Download PDF | Thomas Sinclair - Eastern Trade and the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages_ Pegolotti’s Ayas-Tabriz Itinerary and its Commercial Context_ 25 (Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies)-Routledge (2019).
453 Pages
At the end of the High Middle Ages in Europe, with buying power and economic sophistication at a high, an itinerary detailing the toll stations along a commercial artery carrying eastern goods (from China, India and Iran) towards Europe was compiled, and later incorporated in the well-known trading manual of the Florentine bank official Pegolotti; Pegolotti was twice stationed in the city of Famagusta in Cyprus, which lay opposite the city of Ayas where the land route ended. The Il-Khanid capital, Tabriz in Iran, attracting expensive merchandise such as spices and silk from a variety of origins, was the road’s starting-point.
To demonstrate the importance of the route in its own time, parallel and contemporary routes in the Black Sea and the Levant are traced and the effect of trade on their cities noted. To compare the Ayas itinerary (1250s–1330s) with previous periods, the networks of commercial avenues in the previous period (1100–1250) and the subsequent one (1340s–1500) are reconstructed. In each period, the connection of east–west trade with the main movements of the European economy is fully drawn out, and the effects on the building history of the three main Italian cities concerned (Venice, Genoa and Florence) are sketched. Attention then turns to the Pegolotti itinerary itself. The individual toll stations are identified employing a variety of means, such as names taken from the Roman itineraries (Peutinger Table and Antonine Itinerary) and archaeological data; this allows the course of the track to be followed through diverse topography to the city of Sivas, then across plains and through passes to Erzurum and finally to Tabriz. A picture is drawn of the urban history of each major city, including Sivas, Erzurum and Tabriz itself, and of the other towns along the route.
Thomas Sinclair was a professor of Turkish History at the Department of Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies in the University of Cyprus. He is the author of Eastern Turkey: An Architectural and Archaeological Survey (4 volumes, 1987–90), contributed three sheets to the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (2000) and has published numerous articles, including many in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd edition; he writes principally on economy and administration in Armenia during the late pre-Ottoman and early Ottoman periods.
Author’s preface
The preparation of this book began in the summer of 2001, when I was staying in the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul in order to work in the Başbakanlık Arşivi. In the evenings and at weekends I was able to read in the Institute’s extensive library in extraordinarily quiet conditions: the library was closed during the summer except to staff and guests staying in the Institute. Moreover at that time guests had completely free access to the book stacks. I was able to put maps, atlases and texts out on the broad, white tables and, knowing the Pegolotti itinerary and the ancient itineraries well, was able to solve most of the outstanding identification problems in both. My original intention was to write an article concerning exclusively the identification of places and roads in Pegolotti and the two ancient itineraries. I presented such an article to Anatolian Studies, whose editor was Prof. Bryer (who sadly has recently died). When it turned out that the length of the “article” was 40,000 words, it seemed that an article was more or less ruled out.
However Prof. Bryer suggested that I expand the short introduction, which covered among other things the itinerary’s commercial role, and so bring the “article” to monograph length. Independently I had concluded that descriptions of the major cities along the route (Sivas, Erzincan, etc.) and of the lesser cities (such as Akşehir/Pürk) were needed: without such descriptions a misleading impression would have been given of the cities’ relative size and of the commercial impact exerted on them by the road. Comparisons with the periods preceding and following the Ayas–Tabriz itinerary were already in the “article”, but expanding this aspect of the work necessitated the description of several additional routes and the investigation of all the routes’ complexities on an increased scale.
