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Muhammad Hamidullah and His Pioneering Works on Islamic Economics hamidullah.info hamidullah.info In the Name of Allah The Most Gracious the Most Merciful hamidullah.info MUHAMMAD HAMIDULLAH AND HIS PIONEERING WORKS ON ISLAMIC ECONOMICS Abdul Azim Islahi Professor Islamic Economics Institute King Abdulaziz University Scientific Publishing Centre King Abdulaziz University Jeddah, Saudi Arabia iii hamidullah.info X Muhammad Hamidullah and Pioneering Works on Islamic Economics ©King Abdulaziz University: 1436H (2015G) All rights are reserved. 1st Edition: 1435H (2014G) King Fahd National Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data Islahi, Abdulazim Muhammad Hamidullah And His Pioneering Works On Islamic Economics./ Abdulazim Islahi -1 - Jeddah, 2015 272p: 17X24 cm ISBN: 9960-06-733-5 1- Islam 2- Islam – Economic Aspects I -Title 330. 121 dc 1436/5473 L.D .no. 1436/5473 ISBN: 9960-06-733-5 King Abdulaziz University Press iv hamidullah.info ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First of all I must thank Almighty Allah, my Lord and Lord of the universe, who strengthened me to undertake and accomplish this work. After Him, I am indebted to a number of people and institutions from whom at various stages I received advice, useful information, source material, encouragement and support for the present volume. I pray for all of them goodness in this life and the Hereafter. I wish to thank in particular: Dr. Muhammad Rashid Ayyub from London; Br. Ozair Shams, a scholar based in Makkah al- Mukarramah; Dr. Ishtiaq Ahmad Zilli former Professor of History, Aligarh Muslim University; Dr. Arshad Zaman Former Chief Economist and Special Planning Secretary Government of Pakistan; and Mr. Rauf Ahmed, Librarian, Dr Muhammad Hamidullah Library, International Islamic University, Islamabad. They helped me procure some rare papers of Dr. Muhammad Hamidullah. Special thank is also due to Sister Sadida Athaullah, the grand-niece of Dr. Muhammad Hamidullah and the executive director of M. Hamidullah Center for Islamic Research, Maryland, USA, who appreciated, approved and warmly welcomed my project when I wrote to her about it, and kindly dug out for me some very early writings of Dr. Hamidullah. I am also grateful to my teacher and mentor Prof. Muhammad Nejatullah Siddiqi, who has been a source of guidance and inspiration in my research activities; I benefited from his valuable suggestions during this project as well. I am also indebted to my colleague at the Islamic Economics Institute, Dr. Abderrazak Belabes, an Algerian-French researcher who is in his own right a great admirer of Dr. Muhammad Hamidullah; he provided me some information about Hamidullah's contributions in French language, and benevolently translated me certain portions. Last but not the least, I must thank Dr. Abdullah Qurban Turkistani, Dean Islamic Economics Institute, for providing me peaceful, congenial and healthy atmosphere for research work at the Institute. Finally, I would like to acknowledge that: This project was funded by the Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR), King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, under grant no. (47-121/1433). The author, therefore, acknowledges with thanks DSR technical and financial support. v hamidullah.info FOREWORD Muhammad Hamidullah was a genius and a prolific writer. Anyone who has interest in the Qur'an's translation, Hadith literature, the Prophet's (peace be upon him) biography, international Islamic law, Islamic politics and archival heritage of Islam, cannot ignore Dr. Muhammad Hamidullah's contributions. But very few may be aware that he was one of the pioneers of modern Islamic economics. Hamidullah started his writings on Islamic economics in 1930s. In fact, it is not easy to get records of some of his early writings. Some of his articles were published in journals that discontinued publication. This may be one of the reasons why his contribution to Islamic economics could not be fully known. Prof. Islahi’s three papers - “Hamidullah: Life and Works”, “An Introduction to Hamidullah's Contributions to Islamic Economics”, and “Zakah as the State Finance: A Critical Study of Hamidullah’s Views” - give plenty of information about Dr. Hamidullah’s personality and multifaceted achievements in Islamic sciences in general and Islamic economics in particular. Professor Islahi has done a great service to Islamic economics by presenting collection of Dr. Hamidullah’s papers with useful notes and making them available to interested readers. Abdullah Qurban Turkistani Dean Islamic Economics Institute King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah Kingdom of Saudi Arabia vii hamidullah.info PREFACE The title "Muhammad Hamidullah's Pioneering Works on Islamic Economics" must be a surprise for many who know him only as expert on Islamic international