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XIV International Economic History Congress
Helsinki, 21-25 August 2006
Session 121: Islam and Economic Performance
Muslim tujjar of the Middle East and their Commercial Networks
in the Long Nineteenth Century
Gad Gilbar
Department of Middle East History
University of Haifa
Haifa 31905 Israel
[email protected]
I
The historiography of the networks of merchants and entrepreneurs in the Middle East, including
the eastern Mediterranean basin, in the nineteenth century, barely deals with Muslim merchants.
The impression gained from the research literature in this field is that the Muslim merchant
networks asserted an entirely marginal influence. It would appear that the important development
of the emergence of networks was the province of Greek, Jewish, Armenian and Arab-Christian
merchant families alone. Put another way, in the context of Middle Eastern society, networks of
merchants and entrepreneurs were a distinctive phenomenon of the communities of religio-ethnic
minorities.
Such a presentation of the economic history of the Middle East has received support and
grounding on the theoretical level, especially regarding theories of the link between the particular
condition of minorities and the undertaking of economic ventures,1 and between the formation of
diasporas and the building of networks of merchants and entrepreneurs.2 In short, the appearance
of trading networks in the nineteenth century and earlier has been ascribed to the special
condition of minorities, and is explained by the social, economic, cultural and even political
1
Everett Hagen, On the Theory of Social Change: How Economic Growth Begins, Homewood IL: Dorsey Press,
1962. Hagen argues that people who grew up in certain minorities develop a much stronger psychological propensity
for entrepreneurship than those who did not. This approach has been rejected by several historians, including
Alexander Gerschenkron.
2
Janet Tai Landa, Trust, Ethnicity and Identity, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994, pp. 101-113.
1
characteristics of these societies. This applies particularly to minorities that suffered persecution,
discrimination and repression.
While research on the Muslim big merchants of the Middle East in the nineteenth century is
still in its initial stages, what has already become clear is that the approach that removes these
merchants from the context of international trading networks is mistaken. Pieces of evidence
from primary sources in public and private archives, as well as indications, sometimes detailed,
in the secondary literature, attest to the activity of networks of Muslim big merchants and
entrepreneurs who operated both within and outside the region. Of the many cases mentioned in
the sources, I shall present a few that substantiate the point I am making:
(1) Hajj Muhammad Hasan Isfahani Amin al-Darb, who was considered the leading merchantentrepreneur in Iran in the late nineteenth century, established branches and agencies of the
firms that he owned already at the early stages of his business activity. Operating from his
head office in Tehran, with the help of relatives, he opened branches in important trading
junctions in Iran itself (Yazd, Mashhad, Isfahan, Tabriz, etc.), as well as in towns that served
as main markets for goods that he imported/exported: Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Aleppo,
Istanbul, Trebizon, Astrakhan, Moscow, Nizhnii Novgorod, Odessa, Warsaw, Marseilles,
Paris, London, Manchester and others. In addition to the branches directly under his control,
he had representatives in the major centers of international commerce, including Brussels
and Hong Kong. Amin al-Darb’s archive in Tehran contains his correspondence with the
heads of his branches, his agents and his representatives in various locations. Some of the
letters and cables have been published, and constitute an important source for understanding
the method of operation of this outstanding entrepreneur.3
(2) The Nabulsis were among the most illustrious a‘yan families in the city of Nablus from the
eighteenth century onward. For generations, members of the family had engaged in the
manufacture and export of soap made from olive oil. In the nineteenth century, the family,
led by Abd al-Rahman al-Nabulsi, seized the opportunity that presented itself to local
entrepreneurs and expanded the areas and range of its concerns. Relying on family members,
branches were opened or enlarged in Jaffa, Karak, Damascus and Cairo. Commercial
representatives were stationed in Istanbul, Jiddah, Baghdad and elsewhere. This network
was a central factor in the expansion of the export of soap produced at the family’s
workshops in Nablus. The family archive in Nablus, and the sijill of the mahkama of this
3
H. Picot, Biographical Notices of Members of the Royal Family, Notables, Merchants, and Clergy in Persia,
Confidential 7028, December 1897, FO 881/7028, NAUK, pp. 65-66 (hereafter: Picot, Biographical Notices); Z.Z.
Abdullaev, Promyshlenost’ I zanozhdenie rabochego klassa Irana v kontse xix-nachale xx vv., Baku, 1963, p. 158
(hereafter: Abdullaev, Promyshlenost’ izarozhdenie); Shireen Mahdavi, For God, Mammon, and Country, Boulder
and Oxford: Westview Press, 1999.
