Download PDF | Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian Peninsula, 900-1500, by Constable, Olivia Remie, Cambridge University Press 1994.
347 Pages
This volume surveys Iberian international trade from the tenth to the fifteenth century, with particular emphasis on commerce in the Muslim period and on changes brought by the Christian conquest of much of Muslim Spain (alAndalus) in the thirteenth century. From the tenth to the thirteenth century, markets in the Iberian peninsula were closely linked to markets elsewhere in the Islamic world, and a strong east-west Mediterranean trading network linked Cairo with Cordoba. Following routes along the North African coa,st, Muslim and Jewish merchants carried eastern goods to Muslim Spain, returning eastwards with Andalusi exports. Situated at the edge of the Islamic west, Andalusi markets were also emporia for the transfer of commodities between the Islamic world and Christian Europe. After the thirteenth century the Iberian peninsula became part of the European economic sphere, its commercial realignment aided by the opening of the Straits of Gibraltar to Christian trade, and by the contemporary demise of the Muslim trading network in the Mediterranean.
Prejace Legal materials present a different array of complications, particularly since books of Islamic law, handbooks of formulae for writing contracts (wathii'iq), and manuals for the instruction and guidance of market inspectors (hisba books) tend to be prescriptive. Nevertheless, they contain many valuable details relating to commercial practice. Collections of juridical rulings {fatwas) addressed specific legal queries, with the answer attributed to a particular legal scholar (thus indicating the period and place of delivery). Many fatwas appear to record real commercial situations and merchant disputes. Biographical dictionaries describing the lives and travels of Muslim scholars are also of service because they mention scholars who were also merchants. These merchant-scholars may not be representative of all Muslim merchants, but they are virtually the only Muslim traders for whom we have any personal information. The Judeo-Arabic documents in the Cairo Geniza collection have been among the most important sources for this study.
This cache of materials, including thousands of medieval letters and other papers, were preserved in a sealed room of a synagogue in Old Cairo where they were discovered in the late nineteenth century. Written in Arabic, but using Hebrew characters, many Geniza letters pertain to the affairs of Jewish merchants trading to and from Egypt during the eleventh and twelth centuries. Over two hundred of them contain references to Andalusis, Andalusi goods, and travel to Andalusi ports. The Geniza also includes Hebrew responsa and Jewish court records that show Andalusi Jewish merchants and their partners involved in suits which parallel those detailed in Muslimfatwas. Although there is some question as to the degree to which Geniza materials represent general trading patterns in the contemporary Mediterranean, or merely Jewish trading patterns, at the very least they provide data on the movement of Jewish traders and their goods to and from Andalusi ports.
I have had access to Geniza materials not only through published editions and translations, but also through the unpublished notes, transcriptions, photographs, and microfilms donated to Princeton University by the late S.D. Goitein, whose pioneering work demonstrated the value of this source. Latin and vernacular documents fill in the picture of Andalusi commercial contact with Christian Spain and other areas of Europe. Town charters {fueros) from Castile, Aragon, and Portugal often include tariff schedules, demonstrating the kinds of goods (Andalusi and otherwise) that were traded in northern markets. Similar lists of commercial tolls are available from Italian and Provern;al cities, and later from ports in northern Europe. Notarial registers are also of value, since they record contracts for merchant voyages to Iberian ports or sales of Andalusi commodities.
The earliest surviving registers, dating back to the I 1 50s, are preserved in the Archivio di Stato in Genoa, and later contracts are available in Marseilles, Savona, Vich, and other cities. Christian chronicles, legal and royal decrees, diplomatic materials, records of ecclesiastical donations, and secular literature also provide data on Andalusi commercial activity. Physical evidence from the fields of archeology, art history, and numismatics also yields clues about Andalusi international commerce and economic contacts. For example, the Pisan bacini (ceramic dishes or fragments used in architectural decoration) demonstrate the diffusion of Andalusi and Christian Spanish ceramics to Italy from the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. The nature of their material strongly suggests that these items arrived in Italy through commerce. In contrast, the wide diffusion of Andalusi coinage may result from economic and commercial contact or from some other means of transfer. It is difficult to evaluate and use these disparate pieces of information. On the one hand, it can be argued that the relative scarcity of data relating to Andalusi trade indicates that commercial exchange was neither important nor widespread. I believe otherwise. Although it is impossible to quantify precisely the numbers of merchants, size and value of cargoes, or frequency of commercial voyages in any given year, there is much to be gained from looking at a variety of documentation. Even a few references to trade, if scattered, are likely to reflect a larger reality.
There is little source material attesting to trade between Muslim Spain (al-Andalus) and Pisa, for instance, yet its existence is proved in the diverse bits of information that survive. There is a Pisan tariff schedule from the second half of the twelth century noting levies on vessels arriving from Andalusi ports, and there are contemporary diplomatic documents drawn up between Almohad rulers and Pisa that refer to commercial matters. Chronicles likewise note Pisan maritime expeditions in Andalusi waters, while the Pisan bacini mutely testify to the transfer of ceramics between Spain and Italy. No notarial contracts survive to record Pisan mercantile expeditions to Andalusi ports, but here we may extrapolate from the Genoese notarial data. Since Genoa and Pisa had similar commercial aspirations (creating competition between the two cities) and because Genoese records parallel those cited above for Pisa, it is probable that Pisan merchants formed partnerships and made voyages very like those shown in the Genoese contracts. By examining the network of commercial routes to and from Iberian ports, the different types of merchants, and the variety of commodities exported from the peninsula, it is possible to reconstruct the quality of international trade, even without being able to quantify the volume of trade in any given period. Nevertheless, the patch-work of data does allow an educated guess as to changes in volume of trade between periods. Although lack of evidence does not necessarily prove that something did not exist, a sharp decrease or sudden increase in material may well signal a real change. This is particularly true in cases where there is external evidence supporting an observed variation in data.
