----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 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 ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]