Making Big Money in 1600: The Life and Times of Isma'il Ibn Taqiyya
Making Big Money in 1600: The Life and Times of Isma'il Ibn Taqiyya by Nellie Hanna is a detailed account of one merchant in one place.
Ismail ibn Taqqiya was primarily a coffee merchant. . The Sufis had been using coffee for about 500 years for their all night prayers. Then, anti-Sufi religious mobs roamed the streets of Cairo burning coffee shops. They claimed that "black water" was an intoxicant. So, a court got some men, gave them coffee and looked for signs of drowsiness and stupidity. The rest is history.
It so happened that he had his choice of courts, four of them, from different schools of law, in which he could register contracts. Abu Taqiyya flexibly extended his trade network by crafting the clauses in his agreements. Hanna compiled her biography from those court records. Her biography reconstructs his daily life, including his marriages, and the marriages of his children, and, ultimately his widows. To borrow and lend money, he became a partner, sometimes in complex multilateral associations.
In a wider trend, Islamic law also developed the concept of the not-for-profit foundation. The “waaf” was originally a common fountain. Whoever owned it first established it as a legal entity so that no one else could take it after his death. By 1600, the “waaf” became away to protect almost any kind of property including cash holdings, naming certain people as its protector, thus giving them inheritances safe from confiscation.
It is a requirement of Islam that a man love all of his wives equally. That can be vague. So one of the women included a clause in her marriage contract specifying how many nights her husband could spend with another wife. It was a legally binding agreement.
As he became wealthy, Isma'il Abu Taqiyya extended and expanded his personal space until his large home dominated his street. He shared that street with a partner who made the same arrangements. They also did this with their warehouses (wikalat), which served as storage, emporia, and guest lodgings. In both cases, the merchant bought each adjacent property in turn, eventually merging them into his own. Thus, public life was gradually excluded from private contexts as the visitor moved inward from the open business into the home.
In the court records, Prof. Hanna also found a Bosnian slave woman who sued some men who had an agreement with her master, but who cut her out of her share. No free woman in London or Paris of 1600 could have done that. This was not an isolated case. Hanna found other women listed as plaintiffs and defendants in other proceedings. Stories from courts tell of sisters suing their brothers, daughters suing their mothers, and so on. While the first-born son was entitled to some large fraction of an inheritance, it was impossible not to leave some inheritance to younger children of either gender. That, too, was alien to the European experience of the time.
What happened to Islam? Nothing. Literally. Meanwhile the West experienced the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. We Objectivists are satisfied that we have a better (if not the best) understand of Truth. But what made the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment was pluralism, many people seeking truth by many paths. If you look at the works and thinkers who influenced the Founders of our Republic, you cannot but be surprised at the wide range of contrary and contradictory opinions: Locke, Hume, and Hobbes... St. Paul, Beccaria, and Montesquieu... Pufendorf and Grotius... Tacitus, Plutarch, and Machiavelli... It was a time of ferment, of different and differing opinions. Cairo of 1600 was something like that, but the Enlightenment never happened there.
Ismail ibn Taqqiya was primarily a coffee merchant. . The Sufis had been using coffee for about 500 years for their all night prayers. Then, anti-Sufi religious mobs roamed the streets of Cairo burning coffee shops. They claimed that "black water" was an intoxicant. So, a court got some men, gave them coffee and looked for signs of drowsiness and stupidity. The rest is history.
It so happened that he had his choice of courts, four of them, from different schools of law, in which he could register contracts. Abu Taqiyya flexibly extended his trade network by crafting the clauses in his agreements. Hanna compiled her biography from those court records. Her biography reconstructs his daily life, including his marriages, and the marriages of his children, and, ultimately his widows. To borrow and lend money, he became a partner, sometimes in complex multilateral associations.
In a wider trend, Islamic law also developed the concept of the not-for-profit foundation. The “waaf” was originally a common fountain. Whoever owned it first established it as a legal entity so that no one else could take it after his death. By 1600, the “waaf” became away to protect almost any kind of property including cash holdings, naming certain people as its protector, thus giving them inheritances safe from confiscation.
It is a requirement of Islam that a man love all of his wives equally. That can be vague. So one of the women included a clause in her marriage contract specifying how many nights her husband could spend with another wife. It was a legally binding agreement.
As he became wealthy, Isma'il Abu Taqiyya extended and expanded his personal space until his large home dominated his street. He shared that street with a partner who made the same arrangements. They also did this with their warehouses (wikalat), which served as storage, emporia, and guest lodgings. In both cases, the merchant bought each adjacent property in turn, eventually merging them into his own. Thus, public life was gradually excluded from private contexts as the visitor moved inward from the open business into the home.
In the court records, Prof. Hanna also found a Bosnian slave woman who sued some men who had an agreement with her master, but who cut her out of her share. No free woman in London or Paris of 1600 could have done that. This was not an isolated case. Hanna found other women listed as plaintiffs and defendants in other proceedings. Stories from courts tell of sisters suing their brothers, daughters suing their mothers, and so on. While the first-born son was entitled to some large fraction of an inheritance, it was impossible not to leave some inheritance to younger children of either gender. That, too, was alien to the European experience of the time.
What happened to Islam? Nothing. Literally. Meanwhile the West experienced the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. We Objectivists are satisfied that we have a better (if not the best) understand of Truth. But what made the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment was pluralism, many people seeking truth by many paths. If you look at the works and thinkers who influenced the Founders of our Republic, you cannot but be surprised at the wide range of contrary and contradictory opinions: Locke, Hume, and Hobbes... St. Paul, Beccaria, and Montesquieu... Pufendorf and Grotius... Tacitus, Plutarch, and Machiavelli... It was a time of ferment, of different and differing opinions. Cairo of 1600 was something like that, but the Enlightenment never happened there.
To MM- thanks.
This is worth noting when reading the 'million man' thread here.
Perhaps some historians exaggerate a bit. But still, the culture of Islam at its height was superior to that of Europe. Science and the standard of living were more advanced, trade, the arts and literature flourished. The message could be if you have free trade and entrepreneurship many other goodies follow.
MM goes on to say, "What happened to Islam? Nothing."
There was no appreciation of the benefits of pluralism, or of the idea that it is productive as well as just/ethical to allow all ideas to be heard, even ones you consider wrong.
The problem is partly with a translated phrase which reads in English something like, 'the seal of the prophet'. To Muslims today this means that nothing Mohamed said can be challenged or ignored regardless of context.
But there have been big changes. The Islamic world of 1400 was very different from that of 600. From the harsh Arabian desert to the sophistication of cultural centers like Istanbul, Bagdad, Cairo and Cordoba-the tolerant intellectual center of Europe.
From about 1400 the change became ossification and a regression to the waring clans of the desert.
I'm amazed I got some history education without learning about this. (I didn't get the best grades in history; I'm a techie.)
I wonder why the Arabic Empire was good at maintaining the ancient Greek mathematical and scientific knowledge but did NOT use it to build industry?
It would take volumes to fill in and correct your misunderstandings if you slept through history classes. The rise and fall of societies is widely debatable and von Mises, for one, suggested that at some level it is intractable.
You might consider the lead pipes that carried the drinking water, even if Rome could have resisted the MASSIVE population movements as the several kinds of Goths were pushed into its borders. Though that did not happen until Rome itself had long since depopulated Greece, bringing in slaves, which itself even in the Republic changed the common ethos.
As late as the 600s, local curates in Gaul still thought of themselves as Romans. Even as the Visigoths were sacking Rome, new villas were built at the port of Ostia. In aviation, we say that no one thing brings you down: the incidents are called "accident chains."