Economic and Financial Crises in Fifteenth-Century Egypt: Lessons from History

The present paper attempts to study the economic and financial crises of fifteenth-century Egypt, which was ruled by Mamluk dynasty. During the fifteenth century, especially in its first half, Egypt faced horrible economic crisis caused sometimes by rulers' ill-governance and corruptions and sometimes by natural catastrophe such as over flooding of Nile or its drying up, outbreak of epidemics, crop diseases, etc. In many cases two or more factors simultaneously existed. Financial crisis mainly emanated from monetary mismanagement. Two social thinkers of the time; al-Maqrizi at the beginning of the century and al-Asadi at the middle, addressed the situation. They analyzed the problem, pointed out the causes, and suggested remedies. The paper gathers the lessons learnt from the studies of the two social thinkers.