There are no diaries or log-books of sea captains from the twelfth century, but there are vivid accounts of crossing the Mediterranean written by Jewish and Muslim pilgrims journeying from Spain to the East. Benjamin of Tudela was a rabbi from a town in Navarre, and he set out on his travels around 1160.1 The aim of his diary was to describe the lands of the Mediterranean, large areas of Europe, and Asia as far as China, in Hebrew for a Jewish audience, and he carefully noted the number of Jews in each town he visited. His book reports genuine travels across the Mediterranean, through Constantinople and down the coast of Syria, though his descriptions of more remote areas beyond the Mediterranean are clearly based on report and rumour, which became more fantastic the further his imagination ventured. He evidently did go to Jerusalem, though, and expressed his wonderment at the supposed tomb of King David on Mount Zion. As Christian passions about the Holy Land became more intense, the attention of Jewish pilgrims was also directed there, under the influence of the crusaders whom they scorned.2 Benjamin’s route took him down from Navarre through the kingdom of Aragon and along the river Ebro to Tarragona, where the massive ancient fortifications built by ‘giants and Greeks’ impressed him.3 From there he moved to Barcelona, ‘a small city and beautiful’, full of wise rabbis and of merchants from every land, including Greece, Pisa, Genoa, Sicily, Alexandria, the Holy Land and Africa. Benjamin provides precious and precocious evidence that Barcelona was beginning to develop contacts across the Mediterranean.4 Another place that attracted merchants from all over the world, even, he says, from England, was Montpellier; ‘people of all nations are found there doing business through the medium of the Genoese and Pisans’.5
It took four days to reach Genoa by sea from Marseilles.6 Genoa, he wrote, ‘is surrounded by a wall, and the inhabitants are not governed by any king, but by judges whom they appoint at their pleasure’. He also insisted that ‘they have command of the sea’. He was thinking here of piracy no less than trade, for he mentioned their raids on Muslim and Christian lands (including Byzantium), and was impressed by the booty they brought back. Two days’ journey away lay Pisa, but the Genoese were constantly at war with the Pisans, who, he claimed, had ‘ten thousand’ towers in their city from which they fought one another.7 He travelled to Bari, but found it desolate, following its destruction by King William I in 1156 (of which more later).8 He crossed to Corfu, which he said was also under Sicilian rule at this time, and then, full of energy, he tackled overland routes by way of Thebes to Constantinople, returning to the Mediterranean only when he reached Gallipoli. From there he hopped across the islands of the Aegean, and then over to Cyprus, where he was shocked by the behaviour of some ‘heretical Jews called Epikursin [Epicureans], whom the Israelites have excommunicated in all places’, for their Sabbath day excluded Friday night but included Saturday night.9 Their presence is a reminder that within the eastern Mediterranean a myriad of small sects still flourished – as Benjamin travelled down the coast of Lebanon he encountered a more dangerous sect, the Ismaili Assassins, but he was able to avoid them and to reach Gibellet, one of the Genoese bases in the Levant, governed, as he rightly observed, by a member of the noble Embriaco family. He was fascinated by the discovery there of an ancient temple, with a statue seated on a throne and two female statuettes at each side. This was evidence of ancient pagan practices with which the ancient Israelites had contended, but there were modern pagans too, he believed: setting off again, he had to pass the territory of the Druze warriors, whom he described as lawless pagans, supposedly practising incest and swapping wives among themselves.10
Benjamin reached Egypt at some stage in his travels, and was very impressed by the harbour facilities at Alexandria: there was the lighthouse, which could be seen from 100 miles away, and there were the merchants from all over the world: ‘from all the Christian kingdoms’, including Venice, Tuscany, Amalfi, Sicily, from Greece, Germany, France and England, from Spain and Provence, and from many Muslim lands, such as al-Andalus and the Maghrib.11 ‘Merchants of India bring thither all kinds of spices, and the merchants of Edom [Christendom] buy from them.’ Moreover, ‘each nation has an inn of its own’.12 Benjamin travelled back by way of Sicily, and his description of the glories of the Sicilian court will be mentioned in the next chapter.
