Download PDF | Byzantium and the Black Sea, c. 1000-1204 , By Jack Sheard, PH.D, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2021.
268 Pages
Abstract
This thesis will argue that the Black Sea of the High Medieval period was an important and vibrant economic zone. During the two centuries before the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Black Sea was bustling with economic activity. Not only did those dwelling on its coasts — the Byzantines, Russians, Georgians and later Seljuqs — make use of the maritime connections for local trade; but its markets also connected those further afield, across the Mediterranean and European worlds. As a result of its substantial commercial activity, and geopolitical import, the Black Sea figured significantly in Byzantine foreign policy; however, the Byzantines did not attempt to systematically close the sea off to foreign merchants, as has been suggested. Rather, they used it as a bargaining chip in their negotiations with the Italian merchant republics of Genoa and Venice.
Due to the later flourishing of the Black Sea under the Pax Mongolica, historiography has tended to underestimate or dismiss this earlier period of Euxine activity; however, such side-lining of this earlier trade is based on mistaken premises or misevaluated sources. In all, the Black Sea was a substantial economic zone in its own right long before 1204, and deserves more thorough investigation than it has been given. This thesis will provide that examination.
Preface: Journal of the Plague Years
The latter potions of the research for and preparation of this thesis were conducted during the events of the Coronavirus Pandemic which began in late 2019. In so far as is possible, steps have been taken to mitigate the effects of governmental restrictions upon this work; however, it is necessary to note that the limitations of access to, and often outright closure of libraries which took place during this period, affected my access to sources. On rare occasions, it has been necessary to use older and potentially less accurate versions of primary material, when more current editions were not accessible; in light of easing restrictions, these references have been revised afterwards; however, this was not always possible.
Another difficulty this thesis has faced is a number of language barriers. | have found it necessary to draw on sources in a range of languages: French, German and Italian, as commonly-used languages of academic publication, and also a wide selection of Russian works, as to be expected, given the region’s proximity to Russia. However, also found in the bibliography are secondary works in Swedish and Polish. | am, naturally, not fluent in all (or even most) of these languages; however, this has proven to be less of a problem than might have been anticipated. Modern technology has provided some solutions, enabling basic, computer-aided translations for a range of materials. Where appropriate, this has been supplemented with human assistance from native speakers in the various languages. As a result, this thesis has been able to use a much wider range of documents, both primary and secondary, than would have been available to me even half a decade ago.
However, not all documents were susceptible to such computerised solutions. The unique, serpentine calligraphy of the Georgian alphabet does not lend itself to automated translation; nor did | have contacts able to translate it for me. Thus, for Georgian sources alone, | was forced to rely almost solely upon already-translated works, with only small extracts from the Kartlis Tskhovreba being examined in the original, with the assistance of a native speaker, where understanding of the precise nuances of certain verbs and prepositions were necessary for precision of argument.
On such a note, | would like to acknowledge the many people who have helped me produce this work, without whom this thesis would not only have suffered immensely, but would most likely not have existed at all. Foremost among these is my supervisor, Professor Harris, whose assistance throughout this process has been excellent. His knowledge of Byzantine (both with a capital ‘B’, and without) lore, as well as historical criticism, has been peerless, and his personal support has been extraordinarily generous, and | am deeply indebted to him for his assistance. Thanks are also due to my parents, who served both as captive proof-readers and (despite my repeated discouragements) voluntary researchers. In addition, | must also thank my numerous translators, Mary, Samia, Krzysztof and many others, whose contributions are sprinkled throughout, as well as my ‘scientific advisors’, Clive and Derek, whose insights into the chemistry were essential for the development of my argument in chapter two.
Finally, | would like to thank my dogs, who have patiently sat and listened as | read, re-read, revised and re-revised this thesis while they acted as mute but loyal sounding-boards over a period of years. The fact that two of the four of them did not survive this process, is, | hope, not a reflection on the work itself.
Jack Sheard Worlingworth, Suffolk May 2021
Introduction: The Byzantine Black Sea?
The Bosphorus’ has created both a geological and historiographical separation of the Black Sea from the wider Mediterranean. Rather than integrating it within larger historical trends and patterns, the tendency has been for historians to isolate the Black Sea, and treat it as a separate, independent body, with little connection to the broader world. However, this thesis will show that such a conception of the Black Sea is inaccurate. During the two centuries prior to the Fall of Constantinople in 1204, the Euxine’ was involved in much larger economic spheres — Mediterranean, Baltic, Caucasian and even trans-continental trading patterns. Moreover, the Sea’s economic importance caused it to be a significant component of Byzantine foreign policy.* Despite such prospects, however, this earlier part of the Black Sea’s history have been overlooked by historians, who instead focus on the Black Sea’s ‘more exciting’ period in the 13‘ century when, thanks to the ‘Pax Mongolica’, it became “the turntable of international trade”.* Such a description, however, can be applied with almost equal validity to the pre-Fall Black Sea, which also thrived on such international trade.
i. Setting the scene — geography and history
Geography
The Black Sea is, to an extent, a fractal of the Mediterranean.” Roughly elliptical, it sits in the northeast quadrant of that larger sea®, with maritime entry only available through a single, narrow strait: the Bosphorus.’ It stretches roughly 300 miles north-to-south, and 600 east-to-west. In turn, the Black Sea possesses its own fractal — the Sea of Azov, again sitting in the north-east quadrant, again only accessible through a single slight passage, the Straits of Kerch, also known as the Cimmerian Bosporos.
The Sea of Azov is roughly 230 miles long, and 105 miles at its widest point.