2
town, contain a wealth of evidence showing the extensive activity of the Nabulsi network.4
(3) Muhammad Ahmad al-Siyufi, born into a venerable merchant family in Egypt, established
the Siyufi company, with offices inaugurated in Cairo in 1860. From there his company set
up agencies and branches throughout Egypt. He also opened a branch in Manchester, and
maintained agencies and representatives in India and the Red Sea ports. As merchants who
specialized in “Sudanese goods” (along with the export of cotton and the import of textiles),
Wright and Cartwright noted, “in their own department they enjoy practically a monopoly of
the Red Sea Trade.”5
(4) Muslim pearl merchants in the Persian Gulf region established branches in Bombay and
Paris in the course of the second half of the nineteenth century. These branches were meant
to promote the sale of pearls in the two markets where demand for them was especially high,
and soon served other commercial purposes as well. Especially noteworthy in the domain of
establishing an effective network was the Aliriza family. One of its members, Muhammad
Ali, opened a retail shop selling pearls and other jewelry on the Champs Elysees in Paris.6
(5) The network established by Ahmad Ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Saqqaf is interesting in many
respects. This entrepreneur, a member of a Hadhramaut family that migrated to Singapore,
established the Singapore Steamship Company in the early 1870s, specializing in ferrying
Muslim pilgrims from the large communities of Southeast Asia to the holy cities in the
Hijaz. Despite fierce competition by Dutch and other steamship companies, the al-Saqqafs
managed to continue their maritime operations on the Singapore-Hijaz route until 1940.
Integral to the firm’s activity, from the start it set up branches in Jiddah and Mecca, which
were run by family members.7
4
Antonin Joseph Jaussen, Coutumes Palestiniennes, I. Naplouse et son District, Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1927, pp.
134-35; Raouf Sa‘d Abujaber, Pioneers over Jordan, London: I.B. Tauris, 1989, pp. 159, 286 n. 51; Ihsan al-Nimr,
Ta’rikh Jabal Nablus wa’l-Balqa’, vol. 2, Nablus: Matba‘at al-nasr al-tijariyya, 1380/1961, p. 294; Ruba Kana’na,
Patronage and Style in Mercantile Residential Architecture of Ottoman Bilad al-Sham: The Nablus Region in the
Nineteenth Century, MA Thesis, Oxford University, 1993, p. 100 (Appendix 1); Eugene L. Rogan, Frontiers of the
State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850-1921, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
5
Arnold Wright and H.A. Cartwright, Twentieth Century Impressions of Egypt, London: Lloyd’s Greater Bvritain
Publishing Company, 1909, p. 375; see also Robert Vitalis, When Capitalists Collide: Business Conflict and the End
of Empire in Egypt, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, pp. 41, 234 n. 8.
6
Michael Field, The Merchants: The Big Business Families of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, Woodstock:
Overlook Press, 1985, pp. 22-24; Géraud Naulleau, “Islam and Trade The Case of Some Merchant Families from the
Gulf,” in Denys Lombard and Jean Aubin (eds.), Asian Merchants and Businessmen in the Indian Ocena and the
china Sea, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 299, 301-302, 306-307; Joshua Teitelbaum, The Rise and
Fall of the Hashemite Kingdom of Arabia, London: Hurst, 2001, pp. 26-27.
7
Edwin Lee, The British as Rulers: Governing Multiracial Singapore, 1867-1914, Singapore: Singapore University
Press, 1991, pp. 165-166; Janet Ewald and William G. Clarence-Smith, “The Economic Role of the Hadhrami
Diaspora in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, 1820s to 1930s,” in Ulrike Freitag and William G. Clarence-Smith
(eds.), Hadhrami Traders, Scholars and Statesmen in the Indian Ocean, 1750s-1960s, Leiden: Brill, 1997, p. 288.
3
These examples do not cover the many variants of the Muslim merchants’ networks. Other
instances include the networks founded by the great wheat merchants of Damascus (Istanbul and
Izmir),8 the networks of Muslim merchants in Salonika, especially the “Egyptian network,” 9 the
networks of the Hijaz merchants in the Red Sea and East Africa regions,10 and the networks of
Iranian merchants in Transcaspia and Central Asia.11 All these show that Muslim merchants were
part of a wide circle of commercial networks in the countries of the Near and Middle East, and
that they played an important role in terms of their contribution to the economic development of
the region.
II
The time is not yet ripe for a quantitative analysis of these networks, as many documents still
await study and analysis. Nevertheless, four initial conclusions that arise at this stage from the
primary and secondary sources will apparently be borne out by the additional material:
(1) The establishment of international commercial networks was more prevalent in Muslim big
merchant families hailing from the eastern and southern parts of the Middle East than from
its western and northern parts. This stems from the greater presence and influence of the
Muslim tujjar in Iran, Arabia and the Persian Gulf than that of the Muslim merchants in
Anatolia and the Nile Valley. Notably, in this context, only the community of Iranian big
merchants founded colonies in the large and foremost trading centers of the Middle East:
Istanbul, Trebizon, Cairo, Baghdad, Basra, Aleppo and others.
