Download PDF | Levant Trade in the Middle Ages-Princeton University Press (1984).
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Preface
About a hundred years ago the German scholar W. Heyd published his History of the Levant Trade in the Middle Ages, which to this very day is the standard work in this field of historical research. In fact Heyd’s work appeared in three editions. First he published in 1858-1864 a series of articles about the Italian merchant colonies in the Tiibinger Zeitschrift fiir die gesamten Staatswissenschaften. Then there appeared in 1879 an enlarged edition of these papers as a book and finally F. Raynaud published in 18851886 a French translation of the work, which meanwhile had been considerably augmented by the author.
The Histoire du commerce du Levant au Moyen Age of W. Heyd was in his day a great scholary achievement and it will remain a basic work forever. With great assiduity the author had collected any piece of information about his subject that he could find in travelogues, commercial treaties, privileges, and in many other sources. He also examined the data with great acumen, so that many of his conclusions can be considered as absolutely valid. But Heyd did not work in the rich archives of the Mediterranean trading towns, which held a foremost place in the Levant trade of the Middle Ages.
The Bavarian scholar G. M. Thomas placed at his disposal notes and manuscripts of his own works, such as the Diplomatarium Veneto-Levantinum, but such basic sources as the registers of the Venetian Senate remained unknown to him. Another great failing in Heyd’s work in the eyes of the modern economic historian is the neglect of various economic aspects of the mediaeval Levant trade, such as the volume of trade. This was partly due to the fact that the author had no access to the archives of Italy and Spain. Nevertheless, Heyd’s work is a masterpiece of historiography, so that it is unnecessary to repeat his quotations from the sources he knew and the conclusions he drew from them. They are almost always correct and sound.
Since the publication of Heyd’s work some excellent economic historians have dealt thoroughly with the international trade of the South European nations in the later Middle Ages. The works of Frederic Lane about the trade of Venice, the books and papers of Roberto S. Lopez about the economic expansion of Genoa in the Middle Ages, the Histoire du commerce de Marseille by Baratier, Reynaud, and others, the work of Mario Del Treppo about Catalan trade in the fifteenth century, and the painstaking publications of the Ragusan acts by Bari§a Kreki¢ are chefs d’oeuvre of solid research and shed bright light on many aspects of the commercial exchanges between Western and Southern Europe, on the one hand, and the Moslem Levant, on the other, in the period of the Crusades and in that which followed it. They provide us with a basis in attempting to draw now an overall portrait of this chapter of mediaeval history.
This is indeed the purpose of the present book. The development of the Levantine trade of the nations of Southern Europe will be sketched here as a phenomenon both of the economic history of these European nations and of the Moslem Near East. For any attempt to deal with the Levant trade without explaining the European expansion as a consequence of the economic decline of the Near Eastern countries would be inadequate. I have dealt with this phenomenon in some books and papers and can refer to them without repeating what has been amply elaborated there. Great stress will be laid in this book on the volume of the Levantine trade of the various South European nations, insofar as the sources known to us make it possible to deal with this problem. The changes which took place in the course of time in the categories of commodities exported to the Levant will be thoroughly examined. Further, an attempt will be made to sum up the results of the research done by some scholars about the development of the commercial methods and of transport in the later Middle Ages.
My research is based on a variety of sources.
The Arabic sources—in the first instance, the detailed chronicles of the Mamluk period, both printed works and manuscripts—have been carefully searched for relevant data. But as far as the relations with the Western Christian nations are concerned, they offer us rather ambiguous information about ‘’Franks” who attacked the Moslem ports or the ships of the Near Eastern merchants. Only seldom do the Arabic chroniclers clearly say who these Franks were. However, the accounts which are to be found in the Arabic sources of the European aggression will be systematically analyzed and attention will be paid to the interdependence of the various traditions quoted by the Arabic historians.
