The Kitab al-kasb attributed to al-Shaybani: poverty, surplus, and the circulation of wealth.

• Author: Bonner, Michael
• Position: Early Islam

Modern discussions of asceticism and accumulation of capital in the early Islamic world cite a Kitab al-kasb attributed to al-Shaybani. This book is actually something of a collective Hanafi production, with much of its content traceable to al-Sarakhsi. However, it does contain a core of sayings or doctrines that can be attributed to Shaybani himself. Unlike the later Hanafis, Shaybani in the Kasb does not express hostility to radical ascetics. In fact he seems to say more about poverty and charity than about acquisition and gain. The "economy of poverty" which emerges from Shaybani's doctrines contrasts sharply with early Islamic thinking in the tradition of [ilm.sup.[subset]] tadbir almanzil or "economics"--even though both of these ("economy of poverty" and tadbir) appear in the Kasb. The article concludes with discussion of the Karramiyya, the only named adversaries in the Kasb, and their "declaring it forbidden to earn a living" (tahrim al-makasib).

1. INTRODUCTION

OVER FORTY YEARS AGO, S. D. Goitein wrote an essay on "The Rise of the Middle-Eastern Bourgeoisie in Early Islamic Times," which provided the classic expression for an argument that had been growing in the literature at least since the time of Goldziher. (1) This essay, which sketches some of the terrain of Goitein's A Mediterranean Society, (2) has been quoted and discussed ever since it first appeared. (3) According to Goitein, an "ideal of renouncing the world," which in the third century of Islam came to be expressed in Sufism, always remained "a strong undercurrent in Islam." Nonetheless, the "representative opinion" of Islam in the early period maintained "a favorable attitude towards earning and amassing capital and, with some qualifications even towards certain aspects of luxury. During that time the merchant class attained a social position and correspondingly, self-esteem, which it secured far later in Europe." (4)

In this essay, Goitein relied upon a then little-known work attributed to the great Iraqi jurist Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Shaybani (d. 189/805), known as the Kitab al-kasb or Kitab al-iktisab, both of which mean "Book of Acquisition [Earning, Gain]." Goitein's evidence also included a treatise on commerce, apparently dating from the fifth/eleventh century, by a certain al-Dimashqi, the Kitab al-ishara ita mahasin al-tijara. (5) Comparing the Kitab al-kasb to the seventeenth-century The Tradesman's Calling by the Englishman Richard Steele, Goitein stated that Shaybani, like Steele,

... had to prove that the vigorous striving of the new Muslim trading people for a decent living was not only not opposed by Islam, but was actually regarded by it as a religious duty. [Shaybani] ... had to overcome deep-seated religious prejudices against making money, convictions made popular by mendicant ascetics who might be compared to the begging friars and monks, against whom Steele wrote so eloquently. As is well-known from other quarters, Muslim asceticism of that time was tinged by Christian influence. (6)

Leah Kinberg built upon Goitein's essay to conclude that the Shaybani and Dimashqi treatises together constitute manifestos of the new "Islamic bourgeoisie" against the old, originally Arabian, austerity surviving among ascetics who had steadfastly rejected the acquisition and accumulation of wealth ever since the beginning of Islam. (7) But here lurk two traps. First there is the danger of contrasting a group defined in part through its role in economic production, thus a class, with another group defined by its religious and ethical views. (8) And second, there is the use of "Islam" as a historical subject or cause, which incurs the risk of a circular argument. While Goitein himself did not fall into either of these traps, others have come close to doing so, in part while following his lead. All in all, the relationship between asceticism and the accumulation of capital in the early Islamic world needs to be reconsidered--and has indeed been reconsidered in recent work that has begun from different premises . (9)

The purpose of the present article is to examine in detail a central piece of evidence in the debate, Shaybani's Kitab al-kasb. While this work praises commerce and inveighs against persons who advocate not earning a living, it takes a mainly negative stance toward the accumulation of wealth beyond one's immediate needs. It devotes at least as much attention to poverty as to the acquisition and accumulation of wealth--which seems a strange way to praise the activity of merchants. The work thus differs not only from later Western writers such as Steele and Franklin, but also from al-Dimashqi, author of the Ishara, who approves (though not unambiguously) of the accumulation of wealth. This study will ask why Shaybani (or whoever wrote this treatise) had so much to say about poverty, leading to broader questions of acquisition and accumulation of wealth, surplus, circulation of goods, in short what we may call early Islamic economic thought.