(2) The Muslim tujjar networks consisted mostly of a few cells or otherwise sparse networks,
i.e., a center with two or three branches. Only rarely did these networks have more than five
units.
(3) The Muslim tujjar families hardly ever seemed to have set up partnerships among
themselves in the process of establishing or expanding international networks. The practice
of strengthening and expanding the network through marriage ties was rare between tujjar
families, which is one of the possible reasons for the sparsity of the networks.
(4) Although within the framework of their networks the Muslim tujjar established branches and
agencies in the commercial centers of Europe, including Manchester, London, Paris,
Marseilles, Moscow and Odessa, this type of network was somewhat of an exception. More
8
Muhammad Adib Al Taqi al-Din al-Hisni, Kitab munkakhabat al-tawarikb li-Dimashq, Beirut: Dar al-afaq aljadid, 1979, vol. 2, pp. 864, 883, 885.
9
Eyal Ginio, “A Forgotten Balkan Elite: The Muslim Merchants and the Egyptian Commerce,” in Kemal Çiçek
(ed.), The Great Ottoman-Turkish Civilization, vol. 2: Economy and Society, Ankara: Yeni Türkiye, 2000, p. 77.
10
William Ochsenwald, Religion, Society and the State in Arabia, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984, pp.
109-110.
11
The Head of the Civil Administration in the Caucasus, 4 August 1901, N. 159, Fond 821, Opis 8, Delo 845,
Russian State Historical Archive.
4
commonly, Muslim networks seemed to have spread in Middle Eastern countries, in the Red
Sea basin, in several commercial centers in India, and in Central Asia. Clearly, the Muslim
networks concentrated in towns with a Muslim majority or a large local Muslim community.
It could be supposed that the Muslim tujjar would have worked toward establishing branches
in the commercial centers of Europe, as trade between the Middle East and Europe carried a
greater potential for profits at higher rates. As noted, most of the foreign trade of the Middle
Eastern countries in the nineteenth century was conducted with European economies – England,
France, Russia, Austro-Hungary and others.12 Trade with the economies of East Asia was
important, but was not of the order of magnitude of trade with Europe. However, while the
Muslim big merchants conducted far-flung transactions with suppliers and consumers of the
European markets, they did so indirectly, through European trading houses or by way of the
networks of non-Muslim merchants. They thus forfeited the lion’s share of the profits that
accrued from the transactions in which they themselves played an important role.
III
The following two cases illustrate the tujjar’s reluctance to set up branches of their networks in
Europe:
(1) Abdallah al-Kahhal (1840-1914) was one of the big merchants in Egypt during the last
decades of the nineteenth century. The commercial network he established embraced trading
centers in Sudan, Hijaz, Tripolitania and Syria. He made huge profits in trade with the
Sudan. Yet, like other big Muslim merchants, he too did not expand his activity to the
commercial centers in Europe.13
Al-Kahhal belonged to the community of “Syrian” merchants in Egypt, that is, those who
were born in Syrian territory, more precisely in sha'm, and migrated to Egypt during the
nineteenth century or before. This group was highly active in the commercial life of Egypt.
In terms of religious origin, the Syrian merchants were divided into two main groups:
Muslims and Christians. An analysis of the regions of their activities is instructive for our
discussion: the Muslims created networks in the markets of the Nile Valley, the Red Sea
basin, the Levant and North Africa, whereas the Syrian Christian merchants focused on the
markets of Europe, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century, establishing
12
Charles Issawi, An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa, New York: Columbia University
Press, 1982, pp. 37-38; evket Pamuk, The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism, 1820-1913, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 31-32, tables 2.3 & 2.4.
13
Terry Walz, “Libya, the Transsaharan Trade of Egypt, and ‘Abd Allah Kahhal,” paper delivered at the Second
Symposium of the Libyan Studies Center Tripoli, 1980; Thomas Philipp, the Syrians in Egypt, 1725-1975, Stuttgart:
Franz Steiner, 1985, pp. 120-121 (hereafter: Philipp, Syrians).
5
branches in London and Manchester, Paris and Marseilles. Their networks also covered
Sudan and the Red Sea basin, but in many cases those were not the main focus of their
activity.14
(2) The role played by the Iranian big merchants, particularly the Tabrizis, in the development
of the carpet weaving industry into one of Iran's major export branches in the last third of the
nineteenth century has been discussed in several sources.15 One of the most reliable is by
Cecil A. Edwards, a noted expert on Persian carpets, who lived in Iran for many years
during the early twentieth century. Edwards aptly describes the process whereby the tujjar of
Tabriz became important entrepreneurs and exporters in this economic field:
It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century, however, that Persian carpets
began to find their way into the West in appreciable quantities. The trade was in the
hands of Tabrizi merchants – men of credit and renown. They had branch offices in
Istanbul, where their principal business was to buy the manufactures of the West and
ship them home via Trebizond. They had their agents, too, in the important towns of
Persia, who collected carpets from the houses and in the bazaars. Most of these pieces
had been long in service.... These pieces invariably realized a higher price after ten to
forty years of service than their owners had paid for them in the first instance.... Thus,
there issued from the houses, into every bazaar in Persia, a constant stream of antique or
semi-antique pieces.
