Presented in six principal analytic chapters with supporting appendices, this book explores the role of Islam in precipitating Europe's twelfth century commercial renaissance. Employing the classic analytic techniques of economics, Gene Heck determines that medieval Europe's feudal interregnum was largely caused by indigenous governmental business regulation and not by shifts in international trade patterns. He then proceeds by demonstrating how Islamic economic precepts provided the ideological rationales that empowered medieval Europe to escape its three-centuries-long experiment in "Dark Age economics" in the process, providing the West with its archetypic tools of capitalism. While treatises such as Maxime Rodinson's excellent book, Islam and Capitalism, document the capitalistic nature of the Islamic economic system, in applying modern economic method to medieval orientalist historiography, this work is unique in capturing both the evolution and the impact of the system's role in forging medieval history.
- ISBN10 3110202832
- ISBN13 9783110202830
- Publish Date 22 August 2008 (first published 1 January 2006)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country DE
- Imprint De Gruyter
- Format eBook
- Pages 395
- Language English
- URL https://degruyter.com/isbn/9783110202830