Book excerpt: The Mediterranean Tradition in Economic Thought surveys the legacy of thinking on economic affairs from the countries in the Mediterraean basin over four millenia. It considers the economic content of the scriptures of the Mesopotamian civilisations, Pharaonic Egypt and the Biblical peoples and the contributions of the Greeks and Romans, and their influence on Islamic civilisation and on the Medieval scholastics. The flowering of the school of Salamanca as recently as the seventeenth century demonstrates how long-lived the tradition was, and throughout Baeck demonstrates how these ideas continue to survive and resurface, citing the renewed interest in the ethical dimension of economics, the revival of interest in the history of Islamic thought, and the re-emergence of Slavophile doctrines in contemporary Russian.