Let us travel round the Black Sea coastline, starting at the Bosphorus straits. Heading north (clockwise, as it were), we run along the coastlines of modern Turkey and the Thracian plains, before passing the Balkan mountain range in Bulgaria. Next, we sail past the coast of what is now Romania, reaching the mouth of the Danube, a major river which flows from its source in the Black Forest for nearly 1800 miles through eleven countries, before emptying into the Black Sea at the northern reaches of Romania’s coastline.
North of the Danube, the ecology of the coastline changes. Instead of the temperate forests on its southern side, we now reach the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, a broad, flat expanse of fertile grassland stretching from the Danube as far east as the Ural River in Kazakhstahn. It is this grassland which defines much of the region north of the Black Sea. From the mouth of the Danube, this coastline curves round north-east and then east as we continue into Ukraine, where we cross the mouths of three more rivers — the comparatively small Dniester and Southern Bug rivers, and then the significantly larger Dnieper, the 1400-mile route of which begins near Smolensk in Russia, and flows through Kiev on its way to the Euxine.
Shortly after the Dnieper, we reach a defining geographical point of the Black Sea — the diamondshaped Crimean Peninsula. Connected to the mainland by an isthmus only 3 miles wide, it extends some 120 miles southward into the Sea, surprisingly close to Anatolia. The southern tip of the Crimea is lined with steep mountains, walling off its southern region from the steppe-plains to the north. Toward the southern tip of the diamond, very slightly on its western side, was the medieval city of Cherson®, where now is modern Sevastopol.
As the peninsula heads eastward (its widest stretch being nearly 200 miles long), we reach the medieval city of Bosporos, now Kerch, which dominates the straits of the same name, controlling access to the Sea of Azov. This smaller sea’s western reaches (the Crimean coast) are marshy and inhospitable, and the northern and eastern coastlines are defined by spits and silty bays, formed by the outflow of the many small rivers which flow into the Azov. Chief amongst these is the Don, a 1200-mile river which rises near Tula, south of Moscow, and flows southwards to the Azov. A notable geostrategic feature of this river is its proximity, at its easternmost point, to the Volga river. The Volga rises to the north-west of Moscow, and follows a 2200-mile course, first east and then south, before draining into the Caspian Sea. Whilst the Volga and Don were only connected by a 60-mile canal in 1952, in medieval times their proximity was such that portage — that is, the overland transfer of ships from one river to the other — was perfectly possible. On the south-eastern coast of the Sea of Azov is the Kuban River delta. The Kuban flows some 400 miles from the Caucasus mountains, before spilling out into the Azov Sea from the Taman Peninsula, a soft and marshy expanse, dotted with mud volcanoes. Whilst currently the Kuban river delta only drains into the the Azov, formerly it would have additionally flowed directly into the Black Sea.
South of the Kerch straits, we return to the Black Sea proper, and head along the the Caucasian coastline of Russia and Georgia. Here, the geography is dominated first by the mountains of the Greater Caucasus range, and then, after we pass a short plain near the mouth of the Rioni or Phasis river, the Lesser Caucasus. Reaching the borders of modern Turkey once again, we pivot around the city of Trebizond (modern Trabzon), isolated from its hinterland by steep and challenging mountains, and head back west. This Anatolian coastline remains fairly mountainous — the Pontic range — and curves a little way north as we reach the city of Sinope (modern Sinop). An important, though perhaps surprising, geographical note here is that Sinope, despite being approximately the midpoint of the southern coast of the Black Sea, is actually closer to the northern coast (the tip of the Crimean peninsula) than it is to Constantinople on the Bosphorus, a significant geographical oddity.? Our journey continues: tilting back south-west from the headland of Sinope, the mountains fade away,
and eventually we reach the Eastern coast of the Bosphorus, back at our starting point This combination of geographical features lends itself to nautical travel. The extent of mountainous regions along the coastline — the Balkans in the west, the Crimean in the north, and particularly the Caucasus and Pontic ranges in the east and south — inhibit overland journeys in these regions. On the other hand, a large number of rivers notch the coastline. | have above mentioned only the larger and most significant ones, and those smaller ones which will feature in the upcoming discussions, but in total, there are approximately 1000 rivers which empty into the Euxine.”° As a result, journeys around the Black Sea, especially before the era of the automobile, generally were taken, in part if not entirely, by water. Whilst the naval lure of this sea is less pronounced in its north-eastern reaches, where overland travel is easier and safe harbour harder to find, for the vast majority of the Euxine coastline, maritime travel is by far the easier mode of transport for a journey of any distance. Thus, the Black Sea formed a natural, and often essential, ‘connective tissue’, linking all those who lived and travelled along its shores.
Hydrology
The Black Sea itself was largely conduicive to such connectivity. The bulk of the sea is surprisingly deep — the Euxine Abyssal Plain reaches some 2,200 metres, with only the north-western gulf and the Sea of Azov lying outside it. Above this Plain, there are two prevailing currents in the Black Sea, one in its western half, one in its east, both of which flow anticlockwise — the Western and Eastern Gyres, separated by the arrow of the Crimean Peninsula.*? There are a few areas which fall outside of these currents, for example the smaller, independent ‘coastal eddies’ near Trebizond and the northern Caucasus. The most significant of these areas is the north-western portion of the Black Sea, roughly everywhere north of a line stretching from Cherson to Constanta. Here, the sea is notably shallower, The benefit of these gyres for Euxine maritime trade is twofold. At a basic level, their presence means that it is exceptionally easy to sail around the Black Sea coastline in an anti-clockwise direction, carried along by the currents. It is certainly possible to oppose these currents when desirable — for example, for a coastal voyage from Trebizond to Constantinople, discussion of which will feature often in this thesis. Nonetheless, with the currents at your back, sailing could at times become very easy.
