Al-Maqrizi and the Gold Standard
from "Early Islamic Coins" web pages of James N. Roberts
One work of al-Maqrizi that has received a top-notch translation is his short economic monograph that has been published under the title Mamluk Economics. Speaking as a translator of al-Maqrizi, I can say that a difficulty is that periodically one hits sections that are full of technical details of one sort or another. With these sections I know that even were I handed a perfect English translation, I would not understand what is going on. In the introduction the translator (Adel Allouche) offers a critique of a previous attempt at translation. He cites Gaston Wiet’s earlier French translation and then comments:
This short passage contains a number of serious errors: first, one mithqal of gold was not exchanged for 150 fals (a fals being a copper coin), but for 150 dirhams of account. Second, one dirham was not worth 24 copper coins, but one dirham of account was equivalent to a weight of 24 dirhams of copper coins (fulus). [8]
And on this critique goes in a similar vein. It makes me want to crawl under my desk. Then comes the coup de grâce: “..a misrendering of the frequent monetary data contained in [this work] will ultimately lead to a misconception regarding the scope of the work itself” (9). I don’t question that conclusion; it’s a reminder of the need for a translator to deeply understand the culture from which a work stems. I am trying to get my hands on books such as this one that illumine one aspect or another of medieval Cairo, even if previously I have had no cause to know a lot about the monetary system.
The actual treatise by al-Maqrizi is fascinating, even if it would be tagged as “wonkish” now. Al-Maqrizi was living in a time of “high-prices” (ghala’—see translator’s discussion of term on pgs. 9-12). His overarching point is that times of scarcity happen, and always have happened. He takes us on a tour of Egyptian history that reaches back to the biblical Joseph and advances to his own era. Whenever God causes the Nile to fall short of its inundation, the harvest will fall short and food prices spike. That’s life. But al-Maqrizi points to a second cause for “high-prices,” which is economic mismanagement on the part of Egypt’s rulers. The crisis he was living through in the early years of the 15th century A.D. he blames squarely on the policies of the Circassian Mamluks.
He has three complaints about the Mamluks: 1) widespread attainment of high positions through bribery, 2) the raising of rents on land, and 3) “the circulation of fulus” (55). These three are causally related, I think. The availability of high position for a bribe means that money must be raised in any way possible, which leads them to raise the rents on the land they own. The peasants who live on the land pay higher rents, but naturally raise the prices on their food production to meet that higher rent. Then the final result is the creation of a dummy currency made up of copper fulus, which has no real value.
It is on this last point of the creation of a copper currency that brings out the greatest ire of al-Maqrizi. He turns out to be a strict adherent to the gold (and silver) standard. In fact, deviation from this standard is not just a bad idea, it is an evil deed. Speaking of Sultan al-Zahir Barquq (r. 1382-99 A.D.) he writes: “Among his evil deeds was a large increase in the quantities of fulus…” (71). He summarizes the currency issue as follows:
This is an innovation and a calamity of recent origin. It has no root among any community that believes in a revealed religion, nor does it have any legal foundation for its implementation. Therefore, its innovator cannot claim that he is imitating the practice of any bygone people, nor can he draw upon the utterance of any human being. He can only cite the resultant disappearance of the joy of life and the vanishing of its gaiety… [77]
What is happening there is that economics is being approached through concepts that have their origin in religious thought. Something of “recent innovation” is to be avoided in Islam. Every practice and belief must be tied back to some precedent in the early Muslim community, and here al-Maqrizi proceeds in his economic thinking according to this same standard. If the use of fulus cannot be defended through its use in other communities established by God, then it must be rejected in the same way one would reject some novel doctrine.
The gold standard is tied to something like a natural law. It is the way things are and have always been. Al-Maqrizi takes us on a second historical tour that reveals the long historical roots of the use of gold and silver exclusively for money. (The first to mint dinars and dirhams? Faligh son of Ghabir son of Shalikh son of Arfakhshad son of Sam son of Noah.) His prescription for setting the economy right is to re-establish the currency on these two metals and to more or less get rid of the copper fulus. If wages, rents, and all payments were once again made in gold then the time of high-prices would end and life would go back to normal.
If God would guide those whom He has entrusted with the welfare of His servants to reinstate gold as the exclusive basis for transactions… this would lead to the succor of the community, the amelioration of the situation, and the checking of the decay that heralds destruction. [83]
Unfortunately al-Maqrizi seems to have been wrong about all this. As the translator points out, Egypt was connected to a broader economic system in which silver was disappearing and forcing the substitution of copper in the coinage (18). Perhaps that’s the lesson here: to be very careful about the translation of economic facts into moral values.. although that is clearly a tempting path, even in our own time. Like Egypt in the 15th century, the US is now going through a re-alignment of the worldwide economic system, and it’s important not to build fanciful arguments about moral causation to explain events that are unfolding at a much higher global level.