Benjamin might be described nowadays as an antiquarian. He was fascinated by ancient buildings in Rome, Constantinople and Jerusalem. His compulsion to list every Jewish community he encountered was matched by an eye for detail and a fascination with the many peoples he encountered. When writing about the Holy Land he not surprisingly turned himself into a guide to the Jewish shrines and graves of the rabbis in Jerusalem, Hebron and Tiberias, and left the Christian holy places out of the account. His private purpose in travelling was most likely to visit the Holy Land as a pilgrim, and yet his other interests kept surfacing. Much the same is true of Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Jubayr, who wrote about twenty-five years later.13 He was born in 1145 in Valencia, but became the secretary to the governor of Granada, who was the son of the Almohad caliph, ‘Abd al-Mu’min. Notwithstanding his excellent Almohad credentials, the governor liked a tipple, and insisted that ibn Jubayr should try some wine. Ibn Jubayr was mortally afraid of disobeying his master, and for the first time in his life drank alcohol. But once the governor realized how upset his secretary had become, he filled the cup seven times with gold coins.
Ibn Jubayr decided that the best use for this money was to pay for his journey to Mecca, and he set out in February 1183; he was away from Spain for over two years.14 In Ceuta he found a Genoese ship ready to sail to Alexandria. The first leg took him back along the coast of al-Andalus, as far as Denia, from where the boat struck out to Ibiza, Majorca and Minorca, reaching Sardinia a fortnight after leaving Morocco: ‘it had been a crossing remarkable for its speed’.15 It was also a voyage across political boundaries: from Almohad Morocco to the Balearics, ruled by the inveterate enemies of the Almohads, the Sunni Almoravids, and up to Sardinia, where Pisan sea power reigned supreme. Yet it was not man but nature that posed a threat. A great storm arose off Sardinia, but eventually ibn Jubayr’s ship reached Oristano, in western Sardinia, where some passengers disembarked to take on supplies; one, a Muslim, was distressed to see eighty Muslim men and women who had been put up for sale as slaves in the marketplace.16 Ibn Jubayr’s ship took advantage of a favourable wind to slip out of harbour. This was a mistake. Another tempest arose, so fierce that the ship could not use its mainsails, and one of these was then ripped by the strong wind, along with one of the spars to which the sails were fixed. ‘Christian sea-captains who were present, and Muslims who had gone through journeys and storms at sea, all agreed that they had never in their lives seen such a tempest. The description of it diminishes the reality.’17 Yet even in this foul weather they reached their target, Sicily, for the ship was following what is often called ‘the route of the islands’, a westward route that took best advantage of the currents and winds.18 Had they lasted, the north-westerly winds of the winter would have favoured their journey, but the weather in early spring was unpredictable as the prevailing winds changed direction.19 They skirted Sicily, observing Etna, and headed for Crete, where they arrived at night about four weeks after setting out from Ceuta. From there they jumped across the Libyan Sea to North Africa, and on 29 March the lighthouse of Alexandria came into distant view. The whole journey took thirty days, which was not excessive compared to journeys recorded in the Genizah letters.20
There were tribulations on land as well as on the high sea. When they arrived in Alexandria customs officials boarded, and personal details of each passenger were written down, as well as a list of all the cargo. The Muslims were made to pay the charitable tax known as the zakat, even if all they possessed was the provisions they needed for the hajj. Another eminent passenger, Ahmad ibn Hassan, who was a physician from Granada, was led under guard to the government offices, to be interviewed about what was happening in the West, and to answer questions about the goods being carried on board. This questioning of important passengers was standard practice in the Mediterranean ports – ibn Jubayr submitted to even closer questioning when he arrived in Palermo on his way back to Spain.21 Then the passengers were subjected to humiliating searches by excessively thorough customs officers:
The Customs House was packed to choking. All their goods, great and small, were searched and confusedly thrown together, while hands were thrust into their waistbands in search of what might be within. The owners were then put to oath whether they had anything else that had not been discovered. During all this, because of the confusion of hands and the excessive throng, many possessions disappeared.22
If only, ibn Jubayr complained to himself, this had been brought to the attention of the just and merciful sultan Saladin: he would surely put a stop to such behaviour.