However, the primary advantage of the gyres is their meeting point — the swathe of sea between the southern tip of the Crimea and the headland of Sinope, where the Black Sea is at its narrowest. Here, the western and eastern gyres flow past each other — potentially a very treacherous situation, allowing for ships to be caught and turned around abruptly. However, a knowledgeable captain could easily avoid this hazard, and instead make use of the benefit of this meeting point; namely, that whether travelling from Sinope to the Crimea, or vice-versa, there was a current supporting your direction of travel. Thus, at the narrowest point of the sea, ships could quite rapidly and fairly easily switch between its northern and southern coasts. Whilst long open water voyages were not always an option, this shorter journey — a day and a night in one Ancient Greek source — could be done with relative ease.??
However, it should not be supposed that voyagers upon the sea could be complacent. Knowledge of the winds was essential. The prevailing wind in the Black Sea is a northerly? one, which covers moreor-less the whole sea, excepting a small region around Trebizond where the air currents are more variable.“* This wind prevails for about 8 or 9 months of the year, except around the equinoxes, in spring and autumn, when the wind reverses direction and blows south-to-north for a short period.
These winds not only buoyed ships; they could have far more negative effects. Take, for example, the voyage of Ibn Battuta in the 1330s. Travelling firstly from Anatolia to the Crimea, in opposition to the northerly wind, he was obliged to wait 51 days for a favourable breeze, before he could finally cross. Three days into his voyage, the wind brought him a new trouble — he was caught in a “terrible tempest... with unparalleled fury” that blew the ship back to Sinope. On his second attempt, he was caught in another storm which blew him off course as far as Kerch. Eventually despairing of his intended destination, he had the captain set him down somewhere on the steppe-coast and journied onwards overland.*® Such difficulty with the winds was not untypical. The northerly winds can can bring terrible tempests, often - but far from exclusively — in the form of a freezing winter Bora, an icy gale which strikes particularly viciously in the eastern portions of the Sea. Nor is it just the northerly winds which cause problems. Southerly winds. as appear in spring and autumn, come without difficulties of their own — they can be just as violent, and caught by them whilst in the vicinity of the Bug, Dniester or Danube rivers will be in greater difficulty — the combination of the wind hitting against against the outflow of those rivers results in particularly vicious waves which can toss ships back and forth perilously.*” It may well have been waves such as these which hindered Andronikos | Komnenos’ flight from Constantinople in September 1185: “but even the sea was vexed with Andronikos... the waves rose straight up and fell back with a yawning chasm and leaped up again to swallow him, and the ship was cast towards shore. Again and again this happened, and Andronikos was hindered from crossing over”.*® Below these dangerous waves can lurk greater hazards. The rocky nature of the shore gave rise to a significant number of reefs and undersea hazards. One pilot-book listed in the Black Sea 101 permanent physical dangers — reefs, rocks, shoals and the like — for which a captain needed to be prepared before travel.?9
This count is exclusive
of both the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, which come with their own set of hazards. The Sea of Azov is the shallowest sea in the world: Its deepest point is only 14 metres and its average depth only 7 metres. As noted above, the Azov is defined by spits and lagoons, erosion and silting. Its western coast is bordered by the Syvash, a system of shallow lagoons and marshes separated from the Azov Sea proper by the Arabat Spit. This region was memorably described by Rabbi Petachia as “the Stinky Sea, [which] if any individual passed, he would die immediately”.”° Entry to the Sea of Azov is only possible through a narrow and shallow passage - the Straits of Kerch or the Cimmerian Bosporos. The combination of its shallow depth, silty marshes and near-complete separation from the rest of the Black Sea led many ancient and medieval writers to view the Azov not as a sea, but rather as a lake or simply a large river-delta.24 Thus, while the Black Sea itself was, to an experienced sailor accessible and even welcoming, the Sea of Azov was a far less congenial prospect. Any ship of significant-enough draught to sail the Black Sea safely, would be at constant risk of running aground on the shifting shoals or sandbars of the more treacherous Azov. Safety in one sea would be risk in the other. Thus the Straits of Kerch marked an important point of transition between two different maritime worlds.
With all this in mind, the Greek name for the Black Sea — EUéetvoc, meaning ‘hospitable’ —- may seem ironic. But we should not be overfearful — winds, reefs, currents and storms could all be negotiated by a skilled sailor. What we should note from this description of the waters of the Black Sea are two key points. Firstly, the interaction of the gyres in the centre of the sea, creating a sort of maritime highway for ease of travel between Anatolia and Crimea; and secondly, the prominence of the northerly wind, which could make sailing in opposition to it a challenging task indeed.
History?
Having explored the geography and hydrology of the Black Sea, we can now turn to its history, establishing the context in which the following discussions will take place. We shall begin, as before, at the Bosphorus, where Constantinople, the seat of the Byzantine Emperor and to some extent the focal point of this thesis, sat in domination over the straits. The Emperor’s realm stretched over Greece, much of the Balkans, Thrace and Bulgaria, many Aegean islands, the Anatolian peninsula, and some southern exclaves in the Crimean peninsula. During our two centuries, the throne in Constantinople was occupied by 23 emperors, from Basil II ‘the Bulgar-Slayer’ to Alexios V Doukas ‘Mourtzouphlos’. The political history of this Empire is, therefore, naturally rather involved, and even a potted history of the 200 years under examination in this thesis would become extended and distract from the main argument of this work. Instead, we shall give only general considerations for Byzantium’s history during this period.
