Economic Concepts of Ibn Taimiyah. Abdul Azim Islahi

supervisors of dīwāns, accountants, scribes, etc. Provision of public services, like dams and canals, schools and hospitals, was one of the heads of public expenditure. A number of buildings, dams and canals were built in the Mamluk period. These historical monuments reveal even today their dignity and grandeur.¹⁵² Spare income was spent on the purchase of horses, the advantages of which, in the medieval age, need no description.¹⁵³ In many cases extravagance and misuse of public funds took place, and contemporary thinkers criticized it.¹⁵⁴

References

      1. Ḥarrān is situated in North Mesopotamia on the small river Jullāb at the intersection of important caravan routes to Asia Minor, Syria and Mesopotamia. Today it is a part of modern Turkey.

      2. Cf. Ibn ‘Abd al-Hādī, Al-‘Uqūd al-Durrīyah (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-‘Ilmīyah, 1938), p. 2.

      3. Muir, S. William, The Mameluke or Slave Dynasty of Egypt (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1896), p. 5.

      4. Ibid., p. 14.

      5. Lane-Poole, Stanley, A History of Egypt in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen & Co., 1925), p. 312.

      6. Ibn Kathīr, Al-Bidāyah wa’l Nihāyah (Beirut: Maktabah al-Ma‘ārif 1966), Vol. 14, p. 137.

      7. Lane-Poole, Stanley, Medieval India under Mohammadan Rule (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1903), pp. 137–8.

      8. Lane-Poole, A History of Egypt, op. cit., p. 310.

      9. Ibn Baṭṭūṭah, Tuḥfah al-Nuẓẓār (Beirut: Dār al-Turāth, 1968), p. 16.

      10. Ibn Khaldūn, Al-‘Ibar wa Dīwān al-Mubtada’ wa’l-Khabar (Beirut: Dar al-Kitāb al-Lubnānī, n.d.), Vol. 5, pp. 926–7.

      11. Ibid.

      12. Muir, op. cit., pp. 23–4.

      13. Atiya, Aziz Suryal, Egypt and Aragon (Leipzig: Kommissionsverlag F.A. Brockhaus, 1938), pp. 54–5.

      14. Muir, op. cit., p. 142.

      15. Lane-Poole, A History of Egypt, op. cit., p. 310.

      16. Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ al-A‘shā (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Khaḍīwīyah, 1933), Vol. 4, p. 28; Maqrīzī, Al-Khiṭaṭ (Cairo: Mu’assasah al-Ḥalabī wa Shurākā’uhā, 1933), Vol. 2, p. 305.

      17. Qalqashandī, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 404; Vol. 4, p. 24.

      18. Ibid., Vol. 12, p. 6.

      19. Ayalon, D., ‘Studies in the Structure of the Mamluk Army’, Bulletin School of Oriental and African Studies (BSOAS) (London, 1954), XVI/I, pp. 71–2.

      20. Poliak, Abraham N., Feudalism in Egypt, Syria, Palestine and the Lebanon (London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1939), p. 11.

      21. Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-Sulūk (Cairo: Lajnah al-Ta’līf wa’l-Tarjamah, 1956), Vol. 2, pp. 461–2.

      22. Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 206.

      23. Ibn Taimīyah, Al-Ḥisbah fi’l IsIām (Cairo: Dār al-Sha‘b, 1976) p. 18.

      24. Ibn Iyās, Muḥammad bin Aḥmad, Badā’i‘ al-Zuhūr (Cairo: Lajnah al-Ta’līf wa’l Tarjamah, 1960), Vol. 2, p. 235.

      25. Cf. Suyūṭī, Ḥusn al-Muḥāḍrah fī Mulūk Miṣr wa’l-Qāhirah (Cairo: Dār Iḥyā’ al-Kutub al-‘Arabīyah, 1968), p. 95.

      26. Ibid., pp. 97, 99.

      27. Ibn Iyās, op. cit., p. 302.

      28. Ibn Taimīyah, Majmū‘ fatāwā Shaikh al-Islām, henceforth abbreviated as MFS. First ed., (Riyad: Maṭābi‘ al-Riyāḍ, 1383 AH, 1963), Vol. 30, pp. 338–9.

