History of Islamic Economic Thought pdf

Phases of the development of economic thought in Islam13Even a fifth group of writers may be distinguished who combined thepractical experience of business with Hellenic teachings and Islamic tradi-tions. The representative author of this group is al-Dimashqi42 who wroteal-lshأ¤rah ilأ¤ Mallأ¤sin al-Tijأ¤rah [The Guide to the Virtues of Trade].2. THIRD PHASE: THE RETRANSLATION ANDTRANSMISSION PERIODThe third phase of Islamic economic thought marks the translation ofIslamic sciences in general and Greco-Arab sciences’ (additions and com-mentaries of the Muslim scholars over the Greek philosophy) in particularfrom Arabic to Latin and other European languages. Durant (1950, p. 910)declares: ‘The stream whereby the riches of Islamic thought were pouredinto the Christian West was by translation from Arabic into Latin. Wehave reports regarding translation activities from Arabic to Greek by theend of the fourth century Hijrah in the Byzantine capital Constantinople43(Sezgin, 1984, p. 119). With the passage of time, the volume of retransla-tion work increased considerably. Hence the period before Western renais-sance is termed as the ‘translation age’ (Myers, 1964, p. 78). As we shalldiscuss in Chapter 8, the translation work was only one of the numerouschannels through which the Muslim scholars’ contribution to economicthought and analysis reached the Western scholastics and became partand parcel of the mainstream economics. No doubt, ‘the transmission ofGreek economics to the West was the joint work of Christians, Muslimsand Jews, who collaborated in harmony’ (Grice-Hutchinson, 1978, p. 61). owever, while mostly Christians and Jews helped in translation workfrom Greek to Arabic in the early period44 and from Arabic to Europeanlanguages in the later period,45 it was Muslim scholars who mainlylearned, discussed, analyzed and developed Greek thought.In the two-way translation — to Arabic and from Arabic — the worksof intellectual, philosophical and practical importance were given prefer-ence.46 The works of muhaddithأ¼n [traditionalists] were hardly touched. ertain works of religious dialectics were translated as Christianity alsofaced the problem of conflict between religion and philosophy. Theyalso wanted to establish superiority of religion over Greek philosophy orreconcile the two streams. In these efforts, works of the Muslim scholars,like al-Ghazali’s ‘I/gyأ¤’ CUIأ¼m al-D7n, were of great help.47 Translation ofthe works of /gukamأ¤’ [Muslim philosophers], physicians, scientists, andsocial thinkers dominated the scene. Works of Ibn Sina, al-Farabi,48 IbnBajjah,49 Ibn Rushd,50 etc. were translated into Latin, Spanish, French,Hebrew and German languages. Grice-Hutchinson (1978, p. 71) writes: