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The story of the Madinah model
A short, plain guide to the old idea we are bringing back: a community that owns its land, trades in a fair market and trains its people in shared trades. If you have never heard these words before, this page is for you.
Where it starts
One word: ‘umran
‘Umran (oom-RAHN) comes from a root that means to build. It means development, and it also means prosperity. The great historian Ibn Khaldun used the word more than 225 times in his Muqaddimah, the book in which he studied why societies rise and why they fall.
Cooperation
Rowing in the same direction
People share the same aim. A community that wants the same things can move together.
Collaboration
Working side by side
People actually work together, held by the bond Ibn Khaldun called asabiyyah, a sense of group solidarity.
Coordination
Organizing the work well
People arrange their work so it is efficient and fair. This is made possible by shared property, which the booklet calls the commons.
The template
When the Prophet ﷺ arrived in Madinah
When the Prophet ﷺ (peace be upon him) arrived in Madinah, he created two institutions for the entire community. The booklet that inspires our work calls Madinah the city of the commons.
The mosque
The first thing set aside for everyone was a place to gather and to pray. It belonged to the whole community and could not be bought or sold.
The market
The second was a public market, open to every person. No one owned it, no one rented a stall from a landlord, and no one paid a tax to trade in it.
“This is your market. Do not build anything of stone on it, and do not let any tax be placed on it.”
The Prophet ﷺ (peace be upon him), on the market of Madinah
What is a waqf?
Property that can never be sold
Both the mosque and the market were made waqf. A waqf is property set aside for a community for good. It can be used by everyone, but it can never be sold, taken or kept by one person. That one rule protects a community’s shared places for generations.
Why it matters
It changes how people relate
When people share the use of land and places they can never sell, they stop competing over who owns them and start working out how to use them well. The commons does two things at once: it meets the community’s needs and it brings the community together.
Why trade
Trade is where provision comes from
It is reported that the Prophet ﷺ (peace be upon him) said that nine tenths of rizq, meaning provision or livelihood, comes from trading. History agrees. Even places with no factories and no natural resources have become rich because people traded there.
If trade is cut, the economy is cut at its jugular vein. So a healthy community needs a trade model: fair rules, an open place to meet and a way for strangers to deal with one another in good faith. Madinah supplied that model, and the Muslim world kept refining it for centuries.
The public market
How a market can belong to everyone
A public market (suq, pronounced like “sook”) is run by the people of the city and owned in common. It is built to keep growing with the city so that every person can keep their right to trade. It earns its keep by splitting its space into two parts.
Trading area
Free to use
Anyone may buy and sell here. The place to trade costs nothing and is never taxed.
Service area
Paid, at fair rates
Traders rent the things they need to do business well: storage, delivery, workshops, offices and equipment. This is how the market pays for itself.
The caravanserai
A lodge for visiting traders
Every great market kept a place for traders from far away, with rooms, storage and space to sell. In Arabic it was called a funduq (FOON-dook). Today the word means hotel, but it began as a lodge for caravans.
Guests, not strangers
Hospitality returned in kind
Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) said of the traveling trader: “that person is the guest of Umar. Let him sell and buy whatever Allah wants.” Traders who were welcomed in one city were welcomed back when they hosted visitors from it. Those lodges linked markets into routes, and some grew into cities of their own.
A different kind of market
Circulation, not extraction
A supermarket is built so that thousands of people buy from one company, and the profit travels away to its owners. A public market is built so that people buy from one another, and the profit stays in the community and moves from hand to hand. The booklet describes the first as an extractive economy and the second as a circulating one.
The guilds
People who share their tools and their craft
The first guild in Madinah was the caravan of traders. A guild (sinf, plural asnaf) is a group of people of the same trade who share the heavy things they all need and look after one another. Members of a caravan even stood surety for each other: if one could not pay, the rest carried the debt. Small traders could join and reach faraway markets they could never have reached alone.
Shared workshops and tools
Warehouses, machinery, offices and workshops are held in common, so a young craftsperson does not need a fortune to begin.
Learning that is passed on
Masters teach apprentices, and skill moves from one generation to the next. Some of today’s great universities began as guilds of scholars.
Quality you can trust
Guilds set standards so a buyer could trust the work, which made trade easier for everyone.
Care for members
Guilds provided support for members who fell ill or grew old, long before modern welfare systems existed.
One good name
Members shared a common brand, and each had a reason to protect its reputation.
Fair competition
Everyone bought materials and sold goods under the same conditions, so the best work could win.
The difference it makes
The booklet describes the guild as the road from employee to entrepreneur. It keeps competition, so people stay inventive, and adds cooperation, so people stay secure.
Employee
- Works for someone else
- Does what they are told
- Owns none of the tools
- Takes initiative with no reward
Guild member
- Works for themselves
- Decides how the work is done
- Shares ownership of the workshop
- Acts from skill and vocation
Proof from history
It has been done, and it worked
The model is not a theory. Mosques, markets and guilds shaped cities from Al-Andalus to Anatolia for hundreds of years. Here are three of the examples the booklet offers.
1455 to 1561
The Grand Bazaar of Istanbul
Built as a waqf for the people of the city. It grew to 61 covered streets, 29 inns for traders and over 30,000 working people, and it is still one of the most visited places on earth.
99%
of Ottoman professions
Almost every trade in the Ottoman Empire was organized into a guild. By the 19th century nearly the whole workforce of Istanbul belonged to one.
From poor to rich
The market town of Yiwu
In 1978 Yiwu, in China, was poorer than its own province. After it built a market and let its farmers trade, it became home to the largest wholesale market in the world, with more than 80,000 shops.
What was lost
It was not a natural decline. It was a legal abolition.
Toward the end of the 18th century, new ideas about unrestricted markets became law across Europe, and the guilds were legislated away. As liberal constitutions spread, the very idea of a public market and of shared property faded from memory, even among Muslims, who had once known them best. What a law removed, a community can choose to rebuild.
Where we are today
How a public market begins, and where we stand
The booklet describes three first steps for starting a public market. They are the road we hope to walk, in this order.
- Study the placeUnderstand the buyers, the producers and the trades of a particular area, and choose a cluster of goods that fits its local economy.
- Build the networkTreat the first market as one part of a wider network of public markets, and find partners in other places to welcome as guests.
- Design the marketGather architects and logistics experts to design the building, then draw it in detail so the community can see it and support it.
Year one is groundwork
Nothing described on this page is open yet. This year we are doing the quiet work first: building our name, researching, writing, meeting people, identifying property and raising the funds to begin.
We will say so plainly when something opens, and not before.
Learn with us
Keep learning, and help us build
If any of this stirred something in you, we would love to hear from you. Ask a question, share the page with a friend, or tell us how you would like to help.
Madinah Commonwealth is a public brand of Madinah Commonwealth Foundation LLC.