      29. ‘The term “guild” designated a medieval union of craftsmen or traders which supervised the work of its members in order to uphold standards and, for the same reason, laid down certain rules and made arrangements for the education of apprentices and their initiation in the union. The guild protected its members against competition and in Christian as well as in Islamic countries, was closely related with religioni Goitein, S. D., Studies in Islamic History and Institutions (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968), p. 267.

      30. Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 94–100.

      31. Lapidus, Ira M., Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 96, 98, 101.

      32. Ibn Baṭṭūtah, op. cit., pp. 24, 26–9, 31, 46, 52.

      33. Ibid., p. 91.

      34. Sharafuddīn, A. S. (ed.), Tafsīr Shaikh al-Islām Ibn Taimīyah (Bhīmandī: al-Dār al-Qayyimah, 1954), pp. 30–1.

      35. Heaton, H., Economic History of Europe (New York: Harper & Row, 1948), p. 152.

      36. ‘Āshūr, S. A. F., Al-‘Aṣr al-Mamālīkī (Cairo: Dār al-Nahḍah al-‘Arabīyah, 1965), pp. 330–1.

      37. Qalqashandī, op, cit., Vol. 14, pp. 322–6.

      38. ‘Āshūr, op. cit., p. 334.

      39. Hitti, P. K., History of Syria (London: Macmillan, 1951), p. 651. Instead of ‘Arab world’ and ‘Arab sciences’, a better term would be ‘Islamic world’ and ‘Islamic sciences’ which is more comprehensive.

      40. Ibid., p. 654.

      41. Ibid., p. 654.

      42. Lane-Poole, A History of Egypt, op. cit., p. 313.

      43. For measurement (rawk) of land and its re-allotment: Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 87–8; Ibn Taghrībirdī, al-Nujūm al-Ẓāhirah (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣrīyah, 1939), Vol. 8, pp. 92–3; Ibn Iyās, op. cit., p. 137.

      44. Maqrīzī, Sulūk, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 130; Ibn Kathīr, op. cit., Vol. 14, p. 69.

      45. Cf. Nuwairī, Nihāyah al-Arab fi funūn al-Adab (Cairo: al-Mu’assasah al-Miṣrīyah al-‘Āmmah, n.d.), Vol. 8, p. 221.

      46. Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 203–4.

      47. Al-Ẓāhirī, Khalīl bin Shāhīn, Zubdah Kashf al-Mamālīk (Cairo: al-Maṭb‘ah al-Jumhūrīyah, 1894), p. 122.

      48. Qalqashandī, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 307.

      49. Hitti, op. cit., p. 619.

      50. Qalqashandī, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 308.

      51. Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 186, 228–9.

      52. Cf. Cahen, Cl., Iḳṭā‘ Encyclopaedia of Islam (London: Luzac & Co., 1971); Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 53.

      53. Cf. Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 96.

      54. Cahen, Cl., ‘Ayyubids’, Encyclopaedia of Islam (London: Luzac & Co., I960), Vol. 1, pp. 796–807.

      55. Hasan, A. I., Tārīkh al-Mamālīk al-Baḥrīyah (3rd ed., Cairo: Maktabah al-Nahḍah al-‘Arabīyah, 1967), p. 432.

      56. Rabie, Hassanein, The Financial System of Egypt (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 32.

      57. Details on pages 44, 47, 48.

      58. A Coptic word meaning ‘measurement’.

      59. Qalqashandī, op. cit., Vol. 4, p. 50.

      60. Nuwairī, op. cit., Vol. 8, p. 201; Poliak, op. cit., pp. 9–10.

      61.