As Pierre Bourdieu was later to point out in describing a similar economy of trust in contemporary Algeria: it’s quite possible to turn honor into money, almost impossible to convert money into honor.76 These networks of trust, in turn, were largely responsible for the spread of Islam over the caravan routes of Central Asia and the Sahara, and especially across the Indian Ocean, the main conduit of medieval world trade. Over the course of the Middle Ages, the Indian Ocean effectively became a Muslim lake. Muslim traders appear to have played a key role in establishing the principle that kings
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