Economic Thinking of Arab Muslim Writers During the Nineteenth Century

Abdul Azim Islahi

• Éditeur: Palgrave Macmillan
• Année: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137553218
• Sujet: Economics
• Sous-sujet: Econometrics

Islahi explores the state of Arab Muslim economic thinking in the 19th century. Investigating the works of nine distinguished Arab writers from various fields, Islahi concludes that the intellectual, economic and Islamic awakening seen in the 19th century paved the way for the development of Islamic economics in the 20th century.

1

Introduction

Ever since writing on the history of Islamic economic thought began in the last century, most authors have focused on the period between the first century hijrah/seventh century CE and the ninth AH¹/fifteenth CE century, with specific attention to works of writers from Tunisia, Syria, Yemen and Egypt – the focus of this book. There are several works on the economic thoughts of Muslim leaders, thinkers, and scholars from the early years of Islam, such as Umar b. al-Khattab (d. 33/644), Ali b. Abi Talib (d. 40/660), and Abu Yusuf (d. 182/798), up to the ninth/fifteenth century scholars, philosophers, and social thinkers, such as al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111), Ibn Taymiyah (d. 728/1328), Ibn Khaldun (d. 808/1406) and al-Maqrizi (d. 845/1442).² This fact is noted in the works of Siddiqi (1980), Nuqli (1998) and Islahi (1997, 2005). There has, however, been an almost complete silence about what the situation was in subsequent centuries; it is as if economic thinking had all of a sudden stopped: that there was a lacuna. My curiosity about the reality of the situation provided the impetus for investigating Islamic economic thought and Muslim economic thinking in the period after the ninth AH / fifteenth CE century. Thus, with the support of the Deanship of Scientific Research, King Abdulaziz University, my first study on the subject titled Muslim Economic Thinking and Institutions in the 10th/16th Century (Islahi, 2009) was published. Further, two more studies Muslim Economic Thinking in the 11th/17th century (Islahi, 2011a), and Islamic Economic Thinking in the 12th AH (corresponding to 18th CE) Century with Special Reference to Shah Wali-Allah al-Dihlawi (Islahi, 2011b) were published. This research has shown that even after the heyday of Islam, thinking by Muslim scholars on socioeconomic problems did not cease.

The present study is a continuation of this research series on Muslim economic thinking. In the thirteenth AH/nineteenth CE century, a new type of intellectual and economic awakening started, and economic problems began to attract the attention of a large number of Muslim scholars in different parts of the world. To cover each of these efforts in such a limited space is not a practical task. Therefore, research into Muslim economic thinking in this period has been divided into two parts: this book concentrates on the Arab world, whilst the one that follows will focus on the non-Arabic speaking world.

Prior to our study period, for many centuries there had been surprisingly little change in the running of the affairs of the Muslim world, whether in life pattern, economy or economic thinking. Indeed, there had been incredible conformity throughout those centuries in thought and action, economic institutions, the composition and means of production, industry, and technology. It may not even be an exaggeration to say that in the Muslim world in general, and in the Arab world in particular, if a person of the fifteenth century CE had come alive again in the early nineteenth century CE, he would have been struck by the familiarity of the prevailing conditions of agriculture, the crops grown and their methods of cultivation, industry and the techniques used therein, commerce and the forms of contract and credit practices. Changes thereafter, however, took place very rapidly; there was little or no comparison between the early years of the nineteenth century and the closing years. Indeed, it was during this period that the Arab world entered into the modern age, when modern, European-type educational and training institutes were established for the first time. It also saw the development of many new economic institutions, never heard of before, such as insurance, banking, joint stock companies, stock exchanges, and so on. This was also the occasion of the Arab masses’ first public exposure to European thought and modes of practice, which made them realize just how laggard they had become. There are grains of truth in Sharabi (1970, p. 2) when he says, ‘The rise of the intellectuals and the elaboration of ideological functions must be seen as a manifestation of the forces of education and enlightenment brought about by increasing contact with Europe’.

It is commonly said that history repeats itself. Indeed, but not exactly. Times, players and even lands had changed. In the pre-modern period, crusades provided an opportunity for the West to see the economic and cultural development of the Muslim East. Heaton considers these ‘as a heaven-sent opportunity’ (1948, p. 152), ‘and since the Asiatic and the Moslem world possessed many industrial or agricultural skills and products which were superior to those of the European end, the West benefited by the lessons it learned from its new masters’ (ibid., p. 76). In the modern period, Arab lands once again saw the European onslaught, but irrespective of their balance sheet of loss and gain, this time, at least, they learnt some economic lessons.

Those Arabs who visited Europe and saw Western society and development firsthand as well as the differences between Western and Eastern societies were very much impressed. They realized that the East could not develop unless it adopted the West’s political and economic systems (Saba Yared, 1979, p. 27).

We start our study, then, with two scholars – al-Shawkani and Ibn Abidin – who had purely traditional training. They did not come into contact with the West, directly or indirectly. However, they do present a useful contrast, almost of opposites. While al-Shawkani called for fresh and independent decision-making (ijtihād), Ibn Abidin insisted on strict imitation (taqlīd). On economic issues, though, they have similar opinions: for example, the former permitted bayʿal-rajā’ and the latter bayʿ al-wafā’ as ways to ease financial difficulties.

Next, we selected two more scholars from the ʿulamā’ community – Rifā‘ah al-Tahtawi and Muhammad Abduh – who graduated from the famous seat of Shariah studies, Jāmiʿ al-Azhar. They both spent some time in Western countries and directly or indirectly studied Western thought and institutions, all of which are reflected in their economic ideas: for instance, al-Tahtawi’s emphasis on the significance of industry, which he calls al-manāfiʿ al-ʿumūmīyah, his discussion of productive and unproductive labour, foreign trade, and competition, and so on, and Abduh’s study on poverty, the abolition of bonded labour, the need for relevant education, and the lack of effective demand, and so on.

