The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean
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During the long minority of James I, absent in his mother’s city of Montpellier, the great Catalan lords squabbled among themselves; even so, royal rights were not fatally undermined, for James’s supporters included grandees such as the count of Roussillon, who saw that the defence of royal authority would bolster his own position. By the 1220s the young king was keen to establish his credentials as a crusading hero. He revived long-standing schemes for the conquest of Muslim Majorca, briefly held by his ancestor Ramon Berenguer III in 1114, thanks to Pisan naval support. On this occasion, though, he proposed to attack Majorca using a fleet composed of his own subjects’ ships. Indeed, the Genoese and Pisans were firmly ensconced in Majorca, where they had trading stations, so they were unsympathetic to James’s ambitions.8 The king began by consulting his subjects at a great banquet in Tarragona, offered to him by a prominent shipowner, Pere Martell, who acclaimed the enterprise as a just and profitable one:
So please you, we hold it right that you conquer that island for two reasons: the first, that you and we will thereby increase in power; the other, that those who hear of the conquest will think it a marvel that you can take land and a kingdom in the sea where God pleased to put it.9
From that moment, it was clear that the interests of the king and the merchants coincided.
As well as Catalan ships, James could call on the resources of Marseilles, for the counts of Provence were members of a cadet branch of the house of Barcelona. In May 1229 he gathered together 150 large ships, besides a great many smaller ones. James asserted that ‘all the sea seemed white with sails, so large a fleet was it’.10 After a troublesome crossing the Catalans and their allies landed, and by the end of the year they had captured the capital city, Madina Mayurqa (known to the Catalans as Ciutat de Mallorca, the modern Palma). The Catalan cities, as well as Marseilles and Montpellier, were rewarded for their help by the award of urban properties and lands outside the city walls. Aware of Genoese and Pisan sensitivities, the king bestowed trading privileges on the Italian merchants in Majorca, even though they had opposed his great enterprise. These acts laid the foundation for the commercial expansion of Ciutat de Mallorca. However, it took many more months to quell the rest of the island. In 1231 James scared Minorca into surrender by a bluff: he gathered his troops in eastern Majorca, within sight of Minorca, and at nightfall each soldier was given two torches, so that when the Muslims of Minorca saw the flares in the distance they were convinced a massive army was ready to descend on them, and sent a message of submission. They paid an annual tribute in return for a guarantee of the right to govern themselves and to practise Islam.11 Ibiza was captured in 1235 by a private expedition sanctioned by the king but organized by the archbishop of Tarragona.
As the conquest of Ibiza suggests, James took little direct interest in the affairs of these islands. He happily placed the government of Majorca in the hands of an Iberian prince, Pedro of Portugal, in exchange for strategically valuable territories in the Pyrenees to which Pedro had a claim. James was still looking landward more than seaward. Yet the result of his Majorcan campaign was that the Balearic islands had suddenly become a forward position for Christian navies, and James celebrated his victory by recording his deeds in an autobiography, the first such work to survive from the hand of a medieval king. It was written in Catalan, a language merchants and conquerors now carried across the sea and down the coast of Spain to Majorca, and then, when James conquered Valencia in 1238, into yet another new Christian dominion. At the end of his life, with two surviving sons, he thought it right to reward the elder one, Peter, with Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, but created an enlarged kingdom of Majorca for his younger son, James. This new kingdom, which lasted from 1276 to 1343, included valuable lands James held on the French side of the Pyrenees: Roussillon, Cerdagne and Montpellier, an important centre of trade linking the Mediterranean to northern France. Intentionally or otherwise, he had created a kingdom that would live from the sea.