The official documents of the South European states, on the other hand, are basic and reliable sources for our research. The various series of the registers of the Venetian Senate, the Misti, Senato Mar, and Secreta are certainly most valuable and contain firsthand information about the mediaeval Levant trade. The Misti reflect clearly the trends of the commercial policy of the Serenissima, the registers of the Secreta shed light upon the activities of the Venetian diplomacy, and the series Senato Mar contains many details about the life of the Venetian colonies overseas. Since the administration of the Venetian colonies was closely watched by the central legislative and executive bodies of the republic, often even trifling matters were dealt with by the latter.
The accounts of the results of the galley auctions in Venice, to be found in the Senato Mar and the Senato Incanti, give us a clue for sketching the upward and downward trends of the Levantine trade of the Venetians. But Gino Luzzatto has already warned against overestimating the value of these accounts (see his Storia economica di Venezia, Venice 1961, p. 138 f.). The conclusions which one can draw from them should be considered cum grano salis. Checking them against the data provided by Morosini (and other Venetian chroniclers) concerning the investments of the Venetian Levant traders and the value of the cargoes of the ships returning from the Levant, one becomes aware that they do not always correspond very well. In some years in which the auctions yielded relatively small amounts, the investments were very great and vice versa. Consequently, one will conclude that the latter data are more relevant for our research, although careful consideration should be given to those referring to the galley auctions.
The same is true for the customs registers, which have come down to us in the archives of Venice (Terminazioni of the Giudici di petizion), Genoa (Drictus Alexandriae 1367, the registers published by John Day, the Caratorum Veterum of the middle of the fifteenth century), and Barcelona (the Real Patrimonio). Even these registers are of the greatest value for our research. In the customs offices of Venice and Genoa and elsewhere, the merchandise was weighed, and in the registers both the weight declared in the Levantine ports, from whence it came, and that established after the arrival in the metropolis were noted. So these registers contain long columns of Oriental and European weights which provide us with a solid basis for the knowledge of the weight units and the standard parcels used by the merchant in the Levant.
Many data which are very useful for the study of the history of the Levant trade are to be found in the registers of the Giudici di petizion, a Venetian tribunal before which litigations between merchants (and merchants versus ship patrons) were brought. The various series of its registers, of which some hundred volumes have been preserved from the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, contain data about conflicts between merchants in Venice and their agents in the Levant and claims against patrons, who are made responsible for the loss of merchandise. The proceedings comprise accounts of shipments, data about prices, etc. However, in many of the proceedings of these litigations, which are contained in the series Sentenze a giustizia, there are no exact dates of the transactions dealt with. In this case one cannot be sure even approximately as to the date on which the transaction was made. In fact often the litigations were brought before the tribunal many years later.
A transaction made in 1412 was judged in 1424 (see G. P., Sent. 36, f. 56a ff.), another made in 1415 was dealt with in 1438 (see same series 78, f. 96b ff.). A case which happened in 1421 was the subject of a litigation in the year 1431 (see Sentenze 56, f. 38a ff.). Sometimes thirty years and more passed before a matter was judged by the tribunal; a lawsuit in 1432 refers to a case which occurred in 1402 (see G. P., Sent. 61, f. 96b), and another in 1477 to a case in 1440 (see same series 165, f. 40b ff.). The series Terminazioni—that is, permits given to deliver merchandise retained in the customs offices—is particularly valuable, because many documents, contracts, and accounts are quoted in extenso (in addition to freight inventories mentioned above).
The acts of the notaries who specialized in drawing up contracts for the maritime trade contain much valuable material for the history of the Levant trade, such as data about the export goods, the investments of single merchants, the conditions agreed upon between lenders and borrowers who departed for the Levant, etc. In these acts one finds also much data concerning the ships which left for the Levantine ports. The collections of notarial acts which have come down to us represent only a fraction of the contracts which were made by notaries, while many agreements were not drawn up by notaries at all.
