IN SEARCH OF EGYPTIAN GOLD
Traders in the Mediterranean
THE HISTORY OF DIPLOMATIC, military, and cultural relations in the Mediterranean has always been tied to that of commerce. The Arab world was located on the major axes of world trade, linked to India, China, Byzantium, Africa, and Europe. In the tenth century, Latin Europe was only a minor partner in these exchanges, but over the following centuries, commercial relations developed and contributed to an economic boom for both civilizations, turning the Mediterranean region into a single economic unit.
CITY AND COUNTRY IN EUROPE AND THE MUSLIM WORLD
At the time of Muhammad’s death in 632, Constantinople was the only large city in Europe.1 As the cultural, political, and economic center of an empire, albeit one weakened by its recent wars with Persia and the invasions of the Slavs and Avars, it remained the great metropolis, the driving force behind commerce with the rest of the empire: namely, the cities around the Aegean Sea (Thessalonica, Ephesus, Smyrna, Miletus), those in the West (Rome, Ravenna, Carthage), and the two other major cities in the empire, Alexandria and Antioch. In the seventh century, both of these cities were taken by Muslim armies, which also twice besieged Constantinople without success (in 674–678, and then in 717–718). The largest city in Europe remained Byzantine until its conquest by the Venetians and the Crusaders during the Fourth Crusade in 1204.
In the seventh century, the Muslims seized the most populous and wealthy cities of
the Byzantine and Persian empires, with the exception of Constantinople. From Isfahan
to Lisbon, the autochthonous elites (now dhimmis) continued to govern the cities and the rural regions of what was now a Muslim empire.
In the cities, where peoples and traditions mingled, a Muslim culture and civilization
developed. The Umayyad caliphs (680–750) were the first to make urban culture and
urban monuments central to Islam and to caliphal authority. This was apparent in Palestinian
and Syrian cities, especially Jerusalem, where the Dome of the Rock was built in 692, and al-Aqsa Mosque some twenty years later, and
Damascus, which was turned into a major capital befitting caliphal ambitions, with
a great mosque and a palatine complex. The Damascene palace was sacked during the
Abbasid coup d’état of 750, and the walls of the city dismantled; Baghdad, the capital
of the new dynasty, took inspiration both from Damascus and, to a lesser degree, from
Ctesiphon, the former Persian capital nearby. A dense urban network emerged, linking
Roman and Persian cities to the new cities arising from Arab military encampments
and to other new entities.2 The model for a medieval Muslim city took shape: the great mosque with its minarets
dominating the city; the palace of the prince (caliph, emir, or sultan), often next
to the mosque; baths, souks, and small neighborhood mosques. Surrounding it all were
the ramparts, whose height and solidity served first and foremost as military defense,
but which also reflected the power and wealth of the city and its prince. “The most
beautiful jewels of the Muslim Middle Ages were its cities,” declares André Miquel.3 At a time when Europe was composed primarily of rural societies, Islam became the
urban civilization par excellence. The sites of power in Latin Europe were usually
castles; in Islam, they were cities. The places for education and writing in Europe
(before the twelfth century) were for the most part monasteries; in Islam, they were
the mosques and madrasas of the major cities. In the famous tripartite division of
European feudal society (those who pray, those who wage war, and those who work the
land) invented by monks in about the year 1000, the rural world dominated, whereas
Muslim jurists tended to view society as a city, distinguishing rich merchants or
financiers from workers and artisans. The peasants (fellahin), like the Bedouins, were considered outside civilized society, and the great Maghrebian
historian Ibn Khald
n even combined the two groups.4
It is therefore not surprising that, as of the ninth century, it was in Muslim Europe—that
is, in the emirate and then the caliphate of Cordova—that the only large European
cities outside Constantinople were located. Cordova was the first, the seat of the
Umayyad dynasty in the West, perpetuating the memory of the fallen Damascus and rivaling
Abbasid Baghdad.5 That capital, if we are to believe the tenth-century geographer Ibn Hawqal, “has
no equivalent in all the Maghreb, or in Mesopotamia, Syria, or Egypt, in terms of
the size of its population, its land area, the vast space occupied by its markets,
the cleanliness of the place, the architecture of its mosques, and the large number
of baths and caravansaries.”6 The economic vitality of many Andalusian cities besides Cordova was dependent on
artisanship and commerce. Almeria was the most important port, the “key” of al-Andalus,
according to the twelfth-century geographer Ahmad al-R
z
. The city produced silk and built ships, and several contracts in the Geniza of Cairo
mention Almeria. That same al-Rz describes other ports on the Mediterranean coast (especially Valencia, Denia, and
Málaga), and then depicts Seville as one of the best ports of al-Andalus, even though,
to reach it from the Mediterranean, one had to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, then
travel more than eighty kilometers up the Guadalquivir. Before the year 1000, commercial
thoroughfares linked al-Andalus, first, to the Maghreb, then to Egypt and Syria; exchanges
with Europe north of the Pyrenees were less common.7
In a Mediterranean dominated by the confrontations and rivalries between Byzantines,
Umayyads, and Abbasids, the rest of Europe played a minor role. In the eighth century,
the Italian and Provençal coastal regions were more the victims of plunder than economic
actors, which led the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne to argue, in his Mahomet et Charlemagne, that the Muslim domination of the Mediterranean sounded the death knell of the ancient
Roman world and obliged Europe to recenter itself to the north. It was not until the
ninth century, when the Christian states acquired the military advantage in the Mediterranean,
that, Pirenne claims, they were once more able to engage in major trade. For Maurice
Lombard, conversely, it was precisely contact with a more economically developed Muslim
world that allowed Europe to enrich itself and to take part in commerce, which it
finally came to dominate. Although the sources remain few, archaeology and numismatics
have made it possible to qualify such claims.8 Europe retained a role in the Mediterranean economy, as attested by the Arab, and
especially Andalusian, coins found in Gaul, England, and Scandinavia and dating to
the eighth to tenth centuries. It is true that these coins did not circulate solely
through commerce: they could also be gifts or booty. But they nevertheless suggest
the existence of trade and at times point to odd convergences: for example, a silver
coin found in Poland bore, on one side, an Arabic inscription with the name of the
Cordovan caliph Hishm II (976–1009) and, on the other, a Latin inscription in the name of the German emperor
Henry II (1002–1024).9 Although it is hard to see who could have struck such a coin or for what reason,
it clearly attests that relations, probably diplomatic as well as economic, existed
between the two sovereigns.