The agents of the Tabrizi merchants collected as many of these old carpets as they could
find in the houses and bazaars of the more important towns, and sent them by caravan to
Tabriz. There they were sorted, baled and dispatched...to Constantinople – which
became the world’s market for carpets. Buyers from Britain, from the United States and
from France...visited the Turkish capital in increasing numbers [and] the demand
continued to grow; but as it grew, the supply of old carpets steadily diminished.
What was to be done? The enterprising merchants of Tabriz were faced with the danger
of the extinction of their profitable trade. They resolved to meet the crisis by producing
new carpets, to be specially woven for export, in sizes and colours which they believed
would appeal to Western taste.
Thus, about the year 1880, the weaving industry of Persia – which since the Afghan
invasion had dwindled into an insignificant village craft – received from the merchants
of Tabriz a stimulus which has placed it today [ca. 1950] in the forefront of Persia’s
commercial activities.
The basic character of the craft was, of necessity, changed. The Persian carpet, from
being an article produced to meet a restricted domestic need, became essentially an
14
Philipp, Syrians, pp. 120-121.
See, for example, Leonard M. Helfgott, Ties that Bind: A Social History of the Iranian Carpet, Washington:
Smithsonian Institute, 1994, pp. 198-200.
15
6
article of export....
The Tabrizi merchants were not content merely to place orders with the village weavers
and leave it at that. They soon established small factories of a few looms in the towns,
where the weaving process could be more easily and more properly controlled. The
movement began in Tabriz itself, but they extended it before long to Meshed, Kerman
and Kashan. In each locality the moving spirit was the Tabrizi merchant.16
Edwards’ statement that the carpets manufactured by Tabrizi tujjar were transported to Istanbul
is corroborated by other sources. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman capital
became the leading international market of Oriental carpets and rugs. The fact that most Persian
carpets were transported there contributed to the central role Istanbul played in this international
trade.17 Apparently, the community of Iranians in Istanbul grew in the 1860s and 1870s.
Estimates by nineteenth-century observers suggest that some 16,000 Iranians lived in Istanbul in
the 1880s.18 The Iranians in Istanbul developed their own social, welfare and cultural institutions.
The community had its own schools, newspapers, hospital, cemetery, and so on. Clearly,
merchants formed a very important segment of this community, and constituted the leadership of
the Iranian colony on the Bosphorus.19 Among the Iranian big merchants, those in the carpet
trade were by far the wealthiest and the most influential. According to a survey of occupations in
the capital carried out in 1330/1913 by the Istanbul municipality, all Iranian wholesale
merchants, without exception, were in the carpet trade.20 Many of these merchants had their
offices and warehouses in the Valide Hani caravanserai.21 By the last decades of the nineteenth
century, Valide Hani had become the center of Iranian business in the Ottoman capital.
Cairo, too, had a colony of Iranian merchants, with the carpet merchants, known for their
assiduousness, playing a prominent role in this trading junction as well.22 In Anatolia, likewise,
Muslim merchants showed marked enterprise in the carpet manufacturing field. There, this
16
A. Cecil Edwards, The Persian Carpet: A Survey of the Carpet-Weaving Industry of Persia, London: Gerald
Duckworth, [1953] 1967, p. 56 (hereafter: Edwards, Carpet).
17
Muhammad ‘Ali Jamalzada, Ganj-i shaygan, Berlin 1335/1917, p. 21.
18
Khan Malik Sasani, Yadbudha-yi safarat-i Istanbul,m Tehran, 1345/1966, p. 94.
19
Ibid., pp. 94-95, 103, 105-107.
20
Tsutomu Sakamoto, “Istanbul and the Carpet Trade of Iran since the 1870’s,” in Th. Zarcone and F. Zarinebaf
(eds.), Les Iraniens d’Istanbul, Paris: IFRI and IFÉA, 1993, p. 230 (hereafter: Zarcone and Zarinebaf, Les Iraniens).
21
Raphael C. Cervati, Indicateur ottoman illustré. Annuaire-almanach du commerce, de l’industrie, de
l’administration et de la magistrature, Année 4, 1883/1300, Istanbul: Cervati Frères & D. Fatzea, 1883, p. 466;
idem, Annuaire oriental du commerce, de l’industrie, de l’administration et de la magistrature, Année 9, 1889-90/
1306, Istanbul: Cervati Frères, 1890, pp. 483-484; idem, Annuaire oriental, Année 14, 1896/1313-14, Istanbul:
Cervati Frères, 1896, pp. 714-715.