One problem with his conquests was what to do with the Muslim population. James saw the Muslims as an economic asset. In Majorca many remained on the land, subject to Christian overlords. The Muslim community slowly seeped away, some emigrating, others converting. This did not leave the land empty: Christians migrated across the sea, whether from Catalonia or Provence, and the character of the island population changed quickly, so that by 1300 the Muslims were a beleaguered minority.12 In Valencia, on the other hand, the king tried to present himself as a Christian king over a Muslim kingdom: although the core of Valencia City was depopulated of Muslims, a flourishing Muslim suburb developed, and across the old Muslim kingdom of Valencia Muslim communities were guaranteed the right to practise their laws and religion, and even (as also happened in Minorca) to ban Christians and Jews from settling in their small towns and villages. These were important centres of production, often specializing in those crops and crafts that the Arabs had brought westwards in the early days of the Islamic conquests: ceramics, grain (including rice), dried fruits and fine cloths were all available, and brought the king and noble landlords valuable income through taxes on trade, overland or across the Mediterranean.13 The surrender agreements that were offered to the Muslims sometimes barely indicated that they had been defeated; they read almost like treaties between equals.14 But that seemed a good way to secure stability, at least until the Valencian Muslims rebelled, and tougher conditions were imposed in the 1260s. Royal tolerance was real, but conditional and fragile.
James saw special potential in the Jews, even though the large Jewish community in Barcelona was not greatly interested in maritime trade (or, contrary to facile stereotypes, in moneylending).15 He invited Jews from Catalonia, Provence and North Africa to settle in Majorca. He had his eye on one particular Jew from Sijilmasa, the town on the northern edge of the Sahara where many of the caravans bringing gold from the bend of the Niger arrived. This was Solomon ben Ammar, who was active in trade and finance around 1240, and acquired property in Ciutat de Mallorca. Such a figure could penetrate with ease into the markets of North Africa, making Majorca into a bridge between Catalonia and the Islamic Mediterranean. Like many of the Jews in Spain itself, he had the advantage of fluency in Arabic. It is no coincidence, then, that in the next century Jews and converts from Judaism based in Majorca set up cartographic studios that exploited exact geographical knowledge from both Muslim and Christian sources, and produced the famous portolan charts that still astonish with their fine detail as they trace the coastlines of the Mediterranean and the seas beyond.16
Within Spain, the encounter between the three Abrahamic faiths took on various guises. In Toledo, deep within Castile, King Alfonso X sponsored translations of Arabic texts (including Greek works put into Arabic), using Jewish intermediaries. By the shores of the Mediterranean such activities were more limited. The uppermost questions in the mind of James I of Aragon were a practical one: how to maintain control over a potentially restive Muslim population in Valencia and other lands he ruled; and a religious one: whether and how to offer his Jewish and Muslim subjects the opportunity to convert to Christianity. Since he benefited enormously from special taxes imposed on these communities he faced the same dilemma as the early Muslim conquerors of the southern Mediterranean littoral: too many conversions would erode his tax base. So, when he insisted that his Jewish subjects must attend synagogue to listen to sermons delivered by missionary friars, he was secretly glad that they preferred to pay him a special tax so that they would be exempted from this demand. Still, he made a public show of supporting the friars. Ramon de Penyafort, General of the Dominican Order, gave high priority to missions among the Catalan Jews and to the Muslims of North Africa. One of his achievements was the creation of language schools where missionaries could learn Arabic and Hebrew to the very highest standard and study the Talmud and the hadith, so they could argue with rabbis and imams on their adversaries’ terms.17 In 1263, King James acted as host to a public disputation in Barcelona, where
the eminent rabbi Nahmanides, from Girona, and Paul the Christian, a convert from Judaism, argued furiously over whether the Messiah had come; each side claimed victory, but Nahmanides knew that he was now a marked man and would have to leave Catalonia. Fleeing to Acre, he lost his seal-ring on the beach. It has now been found and is displayed in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.18
