Christian And Islamic Attitudes Toward Merchants And Trade Until 1500

Using the documents I have found that the attitudes of Christianity and Islam toward merchants and trade from the religions' origins until about 1500 have changed over time in both Islamic and Christian point of views.

The "missing voices" or missing documents that would have helped make my essay answer the question more fully and complete is two journal entries or documents of an average class standard persons' point of view on an Islamic and Christians' disposition towards merchants and trade from the religions' origins.

I have three groupings of the documents provided that helps me answer the essay question. The first grouping is Islamic point of view documents which are the second, fifth and seventh documents, and Christian point of view which are the first, third, fourth, and sixth documents. Over time both the Christians and the Islamic have slowly started to be for merchant and trade. On the Islamic point of view side, in the earlier centuries the Islamic people were more dominantly religious and in the Qur'an it says that merchants are unfair and unequal traders. But as the centuries went by the Islamic point of view went from strongly disagreeing with merchants and trade to looking down on merchants but believing that it isn't unfair and unjustified and it is alright to do. In the Christian point of view in the earlier years religion was also more dominant and they strongly disagreed with merchants and trade, but as time went on Christians became less religion dominant and believed that merchants and trade were okay and for the most part good.

The second grouping is time periods. They are the first century to tenth century and eleventh century to fifteenth century. My only documents in the first category were from religious books and both the Islamic and Christian point of view was strongly opposed to merchants and trade. But the documents from the eleventh century to fifteenth century became more and more less opposed and more for merchants and trade. For example, in the fifth document Ibn Khaldun, a leading Muslim scholar, said according to the information he provided above this quote "This is why {religious}