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Book chapter | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Islamic financial institutions: theoretical structures and aspects of their application in sub-Saharan Africa |
Author: | Hunwick, John |
Book title: | Credit, currencies and culture: African financial institutions in historical perspective |
Year: | 1999 |
Pages: | 72-99 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Subsaharan Africa |
Subjects: | Islam finance economic history |
Abstract: | Muslim ways of conducting business, grounded in, if not always well reflecting, Islamic law and social ethics, have been a factor in sub-Saharan African commerce for a millennium. Muslim polities there have come and gone for almost as long, yet there still is no clear notion of how business was conducted in Timbuktu, Ghadames, Kano and Kuka; the account books and merchant correspondence have not been studied - though at least for the 19th century some do exist. The author draws attention to the research potential of Islamic financial institutions and suggests that they deserve greater consideration. He pays attention to trade in the Koran, which is replete with mercantile metaphors; State economics; Islamic commercial law; and currencies. An appendix containing four documents of financial transactions from 19th-century Timbuktu, translated by the author, has been added. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |