political fragmentation and cultural diversity 271Taymìya explained that further in stating that if the sellers are sell-
ing their goods in a proper manner, without artificial manipulation
of prices, and the current price happens to rise either through the
scarcity of an article or an increase in the demand, then these are
market conditions. In these circumstances compelling the sellers to
sell at a particular price would be unjustified and wrong. But if the
sellers refrained from selling in anticipation of a price more than the
reasonable price at a time when there is an urgent need for the goods,
they would be doing wrong as they would be manipulating market
forces in order to sell for more than the fair value. “Price control
has no meaning other than compulsion to sell at a fair value”.
Turning his attention to monopoly, Ibn Taymìya condemned all
forms of monopoly including, interestingly enough, oligopoly, and
regarded them as a serious form of market manipulation. “A more
serious matter is where people have a monopoly of a particular com-
modity that are sold only to them and then retailed by them”, which
leads to “any would-be competitor being restrained either harshly,
by imposition, or by some gentler means less open to abuse”. In this
situation price fixation is a must, “prices must be controlled so that
monopolists sell only for fair value and buy people’s goods only for
fair value”, (ibid.) This is because, “If the monopolists were licensed
to set their own prices the public would be injured on two sides:
the sellers wishing to sell their goods to them on the one hand, and
those purchasing goods from them on the other”, (ibid.)
The removal of economic injustice through the manipulation of
market forces was the main concerned of Ibn Taymìya in justifying
the intervention by the state in market conditions. To him price con-
trol by the state is not only an undisputed right but also a compel-
ling duty. Three conditions seemed to have been put however by
Ibn Taymìya to organise the intervention of the state and, seem-
ingly, curb its power. First, the commodity subject to market imper-
fection ought to be of a particular necessity to the consumers at
large. By implication, he did not seem to be particularly concerned
about goods of a luxury nature; these could be afforded by the well-
offconsumers. Second, there ought to be a manipulation of the mar-
ket conditions through the sellers refraining from sale in anticipation
of a future shortage of supply that would lead to a price increase.
This is a manipulation of supply forces. Third, manipulation of mar-
ket forces through monopolistic activities, which would jeopardise
the choice of both consumer and producer when the commodity is