The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean

by David Abulafia

  22. J. Holo, Byzantine Jewry in the Mediterranean Economy (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 183–6.

  23. Abulafia, ‘Italiani fuori d’Italia’, pp. 207–10.

  24. A. Citarella, Il commercio di Amalfi nell’alto medioevo (Salerno, 1977).

  25. D. Abulafia, The Two Italies: Economic Relations between the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the Northern Communes (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 59–61.

  26. G. Imperato, Amalfi e il suo commercio (Salerno, 1980), pp. 179–235.

  27. D. Abulafia, ‘Southern Italy, Sicily and Sardinia in the medieval Mediterranean economy’, in D. Abulafia, Commerce and Conquest in the Mediterranean, 1100–1500 (Aldershot, 1993), essay i, pp. 10–14.

  28. M. del Treppo and A. Leone, Amalfi medioevale (Naples, 1977).

  29. J. Caskey, Art and Patronage in the Medieval Mediterranean: Merchant Culture in the Region of Amalfi (Cambridge, 2004).

  30. S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, vol. 1, Economic Foundations (Berkeley, CA, 1967), pp. 18–19.

  31. D. Corcos, ‘The nature of the Almohad rulers’ treatment of the Jews’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, vol. 2 (2010), pp. 259–85.

  32. Benjamin of Tudela, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, ed. M. N. Adler (London, 1907), p. 5; Abulafia, Two Italies, p. 238.

  33. D. Abulafia, ‘Asia, Africa and the trade of medieval Europe’, Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 2, Trade and Industry in the Middle Ages, ed. M. M. Postan, E. Miller and C. Postan (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1987) pp. 437–43; cf. the misconceptions in Holo, Byzantine Jewry, p. 203.

  34. H. Rabie, The Financial System of Egypt, AH 564–741/AD 1169–1341 (London and Oxford, 1972), pp. 91–2.

  35. Abulafia, ‘Asia, Africa and the trade of medieval Europe’, p. 436.

  36. C. Cahen, Makhzūmiyyāt: études sur l’histoire économique et financière de l’Égypte médiévale (Leiden, 1977).

  37. C. Cahen, Orient et occident au temps des croisades (Paris, 1983), pp. 132–3, 176.

  38. K.-H. Allmendinger, Die Beziehungen zwischen der Kommune Pisa und Ägypten im hohen Mittelalter: eine rechts- und wirtschaftshistorische Untersuchung (Wiesbaden, 1967), pp. 45–54; Cahen, Orient et occident, p. 125.

  39. Cahen, Orient et occident, p. 131.

  40. L. de Mas Latrie, Traités de paix et de commerce et documents divers concernant les relations des Chrétiens avec les arabes de l’Afrique septentrionale au Moyen ge (Paris, 1966).

  41. D. Abulafia, ‘Christian merchants in the Almohad cities’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, vol. 2 (2010), pp. 251–7; Corcos, ‘The nature of the Almohad rulers’ treatment of the Jews’, pp. 259–85.

  42. O. R. Constable, Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2003), p. 278.

  43. Abulafia, Two Italies, pp. 50–51.

  44. D. O. Hughes, ‘Urban growth and family structure in medieval Genoa’, Past and Present, no. 66 (1975), pp. 3–28.

  45. R. Heynen, Zur Entstehung des Kapitalismus in Venedig (Stuttgart, 1905); J. and F. Gies, Merchants and Moneymen: the Commercial Revolution, 1000–1500 (London, 1972), pp. 51–8.

  46. D. Jacoby, ‘Byzantine trade with Egypt from the mid-tenth century to the Fourth Crusade’, Thesaurismata, vol. 30 (2000), pp. 25–77, repr. in D. Jacoby, Commercial Exchange across the Mediterranean: Byzantium, the Crusader Levant, Egypt and Italy (Aldershot, 2005), essay i.

  47. D. Abulafia, ‘Ancona, Byzantium and the Adriatic, 1155–1173’, Papers of the British School at Rome, vol. 52 (1984), p. 208, repr. in D. Abulafia, Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, 1100–1400 (London, 1987), essay ix.

  48. Gies, Merchants and Moneymen, pp. 57–8.

  49. Abulafia, Two Italies, pp. 237–54, showing he was not a Jew; cf. E. H. Byrne, ‘Easterners in Genoa’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 38 (1918), pp. 176–87; and V. Slessarev, ‘Die sogennanten Orientalen im mittelalterlichen Genua. Einwänderer aus Südfrankreich in der ligurischen Metropole’, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, vol. 51 (1964), pp. 22–65.