Yet ibn Jubayr greatly admired Alexandria. Today, very little remains above ground of either the ancient or the medieval city. Even in ibn Jubayr’s time, underground Alexandria was more impressive than Alexandria above ground: ‘the buildings below the ground are like those above it and are even finer and stronger’, with wells and water-courses that ran below the houses and alleys of the city. In the streets, he observed great columns ‘that climb up and choke the skies, and whose purpose and the reason for whose erection none can tell’; he was told that they were used by philosophers of past times, but was convinced that they were part of an astronomical observatory. Memories of the Library of Alexandria had turned into fables. He was enormously impressed by the lighthouse; there was a mosque on its top level, where he went to pray. He heard that there were up to 12,000 mosques – in other words, a very great many – whose imams received their salary from the state. As befitted a great city of the Islamic world, it was full of madrasas, hospices and bath-houses; the government supervised a scheme under which the sick were visited at home and were then reported to physicians, who were answerable for their care. Two thousand loaves of bread were distributed each day to travellers. When public funds were inadequate for this, Saladin’s own funds covered the cost.23 Taxes were very low, though the Jews and Christians had to pay the standard dhimmi taxes. Ibn Jubayr was strangely fulsome in praise of the Ayyubid sultan, whose Sunni Islam was some way removed from Almohad beliefs, and whose relations with the Almohads were not easy.
From Alexandria ibn Jubayr made his way down the Nile to the Red Sea and Mecca, and he returned to the Mediterranean only in September 1184, coming down to the coast from Damascus and over the Golan Heights to Acre in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. He passed through lands inhabited by Muslims but owned by Franks: Tibnin, he says, ‘belongs to the sow known as queen who is the mother of the pig who is lord of Acre’, that is, to the Queen Mother of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem.24 Firmly resolved to resist temptation, ibn Jubayr and his fellow-pilgrims entered Acre on 18 September, and he expressed the fervent hope that Allah would destroy the city. Here too visitors were sent to the Customs House, whose great courtyard offered space in which to accommodate newly arrived caravans; there were stone benches at which Christian clerks sat, and they spoke and wrote in Arabic, dipping their pens in inkstands made of ebony and gold. They worked for a tax-farmer who paid the king a vast sum of money for the concession of running the Customs House. This was standard practice in the medieval Mediterranean, and the building ibn Jubayr visited was almost certainly the Khan al-‘Umdan, a substantial arcaded structure arranged around a court that still stands close to the harbour, though largely rebuilt in the Turkish period.25 There was space on the upper floors in which to store goods once they had been checked, but the customs officers were thorough, and even inspected the luggage of those who said they were not carrying any merchandise; by contrast with Alexandria, ‘all this was done with civility and respect, and without harshness and unfairness’.26
Even in 1184 Acre was a great port, and it would become greater still following a shower of new privileges for Italian and other European merchants from 1190 onwards. These privileges were offered as a reward for sending naval help during the great emergency that followed the capture of Jerusalem and of most of the crusader kingdom by Saladin in 1187. The Pisans were able to move their business from Jaffa, which was too far to the south to bring them the full benefits of the Levant trade, northwards to Acre, with its easy links to Damascus and the interior. It was not that Acre possessed a particularly good harbour. Ships anchored at the entrance to the harbour, which (as in most Mediterranean ports) could be closed off by a chain, and goods had to be ferried across from the shore: it ‘cannot take the large ships, which must anchor outside, small ships only being able to enter’. When the weather was bad ships would need to be beached. Good harbours were not a prerequisite when medieval merchants chose their trading station – witness also Barcelona, Pisa and Messina. Yet ibn Jubayr took the view that ‘in its greatness it resembles Constantinople’, referring not to the size of Acre but to the way in which Muslim and Christian merchants converged there, arriving by ship and caravan, so that ‘its roads and streets are choked by the press of men, and it is hard to put foot to ground’. As ever, ibn Jubayr was quick to mask his admiration for what he saw with imprecations: ‘unbelief and unpiousness there burn fiercely, and pigs and crosses abound’, the pigs being impure Christians as well as unclean animals. ‘It stinks and is filthy, being full of refuse and excrement.’27 Naturally, he deplored the conversion of mosques into churches by the crusaders, but he did note that within the