Campaña internacional para levantar las reservas de la CEDAW: “Equality without Reservations”

Before we end the account of Muslim economic institutions, it is better to have a brief overview of the economic conditions of two other big governments of the time - Safawid Iran and Mughal India.

In the early sixteenth century, the Portuguese Admiral Albuquerque captured Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and set up trading port in Hormuz, Bahrain and Muscat. Initially Shah Isma‛il opposed the capture of Hormoz by the Portuguese, but finally made a treaty with Albuquerque and recognized the Portuguese establishment. In return ‘they offered to help Iran in the occupation of Bahrain, and in subduing piracy on the shores of Baluchestan and Mokran. They also agreed to help each other against the Ottomans’ (Armajani, p. 173).

Shah Abbas I paid much attention to revival of the economy and did a number of things to develop commerce and industry, for example, building carvanserais and guest houses all along the trade routes (Armajani, p. 167). Iran reached its zenith of power politically, economically and culturally under his reign. Trade with the west and industry expanded, communications improved; the capital, Isfahan, became the center of Safawid architectural achievement.” “Under Shah Abbas I, Iran prospered; he also transplanted a colony of industrious and commercially astute Armenians from Jolfa in Azerbaijan to a new Jolfa next to Isfahan. Shah Abbas encouraged international trade and the production of silks, carpets, ceramics and metal ware for sale to Europeans. He founded a carpet factory in Isfahan. Royal patronage and the influence of court designers assured that Persian carpets reached their zenith in elegance during the Safawid period. He advanced trade by building and safeguarding roads. He welcomed tradesmen from Britain, the Netherlands and elsewhere to Iran. His governmental monopoly over the silk trade enhanced state revenues. Merchants of the English East India Company established trading houses in Shiraz and Isfahan. After Shah Abbas ousted the Portuguese from the island of Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf in 1622, Bandar Abbas (Port of Abbas) became the center of the East India Company’s trade. But Later the Dutch East India Company received trade capitulations from Shah Abbas. The Dutch soon gained supremacy in the European trade with

Iran, outdistancing British competitors. They established a spice-trading center at Bandar Abbas.

The Safawid Empire’s geographical position was ideal. They were near the major overland trade routes between East and West and were beginning to prosper from the growing economy. They were able to trade with Mesopotamia and India, which were technological civilizations at the time. Iran provided overland routes so they could trade ideas and goods. Despite periodic wars between Iran and the Ottoman Empire, they maintained an extensive trade, especially in the highly prized Iranian silk, which large quantities of silk were shipped from Iran to commercial centers such as Aleppo and Bursa and from there re-exported to Marseilles, London, and Venice.

In India, the reorganization of the land revenues system is considered the crowning achievement of Akbar as an administrator but the credit does not go to him exclusively. In fact it was Sher Shah Suri ‘who made a systematic survey of the land under cultivation and laid the foundation on which Akbar raised the super-structure’. After a careful survey, land was classified in four categories based on its fertility and cultivability and revenue was fixed accordingly. The arrangement benefited the state as well as the peasantry. The fixed land tax provided certainty of revenue and prevented any fraud on the part of the revenue officers.

According to Lane-Pool (1903, pp. 261, 263), ‘The land tax was always the main source of revenue in India, and it had become almost the sole universal burden since Akbar had abolished not only the Poll-tax and pilgrims’ dues but over fifty minor duties …. The basis of the land revenues was the recognition that the agriculturist was the owner of the soil, the state being entitled to the surplus produce. In some cases iqta` or land grant was also adopted. An equal rate was demanded from both Muslim and non-Muslim subjects. This was a complete departure from the Islamic principle of ushr or kharaj. He aimed at securing to the peasant the power of enjoying his property and profiting by the prints of his labours, … The very successful land revenue system of British India is little more than a modification of these principles’ (ibid. p. 264).

Akbar also introduced a new and fairer system of taxation based on carefully estimated tables of crop yields. Tax collectors had their own district tables and used them to work out how much grain the farmers should contribute. This contribution was then converted into its cash value, district by district, because food prices varied in different parts of the empire.

Industry was also very developed in this period. After citing various sources that give an account of Indian industry in the sixteenth century, Moreland (1975) remarked in 1920: “Making every allowance for these sources of error, it is still to my mind indisputable that in the matter of industry India was more advanced relatively to Western Europe than she is today”. ‘A considerable amount of trade was carried on by overland route through the two Indian gateways, Qandahar and Kabul, with Balkh and Khurasan, Khwarizm and Persia, Turkey and Arabia, and even Tibet and China’ (Yasin, 1971, 24). But it is not known whether Indian traders had any concern to maintain favourable balance of trade as the European mercantilists strived for it in this period. The Indian maritime trade was confined to the costal areas only because of the Portuguese piracy. To quote Moreland (1975, p. 5) again, ‘in the closing years of the sixteenth century the Portuguese were indisputably masters of the Indian seas, not so much from their own strength as from the failure of the Asiatic nations to realize the nature of the sea power’.

Endnotes:

1. Faddan, a measure of land divided into qasbahs which were measured in term of dhira’ (or feet). The size of these units varied according to the nature of the transaction, and the fertility of cultivation of the land in question. The Ottoman faddan was slightly smaller than the Mamluk one (Shaw, 1964, pp.170-71). 2. In Persian ‘parah’ means piece or murcury] (Gibb and Bowen, 2:39n). [akce or full

name ‘akcei osmani’ means Ottoman little silver piece or ‘little white’, ‘ak’ being a world for white in Turkish and ‘ce’ a Persian diminutive. European authors refer on this account to the akce as an ‘aspre’ from the equivalent Greek word for white, (ibid, 2:49).

3. In modern Arabic, qurush, singular qirsh.

4. ‘florin’ Gold pieces, bearing a flower on the reverse (whence – from florino – the name) were minted in Florence in 1252.Vanice followed suit with a gold coin of the same weight in 1284. This at first known as a ‘ducat’ (i.e. ducal or doge’s coin) was subsequently called a zecchino or sequin (apparently from the Arabic sikka, ‘a

coin’) Gibb and Bowen, 2:50ff. Coming to 15th century, due to trading relations, the coin was in common use of Arabs also as al-Bulqini mentions in his fatawa noted by al-Suyuti.

5. “In theory, akce were minted only from pure silver whereas in the gurus coins weighing 9.5 dirhams, a portion of 1 dirham was composed of copper” (Sahillioglu, p.44). Sahillioglu notes that dirham was equal to 3.072 grams. 6. "The myth generally circulated by modern Arabs to the effect that 400 years of

Ottoman rule suffocated Arab progress cannot be maintained by evidence" (Armajani, p. 156).

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