22
Mohammad Yadegari, “The Iranian Settlement in Egypt as Seen through the Pages of the Community Pages of
the Community Paper – Chihrinima (1904-1966),” in Elie Kedourie and Sylvia G. Haim (eds.), Modern Egypt:
Studies in Politics and Society, London: Frank Cass, 1980, pp. 98-114; Anja W.M. Luesink, “The Iranian
Community in Cairo at the Turn of the Century,” in Zarcone and Zarinebaf, Les Iraniens, pp. 193-200.
7
manufacture centered in Usak (western Anatolia). The huge demand for carpets in Europe and
North America brought about unprecedented prosperity in the carpet manufacture branch in the
city and its surroundings. Local Muslim entrepreneurs played a major part in this development.
They invested in the establishment of spinning mills for wool, the basic raw material in carpet
weaving in this region.23 One of the foremost local entrepreneurs in this field was Tiritoglu
Mehmet, who also engaged in other types of commerce (e.g., wheat exports) in partnership with
foreign merchants.24
Despite their entrepreneurship and their evident dominance in the carpet manufacturing
branch in Iran and in Anatolia, Muslim big merchants, whether individually or as a group, did
not develop networks to sell these products in the European markets, where the demand for them
was particularly high. Foreign trading houses – British, French, Italian, Greek, German and
American – opened agencies in Istanbul and Izmir, and through them conducted the large-scale
marketing of carpets.25 Thus, the huge profits from one of the major export branches of Iran and
Anatolia went to the trading houses owned by foreign entrepreneurs. The intense competition for
the spoils was carried on between the foreign networks themselves. Muslim merchants were
hardly in evidence.
IV
A study of the experience of Muslim merchants who did sojourn over time in European cities in
preceding centuries may help explain the conduct of the Muslim tujjar with regard to these
places in the nineteenth century.
Historiographic research so far has reconstructed only a single case in the course of three
centuries (sixteenth-eighteenth) of an active, busy colony of Muslim merchants in Christian
Europe: the Fondaco di Turchi in Venice. This colony of Muslim merchants was founded toward
the end of the sixteenth century and was active at least until the second half of the eighteenth
century. The colony flourished for a considerable number of years during this period: the
number of Muslim merchants increased, the volume of their business expanded, and their profits
rose.26 Documents in Venetian archives provide a key to understanding the special nature of this
feature, and, indirectly, why this development was not replicated in the other great commercial
centers of Europe. Hence, several points in the history of the “Turkish funduq” in Venice merit
23
Donald Quataert, Ottoman Manufacturing in the Age of the Industrial Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993, p. 150 (hereafter: Quataert, Ottoman Manufacturing).
24
Dahiliye Nezareti Mektubî Kalemi, 1586/22, 19 Jumada I 1306/31 January 1888, Ba bakanl k Osmanl Ar ivi
(Istanbul).
25
Quataert, Ottoman Manufacturing, p. 151.
26
P. Preto, Venezia e I Turchi, Padua, 1975, pp. 128-139 (Hereafter: Preto, Venezia); G. Verecellin, “Mercanti
Turchi a Venezia alla fine del cinquecento,” Il Veltor: Rivista della Civilta Italiana, vol. 23, nos. 2-4 (1979), pp.
243-275.
8
our attention.
The funduq was an edifice that served as a business center, office site and storage facility for a
group of foreign merchants, usually of similar origin. Groups of merchants concentrated in one
precinct enjoyed significant advantages. They could share such fixed costs as guarding, ongoing
care and maintenance of goods, tending animals, and joint purchases of food. Furthermore, they
acquired a sense of security and protection from hostile elements. Such an arrangement also
ensured that potential customers would be drawn to a place identified not only with certain
merchants but also with particular commodities. In addition, such proximity lowered the cost of
transactions made among the merchants of the funduq themselves. The establishment of the
funduq required the assent of the Venetian authorities, who were also aware of the advantages of
a concentration of foreign traders in one area, namely easier supervision of them and their
dealings, and easier protection of their property in the event of harassment on the part of the local
population.
In August 1573, the Ottoman merchants in Venice requested the authorities to grant them a
place where they could transact their business. Six years later, the Osteria del Angelo was
earmarked as the funduq of the Ottoman merchants (“the Turks”). Over the next two hundred
years or so, this merchants’ colony knew both good times and bad. Most important for our
concern is the picture that emerges from the Venetian sources of opposition and deep enmity by
various groups in local society to the presence and activity of Muslim merchants generally, and
to the presence of their funduq in particular. The arguments raised against “the Turks” were
religious, moral, economic and political. These complaints against both Muslims and Jews
recurred in different versions in other places in Europe. In Venice of the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth century the Turks were accused of being corrupt; “robbed the public, turned youth to
evil ways and misused Christian women” (“rubbar, il condur via garzoni, usar con donne
christiane”);27 their funduq would become “a den of vice and a cesspit of filth” (“redotto de
viziosi et sentina de sporchezzi”);28 and they intend to erect a mosque and to pray there to their
prophet Muhammad, which, of course, would be an intolerable scandal. Additionally,
economically, the goods they brought from Istanbul were of little value; and as for the political
side, their presence in the city endangered Venice, considering the territorial aspirations of the
Ottoman sultans.