Furthermore, for various reasons one often styled a contract in very ambiguous terms. Consequently some scholars have expressed doubts as to the conclusions one can draw from the notarial acts (see P. Earle, ‘The Commercial Development of Ancona, 1479-1551,” Ec. Hist. Rev., 2nd series, 22, 1969, p. 30). But for many years the collections of several notaries working in the same town have been preserved, so that the margin of error and the doubts as to how far they convey to us a truly representative portrait of the commercial activities in their town are reduced. This is true for some towns which ranked as second-class South European trading nations, such as Palermo, Messina, and Ancona. But even a study of the notarial acts drawn up in Barcelona is very fruitful for our subject, although these acts have been used by such excellent historians as Cl. Carrére and M. Del Treppo. The acts of the Barcelonan notaries of the end of the fourteenth century and of the fifteenth century are very numerous and make it possible to put into relief some phenomena of the Catalan trade with the Levant and to elaborate its structure in detail.
A very important source of information for the history of the mediaeval Levant trade can be found in the acts of the Italian notaries who exercised their profession in the Levantine emporia. To the acts drawn up in Creta and in Cyprus by Venetian and Genoese notaries a great number of deeds which were written in Egypt and in Syria should be added. The number of acts drafted by Genoese notaries in the Moslem Levant and known to us is unfortunalely very small, but those of the Venetian notaries of Alexandria and Damascus are very numerous. The chaplains of the Venetian consuls fulfilled the role of notaries for all the European merchants who resided or sojourned in these emporia. There have come down to us (known to the present writer) the acts of Antonello de Vataciis who worked in Alexandria from October 1399 until October 1401 and again from July 1404 until September 1406.1 His successor as Venetian chaplain in Alexandria, Leonardo de Valle, left us notarial acts dating from November 1401 to April 1404.
From the time he held the post of chaplain (and chancellor of the consulate) the proceedings of the Council of the colony have been preserved (as they were drawn up by him). The Venetian notary Cristoforo Rizzo, who practiced also in Tana, left us acts drawn up in Alexandria from November 1414 until October 1416. Giacomo della Torre, another wandering notary, held the office of chaplain and chancellor of the Venetians in Damascus from the end of 1411, leaving acts dating from December of that year until October 1413. Much more numerous are the acts drawn up in Damascus and Beirut by Niccolé Venier.
They date from October 1417 until May 1419. Then the notary returned to Venice, but in the fall of 1420 he began to exercise his profession in Alexandria, and a copious collection of his acts drawn up in the Egyptian emporium has come down to us dating from October 1420 to December 1422. One of his successors in Alexandria was Cristoforo del Fiore from whom acts dated July 1425 to May 1426 have been preserved. In the middle of the fifteenth century he was notary in Damascus. The acts which he drew up in the Syrian capital and which have come down to us date from October 1454 to October 1457? and September 1460 to October 1463. A very rich collection of notarial acts drawn up in Alexandria is that of Niccolé Turiano. They date from October 1426 to November 1428, May 1434 to November 1435 and August to October 1436. Meanwhile the notary had been in Rhodes and had practiced there.
To these notaries who left us a great number of acts there should be added others from whom only few deeds have come down to us. These were notaries who never held the post of chaplain or who had given it up; they were true free lancers. But all of these notaries had in common great experience in the Levant and a thorough knowledge of the commercial methods. So their acts are a mainstay of our information about the Levant trade in that period. They also make it possible to estimate the numbers of the merchants who came from various countries to the Moslem Levant and lived there for a certain time. Certainly one will not believe that the names of all European merchants who lived in the Levantine trading towns in certain years figure in the deeds of the chaplains of the Venetian consul, who served all of them as notary. However, the difference between the number of those who lived there and that of those whose names appear in the notarial acts must not have been great, and, adding up the numbers of merchants of the various trading nations who appear in those acts, one may suppose that the figures give us at least a reliable assessment of these different groups. The supposition that in the course of a certain year almost all the merchants residing in a Levantine trading town applied to a notary or were called to be witnesses is borne out by a comparison of the number of the Venetians mentioned in the acts of the Venetian notaries who worked in Alexandria in the year 1401, and the number of those who took part, according to the registers of the colony (see above), in a general assembly of the Venetian colony held in that year. In the notarial acts one finds 24, in the latter source 26. Another reason for the importance of the notarial acts is that the notaries drew up many acts which did not refer to the commercial activities of the European traders but to other matters which shed light on the social life of the merchant colonies. Wills of merchants and of their servants, contracts of sale of slaves and of slave girls, obligations of pilgrims and captives written and received by the merchants, reveal to us the conditions of life of the merchants overseas, which otherwise would have remained obscure for us.