  50. Abulafia, Two Italies, pp. 102–3, 240.

  51. Ibid., p. 244.

  52. Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of ibn Jubayr, trans. R. Broadhurst (London, 1952), pp. 358–9; Abulafia, Two Italies, pp. 247–51 – in the Genoese documents he appears as ‘Caitus Bulcassem’.

  5. Ways across the Sea, 1160–1185

  1. Benjamin of Tudela, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, ed. M. N. Adler (London, 1907); also The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, ed. M. Signer (Malibu, CA, 1983); references here are to the original Adler edition.

  2. J. Prawer, The History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Oxford, 1988), especially pp. 191–206.

  3. Benjamin of Tudela, Itinerary, p.

  4. Ibid., p. 2.

  5. Ibid., p. 3; cf. H. E. Mayer, Marseilles Levantehandel und ein akkonensisches Fälscheratelier des XIII. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 1972), pp. 62–5.

  6. Cf. M. Soifer, ‘ “You say that the Messiah has come …”: the Ceuta Disputation (1179) and its place in the Christian anti-Jewish polemics of the high Middle Ages’, Journal of Medieval History, vol. 31 (2005), pp. 287–307.

  7. Benjamin of Tudela, Itinerary, p. 3.

  8. Ibid., p. 9.

  9. Ibid., pp. 14–15.

  10. Ibid., pp. 17–18.

  11. Ibid., p. 76, n. 1: twenty-eight groups in one MS, forty in another.

  12. Ibid., pp. 75–6.

  13. Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of ibn Jubayr, trans. R. Broadhurst (London, 1952).

  14. Broadhurst, ibid., p. 15.

  15. Ibn Jubayr, Travels, p. 26.

  16. Ibid., p. 27.

  17. Ibid., p. 28.

  18. Roger of Howden, cited in J. Pryor, Geography, Technology, and War: Studies in the Maritime History of the Mediterranean 649–1571 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 37.

  19. Pryor, Geography, Technology, and War, pp. 16–19, and p. 17, figs. 3a–b.

  20. Ibn Jubayr, Travels, p. 29.

  21. Ibid., pp. 346–7; also J. Riley-Smith, ‘Government in Latin Syria and the commercial privileges of foreign merchants’, in Relations between East and West in the Middle Ages, ed. D. Baker (Edinburgh, 1973), p. 112.

  22. Ibn Jubayr, Travels, pp. 31–2.

  23. Ibid., pp. 32–5.

  24. Ibid., p. 316.

  25. R. C. Smail, The Crusaders in Syria and the Holy Land (Ancient Peoples and Places, London, 1973), p. 75.

  26. Ibn Jubayr, Travels, pp. 317–18.

  27. Ibid., pp. 318, 320.

  28. Usamah ibn Munqidh, Memoirs of an Arab-Syrian Gentleman or an Arab Knight in the Crusades, ed. and trans. P. Hitti (2nd edn, Beirut, 1964), p. 161.

  29. Ibn Jubayr, Travels, pp. 320–22.

  30. Ibid., pp. 325–8.

  31. Koran, 27:44.

  32. Ibn Jubayr, Travels, p. 328.

  33. Ibid., p. 329.

  34. Ibid., pp. 330–31.

  35. Ibid., p. 332.

  36. Ibid., p. 333.

  37. Ibid., p. 334; Pryor, Geography, Technology, and War, p. 36.

  38. Ibn Jubayr, Travels, pp. 336–8.

  39. Ibid., p. 339.

  40. Ibid., pp. 353, 356.

  41. Ibid., pp. 360–65.

  42. H. Krueger, Navi e proprietà navale a Genova: seconda metà del secolo XII (= Atti della Società ligure di storia patria, vol. 25, fasc. 1, Genoa, 1985).

  43. Ibid., pp. 148–9, 160–61.

  44. J. Pryor and E. Jeffreys, The Age of the : the Byzantine Navy ca 500–1204 (Leiden, 2006), pp. 423–44.

  45. Pryor, Geography, Technology, and War, p. 64; Krueger, Navi, p. 26.

  46. Krueger, Navi, pp. 24–7.

  47. Pryor, Geography, Technology, and War, pp. 29–32; R. Unger, The Ship in the Medieval Economy, 600–1600 (London, 1980), pp. 123–7.

  48. D. Abulafia, ‘Marseilles, Acre and t
he Mediterranean, 1200–1291’, in Coinage in the Latin East: the Fourth Oxford Symposium on Coinage and Monetary History, ed. P. Edbury and D. M. Metcalf (British Archaeological Reports, Oxford, 1980), pp. 20–21, repr. in D. Abulafia, Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, 1100–1400 (London, 1987), essay x.

