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Professor Rosser: 
 
My response to Ms. Duggan was not about  the greatest medieval  
Muslim thinker; it was  about  whether or not  Thomas Aquinas was   
the first scholar to view  economic gain as positive. Ibn Khaldun (1332- 
1406) was a great thinker and perhaps the first social scientist anywhere  
(many who know his works regard him the father of  political science  
or even sociology). And Professors Haddad and Lois Baeck have  
called him the first development Economist. However, in terms of  the  
first medieval  Muslim thinkers to explicitly emphasize Economic gains  
and the market,we should really  mention many Persian (i.e.,Iranian)  
and Arab writers  who  wrote on such issues 3 to 4 centries before Ibn  
Khadun.Those writers were not Social scientists--they were  
philosophers, theologians,or writers of books of counsel for kings.    
 
Hamid Hosseini 
 
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