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 identify a past or current financial situation and explain how it can inform financial decisions. The museum describes two instruments of the past and does not explain the decisions they guided; drawing out the decision and the related mathematics is your work with your class. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- F1.1 identify a past or current financial situation and explain how it can inform financial decisions, by applying an understanding of the context of the situation and related mathematical knowledge
2 The lesson
Who pays, who collects, and where and when?
Read the description and draw a simple diagram of the parties, places and amounts. Then ask what each party knows before deciding.
Go deeper
Read what the record says of the sakk. Hasan Ibrahim Hasan says in Tarikh al-Islam that the sakk is much like today's cheque. He cites al-Khwarizmi in Mafatih al-ulum that it gathered the names of those entitled to payment, their number, and what each was due 2. The caliph, sultan or prince then signed at its foot to authorise payment of these stipends 2. As the record gives it, one paper carried the names, the number and the sums, and one signature at the foot authorised payment. The same author adds that the word is still used in European languages 2.
How do we know?
The record presents both instruments as Hasan Ibrahim Hasan presents them in Tarikh al-Islam, and cites this one book for them 2. For what the sakk gathered he cites al-Khwarizmi, so a student reads one author's report of another's description, not a sakk. His comparison with the cheque and his remark about European words are what the record carries on how the instrument relates to later ones; it adds nothing more.
Think about it
Take a position and answer the strongest objection to it: is calling the sakk "much like today's cheque" a good way to learn what it was, given that the record describes one paper naming those entitled and what each was due, signed at its foot by a ruler?
Into the museum
- The sakk and the hawala: the record this lesson reads, with the second instrument.
- Hawala, the transfer of a debt: how the jurists' encyclopaedia defines the word hawala.
- Nizam al-Mulk: the vizier whose bills of exchange the record mentions.
Try this
Read The sakk and the hawala. Compare the sakk with a cheque of today in a two-column table: what is similar and what differs.
3 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
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 presents the sakk and the hawala in Tarikh al-Islam as two financial instruments. The sakk is much like today's cheque; the author cites al-Khwarizmi in Mafatih al-ulum that it gathered the names of those entitled to payment, their number and what each was due, and the caliph, sultan or prince then signed at its foot. As evidence of how widely the hawala was used, 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, and collected their value from the Seljuk agent in Antioch. Who gained from such an instrument, and how?
I can now