Not less important than the notarial acts are the remnants of the archives of Levant traders, which have come into the possession of public archives. When the property of Venetian families passed to the endowment of S. Marco, the records and files of letters were also handed over to the procuratori of the fund. So the archives of many enterprising Levant traders and of family firms have been preserved and finally passed to the Venetian State archives. These archives comprise accounts, often whole ledgers, letters of agents in Egypt and in Syria, price lists compiled in Alexandria and in Damascus, freight inventories, reports about the total purchases made by the European trading nations in the Levant, etc. The archives of Biegio Dolfin, who from 1408 to 1410 and again from 1418 to 1420 held the post of Venetian consul in Alexandria, also contain lists of payments made to the consulate and others of its records.
Unique among these archives of firms which engaged in international trade are those of Francesco Datini, the famous merchant of Prato. He was not a Levant trader stricto sensu, but chairman of commercial companies in Florence, Pisa, Genoa, Avignon, and Barcelona, the latter with branches in Majorca and Valencia, all of which engaged mainly in the trade of wool and cloth. But, like so many mediaeval merchants, he was active in other sectors of business, among which the spice trade was not the least important. Francesco Datini, like other men of genius, had the gift of finding collaborators, employees, and agents who distinguished themselves by their great capacity. In Damascus for a certain time Bertrando Mignanelli, a native of Siena, was a corre-spondent of his. Living many years in the Levant, Mignanelli had acquired a thorough knowledge of the Arabic language, so that in later years he could serve as interpreter at the council of Florence, where representatives of the Coptic Church appeared. He also became a friend of Sultan Barkik and wrote in Latin a biography of this Mamluk ruler (Ascensus Barcoch), as well as a book on the invasion of Syria by Timur Lang (Ruina Damasci).
The agents and business friends of the Datini firm were required to supply its branches continuously with current information about the commercial movement, and the 125,000 of their letters which have been preserved in the Datini archives in Prato (in the Archivio di Stato of that town),? and have been put into order by the late Federigo Melis, are a true treasure house for all those interested in the economic history of the late fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century. It is no exaggeration to maintain that this truly enormous collection of letters (the so-called carteggio), which comprises so many thousands of pieces, can be considered as the first series of the modern commercial bulletins which in fact gave birth to our newspapers. The letters contain news about ship departures and arrivals to and from the Levantine ports (and other Mediterranean ports); cargo inventories, apparently obtained from the secretaries of the ships or from customs officers; forecasts of the development of prices; and also political news, which of course influenced the commercial movement.
The writers of the letters attached to them (or included in them) freight inventories of the ships of the various trading nations sailing from the Levantine ports to Venice, Genoa, Aigues-Mortes, and Barcelona and also price lists of the major emporia of the Levant, Southern and Western Europe. The Datini archives contain accounts of the transactions of the firm which also traded in spices and other Oriental commodities. In great commercial centers Francesco Datini had several business friends and agents, who regularly provided his firm with current information. So one can find in his archives letters written in Venice by two of such agents on the same day. Furthermore, they wrote frequently and it could happen that they wrote twice a day, or addressed on the same day Jetters to the Datini firms in two towns, e.g., in Pisa and Barcelona (see, for instance, Dat 712 and 927, letters of Zanobi di Taddeo Gaddi, and Dat 927, letters of the Commessaria of Zanobi di Taddeo Gaddi).
The most diligent of Datini’s correspondents was indeed this Zanobi di Taddeo Gaddi, from whom a very great number of letters has come down to us. The last of his letters (to the Datini firm in Pisa) shows the date of 10 July 1400, and the first of his successors (Commessaria) bears that of 6 October 1400. The whole of the Datini records (the letters written to this firm) extends from the 1370's to the year 1411. Box 930 contains letters of the year 1411 written by Tommaso di Giacomo & Cie in Venice, and others also written in Venice by Perluccio del Maestro Paolo, Paolo di Giovanni, Taddeo, son of Zanobi, Lorenzo di Francesco & Cie., and Giovanni di Domenico Ciampelli & Cie. In fact few letters written in the Levantine trading towns themselves have been preserved in the Datini archives, but they are so often quoted that the quotations alone make it possible to compile price lists of the Levantine markets.