Historians insist on the important role that the exchange of gifts played in consolidating
political and social ties in Europe in the early Middle Ages, whether between husband
and wife, vassal and lord, or two allied kings. From that point of view, the lists
of objects exchanged during embassies, between Cordova, Constantinople, Aix-la-Chapelle,
and Baghdad are of interest here. For example, during negotiations for an anti-Umayyad
alliance between the Frankish king Pepin the Short and the Abbasid caliph al-Mansr in the 760s, the ambassadors on both sides were “laden with presents.”10 In 802, when a new Abbasid embassy arrived at the court of Charlemagne in Aix-la-Chapelle,
it brought linen and silk, perfumes and spices, a bronze clock, a brass candelabra,
and exotic animals, including an elephant named Ab al-‘Abbas, which impressed the court and whose death eight years later was noted
with sadness.11 It is not known exactly what gifts Charlemagne sent to Baghdad, but he likely would
have had trouble creating the same sensation in that city. By contrast, Abbasid caliphs
and Byzantine emperors tried to outdo one another in the extravagance of the gifts
they sent with embassies between the two capitals. Caliph Ma‘mn, having received sumptuous gifts from Emperor Theophilus (829–842), ordered: “Give
him a present a hundred times more precious than his own, so that he will know the
power of Islam and the blessings God has bestowed on us.”12
More prosaically, for the Mediterranean economy Europe represented an important source of raw materials: wood and iron especially, and also hides and furs. But its most important and most lucrative export between the eighth and tenth centuries was undoubtedly slaves.
FROM A “MUSLIM LAKE” TO AN ITALIAN MARE NOSTRUM IN THE ELEVENTH TO FOURTEENTH CENTURIES
After the year 1000, as the caliphate of Cordova was collapsing, Fatimid Egypt became the true hub of world commerce, for three reasons. First, located between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, Egypt stood at the crossroads of major world trade routes. Second, it was one of the most prosperous regions of the Muslim world: the Nile irrigated and fertilized it and also provided a crucial artery of communication. And third, the leaders of the country, the Fatimid caliphs (969–1171) and then the Ayyubid sultans (1171–1250), understood the importance of commerce for their country and generally did not impose excessive tax burdens or restrictions on personal travel. The historian Shlomo Goitein even calls the Mediterranean of the time a “free trade community.”13
The letters of Jewish merchants found in the Geniza attached to the synagogue of al-Fustt (Old Cairo) indicate the scope of activity of the Egyptian traders, present on the
Atlantic coasts of Morocco and Portugal and even in the ports of India. It was in
India that spices (pepper, cinnamon, ginger, and others) were purchased, to be taken
to a port on the Red Sea: either Qulzum (present-day Suez), from whence merchandise
was transported via caravan as far as Cairo; or ‘Aydhb, in Upper Egypt, from which traders crossed the desert to Aswan and then sailed
down the Nile. The annual caravan returning from the pilgrimage to Mecca frequently
offered an opportunity to bring back Eastern goods to the capital. From Cairo, ships
transported merchandise to one of the Mediterranean ports: Rosetta, Damietta, or especially,
Alexandria. From these ports, spices from the East as well as Egyptian products, the
most important of them being linen, were transported to Palestine, Cyprus, Byzantium,
the Maghreb, and Europe. This linen could be in the form of flax (exported to the
Maghreb or Sicily, where it was woven) or of finished cloth. In Egypt, as elsewhere
in the Mediterranean world, the textile industry was one of the most important economic
activities; according to Goitein, it involved, in one way or another, most of the
active population of Cairo. Linen cloth—garments, sheets, cushions, rugs, or other
products—represented a large share of the wealth in each house.14 But not everyone worked for the textile industry: the Geniza mentions 265 manual occupations, from peddler to dyer and from bead piercer to maker
of kohl sticks.15 A number of these artisans fabricated export articles, especially glass, or gold
and silver jewelry. Some also produced foodstuffs, sugar first and foremost, and many
an Egyptian trader invested in refineries. Ports such as Alexandria especially were
the site of all sorts of activities related to the production of provisions for sea
journeys: biscuit, salted fish, and so on.
The letters in the Geniza, most of them from Tunisian, Sicilian, and Egyptian merchants,
show that there was frequent communication and that these merchants crossed the sea
back and forth between Palestine, Cyprus, Constantinople, Spain, Sicily, and the Maghreb.
