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A review by buermann
Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam by Abraham L. Udovitch
4.0
"New firm structures also emerged, with the Italian commenda at the root of all subsequent modern forms of business, from joint-stock corporations to private partnerships."
--The Routledge Companion to Business History; p.319; ed. by J Wilson, S Toms, A Jong, E Buchnea; 2017
"One of the key bases for the economic expansion of Venice was a series of contractual innovations making economic institutions much more inclusive. The most famous was the commenda... This economic inclusiveness and the rise of new families through trade forced the political system to become even more open... Having implemented a political Serrata ['cartelization', in 1286], the Great Council [of 1314] then moved to adopt an economic Serrata... Most important, they banned the use of commenda contracts, one of the great institutional innovations that had made Venice rich."
--"Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty", Acemoglu & Robinson, 2013.
"The commenda was a medieval contract which developed in Italy around the 13th century."
--Wikipedia, presently.
"It appears very likely that the commenda was an institution indigenous to the Arabian peninsula which developed in the context of the pre-Islamic Arabian caravan trade. With the Arab conquests, it spread to the Near East, North Africa, and ultimately to Southern Europe. The commenda was the subject of lengthy and detailed discussion in the earliest Islamic legal compendia (late eighth century [in the Kitab al-Umm of al-Shafi'i, rectifying merchant traditions with Hanafi jurisprudence]). Its legal treatment in these early treatises bears the hallmark of long experience with the commenda as an established commercial institution."
--"Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam", Abraham L. Udovitch, 1970.
"The qirad was undoubtedly more similar to the commenda than were the [Byzantine] chreokoinonia and the [Jewish] 'isqa... there were certain peculiar similarities which were so striking as to suggest strongly some degree of exchange of ideas between the two contracts... the Muslim legal sources upon which much of our knowledge of the qirad is based predate the earliest references in the West to the commenda, the influence would probably have been from Islam to Christianity rather than vice-versa... the similarities both in economic structure and juridical conception between the qirad and commenda were far too striking for us not to admit that the qirad must have added its influence."
--"The Origins of the Western Commenda", John Pyror; Speculum 52(1), 5-37.; 1977.
Even as the commenda was outlawed in some Italian cities by state-backed cartels, agents continued trading on the contract in Europe and elsewhere into at least the 18th century (c.f. "From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean", Sebouh Aslanian, 2011).
--The Routledge Companion to Business History; p.319; ed. by J Wilson, S Toms, A Jong, E Buchnea; 2017
"One of the key bases for the economic expansion of Venice was a series of contractual innovations making economic institutions much more inclusive. The most famous was the commenda... This economic inclusiveness and the rise of new families through trade forced the political system to become even more open... Having implemented a political Serrata ['cartelization', in 1286], the Great Council [of 1314] then moved to adopt an economic Serrata... Most important, they banned the use of commenda contracts, one of the great institutional innovations that had made Venice rich."
--"Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty", Acemoglu & Robinson, 2013.
"The commenda was a medieval contract which developed in Italy around the 13th century."
--Wikipedia, presently.
"It appears very likely that the commenda was an institution indigenous to the Arabian peninsula which developed in the context of the pre-Islamic Arabian caravan trade. With the Arab conquests, it spread to the Near East, North Africa, and ultimately to Southern Europe. The commenda was the subject of lengthy and detailed discussion in the earliest Islamic legal compendia (late eighth century [in the Kitab al-Umm of al-Shafi'i, rectifying merchant traditions with Hanafi jurisprudence]). Its legal treatment in these early treatises bears the hallmark of long experience with the commenda as an established commercial institution."
--"Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam", Abraham L. Udovitch, 1970.
"The qirad was undoubtedly more similar to the commenda than were the [Byzantine] chreokoinonia and the [Jewish] 'isqa... there were certain peculiar similarities which were so striking as to suggest strongly some degree of exchange of ideas between the two contracts... the Muslim legal sources upon which much of our knowledge of the qirad is based predate the earliest references in the West to the commenda, the influence would probably have been from Islam to Christianity rather than vice-versa... the similarities both in economic structure and juridical conception between the qirad and commenda were far too striking for us not to admit that the qirad must have added its influence."
--"The Origins of the Western Commenda", John Pyror; Speculum 52(1), 5-37.; 1977.
Even as the commenda was outlawed in some Italian cities by state-backed cartels, agents continued trading on the contract in Europe and elsewhere into at least the 18th century (c.f. "From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean", Sebouh Aslanian, 2011).