For our subject the letters written in Venice and the correspondence of the Datini firm of Barcelona are the most important documents. The letters which the Venetian friends of Datini addressed to his companies, in Pisa, Florence, and Barcelona, contain many quotations from letters received from Alexandria and Damascus, news about the fluctuations of the prices of the Levantine articles in the South European emporia, and, last but not least, data about the shipments of cotton which were brought twice a year from Syria to Venice by the cog convoys of spring and fall. As these data are often found in letters of several friends of Datini, we can check them and rely upon their authenticity.* Many of the statements concerning the cotton trade of Venice are, however, prognostics, i.e., resumés of what the friends of Datini had heard from various acquaintances, who themselves relied frequently upon hearsay.
The correspondents of Datini and other commercial agents indeed collected news from all sources—from customs officers, secretaries of ships, merchants, and fattori. Of course, the information concerning the shipments of cotton due to arrive have much less value than data about the freight of ships actually arrived. Furthermore, the writers of these letters often say in a very general way that a certain quantity of cotton will be in Venice at the next fair. So one cannot always be sure that only Syrian cotton is indicated (and not cotton of the Greek countries). But, despite these shortcomings, the data one finds in the Datini letters from Venice concerning the cotton shipments that were unknown to Heyd and other economic historians are of great importance for the history of the Levant trade in the later Middle Ages. They will lead us to a new evaluation of the commercial exchanges between Southern and Western Europe, on the one hand, and the Moslem Levant, on the other. The letters written to the Datini firm in Barcelona from various ports and trading towns of the Western basin of the Mediterranean shed bright light upon the Levantine trade of these emporia, which otherwise would have been shrouded in darkness. The letters from Genoa, on the other hand, have much less value for the study of the history of the Levant trade. They deal mainly with the wool trade in the countries around the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Whereas one finds in many letters accounts of the. cargoes carried to the ports of Southern Europe by Italian, French, and Catalan ships, a whole batch (now Dat 1171) comprises only such inventories and in addition price lists. Other boxes contain collections of insurance acts. Even they comprise very valuable data for our subject.
In addition to official documents, notarial acts, and the archives of merchants, some literary works written by authors with a sound knowledge of the Levant trade and reliable firsthand information, contain most valuable data for our research.
The Secreta fidelium crucis of Marino Sanuto Torsello, who wrote in the first decade of the fourteenth century, has often been quoted as an authentic source. But in fact this treatise, which was destined to stir up anti-Moslem feelings and to induce the pope and the Christian princes of Europe to undertake a new Crusade against Egypt, should be used with great caution. For the author, in order to reach his goal, greatly exaggerated in describing the intense trade between Egypt and Europe and the great revenue that the sultan of Cairo had from it.
