Riba in Tunisia

"A recent study using legal documents enables us to form some idea of economic life in what is now Tunisia, in the twelfth century especially, but also in the two centuries before that. We see numerous loans and purchases on credit are recorded. The trade of moneychanger and banker was flourishing. The bankers controlled at least a substantial proportion of commerce. The wholesalers, apparently, trading in flax, cotton and oil, butchers and grain merchants, had accounts with them (kept in terms of gold currency). They nourished these accounts by paying in part of their takings (in silver currency) and paying their suppliers in bills on the bankers. Let it be noted that to receive (or to have the right to receive) gold coins in exchange for payment in silver ones is already riba, forbidden specifically by the Malikite school of law which was dominant in the Tunisia of that time. Here, then, there was an everyday practice of violation of the canonical rules regarding riba. It is therefore quite probable that this transgression tainted other commercial operations too of which we have record for this period, and which it would be too naïve to suppose were carried on out of philanthropy and piety."

(Source: Maxime Rodinson, Islam and Capitalism, Chapter 3)