The Empire faced manifold threats: in the West, the rising star of the Normans of Southern Italy and Sicily, which shone avariciously on the Byzantine exclaves in Italy, and beyond that, the Byzantine Balkans; In the East, the furious and fast-blowing wind of the Seljugq Turks, who, having sacked Baghdad now raced through the Anatolian and Caucasian mountain ranges, pushing dangerously against all the eastern walls and borders of the Empire; from the north, Pecheneg incursions against Thrace and Macedonia increased after Basil l’s conquest of Bulgaria; and from within, the ever-
smouldering fire of domestic unrest — not only nationalist uprisings from the subjugated Bulgars, but more commonly political chicanery and outrage from the political-military class. Cheynet counted 223 revolts against Byzantine emperors in the period 963-1210 — one every 1.1 years. Of these, Alexios | Komnenos, who reigned from 1081 to 1118 (during the midpoint of this thesis’ period), would face 20 — the most of any emperor.”? He himself had emerged the victor of a multi-party civil war after the capture of Romanos IV Diogenes by the Seljuqs, and his dynasty would come to an end through a similar usurpation by Isaac II Angelos.”*
To oversimplify, the general trend of the Empire during these two centuries is one of decline. In 1018, Basil Il, having subjugated Bulgaria, now ruled over an expansive Byzantium, stretching from Armenia to Italy, from the Crimea to Antioch; in 1100, Alexios | would be fighting to regain much of this lost land, from Seljuq and Norman, forced to find alliances with enemies, and finding his best laid plans complicated by commencement of the Crusades; and in 1204, the Empire collapsed: bankrupt, mismanaged, splintered. The great city of Constantinople would be sacked by the combined Frankish and Venetian force of the Fourth Crusade. Thus decapitated, the Empire was divided up between the Latin Empire, the Venetian Stato da Mar, and the various Byzantine successor states centred in Nicaea, Trebizond and Epirus. In 1261, Michael VIII Palaiologos would recapture Constantinople, and resurrect the Byzantine Empire into a second shadow-life; but in 1204, the collapse of Byzantium seemed complete. The ramifications of the Fourth Crusade were immense, not only for the Black Sea but the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean.
For Georgia, however, the narrative follows quite the reverse. In 1008, the Kingdom was born from warring petty princedoms, united under Bagrat II|, whose adoption by Davit III of Tao united several political entities together. However, for 80 years, this nascent kingdom was beaten from pillar to pos both by the Byzantine campaigns in the Caucasus, and the ever-present threat of internal strife. This latter posed significant problems for the Kingdom: even the nationalist Kartlis Tskhovreba, the state histories of Georgia, felt compelled to say that “the Georgian race is by its nature disloyal to its sovereign. As soon as they have raised themselves, put on some flesh, reached a state of honor and peace, they immediately start to contemplate all kinds of mischief, as the ancient chronicles of Kartli relate.”*° Then came the crowning threat — the arrival, in the 1080s, of the Seljugs in the southern Caucasus, heralds of a period known to the chroniclers as the Didi Turkoba, or ‘Great Turkish Troubles’. King Giorgi Il, vacillating and ineffective, did not prove up to the task; he bought the Seljuqs off with a heavy tribute, but was nonetheless forced to abdicate in favour of his son, Davit IV.7°
Davit IV ‘The Restorer’ ushered in a new period of growth for Georgia; his reign is seen as the start of a Golden Age for the Kingdom. He swiftly evicted the Seljuqs, and began to expand his borders at every opportunity, even capturing the wealthy city of Tbilisi, which had been lost to Georgia for four centuries. His crowning military achievement was the much-eulogised Battle of Didgori, in which his personal leadership of a small force saw the defeat of an Islamic coalition of much greater size. In addition to this, he was well-read and cultured, and like his biblical namesake, wrote a collection of psalms. He strengthened the power of the state, crushed rebellious nobles, and brought the Kingdom of Georgia into the light of success. He was — of course — canonized upon his death. After a few indifferent monarchs, Davit’s great-granddaughter, Tamar, took the throne, and much like her predecessor, quelled threats both internal and external. Her first husband, the Russian Yuri, was expelled from the country, and beaten back both times he tried to regain his bride; however, Tamar’s second match, David Soslan, was far more successful. Georgian borders were once again expanded, with the subjugation of vassal states on all her borders. The culmination of this expansion was the establishment of the Empire of Trebizond, a semi-puppet state under a scion of the Byzantine Komnenian dynasty related to Tamar, centred on that wealthy port-city. This military expansion was coupled with a cultural revival, exemplified by the Georgian Epic The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, a deep, poetic metaphor for Tamar’s reign. The contrasts with Byzantium’s fortunes are striking — from the quarry of Basil’s ascendant empire in the early years of the millennium, Georgia had risen to undreamt-of heights, establishing successor states for the Empire which had once been her master.
A third important polity for our thesis is the newly-solidified state of the Kievan Rus’. Having descended from Novgorod and established a princedom centred on Kiev, the Rus’ were in equal parts mercantile and militaristic. Many of their merchant class travelled broadly, from end to end of Europe and far east into Arab lands and central Asia, largely by small ships through river systems. However, after their Christianization under Prince Vladimir in the late 10 century, the Rus’ connections to Byzantium were central to their economy and culture (as will be seen). Trade convoys sailed down the Dnieper and across the Black Sea yearly to bring northern goods to Constantinople, and would return months later with goods purchased in the Empire. Kiev also served as a through-region for the connection of Varangian Scandinavia and Byzantium. Militarily, they were constantly striving against the Pechenegs and Qipjaqs”’, Turkic tribes who dwelt in the region between Kiev and the Black Sea, and thus always posed a threat to merchant-adventures travelling the route ‘from the Varangians to the Greeks’. The Kievans held their own against them — particularly notable were the successes of Vladimir || Monomakh, whose victories against the Qipjaqs would force a great many of them out of the Rus’ realm to the Caucasus. However, the Kievan polity, like the Georgians and Byzantines, was the victim of internal power struggles, often involving Turkic mercenaries from the steppe. The apogee of such struggles was the sack of Kiev in 1169 by a collection of Rus’ princes.
