Ticaret

Göndermeler

Mevlânâ'dan

Korkak tabiatlı, cam canlı tacirin ticaretinde ne kâr vardır, ne de ziyan. Hatta ziyanı vardır, çünkü mahrumdur ve hordur; şule yutan, ışık bulur. Çünkü bütün işler ümit üzeredir; din işi evlâdır; bununla kurtulursun. Burada ümitten başka kapı çalmaya izin yoktur. Allah doğruyu daha iyi bilir. Boyunları çalışmaktan iğ gibi olsa da kişileri mesleklere çağıran, ümit ve beklentidir. Kişi sabahleyin dükkâna giderken, rızk ümit ve beklentisiyle koşar.

Çok kişi ay ışığında yolunu görmez; güneş doğunca yol görünür. Güneş, değiş tokuş edenleri tam olarak gösterir; şüphesiz çarşılar gündüz vaktinde olur. Böylece sahteyle, geçer olan para iyice görünür; böylece aldatma ve hileden uzak olunur. Güneşin ışığı yeryüzüne tam gelince, tacirler için âlemlere rahmet olur. Ancak kalpazanlarca çok nefret edilir; çünkü güneşle onun parası ve malı değersiz olur.

Diğer

The term “silk road” thus refers to more than just trade in silk between China and Rome over a few centuries. It stands for the exchanges of things and ideas, both intended and accidental, through trade, diplomacy, conquest, migration, and pilgrimage that intensified integration of the Afro-Eurasian continent from the Neolithic through modern times. Warriors, missionaries, nomads, emissaries, and artisans as well as merchants contributed to this ongoing cross-fertilization, which thrived under imperial and religious unifications.

In the 1930s, the social scientist Frederick Teggart looked at the Eurasian connections between Rome and Han and their shared problem with “barbarians” on the frontiers; he wrote a book attempting to explain what he saw as correlations between Eastern and Western history. Wars in the Roman east and barbarian invasions along the Danube and Rhine were ultimately the result, Teggart argued, of policies of the Han government. How? Through trade and nomadic migrations. Wars in the Tarim Basin disrupted trade that would have passed through Parthia, which in turn made trouble on the eastern Roman frontier in Armenia. Likewise, Han policies to split the Xiongnu set tribes in motion across the steppe to Russia, who in turn drove other “barbarian” tribes before them, right up to the Roman northern frontier in Europe.

At first it was the temple that was the focus of whatever high culture there was. At the temples in ancient Sumeria, where urban life began in the fourth millennium BC, the work of controlling the local flooding and providing for the drought of the Mesopotamian alluvial plain was carried on under the learned priests, who in turn disposed of the surplus. It was they who sent out traders to bring in exotic goods necessary to the developing exploitation of the plain, fertile but lacking in minerals and even stone. When disputes arose with rival towns, perhaps over control of the trade, they organized the fighting men. But then as warfare became more elaborate -each town trying to outdo the others- military affairs and the general control of the town fell into the hands of non-priestly specialists: kings and their dependents. The royal court became a second focus of high culture alongside the temple, and was based like it upon agricultural production. Its revenue, in whatever form it took it, may be called taxes, which came chiefly from the land. Much more gradually, at last, the traders too became independent merchants, doing business on their own account and gaining enough profit to share, if more modestly and indirectly than temple or court, in the revenue of the land. When this happened, rich merchants too became patrons of the arts and the market became a third focus of high culture.

All three foci of high culture depended on the condition of agriculture. The basis of temple and court was agrarian in that their wealth and power presupposed chiefly arrangements concerning agricultural production. The market depended on agriculture less directly than did temple or court, for the traders brought goods from afar subject to other hazards than that of the local weather, and (provided there were sufficient stored savings) sold their goods in lean years as in fat. Yet, in the long run, the merchants too depended on the state of agriculture and their profits presupposed the peasants' surplus. Even when, as in Syria, mercantile city-states arose which depended primarily on distant trading by sea and land, their trade depended so intimately on the agrarian societies about them that both morally and materially they too lived ultimately from the peasants. Even the pastoralists, including the desert nomads, who depended on the agriculturists for much of their food and goods, were part of the same social complex. Accordingly, the type of social order which was introduced into the agricultural regions (and the areas dependent on them) with the rise of cities may be called agrarian-based or (to be more comprehensive) agrarianate citied society. (I say 'citied', not 'urban', because the society included the peasants, who were not urban though their life reflected the presence of cities.)

Persia’s hegemony over Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Levant brought political stability, whilst its efficient communications networks and infrastructures, such as the great Royal Highway, helped facilitate trade (Herodotus 5.52–4).