Merchants generally did not specialize in a particular product but bought and sold
a large diversity of goods. One of the many examples is Nahray b. Nissm, who traveled the Mediterranean for fifty years (1045–1096): he bought linen in
Egypt and resold it in Tunisia or Sicily; imported Spanish silk, Maghrebian felt,
and Byzantine cotton to Egypt; purchased olive oil, soap, and wax in Tunisia or Palestine;
exported Egyptian sugar; purchased dried fruit in Syria; and bought and sold shoes,
hides, jewelry, books, paper, and many products used in dye works, as well as pharmaceuticals,
cosmetics, and perfumes.16 The documents in the Geniza mention roughly two hundred products, about forty of
which were the object of regular and intense trade.17 A large part of society participated in commerce: more than one traveler, whether
pilgrim or ambassador, rabbi or ulema, took advantage of his travels to engage in
trade. Those who did not travel often played the role of financial backers or producers.
In al-Andalus and Sicily, it was possible to invest small or large amounts in the
silk trade, just as people now invest in the stock market.
By contrast, the Egyptian merchants who criss-crossed the Mediterranean between Cyprus
and Seville did not go to Italy or Provence. It was the Italians who went to Egypt,
especially Alexandria—certainly in small numbers in the tenth century, but increasingly
in the following centuries. Sometimes they were called simply R
m, “Romans,” a term normally used for the Byzantines, but more and more often they
were called “Franks” (Faranj or Ifranj)18 The arrival of Ifranj merchants in an Arab port was an important event for Muslim merchants. As soon as
someone caught sight of their ships or heard a rumor of their arrival, prices on certain
goods climbed, to the joy of sellers and the despair of potential buyers. In the eleventh
century, many merchants were delighted at the presence of the Europeans, who paid
high prices even for poor-quality goods. The Europeans sold wood, cheese, and wine
(its consumption was not forbidden during the Fatimid era).19 They also brought silver, a rare product in the Muslim East before the eleventh century,
when gold coins were primarily in use. And they brought slaves.
Until the tenth century, two European regions in particular were involved in these networks of international trade: the empire of Constantinople and the caliphate of Cordova. The rest of Europe profited somewhat from the boon of that commerce: there were Frankish merchants in the cities of al-Andalus, and Italian—especially Venetian—merchants in Constantinople. But gradually, beginning in the tenth century, Italian merchants headed to the East, especially Egypt, to gain direct access to Arab markets.20
Amalfi, from the ninth century until its conquest by the Normans in 1073, was the
chief Italian city trading with North Africa.21 This port city south of Naples established peaceful relations with the Aghlabids
of Ifrqiya (modern-day Tunisia) in the ninth century, which kept it from becoming a target
during the Ifrqiyan maritime raids on the Italian coast, and allowed it to retain its independence
from the Lombard princes of Benevento. Although the city nominally recognized the
suzerainty of Constantinople, with which it maintained fruitful diplomatic and economic
contacts, that did not prevent it from enjoying de facto independence, and especially,
from participating in trade with Muslim Ifrqiya and Sicily. It established good relations with the Fatimids soon after the creation
of the Shiite caliphate in 909. The Amalfitans participated in the Fatimid conquest
of Egypt in 969 by conveying food and wood for the conquerors. The new lords of Egypt
showed their gratitude by granting the Amalfitans significant fiscal privileges. Their
presence in Egypt is confirmed by the report of an incident in 996: rumors spread
in Cairo of a Byzantine invasion, and Amalfitan merchants suspected of being in league
with the Rm were massacred. If we are to believe the chronicles, about a hundred died, and losses
amounted to about 84 pounds of gold. That event shows the dangers that foreign merchants
faced in Egypt and elsewhere, but it does not seem to have discouraged the Amalfitans
for long: the caliph ratified their privileges and compensated them for their material
losses. These merchants exported wheat, wood, linen, wine, and fruit from Italy to
North Africa; in Ifrqiya, they obtained olive oil, wax, and gold; in Egypt, spices and gold. Amalfi and
its neighbors Salerno and Naples adopted the tari, a Fatimid gold coin, as the principal currency, a good indication of the importance
of these contacts in the region’s economy. Gold fueled Amalfitan trade with Byzantium
and Italy, thanks to which Italian princes and popes could obtain luxury articles.
Amalfitan commerce suffered when the Normans conquered the city in 1073 (the Norman
kings favored Palermo and Naples), then again when the Fatimids fell from power in
1171.
Venice, built on an archipelago at the headwaters of the Adriatic, also turned resolutely
toward the sea.22 Its primary resources were salt and fish. After the decline of Ravenna, it served
as the chief Byzantine port in northern Italy. Like Amalfi, Venice benefited from
its privileged relationship with Constantinople, while at the same time enjoying great
autonomy. A Byzantine protectorate, it became a naval ally of Constantinople against
the Slavs in the Adriatic, then against the Normans in southern Italy. The Venetians
therefore obtained a series of privileges in the imperial capital, especially in 992
and in 1082, that allowed them access to the Constantinople market with reduced customs
duties. At first, the Venetians bought primarily in Constantinople itself, but increasingly
they established themselves directly in the ports of the Levant. In addition to salt
and fish, they brought wood, iron, and slaves. According to a hagiographical legend,
Venetian merchants in Alexandria stole the body of Saint Mark the Evangelist in 828,
hiding it in a pork barrel to thwart the vigilance of Muslim customs officers. But
it was primarily from the twelfth century on that they settled long-term in the East:
in Tyre, after the Crusaders’ conquest of that city in 1124, and in Alexandria. Venice
also became a privileged partner of the Ayyubids in Egypt. The aim of the Fourth Crusade
of 1204, financed in large part by the Venetians, was to conquer Egypt; diverted from
that aim, it ultimately sacked Constantinople.23 Venice drew a considerable profit from that conquest. It played an important role
in the government of the new Latin empire in the East and established many colonies
or trading posts in the Aegean and Black seas. It did not overlook Egypt, however:
between 1205 and 1217, Venice and the Ayyubids concluded a series of six peace and
trade treaties. The first of these mentions a delegation of Venetian high dignitaries
coming to Egypt to negotiate the accord. To mark the new alliance, Sultan al-
dil freed Venetian captives and sent balm to the doge of Venice. The accords granted
the Venetians the right to engage in trade anywhere in Egypt, to transport wine, to
keep a funduq (a sort of inn and warehouse) in Alexandria; each side promised not to attack the
lands or ships of its partner.24
In contrast to the slow progress of Venice and Amalfi, Pisa and Genoa seem to have
come out of nowhere in the eleventh century, taking control of the western Mediterranean
basin within a generation. From the eighth to the tenth century, the Italian coast
had often been the victim of Ifrqiyan raids: Genoa, for example, was sacked by a Fatimid expedition in 935.25 In the eleventh century, the disappearance of the caliphate of Cordova, the only
naval power in the western Mediterranean, left a void that was immediately filled
by pirates and adventurers. Naval war and privateering became the norm, and some islands,
such as Corsica, Sardinia, the Balearics, and Djerba were lairs for Arab privateers.
