Hi Everyone,
My name is Khuram Malik, I am a business strategist by day. I spent the last few years looking into the economic prosperity of previous nations and civilisations and discovered the concept of Qirad which was used by the Greeks (it was called something else by them but the concept was the similar), the Romans, the Arabs and eventually the Italians during the renaissance.
Smart Contracts are perfect for something like Qirad. I had originally planned to hire a developer to build the Smart Contract but was introduced to DAML and wondered if I might be able to do this myself.
I have a background in IT but I am not a coder or programmer, but given the nature of DAML Iāve decided to attempt this myself anyhow.
I look forward to learning from experts and fellow smart contract builders alike here.
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Hi @krmmalik, welcome to the forum! Youāre definitely in the right place to meet other Damlāers. Hope you have a great time using Daml.
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Hi @krmmalik and welcome! That sounds really interesting. Could you explain to someone ignorant about islamic finance what is the difference between Qirad and Venture Capital?
I hope you have a good experience getting started with Daml. If there are any hiccups, or difficulties, please donāt hesitate to ask or feed back in this forum.
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Thanks @bernhard .
So in Qirad there are no equity stakes and effort is valued over capital. The Qirad Agent i.e. the entrepreneur gets to call all the shots so has more control over his or her business. The investor provides capital but has little to no say in how business is conducted, and without any stake in the business, these stakes cannot then be sold of or traded up hurting the workforce economically in the process.
Iāve had an āOKā start to DAML I would say. I realise the objective of DAML is to be as low-code as possible but for a non-coder the learning curve is still quite steep, but Iām managing for now, which is great.
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sounds really interesting @krmmalik and welcome to the forum again!
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Hi @krmmalik I second the motion! Iād like to to learn more about Qirad. What is the religious and cultural context to it, if any? What are your views on itās suitability to integrate or at least tolerate the Western notion of āsmart contractsā? Which as far as I know, are quite different Mudharabah and Wadiah.
I only ask, as a forgotten (me, not him) Islamic Finance (IF) leader I used to follow on Twitter, is now advertising an introduction to Cryptocurrency investing within the IF framework via a mailing list.
Update: After some research, apparently Qirad is also known as āMuqarabahā by Hanafi and Hanbali scholars, and was one of the basic financial instruments of the medieval Islamic world. So Iād be interested in exploring this potentiality further.
Reference: Qirad - Wikipedia
Regards, QA.
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hi @quidagis , thanks for your questions.
In answer to those.
Qirad is the arabic term for this financing model. It was used in other places as well, such as Italy in the 15th century where it was one of the greatest contributors to the prosperity of Florence at the time. Iām not sure what the Italian for Qirad is I am afraid.
Smart Contracts are super conducive and super suitable to the concept of the Qirad. The reason is the trust model. In other financing modes, the āsecurityā is either equity or collateral, but in Qirad it is the reputation of the person raising finance as well as their guarantors (known as Hawallaās) who have to sign off on each contract and vouch that they guarantee for this person. The whole trust model in Smart Contracts and specifically DAML is super conducive to this and Qirad is a perfect application to take advantage of this platform.
I may end up (once I get my head around all the concepts and master DAML better) becoming the first person in the world to create an entire Guild system on the blockchain as a result of this. Guilds are groups of people that all agree to vouch for each other and operate as a single unit so that if an investor pours money into a business and the individual runs off, the guild is responsible for repaying the investor. In this way, the guild replaces the need for collateral or equity.
Qirad is known as Mudarabah by Hanafi scholars, but in the Hanafi school of thought there are some slight differences. I am using the more puritan definition of it.
If you like, I can link the key slides from my presentation that provide more background context and info.
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Thank you for the comprehensive reply, and your aspirations. It sounds like a very interesting concept, guilds as a trusted body that equally shares Risk & Reward. Please contact me directly through the forum messaging service, and we can go from there.
Select my name and message me directly 
ā¦ sorry.