The struggling Rus’, the ascendant Georgians, the doomed Byzantines — these three powers surrounded the Black Sea, their borders threatened by nomadic Turkic tribes, their thrones threatened by avaricious and ambitious nobles. The compression of two centuries, fraught with political strife, gives an impression of such a traumatic scenario that commerce and finance could hardly thrive. However, despite such angst — indeed, given the role of the Qipjaqs and Seljuqs in the trading patterns which will be discussed, perhaps because of such angst — the economy of the Black Sea would nonetheless flourish.
Some notes on seafaring
Currently, surprisingly little is known about the practical nature of seafaring in the Black Sea before the golden era of the Italian Maritime republics in the late 13" and 14* centuries. Fortunately, this looks as though it is likely to change drastically in the future. The lower portions of the Black Sea are anoxic and inhospitable to life; as a result, shipwrecks which rest in this portion of the Sea remain in almost perfect conditions. The Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project (MAP) has made excellent use of this; between 2015 and 2017, in Bulgarian waters alone, the MAP found 65 wrecks, ranging from 4" century BC to the 19* century AD. So well preserved are these wrecks, that still-coiled ropes, and even decorative carvings in the wood, are easily visible in the 3D scans.2? However, the combination caused by the inundation of new material, and the volatile situation in the Black Sea at present, has caused some impediment, and, as yet, none of these wrecks have been published in detail. | very much hope this will change in the next few years.
The knowledge of such treasure makes it all the more frustrating that we currently know so little. It is not the role of this thesis to engage deeply with the ‘how’ of seafaring; instead the focus is on the ‘why’, the ‘where’ and the ‘when’. | shall therefore give only a brief description of the current understanding.
It is first necessary to note that for several Euxine nations, we have almost no evidence that they engaged in seafaring at all. The Qipjaqs, for example, did not appear to have any maritime capabilities, although there is a reference to them being present at an overseas market; whether it was them or their representatives, and whether they travelled by sea or land to get there, is unclear.?° The Seljuqs appeared to have some maritime merchants at the turn of the 13" century, but beyond that we have no information. 32 A Persian source calls the Black Sea ‘the Sea of the Georgians’ which implies some engagement with the Euxine; however, other sources give no indication of maritime activity from Georgia.
This is not true for all Euxine coastal peoples. For two of these peoples, we know they were certainly capable sailors. The Rus’ engaged with the rivers and the Black Sea to a great extent; the details of this engagement will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3, so | shall pass over them here.*? This leaves the Byzantines. As Pryor notes, however, whilst we often have generic references to ships and sailing, details of Byzantine naval technology, particularly outside a martial setting, are “scant [and] reveal precious little.” We have some indication of technological development — for example, lateen sails, which allow ships to sail against the wind when they ‘tack’, may have been in use since the sixth century.2* However, while western Europe did make nautical advances in the 12" century, resulting in larger, multi-masted and -decked ships, we do not know to what extent, if at all, this technology was adopted by the Byzantines.*°
Our best insight into 10"*-12" century Byzantine shipping comes from the Serce Limani wreck, found near the harbour of the same name, slightly north of Rhodes. A small merchant-ship transporting a range of goods from the Levant towards Constantinople, it sank suddenly in 1025, and remained, slowly decaying, in that harbour until its excavation beginning in 1979. There is much to be learned from this wreck, but for our purposes, it is enough simply to describe the type of ship, as an example of the sort of ship with which we will be dealing in this thesis. Slightly more than 15 metres long, with a deck, and estimated draft of 1.5m when fully laden, the Serce Limani had a cargo capacity of about 35 tons. * The top portion of the ship was not preserved, so suggestions of its rig and tackle are only speculatory; however, based on a detailed analysis of centres of buoyancy and gravity, alongside a reconstruction of the ship, the “most plausible and efficient” setup for the Serge Liman! ship would have been a two-masted double-lateen rig.*” Lateen sails would seem especially likely given that there is evidence the ship was prepared for long open-water voyages. The presence of sheep-bones and grape pips together in amphoras indicates preserved meat, and the discovery of a “sheep or goat dropping” suggests there may even have been live animals kept on board — arguably the best method of preservation; this, coupled with the presence of gaming pieces, led to the hypothesis that this was a ship capable of going for a week, maybe more, without landing on the coast.?? Nonetheless, longer journeys like those would have remained the exception, rather than the rule. Open-water sailing
carried with it greater risks, whereas harbour-to-harbour cabotage was a much safer course, when available — after all, it was because the Serce Liman was so close to shore that its crew likely escaped its sudden and surprising sinking.
Admittedly, we are using a data-set of one; it could well be that the wreck at the Serce Liman! was an anomaly. Nonetheless, this is the information we have to go on, and thus we have the image of the sort of ship which this thesis will follow on its voyages around and across the Black Sea. Not excessively large, nor excessively capacious, but nonetheless hardy and capable of carrying a signficiant cargo, possibly — assuming the weather did not turn against her — across open water without insurmountable difficulties. In the words of J. Richard Steffy, “a little merchant vessel that was full and flat and simply built... and that was it.
ii. Historiography
Frameworks
Historical study of the Medieval Black Sea has been limited; this is especially the case with the period prior to the Fourth Crusade. In part, this is due to the Black Sea’s perceived isolation from the ‘real’ Mediterranean. Separated from the rest of the sea by the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, it is often regarded as a separate entity. Geologically, this is somewhat true — the Black Sea was originally a glacial lake, before it connected to the Mediterranean at some point during the Holocene era.*? Regardless of the geological origins, the Black Sea is — rightly or wrongly — treated separately from Mediterranean histories. Nonetheless, the methodology of the histories of the Mediterranean can shed light on similar approaches for the Black Sea.
