Early Muslim sociology responded to the challenges of social organization of diverse peoples all under common religious organization in the Islamic caliphate, the Abbasid and later Mamluk period in Egypt. It was rooted in methods from early Muslim philosophy and it reflected the strong concern of Islam with social cohesion. Anglicized/Latinized version of the Arabic word خليفة or Khalifah, Caliph is the term or title for the Islamic leader of the Ummah, or community of Islam. ... Abbasid provinces during the caliphate of Harun al-Rashid Abbasid (Arabic: العبّاسيّون AbbāsÄ«yÅ«n) was the dynastic name generally given to the caliphs of Baghdad, the second of the two great Sunni dynasties of the Islamic empire, that overthrew the Umayyad caliphs. ... An Ottoman Mamluk, from 1810 Mamluks (also Mameluks, Mamelukes, Mamlukes) (the Arabic word usually translates as owned, singular: مملوك plural: مماليك) comprised slave soldiers who converted to Islam and served the Muslim caliphs and the Ottoman Empire. ... Early Muslim philosophy can be starkly divided into four clear sets of influences: First, the life of Muhammad or sira which generated both the Quran (revelation) and hadith (his daily utterances and discourses on social and legal matters), during which philosophy was defined by acceptance or rejection of his... Islam (Arabic: ; ( (help· info)), submission (to the will of God)) is a monotheistic, Abrahamic faith, and the worlds second-largest religion with approximately 1. ...

Social responsibility in commerce

The development of Islamic banks and Islamic economics was a side effect of this sociology: usury was rather severely restrained, no interest rate was allowed, and investors were not permitted to escape the consequences of any failed venture - all financing was equity financing (Musharaka). In not letting borrowers bear all the risk/cost of a failure, an extreme disparity of outcomes between "partners" is thus avoided. Ultimately this serves a social harmony purpose. For more information please refer to http://www. ... Islamic economics is economics in accordance with Islamic law. ... Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. ... Usury (pronounced // or //, from the Latin usuria, demanding in return for a loan a greater amount than was borrowed) was defined originally as charging a fee for the use of money. ... An interest rate is the price a borrower pays for the use of money he does not own, and the return a lender receives for deferring his consumption, by lending to the borrower. ...

Muslims also could not and cannot (in shariah) finance any dealings in forbidden goods or activities e.g. alcohols, pork, gambling etc. Thus ethical investing is the only acceptable investing, and moral purchasing is encouraged. Sharia (Arabic شريعة also Sharia, Shariah or Syariah) is traditional Islamic law. ... Ethical investing, also known as Socially responsible investing or SRI attempts to ensure that invested funds are not used to violate the investors most basic moral values or ethical codes. ... Ethical consumerism is the practice of boycotting products which a consumer believes to be associated with unnecessary exploitation or other unethical behaviour. ...

Ecological responsibility

Perhaps due to resource scarcity in most Islamic nations, there was an emphasis on limited (and some claim also sustainable) use of natural capital, i.e. producing land. Traditions of haram and hima and early urban planning were expressions of strong social obligations to stay within carrying capacity and to preserve the natural environment as an obligation of khalifa or "stewardship". Natural capital is a metaphor for the mineral, plant, and animal formations of the Earths biosphere when viewed as a means of production of oxygen, water filter, erosion preventer, or provider of other natural services. ... This article covers the word as used in Islamic urban planning. ... Hima means (is Arabic for) inviolate zones solely for the conservation of natural capital, typically fields, wildlife and forests (contrast haram to protect areas for more immediate human purposes). ... Urban planning is concerned with the ordering and design of settlements, from the smallest towns to the worlds largest cities. ... In ecology, carrying capacity is the measure of habitat to indefinitely sustain a population at a particular density. ... Omdurman, Sudan. ...

Khaldun's conflict theory

Without doubt the most important figure in early Muslim sociology was Ibn Khaldun, who conceived both a central social conflict ("town" versus "desert") as well as a theory (using the concept of a "generation") of the necessary loss of power of city conquerors coming from the desert. Statue of Ibn Khaldoun in Tunis Ibn Khaldūn, full name Abū Zayd ʕAbdu l-Rahman ibn Muħammad ibn Khaldūn al-Haḍramī ( ابو زيد عبد الرحمن بن محمد بن خلدون الحضرمي ), (May 27, 1332/ah732 to March 19, 1406/ah808) was a famous Arab historiographer and historian born in what is modern day Tunisia, and is...