Pisans and Genoese also engaged in piracy, launching raids against the islands and
the ports of the African coast: Sardinia in 1015–1016, Annaba in 1034, Palermo in
1064, Mahdia in 1087, Tortosa, Spain, in 1092, and the Balearics in 1113–1115.
The Pisans and the Genoese fought over Corsica and Sardinia and concluded peace and
trade accords with the Muslim cities they had previously sacked. According to Ab Shma, a thirteenth-century chronicler, these ferocious pirates and plunderers had become
merchants who now sold to Muslims the arms with which they had previously threatened
them. To avoid the risk of raids and to attract trade, the Muslim princes gave privileges
to both cities, often managing to play up the rivalry between the two. Hence many
peace treaties were signed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries between Italian
cities and Muslim princes, with each side promising not to engage in acts of plunder
or piracy against the other. At the same time, the merchants of the Italian city obtained access to the
market in the Muslim prince’s territory at preferential customs rates.26
Pisa and Genoa often contributed toward the conquests of the Christian princes in
Spain, Sicily, and in the Crusader states, offering their assistance in exchange for
booty and tax privileges in the conquered cities. In the twelfth century, the two
cities vied for control of the western Mediterranean, without any other real pretender:
the Almoravids did not have a significant fleet. The Almohads did manage to form a
navy, which participated in their conquests and for several decades controlled the
Strait of Gibraltar. The importance of that fleet became apparent when Saladin asked
Caliph al-Mansr for the navy’s aid in Acre, which had been besieged by Philip Augustus and Richard
the Lion-Hearted. But these same Almohads conceded major fiscal privileges to the
Pisans, recognizing the commercial hegemony of the Italian maritime cities.
The Catalan ports, with the backing of the kings of Aragon, became important economic and military actors in the Mediterranean in the thirteenth century. In the twelfth century, the counts of Barcelona and the kings of Aragon were still appealing to Pisan or Genoese fleets to aid them, for example, in undertaking maritime actions against the Muslim princes of the Balearics or al-Andalus, but by the next century, the Catalans had become a true sea power. It was from Barcelona that James I launched the conquest of the Balearic Islands (1229–1235), and the Catalan fleet also played an important role in the conquest of Valencia (1238). By midcentury, merchants from the three major Catalan ports—Barcelona, Majorca, and Valencia—were present nearly everywhere in the Mediterranean: they obtained privileges in Tunis, Bougie, Alexandria, and elsewhere. Thanks to a matrimonial alliance with the Hohenstaufen and a shrewd exploitation of the Sicilian Vespers of 1282, the House of Aragon took over Sicily, then added the conquest of Corsica and Sardinia in the fourteenth century, and finally, the kingdom of Naples in the fifteenth. Aragon thus became the great unrivaled power of the western Mediterranean. In the late fifteenth century, it merged with Castile, an emergent sea power in the Atlantic.27
Competition was keen between these commercial cities, taking the form of piracy, violent attacks on the property or persons of the rival city, and sometimes open warfare. For example, four wars erupted between Genoa and Venice between 1256 and 1381. Many Muslim princes were able to benefit from the rivalry between these cities by offering the potential ally privileged access to their markets. Although traders continued to frequent Mamluk Egypt in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the competition between Genoese, Venetians, and Catalans was increasingly intense in the Aegean and Black seas. In the Crimea, where the Silk Road passing through Mongol territories reached its end, the Genoese established a trading post in Caffa and the Venetians one in Tana. Silk was imported to Europe from these ports, but so too were slaves bound for Europe and Mamluk Egypt. It was from Caffa that the Genoese brought back to Europe the Black Plague, which ravaged both Europe and the Arab world in 1347–1348. The plague accelerated a demographic and economic decline that had already begun in Europe in the early fourteenth century. That tendency, coupled with the rise of the Ottomans, decimated European trade in the East. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were marked by a series of setbacks, with the European cities losing one by one their trading posts and colonies in the Black and Aegean seas. The Mediterranean went from a “Muslim lake” in the ninth century to an increasingly Italian sea (mare nostrum, it was called) from the twelfth century on—becoming, in the fifteenth and sixteenth century (as described by Fernand Braudel), a sea increasingly dominated by two great powers: the Ottomans in the East and the Spaniards in the West.
MODALITIES OF TRADE: CONTRACTS, TECHNOLOGIES, PORT INSTITUTIONS
The modalities of trade—contracts, technologies, and institutions—changed and became more diverse throughout the Middle Ages. There was continuity in that gradual change, however. In general, Italian merchants of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries used the same procedures and institutions as their Jewish and Muslim counterparts and predecessors, and the European languages of the Mediterranean basin adopted several of the Arabic terms designating these practices and institutions.
