I have read many books on Islam. I read them to understand why Islam conquered so much so quickly, and why it failed both politically and economically over the last 500 years. The relative economic decline is of interest because around 1000 CE, the Muslim world was as wealthy as Europe. This is the first book that provided understanding that I could use. Not on conquest directly, but on the economics.
In "The Long Divergence", the author emphasizes two themes around Muslim law of inheritance. Islamic law mandated distribution of wealth after death amongst multiple heirs. This had two results. First, it forced partnerships to be short lived: Death followed by demands for their part of the inheritance by heirs required liquidation of a partnership. Knowing that any death would end the partnership, Muslims tended to favor two person partnerships of short duration. In contrast, after 1000 CE Europeans developed forms of partnership and corporations that could survive the death of a single participant. Partly this was adoption of primogeniture, under which a single descendant could inherit the whole on one person's assets in a property, business or partnership. At the same time Europeans were becoming innovative about the types of business arrangements used to accumulate wealth. Something like modern corporations developed to manage guilds, monasteries, and even cities. European rulers, desperate for money, and often only weakly in power, were willing to allow independent groups take local power, in exchange for stability and the right to tax revenues or profits. These independent institutions were allowed to change their internal rules and general goals as circumstances changes.
The second theme in "The Long Divergence" explaining relative Islamic economic decline is Islam's failure to develop anything like the European corporation. Again this relates to Muslim inheritance law. The Waqf, the only way Muslims could create an enterprise that could outlive the founder had to be established for only one purpose and that purpose could never change. So, for example, a Waqf to establish a caravan station could never become anything else, even if trade routes or means of transportation changed. Meanwhile, as mentioned in the last paragraph above, European corporations could adapt to changing circumstances to redirect investment in the more productive ways as circumstances changed.
There is much more in this book. I think the author has discovered something about the role of law in economic development that explains a lot about the relative decline of the Islamic world relative to Europe.
There is one other benefit I got from reading "The Long Divergence". The author argues that the codification of rules of inheritance in Islam provided economic laws that were superior to alternatives available in much of the world at the time of the early Muslim conquests. Although he does not argue that this caused the rise of Islam, it suggests one reason for its early success.
Also noted in the book, is that the separation between Church and State in Europe helped lead to innovation in Europe and stagnation in the Islamic world. This made me remember independently that existence of canon law, which the Catholic Church created to govern its internal ecclesiastical affairs, independent of the laws of the political entities in which it served the religious needs of Europeans. Canon law still exists and is still used by the Church to settle issues pertaining to the Church alone. (These include discipline of clergy, alteration of church property, etc.) Many protestant religions have their own versions of cannon law.
Another thing: From this book I learned that Shia and Sunni Muslims have slightly different inheritance laws. I did not know that despite much reading on Islam.
The book made is entertaing, and made me think. Not too much more to ask for in a book on a potentially boring subject!
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