The Compilation Of Documents On Islamic Economics (Saleh Kamel Library)

The work in this project has begun within the framework of the projects of the Institute two decades ago upon the desire of H.H. Sheikh Saleh Abullah Kamel, with the aim of considering a plan to compile information pertaining to Islamic economics throughout the life of the Islamic nation, its thought, work, and institutions. The project was thoroughly studied and had a scope of cataloguing based on extracting these materials from the tradition and source books, namely, the Holy Qur’an, books of Hadith, tafsir, fiqh, fatawa (legal opinions), history, biography, genealogy, literature, dictionaries, geography, travel, kharaj (land tax), hisbah (market inspection) and tillage. The project is supervised by Prof. Dr. Abd al-Aziz al-Duri.

Work was commenced by the publication of a bibliography of texts on Islamic economics according to sources, comprising topics of the one source and thus mentioned under the topic of the source, along with a definition of the source and the economic topics it contains. The outcome of this work is based on one thousand and two hundred sources amounting to 24 volumes.

At the same time of issuing this profile, twenty five volumes were published according to sources, with reference to the source, edition and page. All these volumes were published according to the subjects and the sources and these are entitled “Annotated Bibliography of Islamic References on Economics”.

Having this huge amount of organized information on the subjects that organise the daily transactions in Islamic societies, a conception of the economic movement in those societies theoretically and practically in terms of fares, savings, financial investment, price control, bazaars and professions, crafts, iqta‘[1], iltizam[2] land categories, weights, measures, etc., the Institute had to collect all the this vast quantity of distributed information in the said several large format published volumes entitled “The Compilation of Documents on Islamic Economics”. The first volume was published in 1170 pages, devoted to the first Arabic alphabet letter (al-alif), followed by second volume which was published in 729 pages, and the third volume in 975 pages ended with the seventh alphabet letter (al-kha’).

The next volumes will follow comprising worthy information to be added thereto.

1. i.e. one is given a piece of land to cultivate it or is given to him in full ownership.
2. i.e. somebody paying the state a sum of taxes which he collects from an estate given to him by the state.