Equipping a ship, loading it with merchandise, and taking it across the Mediterranean
involved considerable costs and risks. In addition to storms and shipwrecks, there
was the danger of war and piracy. The line between war and privateering, between piracy
and commerce, was fuzzy. As we have already seen, there were frequent raids on land
and at sea, inflicted to avenge affronts suffered and to obtain booty. Some of these
expeditions were led by rulers as part of a declared war, but most of the attacks
were makeshift operations in which religious or military confrontation was merely
a pretext. Of the many examples, consider that of Jabbra, emir of Barka (in modern-day Libya) in the eleventh century. A supporter of the
Fatimids of Cairo at a time when Ifrqiya had liberated itself from the Shiite caliphate, he waged holy war against both
the Byzantines and the Western Sunnis. Thus he attacked the ships doing business between
Ifrqiya and Egypt that sailed past Barka. In Alexandria and Cairo, the emir had agents
to whom the merchants could pay a ransom if their property or employees were seized.
Jabbra provides a good example of economic diversification: in Egypt, he sold slaves procured
through the commandeering of Byzantine ships, and he made those trying to get past
Barka without being attacked pay a high price for his “protection” service. He exemplified
flexibility as well: in 1051, Jabbra became a vassal of the Ifrqiyan Sunni Mu‘izz b. Bdis and henceforth conducted his raids against Fatimid Egypt.28 There were dozens of Jabbras in the Mediterranean at any given moment (though most of them had less power to cause harm): small adventurers who, on the pretext of defending the
true religion (Greek or Latin Christianity, Sunni or Shiite Islam) or a legitimate
prince, attacked passing ships. To discourage them, the ships formed convoys. Such
was the case in Alexandria in the eleventh century, especially in wartime: ships heading
for the Maghreb left the port together, accompanied by armed ships belonging to the
caliph.29 And such was also the case in the Italian cities, especially for the Venetians, who
organized a series of annual convoys for different destinations.
A whole series of contracts and organizations were set in place in the Middle Ages to share costs, risks, and profits.30 The most simple, the shirka or khulta in Arabic, consisted of a partnership in which everyone invested a share of the funds and obtained a corresponding percentage of the gains or losses. Another type of contract was the qirad between a financial backer, who provided the capital, and a merchant who transported and sold the merchandise. Italian merchants adopted that type of contract in the eleventh century, calling it a commenda. Profits were usually divided as follows: 75 percent to the investor, 25 percent to the trader who delivered the merchandise. Yet another type was the societas, in which the traveling merchant provided a share of the capital, often a third, and the financer the remaining two-thirds; they then shared the profits. The financial backer could be a group of people: Genoese women and men, for example, sometimes invested small sums in maritime enterprises.
To facilitate payments, merchants in the Mediterranean world developed banking instruments. They were attempting to circumvent two problems: the transportation of metal currency and the prohibition on usury in Muslim and Christian law, a prohibition often interpreted as a ban pure and simple on interest-bearing loans. Italian merchants often used bills of exchange: a merchant or banker would pay an entrepreneur in the local currency in Pisa, for example, and the entrepreneur would promise to reimburse the banker’s agents elsewhere, in Alexandria, say, in the local currency at a later date. That allowed the merchant to have the capital he needed to purchase the merchandise he was going to transport and to avoid the problem of transporting and changing money. This operation constituted a hidden interest-bearing loan, since the rate of exchange was always set in such a manner as to provide the lender with a profit. Islamic countries used a sakk (the origin of the English word “check”), which authorized payment on an account.31
The seacraft that crossed the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages were many and varied, as reflected in a rich lexicon of Arabic, Latin, Italian, and Catalan terms. They ranged from small boats for one or two people to large galleys with a crew of two hundred to three hundred seamen. Western ships were for the most part built on the model of Byzantine and Muslim ships, with a lateen sail that shifted to take advantage of the winds and a double lateral rudder; this until the second half of the thirteenth century, when ships from the Atlantic appeared, with a single rudder aft and a combination of lateen and square sails. After the conquests of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Islamic countries along the Mediterranean had few forests that could provide sufficient wood for shipyards. Sardinia and Corsica, by contrast, provided wood to the Genoese shipyards, along with a labor force to build and man the ships. Barcelona made good use of the Catalan forests. This situation contributed to the growing domination of Latin sea power, especially since many synods of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries prohibited selling ships to the Muslims. The prohibition, however, did not prevent the Genoese and others from doing so.
For navigation, Arab pilots had astrolabes that allowed them to measure latitude. By the late eleventh century, they could orient themselves by a magnetized needle, precursor to the compass (which appeared in the second half of the thirteenth century). They also probably had nautical charts, forerunners of the portolans of fourteenth-century Italian navigators. Commercial ships could readily become war vessels: as soon as the captain came across an enemy ship, he could decide, often with the agreement of the crew and merchants, to attack in the hope of seizing the rival ship, its merchandise, and its crew. If he succeeded, he shared the booty with merchants and crew. Many letters from travelers express the fear of being taken in such actions. That is why passengers were often torn between the desire to sail within sight of the coast (to better keep their bearings and to be able to return to terra firma in case of a problem) and the desire to distance themselves from it, in order to be out of sight of potential corsairs. Letters from Egyptian and Tunisian traders speak of the relief everyone felt when the coast was no longer visible.32
In addition to merchants and the crew, which could also include soldiers and oarsmen, the ships often transported passengers: Crusaders, mercenaries, emigrants, pilgrims to Jerusalem or Mecca. Passenger lists and contracts survive, but few descriptions of life on board. Ibn Jubayr traveled on a Genoese craft, stopping in Christian ports. He describes the festivities of All Saints’ Day, when the ship shone with the candles of Christians, who listened to sermons from their priests.33 But he gives the impression that, in general, contacts on board were limited. All remained with their own party, spoke their own language, ate their own food that they had brought with them, and, when a storm hit, implored God in keeping with their own religion.
