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Islam and the Global Luxury Commodity Trade in the 10th century

Aga Khan Program Spring 2025

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Islamic maritime trade was one of the principal carries of global trade in the 10th century, stretching from China to Spain. The main elements of that trade were things that we today might call luxury commodities: musk, cinnamon, sulfur, pearls, pepper, rubies bird’s nests, agarwood, ambergris, and camphor. These and an array of other – often lightweight – commodities were all more valuable than gold. None of them came from China. Instead, they came from chieftain societies in complex sets of upstream and downstream exchanges that leave almost no record in historical accounts. As a consequence, though there is ample evidence of these commodities in the metropole, there has been scant attention played to the upstream exchanges. What did the people who procured or harvested these commodities get for their efforts, and what exactly was the nature of the economy that fed these commodities into the global supply chains? The paper explores what I call Dark Matter Economy and its essential role not just in the history of global exchanges, but also in the history of architecture.

Speaker: Mark Jarzombek

Mark Jarzombek is a Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture and Life member of the Society of Architectural Historians. Diplom Architekt. ETH: 1980, Ph.D. MIT: 1986

Jarzombek works on a wide range of topics – both historical and theoretical. He is one of the country’s leading advocates for global history and has published several books and articles on that topic, including the ground-breaking textbook entitled A Global History of Architecture (Wiley Press, 2006) with co-author Vikramaditya Prakash and with the noted illustrator Francis D.K. Ching. He is the sole author of Architecture of First Societies: A Global Perspective  (Wiley Press, 2013), which includes custom-made drawings, maps and photographs. The book builds on the latest research in archeological and anthropological knowledge while at the same time challenging some of their received perspectives. 

His most recent book is Architecture Constructed: Notes on a Discipline (Bloomsbury, 2023), that studies the frictions divided between the architect and contractor, positioning it with the problematic of Eurocentrism.
 
Jarzombek’s ground-breaking work on global architecture history was highlighted by a 3.5 million dollar grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that Jarzombek received with co-PI, Vikramaditya Prakash (University of Washington, Seattle), to create a new scholarly entity called Global Architecture History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC). Promoting the development and exchange of teaching materials for architectural history education across the globe, the collaborative provides awards to members and their teams to develop new lecture material from global perspectives.