ABSTRACT
By any measure, the scriptural and early historical legacy of Islam is among the most market-friendly of all the world religions. In contrast to Christianity’s merchant-thrashing Jesus, the Prophet Muhammad was a trader, and the Qur’ân abounds with commercial imagery. Islam’s holy book enjoins believers to engage in trade in a spirit of goodwill (4:29), faithfully fulfill contractual obligations (5:1; 16:91), and behave in a manner that recognizes the importance of private property and uncoerced exchange. The first three centuries of the great Islamic expansion are recognized as having been an age of unprecedented commercial growth. By the tenth century, Muslim merchants and jurists had developed bookkeeping, credit, and investment institutions that were among the most advanced in all of Eurasia. 1 Although the late Middle Ages (1250-1500) saw a decline in the Middle East’s economic dynamism, the period was followed by a commercial boom in the Muslim-dominated Indian ocean. There Muslim merchants created the world’s largest and most lucrative trade emporium, a vast network that tied coastal East Africa, southern Arabia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia into a vast trading network. In the Southeast Asian wing of this trade oecumene, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw the development of an independent merchant class that, like its counterpart in Renaissance Europe, patronized the arts, promoted individualized styles of religiosity, and, in a few settings, even sought to curb the authority of rulers. 2
