The Muslim Scholars and the History of Economics A Need for Consideration

Abstract

Introduction
. . .The enterpriser addressing a Greek who had been boasting of the scientific
achievement of his people, says: You boast most unreasonably of these sciences;
for you did not discover them by your own penetration, but attained them from
the scientific men of Ptolemy's times; and some sciences you took from the Eygptians
in the days of Prammetichus, and then introduced them into your own
land, and now you claim to have discovered them. The King asked the Greek
philosopher: "Can it be as he says?" He replied saying, "It is true; we obtained
most of the sciences from the preceding philosophers, as others now receive
them from us. Such is the way of the world - for one people to derive benefit
from another. Rasail of the Ikhwan Al-Safa
Never in any age was any science discovered, but from the beginning of the
world wisdom has increased gradually, and it has not yet been completed as
regards this life. Roger Bacon
. . .there is no longer any excuse for a pmctice which has confounded the study
of medieval economics since its inception more than a century ago, namely,
that of basing the most sweeping historical generalizations on a fav familiar
names, with no regard for context and continuity; even the best textbooks in
the field still skip and jump from one century to the next, in and out of different
traditions. But a scholastic commentator superimposed his own ideas on those
accumulated in the particular tmdition in which he wrote, accepted its premises
and adopted its language. He cannot be fully understood until its foundation
is also dug out.
It is easy now to forget that those who laid the foundation of modem
economics in the eighteenth century were as familiar with the accumulated ...