Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to describe the advantages and disadvantages of ways of paying for goods and services, and to describe trading, lending, borrowing and donating as ways of distributing resources. The museum offers records on trade, on written payment orders and on endowments; lending and borrowing your class adds. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- F1.1 describe the advantages and disadvantages of various methods of payment that can be used to purchase goods and services
- F1.5 describe trading, lending, borrowing, and donating as different ways to distribute financial and other resources among individuals and organizations
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
What does each way of paying ask you to trust?
For each method you can name, say what a seller must trust and what a buyer must trust. Then list one advantage and one disadvantage.
Go deeper
A historian gives one scene as evidence of how widely the hawala was used. In Tarikh al-Islam, Hasan Ibrahim Hasan writes that the boatmen who ferried the Seljuk sultan Malikshah and his armies across the river Jayhun received bills of exchange from his vizier Nizam al-Mulk. They collected their value from the Seljuk agent in Antioch 2. The record presents the sakk and the hawala as this one author presents them, and adds that the Arabic hawala remains the origin of the word awal in Urdu 2.
Two views
How did the jurists treat the endowment of cash? The TDV Encyclopedia, as the record on waqf gives it, says the early Hanafis did not accept it, though a view allowing it was attributed to Zufar. It adds that it became official, binding practice in the Ottoman state after the Shaykh al-Islam Ebussuud issued a fatwa and an order permitting it in 1548 3. The record reports both and decides nothing.
Think about it
Hasan Ibrahim Hasan offers the boatmen as evidence of how widely the hawala was used. Is one scene enough to show that a practice was widespread, and what else would you want to see before you agreed, and why?
Into the museum
- The sakk and the hawala: the written order that names those entitled to payment, and the bill collected from an agent.
- Waqf: how an owner locks the capital away and gives the yield to a good cause.
- Trade in Islam: what al-Maraghi, quoting Ibn Khaldun, says surrounds buying and selling, from exact measure to false oaths.
- Nizam al-Mulk: the vizier named in the scene.
Try this
Read the records on the sakk and the hawala, and on waqf. For each, say who gives, who receives, and what is handed over.
4 Carry it further
Where this lesson leads in the museum.
5 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Trade in Islam have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Honest measure in buying and selling. Al-Maraghi sees commerce as one of the widest fields of human activity. Quoting Ibn Khaldun that trade invites haggling, fraud and false oaths, he shows Islam surrounding it with exhortation and warning: exact measure and weight, disclosure of defects, and commendation of leniency in buying and selling. He also sets out the forms of partnership, among them mudaraba. How does honest measure protect both the buyer and the seller?
In your own words: what does The sakk and the hawala have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
The sakk and the hawala. Hasan Ibrahim Hasan writes in his Tarikh al-Islam that the sakk is much like today's cheque: it gathered the names of those entitled and what each was due, and the caliph, sultan or prince signed at its foot to authorise payment. As evidence of the hawala's wide use, the boatmen who ferried the Seljuk sultan Malikshah and his armies across the river Jayhun received bills of exchange from his vizier, to be collected from the Seljuk agent in Antioch. Why might a paper be handier than coins?
I can now