Sometimes, the annoyance, harm and harassment of the Turkish merchants by the Venetian
populace reached such levels that the authorities stepped in forcefully in their defense. For
example, in August 1594 a declaration was published by the republic’s legal authorities stating
27
28
Preto, Venezia, p. 130.
Ibid., p. 132.
9
that whoever harmed the Turkish merchants was liable to heavy penalties: exile, imprisonment
and even death by hanging. In January 1612 another law was passed allowing the imposition of
weighty punishment on anyone who harmed the foreign merchants operating in Venice in any
manner.29 It is not clear how effective these measures were in ending the incitement and injury to
the Muslim merchants. Still, there is no doubt that for many years the Venetian authorities had a
clear interest in ensuring the personal safety, the property and the ongoing activity of these
merchants. It was in the interest of a power whose strength and might lay in the existence of an
international commercial system. This required conditions of personal safety and security of
property for all who were part of it. Notably, this was clearly the perception of the fathers of the
Venetian state, and they adhered to it consistently, with only a few exceptions related to the
military campaigns in which the republic was involved.
Venice was exceptional in the European political system in the protection it afforded the
Muslim merchants who resided there. In no other state in Europe in the sixteenth-eighteenth
centuries did rulers and governments adopt a policy of protecting foreigners, let alone Muslims.
The attitude in the various European states ranged from an explicit ban against the presence of
Muslims to passive acceptance of their presence while displaying indifference to injury against
them by the local population. To put it mildly, the states of Europe until well into the nineteenth
century were not the soil in which Muslim enterprise could flourish.
V
Several causes can be suggested for the absence of colonies of Muslim merchants in the
commercial centers of the states of Europe in the nineteenth century – or why the Muslim big
merchants eschewed developing ramified commercial networks in these countries. These causes
may be divided into two groups: (a) political, social and economic conditions in the European
countries; and (b) conditions and circumstances in the home countries of the Muslim merchants.
Regarding conditions in the European markets, three factors stand out:
(1) Large groups in Christian Europe looked askance at the presence and economic activity of
Muslim nationals. In the nineteenth century, as in earlier times, such a presence aroused
varying degrees of rejection, opposition and hostility to Muslim businesses. Muslim
merchants encountered this attitude on the part of customers, suppliers and commercial
competitors. These attitudes had deep historical roots, nourished by economic, social and
cultural factors. Despite significant developments in the direction of secularization in many
European societies during the nineteenth century, the basic attitude toward the presence of
Muslim merchants remained unchanged among large strata.
29
Ibid., pp. 132, 134.
10
For many centuries, these attitudes were also held by central governments in Europe.
From the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries, most European countries promulgated laws
forbidding the lengthy sojourn, permanent settlement or engagement in commerce by
foreign nationals, including Muslims. Bernard Lewis maintains that this posture of the
governments in the European states was the main factor in the absence of Muslim merchant
colonies in Christian lands.30 Thus, when the dramatic economic development of the
nineteenth century occurred – the first globalization, as it were – Muslim merchants had no
strongholds in the European markets.
(2) Many Muslim merchants felt a sense of alienation in their contacts with foreign firms and
merchants, and all the more so in extended stays in Christian countries. While some
merchants did acquire sufficient mastery of one or two European languages, the cultural
divide, including different patterns of conducting commercial transactions and formulating
contracts and obligations, created misunderstandings and ultimately serious disputes. In this
inauspicious situation, no machinery was devised in the nineteenth century (and certainly
not earlier) that might protect the Muslim merchants or grant them any chance of fair
representation in the local courts in cases of commercial disputes with local merchants or
customers. In short, Muslim merchants in European countries did not enjoy the same
facilitating and protective conditions that the Ottomans, and Khedival Egypt, extended
contractually (the capitulations/imtiyazat) to most of the European states.
(3) In light of the prevailing attitude to foreign Muslim nationals, and the specific condition of
the Muslim merchants in the lands of the West, clearly, the position of Muslims in
commercial competition with local merchants, or with merchants belonging to one of the
minority Christian groups of the Middle East who enjoyed European protection, was
inferior. For example, British companies importing carpets from Istanbul and Izmir through
their branches in those cities to London, Paris, and New York would prevail in the
competition with Muslim merchants who specialized in the export of carpets manufactured
in Anatolia or Iran. Of the various agencies – in any case few – that Muslim firms or
merchants, subjects of the Ottoman empire, Iran, and Egypt, established in the nineteenth
century in the centers of European commerce, not a single Muslim commercial house is
known to have flourished, or to have succeeded on the basis of its commercial success in
Europe to expand its businesses and attain high international standing in any branch of
commerce. In the few cases where Muslim merchants invested their capital in European
economies (such as Muhammad Hasan Amin al-Darb, who invested in Russia and France),
they did so with profits made from their activity in their countries of origin.