law, biographer of the Prophet, translator of the Qur'an in French language, …….. and one who discovered and edited many valuable Arabic manuscripts of early Islamic period. I experienced this reaction during preparation of this work. Whenever, I mentioned to my friends, colleagues, and even experts of the discipline that I had been working on Dr. Hamidullah's papers on Islamic economics, most of them questioned with great surprise: "Had he contributed to Islamic economics?" In fact he was one of the pioneer writers on the subject and one who coined the term "Islamic Economics" by which this discipline is known worldwide today. Many firsts in this subject belong to him. For instance: the first and the earliest record of the interest-free financial institution in the modern period, advocacy of mutuality as the basis for Islamic insurance, mutuality based Islamic finance, proposal for establishment of international interest-free monetary fund, federation of currencies for Muslim countries, to name a few. This project started with a simple but difficult task of preparing a complete list and bibliographical details of Hamidullah's papers on Islamic economics. His biographers have almost ignored his contribution to economics. Even the most comprehensive list of his works did not mention more than 2-3 titles related to Islamic economics. In most cases the bibliographical details were missing. The papers contained in this volume have been procured through numerous sources with painstaking efforts. Hamidullah's writings on Islamic economics are spread over more than half a century and in various journals. Some of them discontinued their publications in their early stages. It was not easy to trace them. After searching libraries in Jeddah and Aligarh, and contacting friends, scholars and relatives of Dr. Hamidullah in America, England, India and Pakistan I succeeded in collecting all papers that were in my list. The present volume consists of his papers on Islamic economics in English language only. He has also written many papers on the subject in Urdu, and a few originals or translations in Arabic, French, Turkish, ix hamidullah.info X Muhammad Hamidullah and Pioneering Works on Islamic Economics Persian, etc. Since Hamidullah's objective was to convey his ideas to maximum number of people, on different occasions and in different languages, he did not care if a story was already told. The readers will realize this while reading these papers. Such recurrence is not surprising especially when papers are written at different occasions and at different times. I hope his papers in English would be sufficient to understand what he has written in other languages. The present volume has two parts. The first part contains three papers – "Hamidullah: Life and Works", "An Introduction to Hamidullah's Contributions to Islamic Economics", and "Zakah as the State Finance: A Critical Study of Hamidullah’s Views". These papers are authored by me. The second part consists of thirteen papers written by Dr. Hamidullah on various topics related to Islamic economics. They are reproduced here with thanks and courtesy of their publishers. The articles in this volume have been arranged in chronological order. Since these papers were written at different occasions and at different periods, no single method was followed. For example, references were mentioned sometimes as endnotes, sometimes as footnotes and sometimes in the middle of the text. Similarly, the references to Qur'anic verses were given sometimes within the text and sometimes along with footnotes or endnotes. I have brought all references to verses of the Qur'an in the middle of the text and all footnotes as the endnotes. In some of his works he gave numbers to paragraphs for reference purpose so that, unlike page-numbers, after change of edition they remain exactly same. In this collection we have removed them to maintain uniformity. Again, no standard transliteration system for Arabic words was followed in all papers. I have tried to bring them under one and the same system. Printing errors have been corrected but no attempt has been made to edit the language. I have tried to complete the references and provide their details, or give explanatory notes if necessary. All such additions are indicated by initial [aai] to distinguish it as addition by the editor. Bibliography part covers the whole volume. Abdul Azim Islahi Jeddah 10-01- 1435/14-12-2013 x hamidullah.info CONTENTS Page Acknowledgement ………….………………………......... v Foreword ……………….……….……………………...... vii Preface ……………………………..…………………….. ix Contents ………………………………………………….. xi 1. Hamidullah: Life and Works …….………………………. 1 2. An Introduction to Hamidullah's Contributions to Islamic Economics ………………………………………..27 3. Zakah as the State Finance: A Critical Study of Hamidullah’s Views …………………………………….. 53 4. Islam's Solution of the
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