Something of the quality of day-to-day encounters between people of different faiths can be gathered from a report of a second, more modest, disputation between a Jew and a prominent Genoese merchant, Ingheto Contardo, that took place in the Genoese warehouse in Majorca in 1286. A local rabbi used to come to the Genoese loggia to spar with his Genoese acquaintance. Contardo treated the rabbi not as an enemy but as a friend in need of enlightenment and salvation. He said that if he found a Jew freezing in the cold, he would happily take down a wooden cross, smash it into fragments and burn it to provide warmth.19 The Jew taunted Contardo with the question: why, if the Messiah has come, is the world at war, and why are you Genoese fighting the Pisans so bitterly? These years of bitter conflict also provide a setting in which to try to understand the career of a charismatic kabbalist who travelled back and forth across the Mediterranean and who knew something about Christian and Muslim mysticism: Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia, born in Saragossa in the Hebrew year 5000 (1239–40).20 Abulafia was preoccupied by the coming of the End of Days – the theme of a Messiah who would declare himself in the presence of the pope had been mentioned in the Barcelona disputation of 1263.21 He travelled the Mediterranean from end to end. Setting out from southern Italy, he attempted to penetrate beyond Acre in 1260, but his way through the Holy Land to the legendary river Sambatyon where dwelled the Twelve Lost Tribes of Israel was barred by fighting between Franks, Muslims and Mongols. Abulafia returned to Barcelona, but restlessly set out again in the 1270s, teaching his doctrines at Patras and Thebes in Greece, arousing the ire of the Jews of Trani in southern Italy, and heading for the papal court where he planned to reveal his Messianic mission, writing visionary books all the while. In his writings he developed a distinctive, ecstatic kabbalistic system, characterized by his belief that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet could be used, in elaborate combinations, to provide a spiritual pathway to God. He was convinced he could show how the soul, immersed in contemplation of God, would leave its material presence and witness God’s ineffable glory. Fortunately for him, the pope died a few days before his proposed audience, and (after a month in prison, where he succeeded only in puzzling his Franciscan captors) he headed back to southern Italy and Sicily, surrounded by his devoted followers; his last appearance was on the island of Comino, between Malta and Gozo, in 1291, a violent time to be living in those waters.
Abulafia’s career illustrates how radical religious ideas were spread by travel across the Mediterranean, sometimes by the innovator himself, sometimes by his followers. His career also shows how, among mystics, ideas of how to approach God were shared and exchanged between adherents of all the revealed religions. One prolific Catalan author and missionary, Ramon Llull (1232–1316), attempted to harness together the common beliefs of Jews, Christians and Muslims, his own mystical theories, and Trinitarian theology, and produced a system or ‘Art’ that he carried across the Mediterranean on travels as ambitious as those of Abraham Abulafia. Llull hailed from the Majorcan branch of a respectable Barcelona family; in the new society of Majorca he prospered as a royal courtier but, he insisted, he led a life of sin and debauchery; a mystical experience on Mount Randa in Majorca in 1274 convinced him that he must turn his talents to the conversion of unbelievers.22 He attempted to learn Arabic and Hebrew, and established a language school for missionaries at Miramar in the Majorcan mountains. He composed hundreds of books and visited North Africa several times (only to be expelled for denouncing the Prophet), but there is no evidence he ever converted anyone. Perhaps his ‘Art’ was too complicated for anyone but a small coterie of followers. One way of explaining the ‘Art’ is to see it as an attempt to categorize everything that exists and to understand the relationship between each of the categories. Thus he defined nine ‘absolutes’ (though the number varied in his works), including Goodness, Greatness, Power and Wisdom, and nine ‘relatives’, such as Beginning, Middle and End. The profusion of codes, diagrams and symbols makes some of his books impenetrable at first sight, though he also wrote novellas on the theme of conversion aimed at a more popular audience.23
Llull was unusual among Christian missionaries in insisting that Jews, Christians and Muslims worshipped the same God, and he set his face against the growing trend to see in the rivals of Christianity adherents of Satan. In his Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men he offered a generally fair and well-informed account of the beliefs of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and allowed a Jewish interlocutor to set out the proofs for the existence of God. His book argued that ‘just as we have One God, One creator, One Lord, we should also have one faith, one religion, one sect, one manner of loving and honouring God, and we should love and help one another’.24 He attempted to put into practice what he preached. He wrote a short handbook for merchants visiting Alexandria and other Muslim lands, setting out how they should engage in discussion with the inhabitants about the relative merits of Christianity and Islam. But they were much more interested in engaging in discussion about pepper prices; they knew, too, that any criticism of Islam could