Why the Islamic Middle East Did not Generate an Indigenous Corporate Law

Classical Islamic law recognizes only natural persons; it does not grant standing to imagined, juristic persons. This article identifies self-reinforcing processes that kept Islamic law from developing a concept of legal personhood indigenously. Community building being central to Islam’s mission, the early promoters of Islam had no use for a concept liable to facilitate factionalism. In subsequent centuries the typical Muslim-owned commercial or financial enterprise was too small, and too limited in scope, to justify lobbying for advanced organizational forms; and Muslim rulers made no attempt to supply the corporate form of organization, because in the absence of merchant organizations they saw no structures worth exploiting for their own ends.