Some of these questions have been addressed by Johannes Christian Wichard, who views the Kitab al-kasb as a compromise, as a call for a just mean between ascetic denial and over-accumulation. (10) Wichard's excellent discussion and his summary of the Kasb should be read together with what follows. However, Wichard does not ask who actually wrote the Kitab al-kasb, a question which has not yet been examined in detail by anyone. (11) This is where we must begin, in the following section.

First, however, I must warn readers that they may find this study of the Kitab al-kasb perplexing in a number of ways. To begin with, we have the work's composite nature, the fact that several authors from different times and places had a hand in its composition, in ways we can unravel only with difficulty. The main difficulty, however, is conceptual. The book's subject matter, clearly announced at the beginning, is the religious duty (farida) of earning a living (kasb). Much of the discussion is accordingly about our obligations and about the religious merit (fadl) we receive for performing or abstaining from certain acts. Why then does the Kitab al-kasb go on to say so much about poverty and charity? And why does it express such a cautious, indeed contradictory attitude toward this very duty of kasb? I maintain that the answer lies in the concept of haqq, "right," or perhaps better "claim." It is this concept, rather than duty, obligation, or merit, that gives the work such consistency and coherence as it h as. For in Shaybani, as in his later followers, we have a kind of representation of what we now call the economic sphere, dramatically unlike ours, in which the concept of haqq plays the central role.

We know well that the early Islamic period was an age of economic expansion, in which markets and production flourished across a larger unified economic space than had ever existed before. However, while people then had and made representations of what we call economic matters, they did not carry in their heads a separate and distinct economic sphere--unlike us, with our constant hypostatization of "the economy" in our politics and daily lives. We may accordingly find it baffling to see how a great scholar of the time actually set about reflecting on some of these matters. The topic of "earning" is, for Shaybani, subsumed under "abstinence," as we shall see shortly. Likewise, most of the other concepts to be discussed in this article do not belong, in the first instance, to economic reflection as such. This is not a religiously tinged description of economy, but rather a discourse on economy inextricably bound up with and part of discourse on the norms of religious law, on the founding and sustaining narrativ es of the Muslim community, and many other things.

2. THE TEXT AND ITS AUTHORSHIP

   If Shaybani ever composed a work on kasb, it no longer exists in its original form. We do have, first of all, what purports to be a mukhtasar, or abridgement of Shaybani's work, by Muhammad b. [Sama.sup.[subset]]a (d. 233/847). An edition of this work, entitled al-Iktisab fi l-rizq al-mustatab ("Acquisition in sustenance considered pleasing"), was published by Mahmud [Arnus.sup.[subset]] in Cairo in 1357/1938, on the basis of a ninth-century (h.) manuscript in the Dar al-Kutub (12) (this edition will henceforth be called "C"). Ibn [Sama.sup.[subset]]a was a Hanafi jurist and a zealous proponent of [ra.sup.[contains]]y, the independent use of reason in jurisprudence. He became chief judge (qadi l-qudat) in Baghdad in 192 under the caliph [al-Ma.sup.[contains]]mun, fell into disfavor and was dismissed in 208, and lived to over a hundred. (13) C begins with a brief statement by Ibn [Sama.sup.[subset]]a on how he is acting to oblige "some friends" who have urged him to abridge this work of the master. Ibn [Sama.sup.[subset]]a's name then does not reappear until the very end of the text. C actually reads as a commentary on or reworking of something by Shaybani. (14) Phrases recur such as "al-Shaybani said" or "Muhammad" [i.e. al-Shaybani] stated," or "he said," clearly referring to Shaybani. These statements are sometimes followed by [Ya.sup.[subset]]ni ("that means") and then by commentary and exposition. But it is difficult to say where Shaybani's words end and where Ibn [Sama.sup.[subset]]a's begin; the share of the total that can be attributed to Shaybani with any certainty is far less than half.

   In 1967 the Syrian scholar Suhayl Zakkar found an Arabic manuscript in Istanbul, written in a fine Persianate hand and bearing the title al-Kasb. (15) When he published an edition of this text in Damascus in 1400/1980 (henceforth "D"), Zakkar described it as a work by Shaybani. However, the work purports to be a commentary (sharh) by al-Sarakhsi (d. ca. 483/1090) on the Kitab al-kasb of Shaybani. It begins with an opening statement and some preliminary analysis by Sarakhsi, but then its text converges with that of...