I then accepted that a study of trade flows requires a study of coins, a giant and unusual undertaking, even within the limits I had set myself. Chapter II, which concerns the whole commercial background to the Pegolotti itinerary, is based to a large extent on the secondary sources. It is in the chapters concerned with the course of the Pegolotti itinerary (which I still regard as the kernel of the book), in the analysis of trade flows along the Ayas–Tabriz line itself, and of course in the study of the coins, that I put in a special effort on the primary sources. With these exceptions the investigation of the international commercial element on the basis of primary sources went beyond my own interests as a student of Turkish and Armenian history, and I hope in future to collaborate with experts on the late medieval trade of Italian and other European mercantile cities. Given the long chronological scope and wide geographical reference of the present book, it was inevitable that those parts which concern the political and social history strictly of Asia Minor and Armenia should likewise be based mostly on secondary sources. This aspect, however, I hope to address in future by means of a more complete reading of the primary sources. Practicality demanded that the examination of coins here be confined to mints lying either on or near the Ayas–Tabriz line; again I hope in future to widen the investigation so as to include mints lying on competing lines of commercial movement, and to collaborate with specialists on medieval European coins.
The expansion of the book’s scope and many other factors meant that relevant secondary work came out in the meantime. I have included some of this secondary work, thus delaying the completion of my own book even further, but tried to confine myself to publications of special significance to the present book’s subject. This apart, I have tried to keep down the number of works cited, whether primary or secondary, by referring to more recent studies. Two important books on the coinage of the Seljuks of Rum, by Broome and İzmirlier, came out after I wrote the relevant sections in the present book: although I have benefited from the two works in other connections, I decided not to deploy their material here and so involve myself in a reworking of my accounts of Rum Seljuk coinage.
Of course their material would have enriched and improved the present book; among the several reasons for not including it was that the authors’ strictly typological approach would not have exerted an outstanding influence on the arguments here, which depend more on an analysis in the aggregate. The reference system in the footnotes is that of Anatolian Studies. I would not have chosen it myself, but in such a long book, once the system was in place, I did not want to rake over all the references again. Certain details of this system are inconsistent with the typesetting conventions of the main text, but no inconvenience or optical shock seems to result. I gratefully acknowledge the help of Robert Hewsen, who died only in 2018, in reading the first draft and winkling out points which were obscurely or misleadingly expressed. Jos Weitenberg, another unfortunate loss, commented on some of the phonetic arguments and suggested clearer ways of setting out my conclusions. Bob Moore gave me some suggestions as to the bibliography on the monetary history of Europe in the second half of the Middle Ages. David Jacoby, yet another loss, and again a recent one, sent several articles.
Teresa Fitzherbert led me to some work on architecture and manuscript illumination in Baghdad and elsewhere in the period after that of the Ayas–Tabriz itinerary. Rachel Goshgarian and Peter Cowe have drawn my attention to relevant passages in the colophons. Catherine DelanoSmith sent a relevant article and referred me to several others. Corradino Astengo kindly found for me in Italy two books which I was unable to find in Britain, gave me several books and suggested further bibliography. My daughter Ioanna helped me by creating in Word the two road diagrams, figures 1 and 2. I must thank the Coin Room of the British Museum and the Forschungstelle für Islamische Numismatik at the University of Tübingen for their help during many visits.
In particular I thank Lutz Ilisch, curator of the Tübingen collection until 2017, for extensive help in interpreting a sizeable number of coins and in making available relevant trays in quick succession. Here I should like to add a note of thanks to Steven Album, who in the beginning helped to form my approach to Islamic coins, and to Judy Kolbas for several conversations on Il-Khanid coins particularly. The responsibility for all parts of the book remains my own. My wife Mary and elder daughter Ioanna have been forbearing, especially during the last nine years, when we have been occupied with the care of our younger daughter Sophia. My research has been well supported by the University of Cyprus library, and particularly by a highly efficient interlibrary loan system. In the British Library I have found many rare and important books and have received much courteous help.
The library of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London has as usual been a source of many texts in Middle Eastern languages. In the London Library I have found much material on European commercial history, travel literature and literature on other subjects. The Bodleian Library has furnished several rare books. A week spent at the library of the Società Ligure Di Storia Patria in Genoa was helpful in providing at the last moment publications on Genoese trade. In other libraries I have searched, either randomly or methodically, and found relevant items, some of which I had not found elsewhere: that of Tübingen University, those of the University of California at Los Angeles and Sacramento, and the Library of Congress. The maps were prepared by Sophoklis Roussos; Philippos Ioannou in the university administration was always willing to help with prints of drafts and of base maps.
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