30
Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982, p. 124.
11
Regarding conditions in the countries of origin of the Muslim merchants, or the circumstances
arising from their cultural sphere, three additional factors may be cited:
(4) In a competitive system in which central governments in the European countries
encouraged, backed and supported merchants and entrepreneurs who were their
citizens/subjects, the fact that the rulers of the countries of the Middle East did not view the
protection of the merchants who were their subjects and who operated outside the
boundaries of their countries a matter worthy of their attention was of major importance.
Rarely do we find an Ottoman or Qajari ruler involved in the furtherance of the economic
interests of his subjects in Europe, or anywhere else.31 This was because the fiscal
foundations of economic policy in the countries of the Middle East viewed no advantage in
the activity of individuals abroad, since this yielded no revenues for the central treasury. The
message, then, to local entrepreneurs operating abroad was clear: the state was indifferent to
their activity and hence no backing or protection was granted them when they needed it. Not
surprisingly, in cases where Muslim merchants became involved in commercial disputes
with their local European competitors, they nearly always emerged the losers.
(5) Several ‘ulama, who held great sway among the community of the faithful, did not
encourage business activity in Christian countries. Ibn Hazm even categorically negated the
prolonged sojourn of Muslim merchants in dar al- harb (house of war) for the purpose of
furthering their affairs.32 These attitudes did not emanate from ‘ulama who from the outset
were antagonistic in their attitude to the merchants, but from those who held a positive view
of commerce and praised those who dealt in it, on condition that their activity remained
within the framework of dar al-Islam (house of Islam).
(6) Muslim merchants who wished to expand the boundaries of their business and operate in
foreign lands had an enticing and attractive alternative: the economies in which the
population was mostly Muslim, or in which large Muslim communities existed. This option
allowed Muslim merchants to operate within the social, legal, cultural and sometimes even
political frameworks known to them, and which were not a priori alien or hostile. The
Muslim big merchants of the Middle East could function in the Muslim populations of
Central Asia, India, China and Indonesia, and East and North Africa. These were economies
and communities that in the nineteenth century contained millions of people with a
considerable total purchasing power; economies that offered raw materials and goods for
which there was demand in the Middle East; and which consumed products exported by the
31
J.R.I. Cole, Roots of North Indian Sh ‘ism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722-1859, Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1988, pp. 259-260 (hereafter: Cole, Roots).
32
Abd al-Halim ‘Uways, Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi wa juhudahu fi al-bahth al-ta’riki wa al-hadari, Cairo, 1979, pp.
323-324, 387.
12
economies of the Middle East.
Indeed, enterprising Muslim merchants worked vigorously in these parts of the world,
and prospered. They found familiar, or partially familiar patterns of conduct in these places,
and legal institutions similar to those in their home countries (the mahkama and Shar'i law).
Naturally, there were disputes and quarrels, some harsh and bitter, between foreign and local
Muslim merchants, or between them and their clients.33 There is abundant evidence of such
cases. However, the relevant condition for our concern is that foreign Muslim merchants
were not subject to discrimination from the outset in the Shar’i or civil courts in Istanbul or
Bombay. True, in these places, too, the authorities and the courts may have tended to accept
the version of the local party in the case of disputes, but they were not imbued with an
excessive measure of opposition to foreign litigants.
The commercial activity of Muslim merchants in the lands around the Indian Ocean had
deep historic roots going back to the first Islamic empires. Muslim merchants from the
Middle East who wished to intensify their activity in commercial centers in Southeast Asia
in the second half of the nineteenth century could rely on the cumulative experience and
knowledge of their predecessors, sometimes members of their own families. Not
surprisingly, Muslim merchants in the nineteenth century who wanted to operate in the
international arena preferred to direct their energies and initiative, and channel their fortune,
toward markets where not only did they feel more at ease, but chiefly where their chances of
reaping profits were more assured. Their targets, therefore, were the markets in the southern
and eastern Middle East, not to the north and west. If on the macro-economic level
commercial activity in the European domain did indeed have greater potential for profit than
in the Afro-Asian domain, from the standpoint of the individual merchant or commercial
house, this greater potential was of little significance so long as the actual likelihood of
attaining high profits was, ultimately, low.
Lastly, a factor that was the result of the slight Muslim commercial presence in the Western
markets, and which became more marked in the last decades of the nineteenth century: Muslim
entrepreneurs and merchants who were not sufficiently exposed to methods of business
management that had developed in the Western economies were hard pressed to withstand
competition not only by European commercial houses but also by those owned by Greek and
Jewish entrepreneurs from the Near and Middle East who had adopted new management
methods.
