The Prophet Mohammed’s surprising life as a businessman | The Story of Money

Did you know that the Prophet Mohammed was a caravan trader? He helped arrange convoys of thousands of camels carrying valuable goods across the Arabian desert. And he put his commercial nous to good use. Not only did he found one of the world’s great religions, but also a model of free-market capitalism that Friedrich Hayek would have approved of. That is the claim of this week’s guest, the libertarian economist and author Benedikt Koehler. He tells hosts Robin Wigglesworth and Gillian Tett how Islamic commercial practices were, in his view, eventually copied by medieval Europeans to great effect.

Further reading:
Early Islam and the Birth of Capitalism (2014), by Benedikt Koehler
The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East (2010), by Timur Kuran
Muhammad: Man and Prophet (1995), by Adil Salahi

Credits: Getty Images

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Hosts: Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth
Producer: Laurence Knight
Executive producer: Manuela Saragosa
With additional help from: Saffeya Ahmed and Lulu Smyth
Original music and sound design: Breen Turner
Broadcast engineers: Bianca Wakeman and Petros Gioumpasis
Podcast development: Laura Clarke
FT global head of audio: Flo Phillips
Video editors: Josh Divney and Kristen Kenyon at Podcast Discovery

Learn more at www.ft.com/tsom or get in touch at thestoryofmoney@ft.com.

Chapters:
0:00 – Intro
2:30 – Dr. Benedict Koehler on Islam, banking, and capitalism
4:30 – Mohammed’s early life and caravan trading in Mecca
7:18 – How Meccan trade networks reduced risk and built prosperity
8:01 – Sixth-century Arabia: religion, trade, and political independence
9:28 – Khadija: wealthy merchant, investor, and Mohammed’s wife
12:09 – How caravan ventures were financed without banks
13:22 – Islam’s ban on interest and emphasis on risk-sharing
14:18 – Mohammed’s prophetic calling and the economic backlash in Mecca
17:01 – Exile to Medina and the creation of a tax-free market
18:00 – Price deregulation, famine, and Mohammed’s free-market approach
19:07 – Zakat, welfare, and balancing markets with social responsibility
20:27 – Islamic business ethics, regulation, and fair trading rules
23:25 – The Ummah, trust, and the growth of a wider commercial community
24:44 – Islam’s expansion, warfare, taxation, and Mohammed’s growing wealth
27:51 – How Islamic commercial ideas may have influenced European capitalism
30:16 – Venetian trade, risk-sharing, and parallels with caravan finance
31:26 – Arabic roots of European commercial and financial vocabulary
34:04 – Fibonacci, trusts, and the transfer of ideas from the Islamic world
35:36 – Debate over how directly Islam influenced Western capitalism
37:51 – Why the Islamic commercial golden age declined after 1500
40:01 – Reassessing Islam’s influence on finance and capitalism
42:34 – Islamic finance, equity investing, and lessons for modern markets
43:20 – How the “Mohammed as capitalist” thesis was received in the Muslim world
45:17 – Mohammed’s wealth, frugality, and final years

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