Factor Markets in Early Islamic Iraq, c. 600-1100 AD

Abstract

This paper reconstructs the organization and development of factor markets in early medieval Iraq. It shows that from the late Sasanian period on, and accelerating in the early Islamic period, there v^as a relatively unrestricted functioning of markets for goods, labour, and capital. This stimulated market exchange, associated with growing monetization of the economy, especially in the towns, hut also in the countryside, even though coercion remained more pronounced there. We hypothesize that these developments hrought economic dynamism hut simultaneously increased inequality and furthered the rise of new, powerful elite groups, causing the decline of the same markets. KeywordsFactor markets -exchange of land, lahour, and capital -early Islamic Iraq -early Middle Ages -Ahhasid period For their comments on an earlier draft of this paper, we would like to thank Maaike van Berkel (UVA, Amsterdam) and Michael Morony (UCLA), and the anonymous referees whose serious comments have stimulated us to revise this paper.

Market dominance and endogenous decline: the contribution of historical analysis

“…The reviewer seems to equate aversion against usury with aversion against interest payments (Hodgson, 2020: 2 and 9). Usury (making use of the distress of other people by requiring extraordinarily high interest rates) indeed was opposed, as many still disapprove of it nowadays, but this did not stand in the way of the rise of interest-bearing loans and extensive financial markets, for instance in 9th-century Islamic Iraq, where a main role was played by private bankers, money exchangers and other financial intermediaries – not by the state as suggested by the reviewer (van Bavel, 2016: 59–60 and 74–76; van Bavel et al ., 2014). The same in catholic Italy and the Low Countries, where, despite canonical usury laws, all kinds of interest-bearing ‘sale and lease’ constructions were employed from the high Middle Ages, followed by extensive markets for private and public debts and, later, the introduction of the formalized mortgage (De Luca and Lorenzini, 2018; Zuijderduijn, 2009: 139–182, 227–247).…”

Mills, cranes, and the great divergence: the use of immovable capital goods in western Europe and the Middle East, ninth to sixteenth centuries

“…Ben Abdallah, De l'iqta étatique , pp. 90–120; van Bavel, Campopiano, and Dijkman, ‘Factor markets’, pp. 283–4.…”