The General Idea of Islamic Development: The Imaret by Umar Vadillo

The General Idea of Islamic Development: The Imaret
by Umar Vadillo

It follows a brief introduction to the idea of Development following the model of Madina, that is, the Islamic model. It is quite important to make our Muslim students to discover the nature of our own Islamic models. The idea that our students in the West will be the instrument of the introduction of that capitalist model of development they have learned from their kafir teachers is abhorrent to most of us. We have a model of development to enhance or revive the situation of people. For centuries the Muslims brought Islam to new lands and they brought their own model of development. They did not open a Central Bank, a Stock Exchange and bring factories to employ people. We did development using almost an opposite method.

We are here to discover part of that world of development as understood throughout hundreds of years of Muslim history, and particularly in the last long period of our Dar al-Islam in Ottoman times. The core of that model consisted on two institutions the 'Mosque and Market'. This is what the Messenger founded in Madinah and this is what the Muslims copied everywhere else. That urban unit, which the ottomans called imaret, was at the center of every town the Muslims created. For example Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. It was revived with an imaret.

Beyond the architectural and urban superiority of this model over the modern one, this model created the basis of commercial justice by supporting what we call Islamic Trading. The more we Muslims undertake our unique role to obey Allah, allow what is allowed and forbid what is
forbidden, the more we will be forced to re-establish our own social and political models over the rotten ones of the kufar. And thus the Muslim cities of the future will be based on the imaret.

WHAT IS AN IMARET? An Imaret is an urban unit consisting of a Market and a Mosque, and other institutions of welfare. The Imarets were created in order to populate a new area (development) or to establish a new neighbourhood in the town. The Imaret was the first pillar of the new development and then residential houses grew around.

Imaret is from an Arabic word: 'imara , meaning construction.

In the Ottoman language Imaret also meant the act of improving a land or a country. So Islamic Imaret means also Islamic Development.

It comes from the Arabic root ' M R and yields the word 'amr - life - and isti'mar - establishment in the land (development), as Allah says in the Qur'an (11:61):

«Worship Allah: you have no other god but Him. It is He Who has produced you from the earth and established you therein"»

So we can say that the essence of the Imaret is life and its result is establishment and development. The Imaret is the core unit of Islamic Development, around which a civilization flourishes. The word Imaret served also to name the kitchen for the distribution of food to the poor in the Imaret complex.

The Imaret in Madinah. When the Messenger of Allah entered Madinah, after he built the mosque he made the market of the Muslims. This is the central model of all Islamic cities.

When the Ottoman Khalifs decided to develop Sarajevo after its conquest, they made an Imaret. When they wanted to create a new district in town they made an Imaret. They repeated this
same model all over the Umma.

THE OTTOMAN IMARET SYSTEM
(by Halil Inalcik)

The construction of Imarets -urban centres supported vakifs- provided the city with public services and markets and played an important part in the growth of the city. The imâret was an
old near-eastern institution which the Ottomans had adopted in the building of Bursa, Edirne and other cities. It was a complex of institutions -mosque, medrese, hospital, traveller's hostel, water installations, roads and bridges- founded with pious or charitable institutions which provided revenue for the upkeep, such as an inn, market, caravanserai, bath house, mill, dyehouse, slaughterhouse or soup kitchen. The religious and charitable institutions were usually grouped around a mosque, while the commercial establishments stood nearby or in some suitably active place. These imarets were an essential part in the plans of all Ottoman towns, giving them their own peculiar character, and until recently they dominated the skyline of cities
and towns in Anatolia and the Balkans.

Founders of imarets usually created them as vakifs, the vakfiye -the deed of endowment- being drawn up before a kâdi, entered in his register and confirmed by the sultan

In 1459 Mehmed the Conqueror assembled the empire's leading men and required each of them to create an imâret in any part of the city that he wished. The grand vizier, Mahmûd Pasha and later other viziers constructed fine imarets in the centre of the city and around the Golden Horn. Buildings devoted to the public good were erected around the mosque bearing the donor's name, and within a short time people settled near these imarets and founded new quarters. Istanbul
thus took on its characteristic Turkish appearance.

'Sultan Mehmed' , in the words of the contemporary historian Nesrî, 'created Istanbul'. His successors, Bâyezîd II and Süleymân, and the royal women, statesmen, ulema and merchants of the period, aided the city's rapid growth by founding imarets in other districts. The Ottoman sultans succeeded in developing Istanbul as a great imperial metropolis. With its population reaching four hundred thousand in the first half of the sixteenth century, Istanbul was the largest city in Europe.

(The Ottoman Empire, The Classical Age 1300-1600)

THE IMARET HISTORY

The Imaret model is the most universal and ancient urban unit. For Ancient Romans, that urban unit consisted of the Forum (Market) and the Basilica (civic centre and temple). The Basilica
developed from being an administrative centre and place for the decision of civil and commercial cases into a place of worship. The Basilica was attached to the Forum where the Market was
held.

This same model is seen in Ancient Greece, in the form of the Agora and the temple: worship and trade coming together as the heart of the city's public affairs.

All great civilization supported and promoted trade. They achieved that by building facilities for both traders and customers. Markets and caravanserais can be seen in almost all great cities of the past. Cities competed with each other in providing free facilities and advantages to foreign traders, on the understanding that their trade would bring them wealth and prosperity. The caravanserais became a typical part of the Islamic Madinah, as part of the renowned hospitality of the Muslims to the traders.

Umar Ibn al-Khattab used to say: "Someone who brings imported goods through great fatigue to himself in the summer and winter [the two typical caravans], such a person is the guest of 'Umar. Let him sell what Allah wills and keep what Allah wills".

SOME CONCLUSIONS

The Imaret system is the Ottoman model of development. It is important that we re-discover our own forms of development. When capitalist developers come to Pakistan or North Africa to
"develop" all they do is to destroy life. Their method is nothing but to introduce their usurious system into the marrow bone of the Muslims. Two of the first institutions to be built in the new
Beirut were the Stock Exchange and the Central Bank. It was said that this was necessary to reconstruct the financial industry of the country. They think usury is what the people of Lebanon need.

The Imaret system underlines the importance that trade (Islamic trade) has to createprosperity in free societies. It is through the imaret that new cities were created and new neighbourhoods added to the towns. The Imaret was the urban unit of town development. It gave order and focus to the town.

To bring prosperity to our people we will need to recreate those instruments that are the basis of a free society. We have mosques. But we have lost the markets. For every mosque we should now erect a free market for our people, where everybody can trade with all the conditions required for trading, and where the dinar and the dirham are the currency accepted. The Imarets will represent the core of the new Islamic development.