When travelers arrived in a port, they normally had to report to agents of the port
d
w
n (the Arabic word that gave the Italian dogana and the French douane, customs), to whom they were obliged to pay duties (called ‘ushr, tithes) on the value of the goods they brought with them. According to Muslim law,
a pilgrim to Mecca was exempt, but every other Muslim had to pay 2.5 percent; the
dhimmi, 5 percent; and the harb, 10 percent. In reality, these payments varied greatly. In Fatimid and Ayyubid Egypt,
it seems that Jewish merchants did not pay more than Muslims. They were simply obliged
to carry on their persons an attestation that they had paid the jizya. Saladin tried to impose a higher rate on non-Muslim merchants but later changed
his mind.34 Ibn Jubayr, upon his arrival in Alexandria, was scandalized that pilgrims were obliged to pay the ‘ushr, as well as non-Qur’anic taxes. He deplored the humiliation that the customs officers
inflicted on travelers.35 The Italian cities negotiated the amount of their ‘ushr: in 1161, the Almohads granted the Genoese a rate of 8 percent, which gave them an
advantage over the Pisans, who still had to pay 10 percent. Elsewhere, Christian merchants
paid more, sometimes as much as 25 or 30 percent. The Italian ports adopted similar
laws. In general, local merchants enjoyed an advantageous rate, while merchants from
foreign cities paid a higher rate, as a function of their nationality. In the ports,
on the roads, and alongside rivers and streams, local authorities often tried to take
advantage of passing merchants by collecting tolls and taxes. In Islamic countries
as in the Latin world, that often led to conflicts and negotiations between the local
powers, the central powers, and the merchants.
Once the merchant had been through customs, he took lodgings in a fun-duq, sometimes called a khan, a sort of inn for merchants and travelers.36 These institutions were numerous: if we are to believe thirteenth-century geographers, there were sixteen hundred in the city of Cordova (these figures may be for the caliphal period, however); most must have been very modest establishments. Italian cities often arranged to have funduqs in the port cities of Muslim countries or in the Latin East. These funduqs sometimes formed small, semiautonomous communities protected by walls, often run by a consul with administrative and judicial powers. They had wells, warehouses, ovens, baths, taverns, and chapels. These centers were very active in summer, but in winter only a small population of expatriates remained. In return, the Italian cities granted funduqs to foreign merchants, such as the fondaco tedesco (German funduq) in Venice.
Local authorities sought to control the sale of imported products, in order to make a profit on them, and at times they held a monopoly on the trade in certain products. In Alexandria, the port authorities organized an auction in the port itself. Italian merchants could be found in the interior of Egypt—Amalfitans in the tenth century, Pisans in the twelfth—but that remained the exception. In Spain, conversely, foreign merchants moved into the urban markets: fueros in favor of the Christian cities guaranteed and regulated the access of Muslim merchants, whereas in the Muslim West hisba treaties did the same for Christian merchants in Muslim cities. In both cases, to be able to enter the city or to sell at the market, the merchant had to pay duties, which could vary a great deal.
Despite the taxes, storms, pirates, thieves, and swindlers, commerce could be highly profitable. In the mid-eleventh century, pepper was twice as expensive in Tunis as in Cairo: someone who purchased it in Egypt to resell in the Maghreb could hope for an 80 percent profit if all went well.37 To understand how that trade worked, let us follow, with the historian Shlomo Goitein, a bundle of “purple” (clothing dyed red) weighing 474 pounds from Cairo to Sfax (Tunisia), via Alexandria, in about the year 1100. The bundle, which cost sixty-six dinars in Cairo, would be sold for ninety-four dinars in Sfax; the merchant paid three dinars in customs duties in Egypt, one dinar for transportation from Cairo to Alexandria, and four dinars for transportation by ship to Sfax. That allowed him to realize a profit of twenty-one dinars, that is, almost a third of his investment.38 True, it was also possible to lose money, especially since “prices are in the hands of God,” according to an Arabic saying attributed to Muhammad and often found in the writings of Jewish and Muslim merchants of Egypt.39
THE IMPACT OF TRADE ON ECONOMIES AND MENTALITIES
Trade changed the ways of life of the inhabitants of Europe and the Islamic countries. It influenced eating habits and habits of dress: Europe discovered oranges, bananas, rice, sugar, pepper, and many spices, as well as silk and henna. The Islamic countries especially took away raw materials (iron, wood) but also wool clothing. The volume of such trade remained limited: in the Middle Ages, only a very small portion of the European population could eat sugar or exotic spices and dress in silk. But that meager transformation of habits of eating and dress in the Latin and Arab worlds would only grow stronger in the centuries that followed. Often these goods from the “Muslim” world were actually produced by Muslim or Jewish minorities in Spain or Sicily, and Christian sovereigns encouraged Muslim farmers practicing intensive horticulture and silk production to stay on. For both merchants and sovereigns, conquest and commerce were two ways of acquiring the wealth desired.
