Monetary thought of the sixteenth century muslim scholars

Muslim scholars of the sixteenth century continued the tradition of writing on economic issues. Their work, however is characterized by the period's overall feature of imitation and repetition and thus reflects hardly any advancement of monetary thought since the works of earlier Muslim scholars. This is clearly reflected in the two representative treatises on money: those of al-Suyuti (d. 1506) written at the beginning of the century, and al-Tumurtashi (d. 1598), written at its the end. History of Islamic economic thought is a well-researched area of Islamic Economics. To the best of our knowledge, however, all such research stopped at the end of the fifteenth century – the age of Ibn Khaldun and al-Maqrizi. The present paper seeks to advance this research and intends to investigate monetary thought of Muslim scholars during the sixteenth century (corresponding to tenth century Hijrah, exactly from 906 AH to 1009 AH). Beginning with an overview of earlier monetary thought in Islam to provide background information, then it goes on to note that particular century's monetary problems in order to provide a perspective for the discussion of monetary thought among Muslim scholars. For the purpose of comparison, European monetary thought of the same period is also analyzed.