aggression, did sometimes need additional funds to finance a war. It could also happen that the normal resources of the public treasury fell short of ensuring universal need fulfilment, which Ibn Taimīyah regarded as an inalienable duty of the Islamic state. He wrote: ‘It is a common consensus that those who are unable to earn sufficiently will be aided with money that suffices them … (Fatāwā, Vol. 29, p. 570). As elaborated in this book, toward the end of the eighth chapter, Ibn Taimīyah argued that an individual’s financial obligations towards society extended beyond the zakāt payments and the Islamic state could levy additional taxation if and when the Sharī‘ah levies did not suffice for fulfilling its duties relating to defence and need fulfilment. But he strongly criticized the unjust and irresponsible manner in which public money was being squandered. The first thing to do, therefore, was to confine public expenditure within legitimate limits. He came out very heavily against the numerous levies imposed by the rulers during his times, in Egypt and Syria. But he did not condone tax evasion in any case. He also exhorted the rulers to ensure vertical as well as horizontal equity, even in illegitimate taxation, as inequality and discrimination would destroy the social fabric. All this has been ably brought out by Dr. Islahi who has also reported that Ibn Taimīyah’s protestations had some impact on the ruler, Sultan Nāṣir Muḥammad bin Qalāwūn and resulted in some needed tax reforms.
Like every social thinker, Ibn Taimīyah had to take the existing socio-economic and political realities fully into consideration before he pronounced on any issue. This is exemplified by his stand on additional taxation as noted above. It is also exemplified by his opinion on land grants or iqṭā‘. As the author notes in Chapter VI, section D: ‘Ibn Taimīyah accepts iqṭā‘ system as a social necessity, as iqṭā‘ was granted to men of the army in lieu of salary. If iqṭā‘ was abolished, paying them would have become difficult in a period when monetary payment was not convenient or feasible.’
III
Ibn Taimīyah’s economics is mostly normative. He is concerned with how economic agents should behave and what economic policies should be adopted by the state. But positive analysis – how it works – does come up on a number of occasions, sometimes in a context quite unfamiliar to students of modern economics. Thus, price fluctuations are discussed in a chapter on qaḍā wa qadar (divine predestination) (Fatāwā, Vol. 8, pp. 520, 523).
Ibn Taimīyah distinguishes between man-made scarcities and natural scarcities and says that only the former justify state intervention. His discussion shows an awareness of the role supply and demand play in determining prices, as demonstrated by the author of the present work, who has also reported Ibn Taimīyah’s comprehensive discussion on price regulation in his treatise on al-Ḥisbah (supervision of the market).
While discussing the un-Islamic levies imposed on traders during his times, Ibn Taimīyah also looked into the incidence of these indirect taxes. The discussion shows his awareness of the shifting of the tax burden from the sellers, who pay the taxes, to the buyers who had to pay a higher price for the merchandise taxed (Fatāwā, Vol. 29, p. 253).
A similar excursion into the realm of positive analysis occurs during Ibn Taimīyah’s discussion on money, its origins, its functions and the changes in its value, reported by Dr. Islahi in Chapter V, section D of this book. Here is an example:
The conditions of immediate payment and reciprocal possession in it (i.e. in the exchange of currency for currency) ensures the purpose of exchange; that it is a means to securing what is desired. This can obtain only through possession (of the currency in exchange) not through (mere) obligation to pay, when it is money from both sides. Therefore, the Law-giver prohibited sale of money for money with deferred payment (Fatāwā, Vol. 29, p. 479).
IV
It has been a pleasure to be associated with the progress of this work, which started as a Ph.D dissertation at the Aligarh Muslim University, from where the author has graduated after having gone through courses in Sharī‘ah sciences at the Madrasatul Iṣlāḥ, a noted seat of Islamic learning in India. His stay in Jeddah during the final stages of this work enabled him to cover all the available works of Ibn Taimīyah as also the numerous works on Ibn Taimīyah. Readers will be impressed, I am sure, by the author’s diligence as well as his enthusiasm in comparing Ibn Taimīyah with some of the famous names in medieval (Western) scholarship. The proper evaluation of an Islamic thinker’s economic contributions can be made, however, only on the basis of his analytical insights and policy recommendations in the context of the objectives of Sharī‘ah with respect to social relations. It is Ibn Taimīyah’s concern with protection of individuals from tyranny and with ensuring need fulfilment, equity, social equality and justice in transactions while guaranteeing freedom of enterprise and property that projects him as an Islamic economist of stature. The reader will find in Dr. Islahi’s book ample demonstration of these features of Ibn Taimīyah’s works.
With the exception of an unpublished thesis on Ibn Khaldūn, I am not aware of any book-length treatment of the economic concepts of any Islamic scholar, in the English language. This makes the publication of Dr. Islahi’s work on the economics of Ibn Taimīyah a singular event for Islamic economics – an actuality which is also a pointer to the many potentialities awaiting scholars like Islahi. I urge them to come forward, now that the path has been broken. May Allah guide us to His ways.
| Centre for Research inIslamic Economics, Jeddah18 Jumādā 1, 140718 January, 1987 | Muhammad Nejatullah Siddiqi |
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* For bibliographical details, see the Bibliography at the end of the book. Words within parentheses, in this quotation and those following, have been added to make the meaning of Ibn Taimīyah’s Arabic text clear.
The age of Ibn Taimīyah (1263–1328) was characterized by massive social and political upheavals. Barely five years before his birth, the centuries-old Abbasid caliphate at Baghdad had been destroyed by the Mongols. And only three years before his birth, Tatars entered Damascus and Aleppo as conquerors. Tatars attacked and plundered Ḥarrān,1 the birthplace of Ibn Taimīyah, when he was about seven years old. Many of the inhabitants of that area were forced to migrate to Syria and Egypt. The family and household of Ibn Taimīyah moved to Damascus to seek refuge and, since they were learned people, to continue their academic pursuits.2
Thirteen years before the birth of Ibn Taimīyah, the Mamluk dynasty had established itself in Syria and Egypt. The Arabic word mamlūk means slave, and these Mamluks had originally been settled by their owners, the Ayyubid sultans, on an island in the Nile, whence their other common name, Bahrites (from baḥr meaning river). The rulers in the first Mamluk dynasty (1260–1382 AD) were drawn from this group and so known as the Bahrite Mamluks.3 Since their rule coincides with the life-time of Ibn Taimīyah (1263–1328), spent mostly in Damascus but also partly in Cairo, it seems appropriate to outline here the political, social and economic conditions of Egypt and Syria in this period.
