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For many centuries Islamic coins, such as the dīnār (pl. danānīr), have attracted the attention of historians and chroniclers. The initial appearance of Islamic coinage came as a response to economic requirements prevailing in the Middle East following the Arab invasion. The motivation behind the inception of Islamic coinage was in absolute harmony with the monetary traditions of the Near Eastern economy. Even though, the external features of the coinage might have been influenced by some sociopolitical factors, their intrinsic value was determined by the contemporary economic conditions. During periods 1870-1930 the world monetary system was mainly built on gold. However, with the establishment of Bretton Woods System in 1944, the world was set on the new monetary system involving a fixed exchange rate system. With the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 the price of gold increased to USD 38 per ounce. In April 1974, following the high volatility in monetary markets and oil crisis the price of gold increased 453% and reached USD 172 per ounce. As the U.S. economy increased in power, the I.M.F. diminished the monetary role of gold so that subsequently, gold was viewed as merely a precious metal commodity that was subject to a market value and changes in the price of gold. This article examines the monetary history of gold during Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid and Ottoman Caliphates. In particular, this study focuses on golds’ performance during global financial crisis of 2007-2009 (GFC) and correlation analysis is conducted to measure the strength and direction of a linear relationship between gold and other selected asset classes as well as financial indicators such as real interest rates, inflation rates, silver price, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Trade Weighted U.S. Dollar Index, money supply and crude oil prices.

This research aims to clarify the impact of monetary reform on retail banking, with the introduction of private crypto-currencies (CCs) and retail central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Given the exponential increase in private de-centralized CCs, involving stablecoins and non-backed digital assets, total crypto assets have now developed into a USD 1.04 trillion market capitalization. Governments and monetary authorities were initially reticent, but now a number of central banks are developing their own wholesale and retail CBDCs. By conducting library research, document and content analysis involving secondary data, this research confirms, involving central bank admission, that the current centralized monetary system allows commercial banks to lend the vast majority of deposit money into existence. However, the impact of private CCs and introduction of retail CBDCs will eliminate credit creation, thus rendering the commercial banking model obsolete. This will inevitably involve a structural change in the global financial system, with the separation of the public issuance of money and the private issuance of equity finance and investment. Ultimately, retail CBDCs will have to develop into public stablecoins that are pegged to intrinsic value to satisfy the store of value function of money and provide stability as the common denominator for all economic transactions.

If we consider the state of the world economy, especially in the OIC countries, some countries have to struggle in dealing with the problems of poverty. Hypothetically, the wealth of natural resources is potentially in the welfare of the population, but the facts on the ground say the situation is another in which it is far from being wellbeing. This study aims to analyze poverty in OIC countries by using a development model proposed by Ibn Khaldun. The model consists of six variables: human resource variable (proxy HDI), the variable role of government (proxy government spending in education and health), variable of development (proxy foreign direct investment), state assets variable (proxy for GDP/capita), justice variable (gini index proxy) and sharia variable (a proxy perception index of corruption). This study uses panel data regression analysis with nine object OIC member countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey and Benin) over the years from 2010 to 2016. The results showed that the variables of development model Ibn Khaldun significant effect on poverty in OIC countries is development variable, the variable role of government (proxy for government spending in health sector), justice variable, wealth nation variable and control variables (unemployment). While the role of government variable (proxy government spending in the education sector), HR variables and sharia variables not significant. From these studies, it can be concluded that not all the variables of development model Ibn Khaldun significant effect on poverty in OIC countries.

The purpose of this research is to develop an Islamic wealth management investment appraisal of the performance of tankers as a primary segment within international shipping and an important component of the oil and energy markets. Shipping is a strong growth industry with about 84% of global trade carried by the international shipping industry. The problem is that many Islamic wealth management institutions and investors have minimal exposure to investment in international shipping. However, shipping is a highly capital intensive industry and currently 75% of ship lending has been conducted by European banks and financed on a conventional basis. Post financial crisis, ship owners, ship lenders and shipyards have all been exposed to the impact of over-levered balance sheets and debt finance. Our objectives are to evaluate the risks and returns of shipping under the framework of Islamic equity finance, and to analyze the performance of investing in tankers over the long term, in order to appeal to private and institutional clients. Accordingly, our methodology adopts an investment analysis of a full population of historical data over a period of 20 years, to evaluate performance involving a maritime return on investment (MROI), IRR, net yield and standard deviation measures of risk and return. Our findings reveal that whilst earnings are volatile in comparison to capital market financial products, unlevered, tax-free returns on tanker investments out-perform financial and other real assets. The significance is that Islamic equity finance, rather than debt at the time-value-of-money, should enhance investment in the tanker sector.Keywords: Islamic finance, Islamic investment, International shippingJEL Classifications: G11, G23, G24, G31, G32, R40

In this study, an alternative fuel for compression ignition (CI) engines called tri-fuel emulsion was prepared using an ultrasonic emulsifier. The objective of the study is to investigate the effect of emulsifying settings and formulation ratio on the physicochemical properties of tri-fuel emulsions. Design of experiment (DOE) with the two-level factorial design was employed to analyze the effect of emulsifying settings such as time, amplitude, and cycle along with the variation ratio of tri-fuel emulsion components as control factors. Numbers of responses identified were important parameters that may contribute to microexplosion phenomenon in CI engine. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out for each response, and the results indicated that density, dynamic viscosity, surface tension, and average droplet size were influenced by specific preparation control factors. Furthermore, interaction among the control factors was found to affect the responses as well. Interaction means the effect of two factors together is different than what would be expected from each factor separately. Besides, the stability of the tri-fuel emulsion was observed for three months. Furthermore, a qualitative approach with a multiobjective lens digital microscope revealed the geometry of freshly made dispersed tri-fuel emulsion droplets. Microscopic examination on tri-fuel emulsion droplets has shown that the dispersed ethanol capsulated within diesel with the help of biodiesel is similar to a water in diesel emulsion and is dissimilar to commercial diesel mixed with fatty acid methyl esters found in the market.