The pioneer in the field of Mediterranean history was Fernand Braudel (1902-1985), whose twovolume The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, first published in 1949, is a landmark of the Annales school.*? Examining the history of the sea at three scales — longue durée, moyenne durée, and histoire événementielle — he painted a portrait of a sea ringed by mountains and deserts, the geography of which dictated the life of “the individual... imprisoned within a destiny in which he himself has little hand, fixed in a landscape in which the infinite perspectives of the long term stretch into the distance both behind him and before. In historical analysis... the long run always wins in the end.”*? On the one hand, such an approach presents a ‘solution’ to history which can be quite appealing; on the other hand, as with other monocausal historiographic approaches, such as some of the environmental histories which will be discussed below, Braudel’s approach can lead to oversimplification of the diverse, even chaotic, unfolding of history. Certainly there is much to be said for the influence of geographical fact on historical event; but to deny human agency in history is somewhat to deny history itself.
Following Braudel’s impressive and imposing work, histories of the Mediterranean fell from prominence, in part due to the belief that there was nothing more to say. Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, in 2000, published The Corrupting Sea, which took Braudel’s geographic near-fatalism and gave it new nuance.** The Mediterranean must be divided into local ‘micro-ecologies’, that is to say “definite places with distinct identities derived from the set of available productive opportunities and the particular interplay of human responses to them”.
This represented a significant advancement on Braudel’s approach — it was no longer merely geography that defined the course of history, but rather the way humans approached, tamed and overcame - or failed to overcome — the geographical limitations of their surroundings. In Horden and Purcell’s own words, their aim with “this microregional approach [was to] put people before physical geography.” *° On the one hand, returning the human to the forefront of history can be commended; on the other, the micro-ecological approach requires a depth of research that seems impossible to maintain for a region as large as the Black Sea, let alone the Mediterranean as a whole. One of Horden and Purcell’s case studies was the region of Cyrenaica, west of Egypt; their endeavours to examine this region required that their “focus of analysis must be sharpened [and] be founded on the study of the local, the small scale — the specific wadi, cove or cluster of springs and wells”.4° Such exhaustive analysis of these micro-details may allow for a ‘higher-resolution’ study of history, but surely require a framework of larger-scale history to build upon. Certainly, attempting to apply this approach to the Black Sea, with its 6,000 miles of coastline, and often extensive hinterlands, would require far more space than a thesis such as this could permit.
The third significant Mediterranean history is David Abulafia’s The Great Sea.*” Subtitled A Human History of the Mediterranean, Abulafia was clear about his attempt to bring the anthopogenic aspect of history to the forefront: “This book... aims to bring to the fore the human experience of... existence on the sea. The human hand has been more important in moulding the history of the Mediterranean than Braudel was ever prepared to admit... the roulette wheel spins and the outcome is unpredictable, but human hands spin the wheel.”*8 Compared to Braudel and Horden and Purcell, geographical determinism is almost completely absent from Abulafia’s work; nonetheless, Abulafia’s work demonstrated that even without unusual historiographical frameworks, a history of the Mediterranean as a region in itself was indeed possible.
Thus these three Mediterranean histories all took vastly different approaches to the study of their shared topic — the impossibly grand, the microscopically local, and the truly human — each of which has their strengths and weaknesses. Of these three frameworks, this thesis and its author own most to Braudel. A larger work than this could review the economics of the Black Sea with a view to Horden and Purcell’s microecologies; and another historian could rewrite this topic with Abulafia’s focus on individual people — but that would be a different work. It is the underlying framework of this thesis that trade patterns are determined, at large, by geographical connections or obstacles, and the longterm development of the resulting routes is given more attention than momentary interruptions or diversions, caused by details in the histoire événementielle. Invidiual humans are rarely brought to the forefront of this thesis; peoples and states, when needed, play their role, but the individual is treated mostly as example, rather than agent. Thus this thesis aims to be, in Horden and Purcell’s phrasing, not history in the Black Sea, but rather a history of it —a Byzantine Black Sea, it is true, but nonetheless the focus of this study is the geographical entity of the Euxine itself, the trade that was carried across it, and the impact it had on the lives of those on its shores.
Euxine historiography
One point that unites these three Mediterranean histories is their deliberate exclusion of the Black Sea. For Braudel, the Black Sea was “only partly Mediterranean”; as a result, it was only indexed for 46 out of 1375 pages (3%).*? In Horden and Purcell’s work, it is indexed for only 9 pages out of the 776 total (1%).°° Abulafia is very clear about its exclusion: The Black Sea “was a sea penetrated by Mediterranean merchants, rather than a sea whose inhabitants participated in the political, economic and religious changes taking place in the Mediterranean itself — its links across land, towards the Balkans, the Steppes and the Caucasus, gave the civilizations long its shores a different outlook and character to those of the Mediterranean”.** As a result, it is indexed for 16 pages out of the 783 total Thus, for any substantial historiography on the Black Sea, we have to look at those studying the region specifically, and in isolation from its surroundings. But here, too, however, there are difficulties in establishing a historiographical basis for the 11°"- and 12**-century Black Sea, as historians have mostly been focussed on the late 13" and 14" centuries; understandably so, as this is the pinnacle of the Black Sea’s economic importance, and the period which will be referred to as ‘The Black Sea Boom’. “Infested” with Italian merchants, the Euxine became the “plaque tournante” of international trade during these years.** Truly, this 13'*-14** century period was an exciting and interesting period of history, and worthy of the amount of study it has been given.