former Friday Mosque there was a corner Muslims were permitted to use. For the relationship between the Frankish settlers and the local population was less tense than either the Almohad ibn Jubayr or newly arrived crusaders may have wished. These new crusaders were perplexed by the easy attitudes they found. The elderly sheikh of Shayzar in northern Syria, Usamah ibn Munqidh (1095–1188), left a memoir of his times that reveals friendly relationships across the Christian–Muslim divide. He came to know well a Frankish knight of whom he wrote, ‘he was of my intimate fellowship and kept such constant company with me that he began to call me “my brother” ’.28 The Franks of the kingdom of Jerusalem borrowed little from Muslim culture, by comparison with the extensive cultural contacts taking place at this time in Spain and Sicily, and yet a practical convivencia was achieved. Ibn Jubayr was very uneasy at the presence of Muslims in this Christian kingdom. ‘There can,’ he wrote, ‘be no excuse in the eyes of God for a Muslim to stay in any infidel country save when passing through it, while the way lies clear in Muslim lands.’29
Still, Christian shipping was regarded as safest and most reliable, and for his return to the west ibn Jubayr chose a ship under the command of a Genoese sailor ‘who was perspicacious in his art and skilled in the duties of a sea-captain’. The aim was to catch the east wind that blew for about a fortnight in October, because for the rest of the year, apart from mid-April to late May, the prevailing winds came from the west. On 6 October 1184 ibn Jubayr and other Muslims embarked alongside 2,000 Christian pilgrims who had arrived from Jerusalem, though his estimate of numbers sounds impossibly high for one ship. Christians and Muslims shared the space on board, but they kept out of one another’s way: ‘the Muslims secured places apart from the Franks’, and ibn Jubayr expressed the hope that God would soon relieve the Muslims of their company. He and the other Muslims stowed their goods, and, while the ship awaited a favourable wind, they went every night on land, to sleep in greater comfort. The decision to do this almost resulted in disaster. On 18 October the weather did not seem fair enough for the vessel to depart, and ibn Jubayr was still in his bed when the ship set sail. Desperate to catch up with it, he and his friends hired a large boat with four oars and set off in pursuit of the ship, which, after all, contained their belongings, and on which they had paid for their passage. It was a dangerous journey through choppy waters, but by the evening they had caught up with the Genoese ship. They had five days of suitable winds, making good progress until a west wind began to blow; the captain tacked back and forth to avoid its worst effects, but the full force of the wind fell on the ship on 27 October, and a spar with sails attached broke off and collapsed into the sea, though the sailors managed to make a new one.30 When the wind dropped, the sea was like ‘a palace made smooth with glass’, words ibn Jubayr quoted from the Koran.31 At nightfall on 1 November the Christians celebrated the Feast of All Saints; all of them, old and young, male and female, carried a lighted candle, and listened to prayers and sermons: ‘the whole ship, from top to bottom, was luminous with kindled lamps.’32 Once again, ibn Jubayr was clearly impressed, but as usual did not want to admit this.
Ibn Jubayr’s diary provides an unrivalled account of shipboard life at this period. He describes how Muslims and Christians who died at sea were buried in the time-honoured fashion of being dropped overboard. Under Genoese maritime law the captain acquired the goods of those who had died at sea: ‘there is no way for the true heir of the dead to gain his inheritance, and at this we were much astonished’.33 The ship made no stops for revictualling, and many of the pilgrims of both faiths found themselves short of supplies after several days. Yet, he insists, there was plenty of fresh food available to buy on board, and ‘in this ship they were as if in a city filled with all commodities’. There was bread, water, fruit (including watermelons, figs, quinces and pomegranates), nuts, chickpeas, beans, cheese, fish, and much else besides; well-practised Genoese sailors evidently knew that they had a captive market for any extra supplies they could load. Blown towards an island under Byzantine control, the passengers obtained meat and bread from the inhabitants. More storms accompanied the ship on its way past Crete, and the passengers began to fear that they would have to winter on one of the Greek islands or somewhere on the African coast, providing they even survived; in fact they were simply blown back towards Crete. Ibn Jubayr was moved to cite some verses from an Arab poet beginning: ‘the sea is bitter of taste, intractable’.34 Having noted that there was a period in the autumn when safe passage was possible from east to west, ibn Jubayr now opined that:
all modes of travel have their proper season, and travel by sea should be at the propitious time and the recognised period. There should not be a reckless venturing forth in the months of winter as we did. First and last the matter is in the hands of God.35
