political fragmentation and cultural diversity 257Money
He elucidated the reasons for the use of money as a means of
exchange. “The timing of the need of the individual from the ser-
vices and goods provided by other individuals is not the same, the
amount of goods and services needed to be exchanged are not equal,
the value of each good in terms of units of another good is not
known, and the relative value of the remaining un-exchanged part
of the good in terms of other goods cannot be determined for cer-
tain, is not known”, he explained, “therefore there is a need for
something that can be used to ascertain a value to all goods and
articles and by which the relative value of articles to each other can
be measured”, he added. The thing that is used to assign values to
goods would need to be a precious metal and the best of that is
gold, and silver. The merits of gold are “it is not perishable, it is
not subject to rust like iron and copper, it does not change in colour
such as lead, it is not too soft like lead, it is controllable and can
be shaped and reshaped without a loss of value, it has no smell and
has pleasant appearance, it can be buried without a loss of value or
appearance, it maintains the imprinted marks during minting for
control purposes”. For these reasons people had agreed to use gold
and silver as the chosen precious metal from which they made money.
As a store of value, al-Dìmashqìstates, “Whoever has obtained this
metal has obtained the ability to acquire all goods, services and pos-
sessions for which the metal can be exchanged, and whenever the
person wishes to do so”, (p. 21).
Cost of Production and Value
With the mentality and awareness of a businessman, al-Dìmashqì
outlined that the value of the good depended upon three main fac-
tors: the cost of the product, the amount of labour involved, and
the demand for the product. For the amount of labour involved we
find him giving an example of the Emerald and how its value changed
dramatically depending upon the amount of work added to it and
the level of skill the work requires. “The value of the emerald increases
dramatically for the craftsmanship involved”, he states (p. 36). Being
aware of the cost, and indeed the level of accuracy, al-Dìmashqì
took into account transportation costs and custom dues in addition
to other costs when the price of the product is determined—the