Rewriting the Bazaar: Notes Toward a History of Capitalism in the Islamic World

Fahad Bishara (University of Virginia)

This talk thinks through the question of what it would mean to write a history of capitalism from the bazaars of the Islamic world. It explores the ephemera of the marketplace – contracts, account ledgers, letters, and receipts – but also more durable forms of writing like fatwas, manuals, and logbooks to explore the different forms of thinking and practice that animated exchange across the Islamic world. To give the concepts some specificity, I anchor the talk in the maritime bazaar of the Western Indian Ocean; the broader aim, however, is to tell a history that unfolds on a much broader temporal and geographical scale, and to bring the Islamic world into closer conversation with the histories of capitalism writ large.

Dr Fahad Ahmad Bishara is Associate Professor of History and Rouhollah Ramazani Professor of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and of a number of articles on the legal and economic history of the Indian Ocean world.

Join by zoom:
https://soas-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/97665861045?pwd=NGRKRzMwaFlUaEp2YnJBdWtNN1B2UT09

Meeting ID: 976 6586 1045
Passcode: PzyHf9EXW0

The seminar is open to all; no registration required.
Convenor: Shabnum Tejani, st40@soas.ac.uk