His pessimism was unwarranted. Before long, five more ships coming from Alexandria hove into view; this little flotilla entered the harbour of one of the Ionian isles and took on meat, oil and overbaked black bread made of wheat and barley, yet ‘people rushed for it, despite its dearness – and indeed there was nothing cheap for sale – and thanked God for what he had granted’.36
When the boats left harbour, November was drawing to a close; travelling became still more difficult as winter set in. Off southern Italy ‘the swollen waves beat incessantly upon us, their shocks making the heart leap’. But they made landfall in Calabria, where many of the Christians decided that they had had enough, for in addition to the storms they were all now smitten by hunger. Ibn Jubayr and his friends were living off little more than a pound of moistened ship’s biscuit each day. Those who landed sold any food they still possessed to those who remained on board, and the Muslims were prepared to pay a single silver dirham for a mere biscuit.37 Whatever relief they felt at arriving close to Sicily soon dissipated. The Straits of Messina were like boiling water, as the sea was forced between the mainland and Sicily. Strong winds propelled the ship towards the shore close to Messina, and one of the sails was stuck, so that it could not be lowered; the ship careered forward towards shallow water with the wind behind it, and its keel struck the seabed and became stuck. A rudder broke; the anchors were useless; all those on board, Muslim and Christian, submitted themselves to the will of God. Some passengers of high status were taken off on a longboat, but this was smashed as it tried to return from the shore. Small boats came out to aid the stranded passengers, though not with the best motives: their owners demanded a high price for the privilege of being rescued. News of the shipwreck reached the king of Sicily, who had recently arrived in Messina to supervise the building of his war fleet, and he came to watch. Displeased at the behaviour of the boatmen, he ordered that 100 tarí (small gold coins) should be dispensed to them so that they would bring to shore a number of Muslims who were too poor to pay what they were demanding. Ibn Jubayr marvelled at God’s prescience in bringing the king to Messina, ‘which proved a saving mercy to us’.38 King William had truly saved those who were still on board, because the day after the ship was grounded it broke up.
Despite his terrifying experience, ibn Jubayr was struck by how accessible the port of Messina was. Ships could approach right up to the shore, and there was no need for lighters to transport passengers and goods to shore – all that was needed was a plank. The ships were ‘ranged along the quay like horses lined at their pickets or in their stables’.39 In order to reach Andalucía, however, he had to travel across the island to Trapani, where he looked for a Genoese ship bound for Spain. Normally this would have been no problem, but the king had imposed an embargo on all sailings: ‘it seems that he is preparing a fleet, and no ships may sail until his fleet has left. May God frustrate his designs, and may he not achieve his ends!’ He began to realize that the destination of this fleet was the Byzantine Empire, for everyone in Sicily was talking about the young man whom King William kept at his court and whom he intended to set on the Byzantine throne, in a reprise of Robert Guiscard’s plans a century earlier.40 The embargo was a nuisance, but it was always possible to influence the king’s officials, using time-honoured ways. Ibn Jubayr managed to find a place on one of three vessels that were travelling together to the west, and the Genoese owners bribed the royal officer, who turned a blind eye to their departure. The ships departed on 14 March 1185. Passing through the Egadian isles to the west of Sicily, they stopped in the little port of Favignana, where they crossed the path of the ship of Marco the Genoese bringing North African pilgrims from Alexandria, people ibn Jubayr had met months ago in Mecca itself. Old friends were reunited and they all feasted together. Four ships now set out for Spain, but the wind seemed to be playing games with them, as they were blown to Sardinia, then southwards, and eventually made headway back past Sardinia to Ibiza, Denia and Cartagena, where ibn Jubayr set foot on Spanish soil once again, finally reaching his home in Granada on 25 April 1185. He concluded his narrative with the weary words of an Arab poet, ‘she threw away her staff and there she stayed, as does the traveller at his journey’s end’.41