Next, we selected two statesmen – Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi and Muhammad Bayram al-Khamis – from Tunisia, which was facing political and financial situations similar to those in Egypt.³ While the former was more of an administrator than a scholar, the latter was just the opposite. However, they worked together, supplementing and complementing each other. Both were influenced by the scientific, intellectual and socioeconomic development of the West, and both were distressed by the backward economy and undeveloped educational and political institutions pertaining in Tunisia. They were practical men, not theoreticians: through their economic ideas, they aimed to reform the socioeconomic condition of the country and its people.

Finally, we took three personalities from two important fields: literature and journalism. Initially, we had only two names – ʿAbd-Allāh al-Nadim and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Kawakibi. During our research, however, we noticed that there was one more person who deserved to be included in our study – namely, Ali Mubarak – who has many important economic ideas to offer. This group mainly used their fictional works of short stories and novels to teach their readers the importance of economic and political reform without annoying anyone. Each of them addressed similar issues: elimination of poverty, agricultural reform, defence of labourers’ rights, protection from usurers, and economic development as a whole.

A view of the list of scholars included in this study and their different areas of activities shows that economic issues had become the common concern of nineteenth century ʿulamā’ (religious sages), scholars, statesmen and literati. This was a new phenomenon, not seen in previous centuries. The personalities covered in this study were not professional economists. In fact, until the end of the nineteenth century, economics had not developed as a subject of study in the Arab world, although some efforts were made during the last decades of the century to translate or produce works on the subject. Towards this effort, Arab Christians, given their deep connections with the West, were the first to take steps towards this endeavour. In spite of coming from different regions of the Arab world and having different areas of interest, they discussed many common issues, as well as their own specific issues. In most cases, they strived to educate their people, explain the new economic institutions to them and create economic awareness so that they could change their economic conditions and life patterns. They did the groundwork for the future generation to think about the economic problems in their own environment and according to their own values and beliefs.

It may be noted that a proper understanding and appreciation of the economic ideas of any people depends on having knowledge of the region and environment in which they lived. To provide such a background, this study first starts with an overview of the nineteenth century Arab World in which we have surveyed the sociopolitical, intellectual and economic conditions. As many studies are already available on this subject, we would like to note that in general, in this chapter, need not to go to primary sources, but have instead benefited from the works already available on this subject. This is also not the theme of this study. The aim of the second chapter is to provide background knowledge for which these available sources suffice. For the remaining chapters, however, we have made an effort to go to the original Arabic sources.

We would like to state here that the present study has certain limitations. Imagine the difficulty of covering the span of an entire century in limited time and space. To solve this problem, we have divided our study on nineteenth century Muslim economic thinking into two parts, making this first part specific to the Arab world. However we find that there are certain Arab scholars who could not be covered in this study. Hence, we have briefly included some representative personalities only in this work. Even then it has not been possible to go deeply into every work by these scholars. What we present here is only a sketch of the economic thinking of the nineteenth century Arab world. Our efforts are not a substitute for a detailed study of the subject. Indeed, there is also a need to study the economic ideas of some of these individuals separately.

2

The Nineteenth Century Arab World: An Overview

2.1 The Arab world in international politics

The end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries CE commenced with Bonaparte’s occupation of Egypt in 1798. Although the French were later forced to withdraw as a result of British intervention in 1801, the occupation’s impact on Muslim society and culture was nonetheless far-reaching. It showed, for example, that the Ottomans alone were incapable of defending their Arab components. Naturally, this led, in turn, to a diminution of the Ottomans’ influence in the region. On two occasions, in 1832 and in 1839, Ottoman forces were even defeated in battle by the Egyptians, the latter even penetrating deeply into Anatolia. European powers, however, saved the sultan and forced an Egyptian retreat. However, from 1789 to 1909, the Ottoman throne saw six sultans,¹ each of whom initiated various reforms to arrest the decaying power and prestige of their empire – once the world’s only superpower.

2.1.1 End of the first Saudi state

In the early part of the nineteenth century, the imām (head) of the first Saudi state² established his custody of the two holy places of Islam, Makkah and Madinah. Fearing that this young Islamic state might gain the central position in the world of Islam, Muhammad Ali,³ who had been appointed Pāshā⁴ of Egypt in 1805, crushed this expanding power at the behest of the Ottoman sultan. In this way, he put an end to the tawḥīdī movement initiated by Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb⁵ (1115–1206/1703–92) which strove for renovation and ‘Islamic modernism without undergoing any modernist influence’ (al-Faruqi, 1994, p. xvii).

2.1.2 Muhammad Ali’s dynasty in Egypt

Muhammad Ali also occupied Syria for a few years. The Syrians, who had at first welcomed his armies, soon opposed him ‘for the heavy legal taxes he levied, for his disarming of them to end their feuds, and finally for his conscripting them for state service. With European help they were shortly rid of him: the Egyptians loved him little more, and his whole dynasty inherited some of his taint, though resistance then was effectively stifled’ (Hodgson, 1974, p. 228).

During the period under study, Egypt gained a central position in the Arab...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction
• 2  The Nineteenth Century Arab World: An Overview
• 3  Thinking on Economic Issues in a Traditional Way: Al-Shawkani and Ibn Abidin
• 4  The Economic Thought of Azharite Scholars: Rifah al-Tahtawi and Muhammad Abduh
• 5  The Economic Ideas of Two Tunisian Statesmen: Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi and Bayram al-Khamis
• 6  The Economic Thinking of Arab Literati: Mubarak, al-Nadim and al-Kawakibi
• 7  Conclusion
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index