Mal

(İng. goods,ware)

Göndermeler

Mevlânâ'dan

Adam çok mal ve hilati gördü, aldandı, memleketinden ve çocuklarından ayrıldı. Adam sevinçle, padişahıncanına kastettiğinden habersiz, yola koyuldu. Arap atına bindi ve neşeyle sürdü. Kendi kan bedelini -sanki- hilat bildi. Ey yüz kabulle, bizzat kendi ayağıyla kötü kaderine doğru yola çıkan kişi! Hayalinde mülk, izzet ve büyüklük vardı. Azrail "Evet git, elde edersin" dedi.

Aslan bu düşünceyle gülüşü açığa vuruyordu: Aslanın gülümsemelerine güvenme. Dünya malı Hakk'ın gülümsemeleridir; bizi serhoş, gururlu ve perişan eder.

Mal tohumdur, her çorak yere ekme. Kılıcı her yol kesicinin eline verme.

Hiç kimse, “Ey insanlar! Benim malım, ambarım ve sofram var, ekmek verin” der mi?

Ey oğul! Kimi istekli görürsen, onun dostu ol; önünde başını eğ. Çünkü isteklilerin civarında olmakla istekli olursun; galip gelenlerin gölgesinde bulunmakla galip olursun. Bir karınca Süleymanlık isterse, onun arayışına hafif hafif bakma. Mal ve meslekten senin neyin varsa önce istek ve bir düşünce değil miydi?

Her biri kendi aslına bağlıdır; ihtiyatlı ol, birbirine benzerler. Nitekim vesvese ve Elest vahyi; her ikisi akılla anlaşılır, fakat fark vardır. Her ikisi gönül çarşısının tellallarıdır, mallarını överler. Ey bey! Sen gönül sarrafıysan düşünceyi tanı. İki düşüncenin sırrını, esirci gibi ayırt et. Bu iki düşünceyi şüpheden bilmiyorsan, “Aldatmaca yok” de; koşma ve koşturma.

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.

Soysuz kişiye ilim ve fen öğretmek, yol kesicinin eline kılıç vermektir. Sarhoş bir zencinin eline kılıç vermek, ilmin, insan olmayanın eline geçmesinden daha iyidir. İlim, mal, unvan, makam ve başarı, soysuzların elinde fitnedir. Bundan dolayı delinin elinden kılıç almak için müminlere savaş farz oldu. Canı delidir, bedeni de kılıç; o çirkin huyludan kılıcı al. Makamın, cahillere çirkinlik adına yaptığını yüz aslan hiç yapabilir mi? Ayıbı gizlidir; alet/fırsat bulunca, yılanı delikten ovaya koşar. Cahil, acı buyruk padişahı olunca bütün ova yılan ve akreple dolar. Mal ve makam elde eden, insan olmayan kişi kendisinin rezilliğini istemiş olur. Ya cimrilik eder, bağış vermez; ya da cömertlik eder, yersiz yere bağış yapar. Şahı, piyadenin yerine kor; ahmağın verdiği bağış böyledir. Yetki bir sapığın eline geçinde makam sanır, kuyuya düşer. Yol bilmez, kılavuzluk eder; onun çirkin canı dünyayı yakar. Yokluk yolunun çocuğu pîrlik/önderlik yaparsa, takipçilerini talihsizlik gulyabanısı yakalar; "Gel, sana ay göstereyim," der; -ama- o temiz olmayan, asla ay görmemiştir. Ey ham cahil! Nasıl gösterirsin? Ömründe ayın aksini suda dahi görmedin ki! Ahmaklar başkan oldular, akıllılar da korkudan başlarını kilimin altına soktular.

Diğer

The issue was not destined to be settled by economic factors alone, with victory going to the competitor who could supply Europe with spices at the lowest price. Portugal went east as crusader and trader, determined to get a monopoly of the westward flow of goods and also to wage the holy war on new battlefields. To establish the monopoly she must gain control of the producing regions and exporting harbors, close the entrances to the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and wipe out any Arab or Egyptian ships that came in sight. For the crusade she must provide a considerable army and navy for combined operations and draw on Abyssinia for material and men. For about two decades she acted with vigor. In 1502 Vasco da Gama broke up Arab-Egyptian shipping so thoroughly that in 1504 scarcely any spices reached the Levantine ports or Mediterranean Europe. From 1506 to 1516 Albuquerque, commander of the fleet and after 1509 governor general of the Portuguese Indies, was untiring, aggressive, and triumphant. He captured Ormuz in 1507, thus blockading the Persian Gulf. He strung a chain of outposts from East Africa to China. He laid plans to capture Aden, establish a base inside the Red Sea, burn the Egyptian navy in harbor, and destroy the Moslem holy city of Mecca. He even suggested that engineers be brought from Europe to divert the upper Nile from its course, thus turning Egypt into a desert. Though Albuquerque died before he could seal up the Red Sea, he did reduce and render fitful the traffic from India and points east to Alexandria and Aleppo. Portugal became for a time the leading, and in some years the only, recipient of East Indian produce. Her ships, laden with some European goods and well stocked with gold from Africa, went out regularly, returning to Lisbon with cargoes that were sent on to Antwerp to be sold. The king claimed a royal monopoly of the trade in pepper, his factors and agents tried to keep the price as high as possible, and he seemed to be richly rewarded for the enterprise of his ancestors. It is probable, however, that much of the royal profit was swallowed up in the cost of sustaining the forces needed in the Orient to suppress rivals. It is certain that those rivals were not permanently or completely suppressed. The Turks, who had gone on from capturing Constantinople in 1453 to conquer Syria in 1516 and Egypt in 1517, were eager to revive the old trade routes because of the revenue to be collected from them. Their eagerness was shared by the Venetians, by the French, who were competing more and more with the Italians in the Levant, and by the Arabs. After about 1520 the Portuguese blockade grew weaker, the administration became incompetent or corrupt, the Red Sea could not be closed tight, and Arab bribes brought freedom from restraint. By 1540 at latest, goods were flowing once more in considerable volume through Aleppo and Alexandria to Venice, Ragusa, Marseilles, and other ports. Professor Lane estimates that by 1560 Venice was receiving more pepper than she had done before the trade was interrupted; that shipments through the Red Sea equaled and sometimes exceeded the Lisbon imports; and that the European consumption of pepper increased greatly —perhaps even doubled- between 1500 and 1560. It has been suggested that Portugal's appropriation of the African gold supply had reduced the Italians' ability to pay for what they wanted in the Levant. If that diversion of precious metal was a serious blow, the damage was repaired by the mounting supplies of silver coming from mid-European mines and then by the influx from America.

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.)

Herodotus (4.16) provides an insight into the operation of Phoenician barter when he recounts a story that was supposedly told to him by some Carthaginian merchants. According to this account, when exchanging with a primitive North African tribe, the Carthaginians would deposit their wares on the beach for the natives to inspect. The indigenous traders would then set out a quantity of gold. Once both parties were satisfied, they would collect their goods and depart. Although this is likely to be a fictitious incident, it nevertheless reveals the Greek perception of how Phoenician barter functioned.

The large quantities of Phoenician manufactured goods recovered from eighth- and seventh-century cemeteries and cremation sites throughout Italy and Etruria, demonstrate that this contact was not only sustained but also widespread.