A History of Agriculture in India v2.c53.s5.3

v2.c53.s5.3

Unlike the Romans, the followers of Islam regarded trade and labour as honourable professions. The Caliphs of Baghdad were also part-time traders, and they purchased their personal goods with the proceeds of their manual labour. They organized the Moslem industrial workers, such as weavers, goldsmiths and blacksmiths, in guilds, and supervised and patronized them. Trade involves travel, visiting distant lands and observing their people as well as their soil, rocks, minerals, fauna and flora. It makes a person observant, and encourages him to think in abstract. From the eighth to eleventh centuries, the entire trade of India and China, on the one hand, and of Europe, on the other, was with the Arabs. The extent of the Arab empire in the ninth century is shown in Fig. 1. An enormous number