However, the brilliance of the later 13"*-14* century Sea has led to neglect of its earlier period, prior to the Fourth Crusade, which falls into the shadow of such exciting and notorious icons of history as Genghis and Kublai Khan, Marco Polo, the Venetian and Genoese maritime empires, and the infamous Black Death. As a result, there is a tendency to give the earlier sea (somewhat lacking in such grand names) short shrift. Oftentimes the pre-Fall Black Sea is written off as a closed Byzantine lake, of no true importance to the rest of the world — a dormant backwater, awaiting its future greatness. It is usually dismissed briefly, if discussed at all, and often with prejudice.
This notion, of a closed and sleeping sea, can be traced at least back to the first historian of the region, Gheorghe I. Bratianu (1898-1953). Focussing his studies on the Genoese interactions with the Black Sea, he wrote, in 1929, that “L’interét que les Grecs avaient a exclure les Occidentaux [i.e. Genoese] de ce marché etaient evident: ils entendaient se réserver l’importation du poisson et des fourrures du
Nord a Constantinople.” This ‘evident’ claim went unsubstantiated, yet would be repeated in the works of many later historians.°° Bratianu later wrote slightly more expansively: “Cette derniére interprétation [of a more open Black Sea] ne deviendrait certaine que si l’on découvrait quelque mention du commerce ou de la navigation des Génois dans un autre port de la mer Noire a cette époque; or, a notre connaissance tout au moins, aucune trace de la présence des marchands, non seulement génois mais italiens en general, n’a été relevée jusq’ici sur le littoral pontique avant le tournant décisif de la IVe croisade. Byzance exercait ici un monopole et le maintenait.”°®
Both of these statements were written from the ‘perspective’ of the Genoese. Even allowing for Bratianu’s interpretation of the source material, his resulting conclusion of a ‘Closed Black Sea’ could only be applied as far as Genoese or Italian merchants. However, this discipline was not maintained, and the argument of Genoese exclusion was extrapolated, by others as by Bratianu, to a broader Byzantine monopoly.
Bratianu’s career (and eventually life) were brought to an untimely end by the apparatus of the Socialist Republic of Romania, depriving him of the opportunity to expand upon his ground-breaking research on the Euxine. The fallen and guttering torch was picked up by the French historian Michel Balard, who has written extensively on the ‘Genoese’ Black Sea. He built upon Bratianu’s work, especially regarding the later ‘Boom’ period; however the prejudice which has permeated Euxine historiography regarding the pre-Fall era is to be found here as well. According to Balard, Venetians were allowed throughout the Byzantine Empire, “sauf files égéennes et la mer Noire, qui restent
monopole byzantin.”°’ Elsewhere, in a similar vein, he stated that “jusqu’en 1204, l’empire byzantine s’est reservé les ressources agricoles des régions pontiques pour le revitaillement exclusif de Constantinople”, and cites Bratianu for this claim.°® This is a notable refinement — the Black Sea no longer is just Byzantine, but specifically supplies Constantinople. Such a claim is dubious — one of the few (but most well-known) sources which discusses Black Sea agriculture explicitly describes the export of Pontic grain to the (Byzantine) Crimea, not Constantinople, as we shall see. Nonetheless, Balard’s assertion went unchallenged.
Elsewhere, it must be admitted, Balard gave the possibility of an open Euxine more thorough attention; however, even here it took only the form of an extended footnote, reaching the same conclusion as Bratianu: “Deux arguents vont a l’encontre de cette derniére interpretation [of an open Black Sea]: on ne trouve aucune trace de la presence de marchands génois en la mer Noire avant la IV° Croisade... Il nous parait donc que, soucieux de réserver aux Grecs le monopole des sources d’approvisionnement de la capitale, le basileus a délibérément écarté les Occidentaux du commerce pontique.
A parallel study, on Venetian rather than Genoese maritime enterprise, was written by Freddy Thieret, was equally dismissive of pre-Fall Black Sea prospects. In his 1959 work La Romanie Vénitienne au Moyen Age, Thiriet asserted that the Venetian grant of privileges in 1082 included the specific restriction that “ils ne peuvent accéder ni aux iles (sauf Chio) ni dans la mer Noire”. This exclusion he bases on the basis that they are not positively mentioned in the text, a theory which Jacoby has
demonstrated to be inaccurate.* Thiriet does concede the possibility that, from 1198, the Venetians may have had access to (but not necessarily traded in) “Zagora”, a somewhat vague region which would have included areas on the Euxine coast of Thrace, but that is as far as he is willing to allow for Venetian access into the Euxine before the Fall of Constantinople in 1204.® Like Balard and Bratianu before him, Thiriet’s interpretation of the Black Sea was a closed one. However, not all historians gave the 11°" and 12" century Black Sea such short shrift. Ralph-Johannes Lilie noted that the early period of Italian-Byzantine commercial relations were under-studied:
The numerous essays by Borsari, mainly on the relations between Venice and Byzantium, have remained virtually unknown. The recent monograph by Balard on the Romanie Génoise is for the 12th century only brief and general, in places even false, while in Bach's works on Genoa and in Abulafia’s on the commercial relations between northern and southern Italy in the same time-period, the sections concerning Byzantium are too short and inaccurate. A positive exception is Hendy alone, whose hypotheses are partly speculative - understandably because of the shortness of this otherwise excellent publication.
Lilie, too, came to the conclusion that “das Schwarze Meer, ebenso wie die See von Asow, nicht nur den Venezianern, sondern hdchstwahrscheinlich auch den Genuesen und Pisanern verschlossen gewesen ist”.® However, he admitted that this was largely an argumentum e silentio.
