The Muslim Common Market

“The density of commercial relations within the Muslim world constituted a sort of world market (to use a somewhat anachronistic term) of unprecedented dimensions. The development of exchange had made possible regional specialization in industry as well as in agriculture, bringing about relations of economic interdependence that sometimes extended over great distances. A world market of the same type was formed in the Roman Empire, but the Muslim ‘common empire’ was very much bigger. Also, it seems to have been more ‘capitalistic’, in the sense that private capital played a greater part in forming it, as compared with the part played by the state than was the case in the Roman Empire. Not only did the world know a capitalistic sector, but this sector was apparently the most extensive and highly developed in history before the establishment of the world market created by the Western bourgeoisie, and this did not outstrip it in importance until the sixteenth century.”

(Maxime Rodinson, Islam and Capitalism, Chapter 3)

Note: If we follow Frank's view as expressed in Re-Orient we cannot accept that the West became dominant as early as the sixteenth century.