Of great value is the treatise of Emmanuel Piloti. Although it was written for the same purpose as that of Marino Sanuto—and a work should not be blindly relied upon—it distinguishes itself as a most original and authentic source for various reasons. Emmanuel Piloti, a Cretan merchant, lived for a very long time in Egypt, apparently from 1396 until 1438, though he went several times to other countries (Dopp’s introduction to Piloti, p. xxv). He travelled much in Syria, Cyprus, and Greece, but had his head office in Egypt. Like most foreign merchants he lived in Alexandria, but he also had an office in Cairo (p. xix) and had contact with the court of the sultan. In 1404 he appeared before the sultan, together with the Venetian consul of Alexandria, and in 1408 he fulfilled a mission for the sultan (p. xx f.). As a Cretan, and so a Venetian subject, Piloti was not an objective, neutral author, but sided with Venice (see Piloti, p. 198 about the battle of Modon) and scoffed at the failures of the Genoese (see p. 197 of his account of the attitude of the Genoese during the attack of Marshal Boucicault on Beirut). As his book is not written on the basis of documents and was destined to substantiate his proposal (for a new Crusade against Egypt by the account of events which he remembered), it contains many errors (see p. 37, the end of Sultan Faradj in 1411; p. 54, the sultan buys every year 2,000 mamluks; p. 174, attack of the Cypriots on Alexandria in the days of Sultan Faradj, and Barsbay; p. 175, the conquest of Cyprus in 1427, should be 1426, and see further pp. 228, 229 about the battle of Nicopolis, p. 103 the tomb of Mohammed, and see also p. 197, note c) and contradictions (see p. 205 and p. 209 talks with the duke of Naxos). But Piloti’s errors are outweighed by the great merits of his book as a treatise summing up the experience and knowledge of a merchant who had carried on trade in Egypt during a lifetime and had distinguished himself by deep insight in economic matters. For he began to write his book in 1420 and did not finish it before 1440 (see pp. xxv, xxvi), writing first in Venetian or even in a vulgar French (some kind of lingua franca of the Mediterranean) and later translating it into Latin (p. xxxiv).
Among the Venetian chronicles (cf. Fr. Thiriet, ‘Les chroniques vénitiennes de la Marcienne et leur importance pour l’histoire de la Romanie gréco-vénitienne,” Mélanges d'histoire de l'Ecole francaise de Rome LXVI, 1954, p. 241 ff.), that of Antonio Morosini is for our subject undoubtedly the most important. Son of a brother of the doge, Michele Morosini, he had access to official sources and could use the documents of the chancery of the ducal government and other records of the authorities of the republic. He had a great interest also in the economic life (rightly stated by G. Luzzatto, Storia economica di Venezia, p. 147) and inserted in his chronicle data which one seldom finds in other sources. His data about Venetian shipping have already been elaborated by F. C. Lane, but the economic historian is truly delighted when finding in this chronicle many data about the yearly investments of the Venetian traders, including the amounts of cash and the value of the merchandise shipped every year to the Levant. The chronicler who obtained his information apparently from official sources (the declarations made by the merchants before the straordinarii, see Morosini, c. 604) provides us with a solid basis for estimates of the volume of Venice's trade with the Moslem Levant in the period subsequent to the time of the Datini records. The chronicle of Morosini served as a source for that of Zorzi Dolfin for the period beginning in the year 1404 and this latter was a source for the Vite de’ duchi of Marino Sanuto (see Morosini, Chronique, I, pp. 2, 15, 25, 122, 161; IV, pp. 178 ff., 253 ff.).
It goes without saying that the Merchant Guides are primary sources for our research. Certainly one has the right to suppose that the comparison of measures and weights which were used in various trading towns, a major topic of these works, points to the existence of commercial exchanges between them. But these books also supply us with data about the export of commodities to the Levant in periods for which one has no other information or almost none, e.g., the beginning of the fourteenth century. The data found in Merchant Guides of this period, as the Anonymous in the Marucelliana Library (cf. Bautier, ‘Les relations,” p. 311 ff.), the Venetian Zibaldone da Canal, and the Tarifa, this too a Venetian treatise, are most valuable for our subject. The number of the Merchant Guides which were known to Heyd was very small, but nowadays many more have been found and some of them have been printed. The late A. Sapori discovered in the libraries and archives of Tuscany alone about a hundred (see his Studi? I, p. 493). All of these works have two features in common: they are in fact collective works and the materials were assembled over a long period. For these Guides are essentially reference works for the merchant and had to be brought up to date time and again. When customs were increased or new imposts established, the old data were of no more use to the merchant, who actively engaged in international trade. Consequently