The case of the merchant and entrepreneur 'Ali Akbar Shirazi may shed additional light on
33
Cole, Roots, pp. 259-260.
13
this discussion. He was one of the leading tujjar in Iran in the closing decades of the nineteenth
century. His commercial network extended from Tehran to shops and warehouses in Isfahan,
Shiraz, Kashan and elsewhere. Renowned for his industrial initiative, he owned workshops near
Tabriz for carpet weaving. ‘Ali Akbar was one of the few Muslim tujjar who also had offices in
England – one in Manchester and another in London. His sons managed the family business in
England, and worked together with the Imperial Bank of Persia.34
A collection of biographical sketches of outstanding personalities in Iran of the end of the
century, compiled in 1897 by H. Picot, secretary of the British embassy in Tehran, includes an
entry on ‘Ali Akbar Shirazi, which records that in 1856 the government confiscated all his
landed property in Fars.35 Did this traumatic personal experience, and the conclusion he drew
that private property was not protected in Qajari Iran, impel ‘Ali Akbar to establish an additional
business base in a state where the right of private property was hallowed? Apparently, there had
to be a powerful driving force of this kind to have prompted him become involved in the British
business world.
VI
The fact that Muslim merchant-entrepreneurs did not establish extensive business networks in
European countries had far-reaching economic, social and political consequences. Three merit
particular attention:
(1) Most international trade by the countries of the Middle East during the course of the
nineteenth century was with the European markets, with the large incomes and profits that
emanated from the initiation and conduct of this trade accruing to whoever specialized in
this field. Generally, the Muslim big merchants in the Middle East had a relatively small
share of this bonanza, since marketing in the consumer economies themselves was not in
their hands. Greek, British, French, Italian and other trading houses picked the fruits at the
most productive end of the export of goods from the Middle Eastern lands. The significance
of this was that the actual rates of saving and investment of the tujjar were smaller than the
potential rates. In other words, it is reasonable to assume that the absence of large-scale
Muslim merchant networks in the European markets had a negative effect on the investment
rates in Middle Eastern economies. A great deal of theoretical and empirical research is still
needed to try to assess the total incomes and investments concerned in quantitative terms.
(2) As we know, the Muslim big merchants were one of the important groups in Muslim
34
E. Beyens, Commerce et Industrie de la Perse, Extrait du Recueil Consulaire Belge, Bruxelles: P. Weissenbruch,
1898, p. 38; Hadji Ali Akbar & Sons, Letters regarding the Signatures of the Company, Archives of the British Bank
of the Middle East, File 728; Abdullaev, Promyshlenost’ izarozhdenie, p. 68.
35
Picot, Biographical Notices, p. 63.
14
societies in the Middle East, from the first centuries of Islam to the modern period were
open to technological and cultural change, and did not refrain from passing them on to the
public at large in their countries of origin. If in the Middle Ages the most important source
of innovation were the civilizations in south and southwest Asia, in the nineteenth century it
was Western societies that were the main source of innovation conveyed to Islamic societies,
and not only in the domain of technology alone. The extent of the exposure of the tujjar to
these various innovations was a central factor in this process of transfer, determined, inter
alia, by the duration of their stay in European societies. The fact that only a few of the tujjar
were exposed directly to Western societies and economies, therefore, was significant in the
transfer process throughout the nineteenth century. Additionally, more than any other
socioeconomic group in the countries of Islam, the tujjar were potentially those who might
have fathomed the full significance of the industrial revolution that Western societies
experienced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A small minority of them who were
exposed to economic development in Central and Western Europe indeed tried to heighten
the awareness of their own people regarding the depth of the change that the West had
undergone. However, these tujjar constituted a very small group, whose voice and influence
were lost in the welter of forces that acted on Middle Eastern societies in those years.
(3) In the long term, the absence of a tradition of Muslim commercial networks at the foci of
world trade was critical when, later, the Middle Eastern economies once again played an
important role in the world economic system following the Second World War (the second
globalization period). In the absence of foci of Muslim enterprises in the Western economy,
those who made the connection between the external economic systems and the local
economies in the Middle East were a new stratum of businessmen representing, and under
the aegis of, the state. Some were state officials themselves, others members of dominant
families. The strength of these businessmen was mainly in the mobilization of political
resources or political power to obtain advantages in the economic sphere.36 Not surprisingly,
the achievements of this stratum in the field of economic enterprise in its Schumpeterian
sense were extremely limited: they were not innovators, trail-blazers or builders of economic
empires with the stamina to compete and endure in the international arena. In hindsight, it
would appear that this was the heaviest price Middle Eastern society would pay for the
weakness of the Muslim networks throughout the long nineteenth century.
36
Raymond William Baker, Sadat and After: Struggles for Egypt’s Political Soul, London: I.B. Tauris, 1990, pp.
18-45.
15