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Dear friends, 
 
After some months of joining the HES list here it is my first posting. It 
is about something affecting the core of my current research so I hope to 
find some advice and guideline in your experience and knowledge ;) 
 
I think I should first introduce myself... I am Olivia Orozco, graduate 
student at Georgetown University. I got my bachelor degree in Economics at 
the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. There I started the PhD in Economics 
and International Relations, where I combined it with courses in the PhD in 
Economic Theory. I stopped those studies to come to the States last year 
and join the Master in Arab Studies at Georgetown University, within the 
Economic and Development concentration with Professor Tarik Yousef. 
 
Till the moment I have been mainly working on Islamic Economics and Banking 
and Mediterranean issues but I am slowly sifting to the field of the 
History of Economic Thought. I am interested in the transmission of 
economic ideas during late medieval ages, from the Islamic world to Europe 
through Spain.  
 
Now, at Georgetown with Professor Yousef, I am researching the relevance 
and importance of the work on monetary issues developed by Al-Maqrizi, a 
disciple of Ibn Khaldun, in the fifteenth century. The most interesting 
aspect of Al-Maqrizi's work is that, in his critique of the monetary policy 
of the Mamluk government in Egypt, he directly linked high inflationary 
periods with the debasement of currency. Al-Maqrizi delineated something 
quite similar to the Quantity Theory of Money, with the aim of finding some 
kind of “economic law” – what could be seen as a character of the posterior 
“economic discipline”. Although Buridan and Oresmes are considered the 
“first” monetarists in History -- a century before Al-Maqrizi -- the first 
enunciation of the Quantity Theory of Money is attributed to Martin de 
Azpilcueta (Navarrus) in the sixteenth century, at least half a century 
after Al-Maqrizi’s works. 
 
So, my big question is: Has someone studied the relation between Azpilcueta 
and Al-Maqrizi? Is it possible that Azpilcueta read Al-Maqrizi and 
Ibn-Khaldun works? Which was the role of School of Salamanca in the 
transmission of economic ideas from the Islamic world to Europe? 
 
The amazing thing of all this is that from Aristotelian roots both the 
Latin Scholasticism and the “Islamic” Scholasticism arrived to very similar 
conclusions about monetary and economic issues. The works of Thomas de 
Aquinas and Ibn Taimiyah are very close both in content and approach. And 
they belong to the same century. Isn’t it possible that there was some kind 
of contact or interaction between both schools?  
 
We need to look for evidence. Maybe in the years works were translated, in 
the interaction between universities, in the sources used by the scholars, 
their relations… etc. I don’t know. 
 
Could anyone give me some ideas, advices or guidelines? 
 
Thanks a lot, 
 
Olivia Orozco 
 
Olivia Orozco de la Torre 
Master in Arab Studies, 2003 
Economic and Develoment concetration 
CCAS Georgetown University 
 
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