Sati' al-Husri suggested that his Muqaddimah is essentially a sociological work, sketching over its six books a general sociology; a sociology of politics; a sociology of urban life; a sociology of economics; and a sociology of knowledge. Sati al-Husri was a Syrian writer and intellectual whose ideas are widely considered to have played a fundamental role in the development of Arab Nationalism. ... The Muqaddimah, or the Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun (Arabic: مقدّمة ابن خلدون), records an early Muslim view of universal history. Many modern thinkers view it as one of the first works of sociology. ...

Asibiyah

Khaldun's central concept of asabiyah, or "social cohesion," seems to anticipate modern conceptions of social capital arising in social networks: Social capital is a socio-economic concept with a variety of inter-related definitions, based on the value of social networks. ... A social network is a social structure made of nodes which are generally individuals or organizations. ...

This cohesion arises spontaneously in tribes and other small kinship groups; and it can be intensified and enlarged by a religious ideology. Khaldun's analysis looks at how this cohesion carries groups to power but contains within itself the seeds - psychological, sociological, economic, political - of the group's downfall, to be replaced by a new group, dynasty or empire bound by a stronger (or at least younger and more vigorous) cohesion.

Interestingly, Khaldun's concept is instinctive and does not involve any social contract or explicit forms of constitution or other instructional capital that would provide a basis for appeals, in law or otherwise. Social contract - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Instructional capital is a term used in educational administration, to reflect capital resulting from investment in producing learning materials. ...

Khaldun's economics

A similar dialectic approach was taken to describe the sociological implications of tax choices, which is now of course part of economics: In classical philosophy, dialectic (Greek: διαλεκτική) is an exchange of propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses) resulting in a synthesis of the opposing assertions, or at least a qualitative transformation in the direction of the dialogue. ... Economics (from the Greek οίκος [oikos], family, household, estate, and νομος [nomos], custom, law, hence household management and management of the state) is a social science that studies the production, distribution, trade and consumption of goods and services. ...

"In the early stages of the state, taxes are light in their incidence, but fetch in a large revenue...As time passes and kings succeed each other, they lose their tribal habits in favor of more civilized ones. Their needs and exigencies grow...owing to the luxury in which they have been brought up. Hence they impose fresh taxes on their subjects...[and] sharply raise the rate of old taxes to increase their yield...But the effects on business of this rise in taxation make themselves felt. For business men are soon discouraged by the comparison of their profits with the burden of their taxes...Consequently production falls off, and with it the yield of taxation."

This analysis anticipates the modern economic concept known as the Laffer Curve. t* represents the rate of taxation at which maximal revenue is generated. ...

Khaldun's history

The Muqaddimah further emphasized the role of systemic bias in affecting the standard of evidence. Khaldun was quite concerned with the effect of raising standard of evidence when confronted with uncomfortable claims, and relaxing it when given claims that seemed reasonable or comfortable. He was a jurist, and sometimes participated reluctantly in rulings that he felt were coerced, based on arguments he didn't respect. The Muqaddimah, or the Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun (Arabic: مقدّمة ابن خلدون), records an early Muslim view of universal history. Many modern thinkers view it as one of the first works of sociology. ... Systemic bias is a neologism used to describe a bias which is endemic in or inherent to a system, especially a human system. ...

Khaldun had few successors in his thinking about history until Arnold J. Toynbee, a 20th century British historian. Arnold Joseph Toynbee (April 14, 1889 - October 22, 1975) was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934-1961, was a synthesis of global history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline. ...

Similarity to modern sociology

Early Muslim sociology is more like that of Hegel or Marx in emphasizing dialectic or feedback loops, or like systems theory as applied in such fields as corporate social responsibility, than it is like that of Weber and others who emphasize structures. There is a remarkable similarity between modern economic ideas and the sociology and economics especially of Khaldun, who lived a remarkably eventful life. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 - November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. ... Marx is a common German surname. ... In classical philosophy, dialectic (Greek: διαλεκτική) is an exchange of propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses) resulting in a synthesis of the opposing assertions, or at least a qualitative transformation in the direction of the dialogue. ... In cybernetics and control theory, feedback is a process whereby some proportion or in general, function, of the output signal of a system is passed (fed back) to the input. ... Systems theory is an interdisciplinary field which studies relationships of systems as a whole. ... Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an expression used to describe what some see as a company’s obligation to be sensitive to the needs of all of its stakeholders in its business operations. ... Weber is a surname of German origin, derived from the noun meaning weaver. The German pronunciation is best represented in English orthography as VAYBr, while in English it is more likely to be pronounced WEBBr or WAYBr. In some cases, following migration to English-speaking countries, it...