Debt: The First 5,000 Years
David Graeber
A groundbreaking history of money, debt, and the moral foundations of economic life
Graeber's landmark 5,000-year history of debt — demonstrating that the current interest-based financial system is historically anomalous and morally contested. Essential secular context for Islamic finance's prohibition of interest.
David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years is not an Islamic finance text — but it may be the most important book of secular scholarship for understanding why Islamic finance's prohibition of interest makes sense. Through meticulous anthropological and historical research, Graeber demonstrates that lending at interest was morally contested in virtually every pre-modern civilization — Aristotle, Aquinas, and Islamic scholars all agreed.
For Fair Meridian course students, this book provides the secular historical foundation for Unit 2's treatment of Islamic economics as the Third Way.
David Graeber
Professor of Anthropology · London School of Economics · Author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years
Anthropologist and economic historian whose landmark work 'Debt: The First 5,000 Years' demonstrates that interest-based debt has been morally contested throughout human history — essential secular context for Islamic finance.
All books by this authorThis book is part of a structured 10-unit course — 185+ lessons, every one with a real-world action. Go from reading to doing.