the data to be found in such books refer most often both to the period in which the author (that means the last compiler) wrote and also to earlier periods. The most famous of these Merchant Guides, the Pratica della mercatura of Pegolotti, was apparently written in the years 1336-1340 (cf. Evans, introduction to the Pratica, p. xiv), but it also contains a chapter about conditions of trade in Acre at the time when the town was still under the rule of the Christians, that is, half a century earlier. Giovanni da Uzzano’s book has the imprint 1440, but he apparently still distinguishes between the ducat and the gold coin of the Mamluks (see Uzzano, pp. 112-114), although since 1425 the dinar had been made equivalent to the ducat. The Libro di mercatantie, a Merchant Guide widely spread in the second half of the fifteenth century, was probably compiled in Ragusa in the middle of that century (see Libro, ed. Borlandi, p. xlv). But even this book was a collective work (see there, p. xxxvi f.) and contains many statements taken over from the Tarifa, Pegolotti, and Uzzano (see there, p. xxxix, xl). Consequently, all these books must be used with the greatest caution when drawing conclusions as to the period to which their data refer. Anyhow they contain many particulars which enable us to outline the history of the Levant trade in the later Middle Ages. The Merchant Guide of Bartolomeo Pasi is a particularly valuable source, insofar as it contains many data about weights and measures which are missing in other similar treatises. A striking feature of this work of the late fifteenth century is the habit of its author to compare the same weight with many others, much more than the authors of other Merchant Guides did, so that the checking of his data is very easy. The Anonymous Merchant Guide in the Marciana Library (It. VII 384) has the date 1493, but on f. 77b one finds the date 1469 and on f. 65b the tariff of imposts in Alexandria in 1486. So even this treatise was compiled over a long period. This Merchant Guide is particularly detailed as far as the payments to be made in the Levantine emporia are concerned. So it is a typical sample of the Venetian Merchant Guides (see U. Tucci, ‘Tariffe veneziane e libri toscani di mercatura,”” Studi Veneziani X, 1968, p. 89, 90 f.).
The conclusions drawn from all these sources should be considered as rather tentative. This book does not claim to be a definitive history of the Levant trade in the later Middle Ages. The author will be happy if the reader recognizes that it traces a certain progress and corrects the portrait one had so far of these commercial exchanges. It should show that the Levant trade of that period was a great export trade. The role of the export of various European commodities, both agricultural and industrial, into the Moslem Levant is put into relief. The study of the judicial acts (of the Giudici di petizién, for instance) and of the archives of Levant traders makes it possible to go much more into detail in studying this aspect of mediaeval Levant trade than one could before. A major result of the present research is the conclusion that the cotton trade was in the later Middle Ages not much less important in the commercial exchanges between Southern Europe and the Near East than the spice trade, at least for a long time. Great stress has been laid on the calculation of the total of the European investments in the trade with the Levant. But certainly one cannot pretend that the conclusions are sure. The data one finds in the chronicles concerning the cash carried by the merchants on the galleys and the round ships to the Levant are not beyond doubt. The Venetian chronicler Girolamo Priuli emphasizes (I diarii, 1, pp. 30, 94) that one should beware of relying on them, because the merchants cheated the shipowners and customs officers, declaring less then they actually had. But if a step forward has been taken in this and in other respects in this book, despite all these handicaps, the author has achieved his aim. For according to an ancient Hebrew saying, “It is not incumbent upon me to finish the work.”
May I finally express my sincerest thanks to the authorities of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who have rendered possible my research by granting me a long leave and covering many of my expenses, and to the Deutsche Forchungsgemeinschaft for a generous grant which enabled me to spend a long time working in the archives of Italy. I am very thankful to Countess M. Fr. Tiepolo, now director of the Venetian State Archives, who encouraged me and accompanied with great helpfulness my first steps in the archives of Venice. Further, I am obliged to Professor R. Mueller, formerly of Tucson, Arizona, and now of Venice, and to Dr. Erwin Fenster of Augsburg, who drew my attention to various important manuscripts in the archives and libraries of Venice. For similar help I am also indebted to Dr. Giangiacomo Musso of Genoa, Dr. Alessandro Mordenti of Ancona, and Professor Marco Tangheroni of Pisa. Professor H.-E. Mayer was specially kind in making important suggestions to me, and Sta Angel Masia de Ros was very helpful during my sojourn in Barcelona.
Jerusalem E. ASHTOR Hebrew University January 1981
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