The use of insects as a biofuel feedstock has received limited research, and little is known about the fuel characteristics of insect biofuel. Fuel properties characterization can guide researchers focused on renewable fuel for the internal combustion engine. Therefore, this investigation focused on the physical-chemical properties modification of Hermetia illucens larvae oil (HILO) and diesel fuel blends, which could highly become an alternative renewable fuel. Five test fuel blends of HILO and diesel fuel were prepared at 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% on a volume basis. Fuel properties such as chemical composition, density, viscosity, heating value, cetane number, and flash point of the test fuel blends were analyzed and compared to the diesel fuel. The main physical-chemical properties of HILO-diesel fuel blends were determined following the ASTM standards. Based on the results, the density, viscosity, cetane number, and flash point of the diesel fuel-HILO fuel blends were increased by 11.28%, 740.30%, 16.92%, and 86.67%, respectively, with the addition of HILO, except for the heating value reduced by 13.66%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A single cylinder diesel engine study of water in diesel emulsions was conducted to investigate the stability effect of emulsion fuel on three different fuel blends and the water emulsification effect on the engine performance. Emulsified fuels contained 2% of surfactant including Span 80 Tween 80 and tested 10 HLB number. The blends also varied of 5%, 10% and 15% of water in diesel ratios namely as BSW5, BSW10 and BSW15. The fuel blends performance was tested using a single cylinder, direct injection diesel engine, operating at 1860 rpm. The results on stability reveal that high shear homogenizer yields more stability on emulsion fuel than mechanical stirrer and ultrasonic water bath. The engine performance results show that the ignition delay and peak pressure increase with the increment of water percentage up to 15%. However, the results indicate the increment of water percentage is also shows a significant decrease in engine power.

Alternative fuels such as biodiesel, bio-alcohol and other biomass sources have been extensively research to find its potential as an alternative sources to fossil fuels. This experiment compared the performance of diesel (D), biodiesel (BD) and diesel-organic germanium blend (BG5) at five different speeds ranging from 1200-2400 rpm. BG5 shows significant combustion performance compared to BD. No significant changes of power observed between BG5 and BD at a low speed (1200 rpm). On the contrary, at higher speeds (1800 rpm and 2400 rpm), BG5 blend fuel shows increased engine power of 12.2 % and 9.2 %, respectively. Similarly, torque shows similar findings as engine power, whereby the improvement could be seen at higher speeds (1800 rpm and 2400 rpm) when torque increased by 7.3 % and 2.3 %, respectively. In addition, the emission results indicated that for all speeds, CO2, and NO had reduced at an average of 2.1 % and 177 %, respectively. Meanwhile, CO emission had slightly increased compared to BD at low speeds by 0.04 %. However, the amount of CO released had decreased at an average of 0.03 % as the engine speed increased. Finally, measurement of O2 shows an increment at 16.4 % at all speed range.

Biodiesel is among the solutions to substitute petroleum‐based fuel. However, the autoxidation ability of biodiesel, which results in degradation of the existing oxygen, has delayed its use on a global level. A potential solution to this problem is the addition of antioxidant additives. Palm oil methyl ester (POME) is the most popular biodiesel in Malaysia. Diesel 80% + POME 20% (B20) was added with two types of monophenolic antioxidant additives, which were butylated hydroxytoluene and butylated hydroxyanisole, at 1000 ppm and 1500 ppm concentrations, respectively, to examine their effects on combustion characteristics, engine performances and exhaust emissions. Hielscher UP400S ultrasonic emulsifier was used to prepare the fuel blends at 20% of the maximum stirring speed. Yanmar TF120M single‐cylinder diesel engine was employed at a constant speed of 1800 rpm with various engine loads. The results showed that B20 and antioxidant‐treated B20 produced a mean increase in brake specific fuel consumption of 8.33%–23.27% and reduced brake thermal efficiency by a mean that was 8.40%–24.95% greater than that of diesel fuel. Both antioxidants reduced nitrogen oxide emission by a mean of 12.92%–30.54%, compared to B20. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiesel fuel is considered as one of the most competence sustainable replacement for fossil fuel due to their superior combustion characteristics and possesses higher oxygen content. Thus, many researchers recently investigated to improve biodiesel capability by adding additives whether by blending with dual-fuel or tri-fuel. However, the combustion characteristics for biodiesel and biodiesel-additives blends are not thoroughly examined and need additional research works to study how the biodiesel behaviour and characterise. Thus, this research main objective is to study a single-cylinder diesel engine cyclic cylinder pressure variations running with biodiesel with antioxidant (B2HA1.0 and B2HT1.0) blends with palm oil methyl ester (POME). While The baseline fuels used for this study were biodiesel (B20) and pure diesel (B0). The entire test fuels were examined at a constant engine speed 1800 rpm with 100% engine load condition. The engine combustion characteristics were studied by utilising the indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP) and cyclic variations of combustion pressure at 200 consecutive cycles. Combustion characteristics of engine diesel have been studied by using statistical analysis. The results revealed that the engine running with biodiesel-antioxidants have higher cyclic variations of combustion from B20 and B0, which B2HA1.0 possessed the highest cyclic variations. It can be summarised from the study that biodiesel-antioxidants fuels produce a substantial influence on the engine cyclical variation, which linked to the characteristics of the engine combustion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]