Ibn Jubayr was deeply unfortunate with the weather, and the shipwreck off Messina was not a daily calamity. He no doubt exaggerated the dangers he had faced and the numbers and travails of those on board. Yet in many respects his voyage was probably quite typical of the times, notably the use of Genoese ships by both Muslim and Christian pilgrims. He writes about Genoese captains who ‘ruled’ their ships, but these large ships would not usually be owned by their captain. Genoese investors bought shares, often as little as one sixty-fourth part, so that ownership of trading vessels was spread widely. An active investor would spread the risk and buy shares in several vessels. The word used for these shares was loca, ‘places’, and they could be traded and inherited rather like modern equities.42 There was no fixed price, since each ship was different, as was the number of shares into which it was divided; shares could often be bought for around £30 of Genoese money, which was the sort of sum a middle-class Genoese might receive in an inheritance and decide to invest for profit. Shareholders included a small number of women; very many shareholders were involved in the government of Genoa, including members of the greatest families of that city such as the della Volta and the Embriachi. Holding these shares would generate revenue from the fees paid by passengers and from the rental of storage space by merchants. The total value of the shares might be as high as £2,480, an example from 1192, or as low as £90, which no doubt represented a ship nearing the end of its life or in need of extensive repair.43
There were two main categories of vessel. Light galleys were used in warfare and for sending ambassadors to foreign courts, but, as in antiquity, they were ill-adapted to choppy waters and had generally to sail in sight of land, using their oars as ancillary power when winds were light or when they manoeuvred into port. The galleys had a mast with a single lateen sail, and a beak or spur rather than a ram at the prow. They were manned by between twenty and eighty oarsmen, who were free citizens. Rather than sharing one massive oar, as was common from the sixteenth century onwards, the oarsmen sat two to a bench, each manipulating an oar of a different length, a system that became known in Venice as rowing alla sensile.44 Their virtue was their speed, for they easily overtook the round ships. Many galleys were privately owned, but were requisitioned by the Commune in time of war, presumably with ample compensation.45 The Genoese documents mention tubby sailing ships, simply known by the Latin word for ship, navis, far more often than they mention galleys, and they do not say much about smaller boats called by names such as barca, because these boats went on short journeys along the coast or across to Corsica and Sardinia on which few goods were carried and in which little money was invested.46 Large naves could reach 24 metres in length and 7.5 metres in width. By the early thirteenth century they might carry two or even three masts, lateen rigged, though ibn Jubayr makes it plain that they would adjust to square rigging when the winds called for this. After 1200 these ships began to be built higher, with two or even three decks, but the lower decks were very cramped, and the aim was to increase storage space rather than to improve conditions for passengers.47 Sternpost rudders were not yet in use in the Mediterranean, where the traditional steering oar favoured by Greeks and Etruscans still held sway. How long the ships lasted is doubtful. Sturdy Roman galleys had enjoyed a long life as grain transports, but medieval vessels were more lightly constructed, and plenty of attention was needed to their careening and repair.
Most ships did arrive safely at their destination, so they were not bad investments, if spread around several ventures. This meant that towns that were only sending small numbers of ships across the sea, such as Amalfi and Savona (not far from Genoa) stood at a disadvantage: their merchants could not spread their investments widely. So some of them, like Solomon of Salerno, went to Genoa, Pisa or Venice and realized that they would do better business there. This had a multiplier effect. The trade of these three cities boomed and potential rivals proved unable to compete. The triumph of the Genoese and Pisans in their part of the Mediterranean was capped by their insistence in the late twelfth century that ships from Provençal ports that sailed to the Levant should be allowed to carry only pilgrims and other passengers, not cargoes.48
Everything and everyone on board was tightly packed together, and travellers slept under the stars, using their possessions as pillow and mattress. By the thirteenth century goods might be kept below deck and cabins were built up at each end of the ship, so there was space for those willing to pay for a more comfortable journey in medieval club class.49 In the dire conditions of sea travel, what carried many of the sea voyagers across the Mediterranean was faith: the faith of the pilgrims, for whom adversity at sea was a test of their devotion that would earn them God’s approval; and the faith of the merchants in their ability to take calculated risks and to emerge with profit from expeditions to the sometimes dangerous lands of the southern and eastern Mediterranean. The merchants too were aware that any profit they made was made thanks to a merciful God – it was proficuum quod Deus dederit, ‘the profit that God will have given’.