Thus, while the early Black Sea was obtaining some more attention among academics, time and again, the conclusion was reached that the Black Sea was closed to the Mediterranean economy and merchants; select goods could only be obtained through reshipment from Constantinople alone, where they had been brought for or by Byzantine merchants. This was the result of what David Jacoby would later describe as “the skewed Eurocentric interpretation of sparse documentation.” Perhaps the most notable opposition to this nigh-unanimous conclusion was that of M. E. Martin. His works are few; in 1979 he published an article entitled ‘The First Venetians in the Black Sea’, drawing on unusual sources, to argue for the presence — small, but historically significant — of Venetian merchants in the Black Sea prior to the Fourth Crusade.°” However, he later revisited the topic, in a tone evocative of a forced recantation:
Until the Fourth Crusade the Black Sea was frequented only by Greek, Arab and Russian merchants: no sail of the Italian states, of Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa, Ancona or Venice was descried upon its waters, although the first two had property in Constantinople and vessels from the others were occasional, if irregular, visitors to the great city. For it is almost universally held that before the Fourth Crusade in 1204 turned Constantinople into the capital of a Latin, Western, Empire, the Black Sea was closed to Italian merchants. Ten years ago your present speaker raised a solitary challenge to this position and sought to show that the Venetian shipping was free to enter the Pontus and probably did so from the 1170s. In general his arguments have met with indignant dismissal or more sorrowful reproach. What can be said without doubt is that access to the Black Sea was not a matter of urgent importance.®
One could infer political, rather than academic, motives from the fact that Martin pronounces this conclusion not based on evidence, but rather “for it is almost universally held” to be so. In any event, he felt the opposition to his position was so strong, that he must renounce his position. However, there nonetheless is included an important detail in Martin’s rueful obeisance to the traditional historiographical view — the mention of “Greek, Arab or Russian merchants”. Until now, study of the Black Sea had been examined primarily through an Italian lens — how the Black Sea related to the burgeoning commercial enterprises of Venice and Genoa. The pre-Fall period was studied with an eye to the Black Sea’s later commercial domination by these Italian Republics. This is why such ink as had been spilled, was concerned with the openness of the Black Sea, particularly to Italian merchants, and its connections with the Mediterranean proper. Little attention had been given to those dwelling on or around the sea themselves.
In part this bias is due to the limitations of the surviving literary evidence. As the vast majority of Euxine nations were largely if not wholly illiterate, the body of source material is weighted in favour of Byzantium and the Latin West, both of whom left substantial written records.®? The Byzantine empire has a substantial literary legacy — chronicles, letters, edicts, poems, dialogues, military manuals, religious texts, even a compendium on equine vetinary knowledge.’° However, what is largely lacking in Byzantine sources is discussion of trade, especially the mundane daily activities; however, in the sources of the Italian merchant-republics, contracts and notarial documents are easily available, becoming more abundant throughout the High and Late Middle Ages. Such plentiful source material naturally draws the historian, especially the economic historian, of the Black Sea to Italian archives, and in parallel, leads Italian historians to consider the Black Sea within their reseaches.
This can be seen in the diverse and exceedingly detailed work of the late David Jacoby (1928-2018), whose studies of the maritime economy around Constantinople touched on a wide range of topics, although nonetheless primarily (it would be fair to say) focussed on the Italians. ”* Similarly, the notable recent contribution of Evgeny Khvalkov, which is focussed on the later, Italian, Black Sea, but nonetheless provides substantial coverage, both historical and historiographical, of earlier periods in order to properly examine the “evolution and transformation” with which he is concerned.”
There have, however, been attempts to compensate for this bias. A hefty counterbalance has been provided by Jonathan Shepard, whose work on the Kievan Rus’ often led him further south to deal with their activities on the Black Sea itself.’ In addition, there have been attempts at broader studies of the Black Sea beyond its relationship with individual nations, but as a region in its own right. One of the most interesting of these Maximillian Lau’s provocative essay, ‘Multilateral Cooperation in the Black Sea’, arguing for a peri-Euxine pact of Christian nations.’”* Broader studies have also been attempted, such as Charles King’s simply-titled and engagingly-written The Black Sea: A Histor However, studies remain absent on the relationship of the Black Sea with the nomadic Qipjaqs, or the Golden-Era kingdom of Georgia.
An additional front of research, which, whilst not strictly focussed on the Black Sea, is certainly relevant to this thesis, is the environmental history of the Eastern Mediterranean and surrounding regions. Focussed on the history of the region’s climate, discussion focusses around the hypothesis of an Eastern Mediterranean ‘Collapse’ around the turn of the first millennium. Drawing on both traditional historical sources, such as chronicles and other written sources, as well as the ‘Archives of Nature’, which include analysis of tree-rings, preserved pollen, and mineral deposits, this research is exceptionally interdisciplinary. The scholar at the forefront was Ronnie Ellenblum (1952-2021), whose work The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean brought the hypothesis to wider attention.’° In more recent years, John Haldon has examined Ellenblum’s hypothesis with regard specifically to the Byzantine situation.’” Whilst Ellenblum’s thesis has taken some criticism in the past decade, the matter is certainly not settled yet, and academic discussions on the role of climate in the events of the High Medieval Eastern Mediterranean remain ongoing.
These studies — Jacoby, Shepard, Lau, Khvalkov — remain the forefront of Euxine research. Analysis of the Black Sea and its peoples remains limited, especially beyond the Byzantine world. Georgian, Qipjaq and Seljuq connections with the Sea are especially understudied. However, historiographical trends suggest that this may not be such a pronounced issue in the future; and indeed, this thesis intends to go some way towards rectifying this problem
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