------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW -------------- 
Published by EH.NET (October 2004) 
 
S.M. Ghazanfar, editor, _Medieval Islamic Economic Thought: Filling  
the Great Gap in European Economics_. London: Routledge/Curzon, 2003.  
xv + 284 pp. $115/=A355 (hardback), ISBN: 0-415-29778-8. 
 
Reviewed for EH.NET by M. Umer Chapra, Islamic Research and Training  
Institute of the Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. 
 
 
Muslim contributions to economics have failed to be generally  
recognized in the Western literature that deals with the history of  
economic thought. This has led to the concept of a "Great Gap" of  
"over 500 years" in the history of economic thought from the time of  
the Greek contribution to that of the Scholastics. Joseph Schumpeter,  
therefore, falsely assumed in _History of Economic Analysis_ (1954),  
that this intervening period was sterile and unproductive. The  
reality, however, is that the Muslim civilization had made rich  
contributions to intellectual activity, including socio-economic  
thought, and had thereby played a part in kindling the flame of the  
European Enlightenment Movement. Even the scholastics themselves had  
been greatly influenced by the contributions made by Muslim scholars.  
The names of Ibn Sina (Avicenna, d. 1037), Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d.  
1198), and Maimonides (d. 1204, the Jewish philosopher, scientist and  
physician who flourished in Muslim Spain and then in Egypt.) appear  
on almost every page of the thirteenth century summae (books written  
by scholastic philosophers) (Pifer, 1978, p. 356). Todd Lowry rightly  
points out in his foreword to the book under review that the  
character and sophistication of Arabic writings on economic subjects  
has been "generally ignored" (p. xi). 
 
Since Schumpeter's book became a classic in economics, it led to a  
"blind spot" in the history of economic thought (Mirakhor, December  
1987, p. 248). This blind spot has persisted to this day, as is  
evident from the reference by Douglass North, in his December 1993  
Nobel lecture, to the "long hiatus between the end of the Roman  
Empire in the West and the revival of Western Europe approximately  
500 years later" (North, 1994, p. 365). It is difficult to understand  
why these scholars have not realized what Abu Bakr al-Razi, the great  
Muslim philosopher, scientist and physician (d. 925), understood more  
than a thousand years ago -- that the history of knowledge is a  
continuous process, building upon the foundations laid by former  
generations of scholars (cited by Rosenthal, 1947, p. 68). If this  
evolutionary process in human intellectual development had been  
realized, Schumpeter and North may not have assumed the great gap or  
hiatus of 500 years, but rather tried to discover the foundation on  
which the Scholastics and other Western scholars built their  
intellectual edifice. 
 
However, Muslims themselves are also to be blamed for having failed  
to adequately articulate their own contribution. Ghazanfar's book  
will go a long way toward setting things right. Ghazanfar has been a  
faculty member at the University of Idaho for the last 36 years. His  
long experience in teaching conventional economics along with his  
deep interest in Islamic economics makes him highly qualified to  
write confidently on the contribution made by classical Muslim  
scholars to economics. He has rendered a valuable service to the  
academy by editing this enlightening book. 
 
In addition to the foreword by Todd Lowry and the introduction by  
Ghazanfar, the book contains fifteen papers, seven of which are by  
Ghazanfar himself, four by him in association with A. Azim Islahi,  
one by Paul Oslington, two by Hamid Hosseini, and one by M.  
Nejatullah Siddiqi in association with Ghazanfar. These papers cover  
in sufficient detail the contributions made by Abu Yusuf (d. 798) Abu  
Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111), Ibn Taimiyyah (d. 1328.), Ibn Qayyim (d.  
1350), and a number of other Muslim scholars like Ibn Hanbal (d.  
855), al-Kindi (d. 873), al-Farabi (d. 950), Ibn Hazm (d. 1064),  
Alberuni (d. 1048), Kay Kaus (d. 1082), Nizam al-Mulk (d. 1092),  
Dimashqi (d. 1175), Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (d. 1274), and Dawwani (d.  
1501). 
 
All these papers together help enlighten the reader on the  
contributions made by these Muslim scholars to a number of economic  
concepts like the market mechanism, demand, supply, prices and  
profits, money, counterfeiting and currency debasement, labor supply  
and population, and the role of the state and justice, peace and  
stability in economic development. There is also a discussion of  
economic thought in medieval Iran, the link between medieval Islamic  
socio-economic thought and the Greek and Latin-European scholarship,  
post-Greek/pre-Renaissance economic thought during the "Great-Gap"  
centuries, and a comparison between the thought of Al-Ghazali and St.  
Thomas Aquinas. The quality of the papers is on the whole quite good  
and the book should go a long way in fulfilling its primary  
objective, which is to highlight the Muslim contribution. 
 
It is a little surprising that, even though the name of Ibn Khaldun  
(d. 1406) is mentioned in several places in the book, there is no  
full-fledged paper on this great scholar. Even though he lived after  
the "Great Gap" period, his book, _Muqaddimah_, or Introduction [to  
History], represents a crystallization of Muslim economic thought  
before him. His insight into some economic principles was so deep  
that a number of theories propounded by him nearly six hundred years  
ago could undoubtedly be considered the forerunners of some more  
sophisticated modern formulations of these theories. A number of  
papers are available on Ibn Khaldun's contribution and at least one  
or two of these could have been included in this book for the sake of  
completeness. It would also have been helpful if the spellings of  
scholars' names had been made uniform throughout the book. Different  
spellings in different papers can create confusion in the mind of a  
reader who is not familiar with these names. 
 
The author deserves our compliments for this valuable contribution to  
Islamic economics. It deserves to have a place in the library of not  
only every college and university where history of economic thought  
is taught, but also of individual scholars of economics concerned  
with the evolutionary development of economic theories over the  
centuries. 
 
References: 
 
Abbas Mirakhor, "The Muslim Scholars and the History of Economics: A  
Need for Consideration," _American Journal of Islamic Social  
Sciences_, December 1987, pp. 245-87. 
 
Douglass C. North, "Economic Performance through Time," _American  
Economic Review_, June 1994, pp. 359-68. 
 
Josef Pifer, "Scholasticism," in _Encyclopedia Britannica_, 1978,  
Vol. 16, pp. 352-55. 
 
Franz Rosenthal, "The Technique and Approach of Muslim Scholarship,"  
_Analecta Orientalia_ (Rome, Pontificam Institutum Biblicum, Vol. 24,  
1974), pp. 1-73. 
 
 
Dr. M. Umer Chapra is Research Adviser at the Islamic Research and  
Training Institute of the Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah, Saudi  
Arabia. He joined the institute in 1999 after retiring as Senior  
Economic Adviser from the Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency where he  
served for thirty-five years. He has authored a number of books and  
papers. His most recent book is _The Future of Economics: An Islamic  
Perspective_ (Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 2000). 
 
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