lead to arrest and deportation or even execution. Llull’s first attempt to cross from Genoa to Africa in 1293 failed because even he lost courage. He had already loaded his books and other effects on the ship when he was paralysed by fear and refused to sail, scandalizing those he had been impressing with his fine words. Soon after, though, he did set out for Tunis, and there he announced to the Muslims that he was ready to convert to their faith if they could convince him of its truth – a ploy to draw them into debate. His verbal battles brought him to the sultan’s attention, and he was placed on board a Genoese ship and sternly ordered never to return, under penalty of death. Such threats to missionaries often made them dream of martyrdom.25 After carrying his teachings to Naples and Cyprus he returned to North Africa in 1307, this time to Bougie, standing up in the marketplace to denounce Islam. When he was arrested he told the authorities: ‘the true servant of Christ who has experienced the truth of the Catholic faith should not fear the danger of physical death when he can gain the grace of spiritual life for the souls of unbelievers’. Ramon Llull had, however, charmed the Genoese and Catalan merchants, who possessed some influence at court and ensured that he was not executed. He returned to Tunis in 1314, at a time when the sultan was playing a time-honoured game: to strengthen his hand against his rivals he sought the support of the Catalans, and let whispers circulate that he was interested in converting to Christianity. Llull was therefore welcome, at last, but he was an old man, and he probably died on board a ship returning to Majorca in spring 1316.26
The sultan was more interested in mercenaries than in missionaries. Catalan militias helped sustain the rulers of the Maghrib, but the kings of Aragon valued their presence too: they provided a guarantee that the North African sultans would not become sucked into the bitter rivalries that, as will be seen, convulsed the Christian monarchies of the western Mediterranean in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Some mercenaries, such as Henry, prince of Castile, were adventurers who had failed to secure lands in Europe.27 They were not a new phenomenon. In the late eleventh century Pope Gregory VII had written appeasing letters to North African emirs, in the hope of providing for the religious needs of Christian soldiers in Muslim armies. In Spain, Christians joined Muslim armies and Muslims joined Christian ones. By 1300, however, the mercenaries formed part of a wider strategy that made areas of North Africa into virtual protectorates of Aragon-Catalonia.
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Another area of Catalan expertise was sailing the sea. By the end of the thirteenth century Catalan ships had a good reputation for safety and reliability; if a merchant was in search
of a ship in, say, Palermo on which to load his goods, he knew he would do well to choose a Catalan vessel, such as the substantial Sanctus Franciscus, owned by Mateu Oliverdar, which was there during 1298.28 Whereas the Genoese liked to divide up the ownership of their boats, the Catalans often owned a large ship outright. They rented out space to Tuscan wheat merchants or slave dealers, and sought out rich merchants who might be willing to lease all or part of the ship.29 The shipowners and merchants of Barcelona and Majorca inveigled themselves into the places where the Italians had long been dominant. In the 1270s, the middle-class widow Maria de Malla, from Barcelona, was trading with Constantinople and the Aegean, sending out her sons to bring back mastic (much valued as chewing-gum); she exported fine cloths to the East, including linens from Châlons in northern France. The great speciality of the de Malla family was the trade in furs, including those of wolves and foxes.30 The Catalans were granted the right to establish fonduks governed by their own consuls in Tunis, Bougie and other North African towns. There were big profits to be made from the overseas consulates. James I was outraged when he discovered in 1259 how low was the rent paid to him by the Catalan consul in Tunis. He promptly tripled it.31 Another focus of Catalan penetration was Alexandria; in the 1290s the de Mallas were seeking linseed and pepper there. In the fourteenth century, King James II of Aragon tried to persuade the sultan of Egypt to grant him protective authority over some of the Christian holy places in Palestine, and the sultan promised him relics of Christ’s Passion if he would send ‘large ships containing plenty of goods’.32 The papacy, with the outward support of the king of Aragon, attempted to ban the lively trade of the Catalans and Italians in Egypt; those who traded with the Muslim enemy were to be excommunicated. But the king ensured that two Catalan abbots were to hand who could absolve merchants trading with Egypt, subject to payment of a swingeing fine. These fines developed into a tax on trade, and produced handsome revenues: in 1302 fines on trade with Alexandria accounted for nearly half the king’s recorded revenues from Catalonia. Far from suppressing the trade, the Aragonese kings became complicit in it.33