Dear Eric

The problem I think is that you write about luxuries we just do not have for
huge swathes of the world's history.  

Very often we just do not have much at all in the way of direct evidence of
either what economic economic policies were pursued, nor what economic ideas
were held.

If we are to make any progress in unravelling these mysteries, we are forced
to start with the few basic historical/archaeological facts that we do have,
concerning coins, metrology and the like, and speculatively infer what
policies and ideas lay behind their creation.

In my initial mail I was complaining about a rather strong tendency amongst
economists to abuse this situation and fill these historical blanks with
ahistorical presumptions deriving from their own preconceptions.  Positing
ideas that are at best unsubstantiated, at worst contrary to the few facts
we do have

You ask about 'Abd al Malik’s monetary policies.  Here is a very rough
sketch of his policies, their failure, and influence, as I would reconstruct
them.  

The first electrum coins seem to have carried a fairly large component of
fiat value.  This was reduced to about 2% by Croesus, on both his gold and
silver.  Darius I seems to have abolished seigniorage altogether, and struck
the first commodity-money coinage, (at least in the West).

This policy seems to have been revived by the Sasanid Peroz (459-84) and was
still in place when the Arabs conquered Persia.  When 'Abd al Malik reformed
the coinage in 698-700 however he abolished commodity money silver coinage
and introduced a silver coin carrying a seigniorage of 1/16th.  This seems
to have met stiff opposition by bullionist inclined elements within the
population.  The caliphs attempted to impose the policy for about 140 years,
and then threw in the towel and reverted to a commodity money silver coinage.

However, the scheme ‘Abd al Malik created was adopted by Charlemagne (794),
and later by William I of England when he initiated the sterling penny (c.
1083).  Seigniorages of about 6% were levied on English silver coin
thenceforward at most periods down to the free coining act of 1666.  The
commodity money silver coinage that was introduced by that act started to
fail after just a few decades, but the British government did not formally
admit defeat on the matter until 150 years had passed, in 1816.  At that
point a c. 6% seigniorage was again raised upon English silver.  Very
similar to that imposed upon sterling pennies, and as initially devised by
'Abd al Malik.

So I guess you could say that it was ‘Abd al Malik who solved the big
problem of small change?

Rob Tye

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On Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:48:04 -0700, Eric Schliesser <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Dear Rob,

This list is primarily devoted to the history of economic
theories/ideas/doctrines, not economic history. But what would be
interesting for this list/community is if you could connect Charlemagne’s
monetary weight standards to some then-existing doctrines/theorizing (or
could show that other misreadings of the past are due to their doctrinal
commitments [I think ideological commitments would be less interesting]. You
hint at some such link in your reference to Abd’ al Malik, but no more
than that.
 I have argued in a couple of places that there is potential for very
fruitful research if we studied the complex interaction between the history
of economic theory/ideas and the history of economic policy (as well as
economic history). 

Cheers, 

BOF Research Professor, Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University,
Blandijnberg 2, Ghent, B-9000, Belgium. Phone: (31)-(0)6-15005958
Fall 2011: Visiting Associate Professor, UC, Santa Barbara
http://www.newappsblog.com/
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=649484
http://philpapers.org/s/Eric%20Schliesser