ABSTRACT
Interest is an important facet of debt and credit. It is calculated as the additional payment (usually calculated on a particular rate over a particular period of time) that is made for providing the debt/credit over a particular period of time. The earliest traces of interest can be found in Egypt, where interest rates of 20 percent were fixed over a period of 2,000 years. However, this had adverse social effects as well. In the years when there were bad harvests, the farmers were constantly in debt and sank deeper in debt, giving up the land and then the family, becoming bonded laborers to a class of rich people in the kingdom. Slavery has been the leading cause of most uprisings, and on several occasions these bonded workers went up in arms against the establishments, either in agitation or by becoming bandits and thieves.