How are we to distinguish between the exchange of goods and the appropriation of ideas, technologies, and modes of thought that accompanied it? The intermediaries were the slaves, immigrants, dhimmis, or Mudejars who provided their services and expertise, whether in navigation, metallurgy, or architecture. Medicine provides a good example: the diffusion and translation of pharmacological treatises required commerce in pharmaceutical products; without the ingredients, the formulas served no purpose, and vice versa. But let us consider in more detail the impact of commerce in a few products of foremost importance: slaves, weapons, paper, gold, silver, and woolen textiles.
One of the chief export products from Europe between the seventh and twelfth centuries
was slaves.40 We have seen how pirates and corsairs—Arabs, Greeks, Italians, Catalans, and others—engaged
in raids and enriched themselves at the expense of captives, who were either ransomed
or sold into slavery. There was also significant commerce in slaves from northern
and eastern Europe, captured by Ottonian, Byzantine, or Slavic armies, or sold by
their parents. We have seen the important role played by the Saqliba (Slavs) in Arab countries, especially in the Umayyad armies of Spain. They were so
numerous in Europe that the classic word to designate a slave, servus, was replaced by esclavus. Pope Zachary (741–752) learned that the Venetians were purchasing slaves on the Roman
market to resell them to the Muslims; outraged, he closed the market and redeemed
many slaves, then liberated them.41 That was no doubt only a local and temporary impediment to a very profitable business.
Constantinople tried to regulate the trafficking in slaves for its own profit, barring
the export of certain kinds of slaves (for example, those who worked in silk weaving
shops) and attempting to prohibit the Italians from selling slaves to the Muslims,
a ban that Pope Adrian I communicated to Charlemagne in 776. The aim of these measures
was both to guarantee a labor pool and to keep the strength of Muslim rivals in check.
But that very lucrative trade skillfully found a way around the Byzantine obstacle:
the Venetians played a large role, and sellers circumvented the empire to the west
(through Germania and Gaul) and to the east (through the Caucasus) to reach Muslim
markets.42
Many written accounts indicate the European merchants’ involvement in the slave trade. In 836, the Neapolitans promised the Lombard prince Sicard that they would no longer sell Lombard captives to Arab merchants—a promise they likely did not keep.43 In 845, the Council of Meaux took note of Christian and Jewish merchants from the kingdom of West Francia who were transporting pagan (probably Slavic) slaves through the kingdom to sell them to “the enemies of the faith” (the Muslims of Spain). For the council, that was harmful in two ways: first, the pagans did not have an opportunity to accept the Christian faith; and second, the enemy’s strength thereby increased. The council therefore proclaimed that merchants had to sell their human merchandise within the Frankish kingdom and not export it. There is little chance that the measure was respected; the “enemies of the faith” undoubtedly paid more attractive prices.44 This traffic would only increase in the following century, fed by the Ottonian emperors’ conquests in Slavic lands.45 Verdun emerged as an important hub for that trade and specialized in the castration of slaves, since the price of a eunuch was about four times that of an uncastrated man on the Byzantine or Muslim markets, and Byzantine law prohibited the castration of slaves (but not the importation of eunuchs).46
Before the year 1000, therefore, slaves were an export product for Europe: European merchants sold them on the markets of al-Andalus or North Africa. The archives of the Cairo Geniza attest to the purchase of European slaves.47 That began to change in the eleventh century. First, the conquests of the Christian princes, from Portugal to Sicily to the Holy Land, placed a large number of Muslim captives in the hands of European Christians, who were able to ransom or resell them. From the eleventh, and especially, the twelfth century on, Iberian fueros allude to specific taxes on the transport and sale of moros (Muslim slaves).48 Beginning in the twelfth century, the Catalans sold slaves in Catalonia or Genoa. Slave markets could be found from one end of the Mediterranean to the other: slaves were auctioned at the Rialto in Venice, at the markets in Andalusian cities, and in the East.
Beginning in the thirteenth century, the Genoese and Venetians competed in the trafficking
of slaves, the most important source of which was the Black Sea region, where they
purchased pagan and Christian slaves. The Genoese exported the male slaves to Mamluk
Egypt, where they would be integrated into the army, and the females to Italy, where
they would serve as household servants.49 The slave trade, for the Italian or Catalan merchants who participated in it, was
one activity among others: the captives or slaves (rarely more than twenty to forty
at a time) traveled in ships loaded with various import goods. About ten thousand
slaves a year may have been sold in Venice in the fifteenth century.50 Slave traders paid close attention to the religious affiliations of slave and buyer:
in Christian territory, it was forbidden to sell a Christian to an infidel, just as,
in the dr al-islm, a Muslim could not be sold to a dhimmi. That sometimes led to odd practices: in the thirteenth century, it was in Tunis
that some European merchants sold Christian slaves to the Muslims; others sold Muslims
there, whom they passed off as Christians. These practices, reported to the pope by
Franciscans and Dominicans living in Tunis, drew a sharp condemnation, which probably
had no effect on that commerce.51
War was an omnipresent danger in the medieval Mediterranean, but it also presented
attractive commercial opportunities. The sale of weapons, military materiel, and foodstuffs
to the armies was very lucrative in the Middle Ages, as it still is today. Within
a context of holy war, efforts were sometimes made to prohibit commerce with the “infidel”
enemy, but these prohibitions themselves attest to the ubiquity of such trade.52 The chronicler Maqrz recounts, for example, that a Mamluk vizier was convicted of selling arms to the
Franks. Christian kings of Jerusalem and popes tried to bar European merchants from
selling strategic products (arms, wood, iron) to the Crusaders’ enemies. In a treaty
concluded with Pisa in 1154, the Fatimids reserved the right to buy all iron, pitch,
and wood that the Pisans brought to Egypt. Two years later, Baldwin III, king of Jerusalem,
in granting economic privileges to the Pisans, prohibited them from conveying iron
or wood to Egypt. These bans were likely not respected to any great extent. In 1179,
the Third Lateran Council railed against the Christians who were selling arms, iron,
or wood to the Saracens or who served as captains on their ships. These Christians
were to be excommunicated, their possessions confiscated, and, once captured, they
were reduced to slavery. Here again, such draconian punishments seem to have been
ineffective. During the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, at a time when preparations
were being made for a new Crusade against Egypt, the prohibitions were reiterated,
with the additional ban on providing assistance or advice to the Crusaders’ enemies.