The scarcity of Geniza records after the middle of the twelth century, for example, gives the impression of a decline in Jewish activity in Andalusi trade. It would be difficult to accept this evidence alone as indicative of a real phenomenon without the accounts of contemporary persecution of Jews in alAndalus and the concurrent appearance of Italian merchants in Andalusi trade. Likewise, when sources documenting Andalusi trade with Muslim ports decline in the second half of the thirteenth century, this probably reflects a true shift in trade because at the same period quantities of data suddenly appear showing traffic between the Iberian peninsula and Europe. This book is concerned primarily with international trade, not with the internal Andalusi economy. To some extent, the distinction between international commerce and internal economy is artificial, since the former was an extension of the latter and dependent in many respects on local markets and regional production. International commerce is set apart by the fact that it formed its own profession, however, and the merchants who handled this trade specialized in buying and selling goods over long distances rather than at the local level. International trade may thus be considered independently as an instrument of contact between the internal Andalusi economy and the wider EuropeanMediterranean sphere. The terms long distance, international, and cross cultural, all carry their own particular connotations and associations. For the purposes of this study, long-distance trade is the most general term since it applies to virtually all of the commercial activity under consideration whether between Iberian cities only a few days journey apart or between al-Andalus and the Near East.
International trade is used for external Andalusi commerce with both Europe and other regions of the Islamic world (diir alIsliim). Because medieval frontiers were not perceived in the same way as modern national borders, the term international here applies not only to trade between regions under different political regimes, such as two kingdoms within the peninsula, but also to trade between traditional geographical regions such as the Iberian peninsula, North Africa, Egypt, and Europe. Cross cultural, on the other hand, is used for trade across a multiple frontier of language, religion, cultural heritage, and ethnicity.1 Andalusi trade was cross cultural when it involved traffic with northern Spain, Europe, or Byzantium. In contrast, trade with other areas of the Islamic world was often long distance and international without being cross cultural.
The diversity of the Iberian peninsula, with its heritage of multiple religions, cultures, and languages, poses terminological difficulties. These begin with the name Spain itself, which is used here for reasons of simplicity and convenience to mean the entire Iberian peninsula, unless modified as Christian or Muslim (or Islamic). The preferable term for Muslim Spain, however, is the Arabic alAndalus. Al-Andalus is used in contrast to Andalusia (southern Castile in the later middle ages), and Andalusi (pertaining to alAndalus) in contrast to Andalusian (pertaining to Andalusia). A number of conventional geographical designations (Europe, the Near East, the Mediterranean world, and the Muslim world) are used, even though their borders are vague or variable. Wherever possible, however, I have favored more specific designations, such as Castile, Aragon, Portugal, or Granada.
Other terms also present difficulties, particularly when religious, ethnic, or linguistic designations are stretched to apply to political or geographical entities. The Muslim world, for example, encompasses all regions under the administration of Muslim rulers, although Christians and Jews lived within its borders. Similarly, Muslim trade generally means trade carried out by Muslims as opposed to trade in the Muslim world (which had many participants). Arab trade likewise means commerce among Arabs, whereas Arabic trade is conducted in Arabic (thus including many non-Arabs and non-Muslims). Analogous problems may arise with the terms Christian and Latin. It is almost impossible to be entirely consistent in the use of place names and personal names, but where an English form exists I have almost always chosen to use it. Thus, I prefer Castile over Castilla; Old Cairo or Fustat over Fustat; Almeria over both Almeria and al-Mariyya. Despite this general rule, some names are used in their original language for the sake either of specificity or variety. Most personal names have likewise been anglicized where there is a common equivalent.
Iberian monarchs have become James (thus avoiding the confusions of Jaime/Jaume), Peter, and Ferdinand, but Alfonso retains its Castilian spelling. Latin first names have also generally - but not invariably - been rendered in English. Names in Arabic and Hebrew present a slightly different problem, and most have retained their original spellings following the system of transliteration laid out in the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Thus, I use Mul?.ammad (rather than Mohammed), 'Ali, and so forth. Names like Ibrahim, Yusuf, or Ya'qiib are given in their Arabic forms, whether they belonged to Muslims or Jews, if references come from Arabic or Judeo-Arabic texts. A few eccentricities persist, nonetheless, as with such well-known names as Moses b. Maimon (or Maimonides) or Benjamin of Tudela. Where a nisba (that part of an Arabic name that denotes a person's place of origin, such as Andalusi, Baghdadi, etc.) is used, it is written without the final long i (thus, Andalusi and Baghdadi) unless the full name is given. Except for the place names al-Andalus and al-Mahdiyya, the initial al- (the definite article) has been dropped, so that al-Idrisi becomes merely Idrisi, al-Maqqari becomes Maqqari, al-Razi becomes Razi, and so forth. The definite article has been retained however, but not elided, when it appears in the middle of aname (i.e., 'Abd al-Ral).man, not 'Abd ar-Ral).man).
The use, or abuse, of the definite article presents a special problem in the context of names such as Almoravid (from al-Murabit) and Almohad (al-Muwahid) in which the Arabic definite article has been incorporated into the English form of the name. Technically, it is redundant to refer to the Almoravids or the Almohads, but it usually sounds odd to use these names in English without the article. Likewise, there is the nicety that, in Arabic, a term such as dar al-Islam or Sharq al-Andalus (eastern al-Andalus) should not be preceded by the definite article because this is already implied. Again, for the sake of English grammar, I write of the dar al-Islam and the Sharq al-Andalus. In the interests of familiarity, I have as a rule favored the Christian system of dating, but in a few cases a Muslim date is also given to reflect a citation from an Arabic text.
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