THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR

BY

GABRIEL BAER

I. The Middle Ages

For about a generation Orientalists. had accepted Louis Massignon's
theory, stated concisely as follows in his article '$inf' in the first edition
of the Encyclopaedia of Islam. 'The organization of labour and the
grouping of workers into corporations in Muslim cities dates from the
ninth century of our era and is closely connected with a movement half
religious and half social, socialistic in origin, that of the J>:armatians'.
Recent research has shown rather conclusively that this theory lacks
evidence and cannot be maintained. 1 After close examination of the
sources scholars have not come across any organization of labour or the
existence of guilds in Qarmati epistles, chronicles of Fa.timid Cairo or
Baghdad in the 4th/10th century, or the vast juridic literature; moreover,
scrutinizing the records of the Cairo Geniza, S. D. Goitein looked in vain
for any trace of an institution resembling a guild. 2
The earliest known texts about the organization of craftsmen are the
references in twelfth-century treatises of the "IJ,isba to foremen of trades
('arif, amin, muqaddam). 3 These foremen were responsible to the mulJ,tasib
for the carrying out of his orders by the members of the profession.
Unfortunately no sources have yet been discovered which would show
how exactly this institution worked, nor what happened during the
early centuries of Islamic history to the organization of crafts and trades
which was well developed in the Roman Empire and in Byzantium.
A little more is known about the development of the function of the
1 See especially S. M. Stern, 'The Constitution of the Islamic City', and C.Cahen, 'Y a-t-il

eu des corporations professionnelles dans le monde musulman classique'? in A.H. Hourani and
S. M. Stern, The Islamic City, Oxford, r970.
1 Ibid., pp. 38-9, 57-8; S. D. Goitein, Studies in Islamic History and Institutions, Leiden, r966,

pp. 267-8.
• al-Maqrizi says that as early as in the beginning of the eleventh century, at the time of the
Caliph al-l:lakim bi'amr Allah, an 'arif was appointed for every craft. However, since al-Maqrizi
was writing four centuries later, it may well be that he projected conditions of his own time back
to an earlier period. See Taqi al-Din al-Maqrizi, Ighathat al umma bi-kashf al-ghimma, Cairo, A.H.
1359/r940 C.E., pp. 18-19, quoted by 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Diiri, 'N'ushii> al-a~naf wa'l-1).iraf fi'l-Islam',
Majallat Kulliyyat al-Adab (Baghdad), vol. I, r958-9, p. 150. In this article Diiri presents a large
amount of material, but unfortunately his presentation lacks sufficient discrimination between
professional and other groups, between crafts and guilds, and between different periods.
32 THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR

<arifs in the Mamluk period. To assist the mu'IJ,tasibs, each craft or trade
had an <arif, selected from among the craftsmen but appointed by the
mu'IJ,tasibs to be their agents. Their intermediary position probably
caused them to become spokesmen for the members of their profession,
and indeed there is evidence that in a specific case they fulfilled represen-
tative functions. 4 However, in general they were not the spokesmen of
independent interests and represented no internal solidarity. Their
duties were to advise the mu'IJ,tasib on the practices of the trade and the
condition of the market. They were responsible for the execution of
duties assigned to the craftsmen, assisted in the organization of the
markets for auxiliary military service and, when ordered by the govern-
ment, brought out the workers for ceremonial occasions. In addition,
when liturgical services were assigned to the market people the <arifs
were assembled to hear the governor's instructions. The most important
duty of the <arif was to assist the mu'IJ,tasib in levying a tax on the market.
However, the mu'IJ,tasib in Mamluk times abstained from controlling
prices, wages, or numbers of craftsmen, which would have required the
assistance of corporations. Indeed, the author of the most thorough
study of this subject concludes that in the Mamluk period 'neither the
European nor the Byzantine type of guild was to be found in the bazaars
of the Muslim city ... considered from the point of view of political
organization, economic regulation, or even corporate fraternal life, there
were no guilds in Muslim cities in this period in any usual sense of the
term'. 6
The same seems to have been true for Islamic Anatolia prior to the
fifteenth century. Although the young men of the akhi movement (13th
and 14th century) were recruited mainly among the craftsmen, the
association as such was non-professional; and Babinger did not find any
traces of guilds in his sources for the time of Mehmet the Conqueror. 6
However, the changes in the political situation in Anatolia brought about
by the rise of Ottoman power were unfavourable to the existence of
free associations such as those of the akhis. This, according to Taeschner,
was the reason for the creation of a guild system in which the akhi
traditions survived. The best known of such guilds was that of the

• Cf. E. Ashtor-Strauss, 'L'administration urbaine en Syrie medievale', Rivista degli Studi

Orientali, 3I, I956, p. 86; E. Ashtor, 'L'urbanisme syrien a la basse epoque', ibid., 33, I958, pp.
I86, 20I-2.
• I. Lapidus, Muslim Cities in the Later MiddlP. Ages, Harvard U. P., Cambridge, Mass., I967,
pp. 98-9, IOI, and seep. 275 for sources.
1 F. Taeschner, 'Akhi', EI•, vol. I, pp. 32I-3; F. Babinger, Mehmed der ErobererundseineZeit,

Miinchen, I953, p. 49r.