But the council introduced a distinction between aid offered to the declared enemies
(the Ayyubids), which was expressly prohibited, and commerce with other Muslim princes,
which was still allowed. Throughout the Middle Ages and well beyond, popes and other
ecclesiastical authorities fulminated in vain against those who did business with
the enemy.
One of the products that arrived in Europe through the Muslim world and that completely altered European society was paper, which had been produced in China since antiquity and was common in the Muslim world from the ninth century on. Spain became one of the major paper producers; Egypt imported Andalusian paper in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. One of the chief centers of production in the Muslim West was Xátiva (south of Valencia), conquered in 1244 by James I of Aragon, who seized the paper factory and turned it into a state monopoly. Xátiva paper, much less costly than parchment, spread (slowly, it is true) to northern Europe and encouraged imitations. It is no coincidence that the reign of James I is particularly well documented: the paper from Xátiva allowed him to develop his chancery. Without paper, a Chinese invention that crossed over to the Islamic countries and was adopted in Aragon, the development of modern bureaucratic states would be unthinkable.53
But it may be the wool trade that best demonstrates the profound and reciprocal effect of commerce between the Latin world and Islamic countries. Here is how that industry operated near the end of the thirteenth century: wool production occurred almost everywhere in Europe and the Maghreb, but increasingly in Castile, England, and Scotland. The wool was transported to Italy, or especially, to Flanders, where workers processed and dyed it (often with colors imported from the Muslim world along with a fixative, alum, at first primarily from Egypt, then from Phocea in Anatolia) and then wove it into cloth. The finished cloth was sold to Italian merchants, who resold it in Italy, elsewhere in Europe, and in ports across the Mediterranean. The cloth industry fostered commerce and vice versa. It changed habits of dress in Islamic countries, as well as the economy of the wool-producing countries: the Castilian mesta (a professional guild of sheep farmers) emerged at that time to regulate transhumance and to ensure profits for this very lucrative trade. Some lords in northern England and Scotland turned their lands into sheep grazing grounds, which they found more profitable than the agricultural work of peasants. During the same period, the Egyptian textile industry foundered in the face of competition from European imports.
Commerce led to changes in the monetary system of both civilizations. Previously, the coinage in Latin Europe was primarily made of silver, often in a copper alloy. In Islamic countries and in Byzantium, gold remained the standard currency of exchange, though silver and copper coinage also existed. Thanks to exchanges with the Maghreb, Europe had access to African gold at a time when its merchants needed it for their large transactions. They used Muslim gold coins or imitations fabricated in Sicily and Spain; the Florentines and Genoese finally minted gold coins beginning in 1252. The silver from European mines, especially in central Europe, financed the products of Italian merchants, who reused the silver to pay for their purchases in the East. Egypt turned the silver into coins, which promoted retail trade. Since gold was relatively overvalued in Europe and silver overvalued in the Maghreb, Maghrebis often paid in gold to buy European products, while Europeans used silver in Maghrebian markets. Toward the end of the twelfth century, the Maghreb, like the East, began to strike coins with European silver. These were square dirhams bearing Muslim inscriptions: “God is great,” “Muhammad is his prophet.” These dirhams, which the Europeans called millares, were so popular that Europeans began to strike millares of their own, used for trade with the Maghreb and bearing these same Muslim inscriptions, which shocked Pope Clement IV and the French king Louis IX.
It is impossible to enumerate all the many effects of commerce on European and Muslim societies of the Middle Ages. Sometimes, these effects were perceived as negative: when Jewish fishermen from Alexandria frequented the bars of Acre and drank beer with Christians, they elicited the contempt of some of their coreligionists.54 Beginning in Italy in the eleventh century, then in the rest of Europe in the twelfth century, cities developed as a result of demographic growth and commerce. In all the participating Mediterranean cities, trade favored the expansion of artisan crafts oriented toward exportation. One of the social effects of commerce was the emergence of urban classes of artisans and merchants. In a large number of European cities, especially in Italy, merchants would ultimately take (that is, buy) power, whereas in the Muslim countries, power remained in the hands of the politico-military elite.55
In Islamic countries, various princes skillfully manipulated the privileges they granted to foreign merchants, Europeans in particular. No one did so better than the Fatimids, and then their Ayyubid successors: in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Egypt consolidated its position as the richest country in the Mediterranean world and in the Islamic world, the crossroads of world trade. Although that preeminence faded in the Mamluk period (1250–1517), this was in large part because the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century had opened a new overland trade route, the Silk Road, which competed with the sea route controlled by the Egyptians.
From the fifteenth century on, it was through the Atlantic that Portuguese and Castilians vied to circumvent the control of their rivals—Mamluks, Italians, and Catalans—and to obtain the fruits of commerce without intermediaries: slaves, gold, sugar, spices. Slaves the Portuguese rounded up on the African coast. Gold they obtained from African princes. Sugar they produced and refined in Madeira and the Azores in the fifteenth century, as they would do in Brazil and the Caribbean in the sixteenth. As for spices, Christopher Columbus would go on a futile search for them in the Caribbean, and Vasco da Gama would purchase them when he finally arrived in India in 1498.