In his essay titled "Economic Theories and Middle Eastern Studies in Japan" in AJAMES (No.12, 1997), Professor Tadashi Okanouchi criticized my book in Japanese, Islam as a Civilization (University of Tokyo Press, 1995), from the theoretical point of view. This small essay is my response to this criticism. Professor Okanouchi called the economic theory, which I adopted in my book for analyzing the characteristics of Islamic economies, as a mercantile theory, and criticized that I anachronistically used this theory regardless of historical context, and overlooking the theoretical heritage of Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Max Weber, who tried to make a linkage between economy and Human Rights. Against Professor Okanouchi's criticism, I insist that the purpose of my book was to present an ideal image or vision of Islamic economies, whose prosperity were structurally based on commerce, being compared with the modern capitalistic economy, that is the object of analysis for Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Max Weber, whose prosperity was structurally based on industry, and defend the utility of the economic theory on market in John R. Hicks's book titled A Theory of Economic History (Oxford University Press, 1969), in which Hicks analyzes the formation and development of market as the process of the birth of the class of merchants and the expansion of their activities, for the purpose of my book.
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