  49. Unger, Ship in the Medieval Economy, p. 126.

  6. The Fall and Rise of Empires, 1130–1260

  1. Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of ibn Jubayr, trans. R. Broadhurst (London, 1952), p. 338; D. Abulafia, The Two Italies: Economic Relations between the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the Northern Communes (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 116–19.

  2. D. Abulafia, ‘The Crown and the economy under Roger II and his successors’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, vol. 37 (1981), p. 12; repr. in D. Abulafia, Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, 1100–1400 (London, 1987), essay i.

  3. H. Wieruszowski, ‘Roger of Sicily, Rex-Tyrannus, in twelfth-century political thought’, Speculum, vol. 38 (1963), pp. 46–78, repr. in H. Wieruszowski, Politics and Culture in Medieval Spain and Italy (Rome, 1971).

  4. Niketas Choniates, cited in Abulafia, Two Italies, p. 81.

  5. D. Nicol, Byzantium and Venice: a Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations (Cambridge, 1988), p. 87.

  6. D. Abulafia, ‘The Norman Kingdom of Africa and the Norman expeditions to Majorca and the Muslim Mediterranean’, Anglo-Norman Studies, vol. 7 (1985), pp. 26–41, repr. in D. Abulafia, Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, 1100–1400 (London, 1987), essay xii.

  7. Ibn al-Athir, in ibid., p. 34.

  8. Abulafia, ‘Norman Kingdom of Africa’, pp. 36–8.

  9. C. Dalli, Malta: the Medieval Millennium (Malta, 2006), pp. 66–79.

  10. C. Stanton, ‘Norman naval power in the Mediterranean in the eleventh and twelfth centuries’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 2008).

  11. L.-R. Ménager, Amiratus-’ : l’Émirat et les origines de l’Amirauté (Paris, 1960); L. Mott, Sea Power in the Medieval Mediterranean: the Catalan-Aragonese Fleet in the War of the Sicilian Vespers (Gainesville, FL, 2003), pp. 59–60.

  12. Abulafia, ‘Norman Kingdom of Africa’, pp. 41–3.

  13. Caffaro, in Abulafia, Two Italies, p. 97.

  14. Cf. G. Day, Genoa’s Response to Byzantium, 1155–1204: Commercial Expansion and Factionalism in a Medieval City (Urbana, IL, 1988).

  15. Abulafia, Two Italies, pp. 90–98.

  16. M. Mazzaoui, The Italian Cotton Industry in the Later Middle Ages, 1100–1600 (Cambridge, 1981).

  17. Abulafia, Two Italies, p. 218; Dalli, Malta, p. 84.

  18. See Abulafia, Two Italies, pp. 255–6, 283–4; D. Abulafia, ‘Southern Italy, Sicily and Sardinia in the medieval Mediterranean economy’, in D. Abulafia, Commerce and Conquest in the Mediterranean, 1100–1500 (Aldershot, 1993), essay i, pp. 1–32; colonial economy: H. Bresc, Un monde méditerranéen: économie et société en Sicile, 1300–1450, 2 vols. (Rome and Palermo, 1986); another view in S. R. Epstein, An Island for Itself: Economic Development and Social Change in Late Medieval Sicily (Cambridge, 1992).

  19. D. Abulafia, ‘Dalmatian Ragusa and the Norman Kingdom of Sicily’, Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 54 (1976), pp. 412–28, repr. in D. Abulafia, Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, 1100–1400 (London, 1987), essay x.

  20. C. M. Brand, Byzantium Confronts the West 1180–1204 (Cambridge, MA, 1968), pp. 41–2, 195–6.

  21. Ibid., p. 161.

  22. Eustathios of Thessalonika, The Capture of Thessaloniki, ed. and trans. J. R. Melville-Jones (Canberra, 1988).

  23. Brand, Byzantium Confronts the West, p. 175.

  24. G. Schlumberger, Les campagnes du roi Amaury Ier de Jérusalem en Égypte au XIIe siècle (Paris, 1906).

  25. E. Sivan, L’Islam et la Croisade: idéologie et propagande dans les réactions musulmanes aux Croisades (Paris, 1968).

  26. D. Abulafia, ‘Marseilles, Acre and the Mediterranean 1200–1291’, in Coinage in the Latin East: the Fourth Oxford Symposium on Coinage and Monetary History, ed. P. Edbury and D. M. Metcalf (British Archaeological Reports, Oxford, 1980), p. 20, repr. in D. Abulafia, Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, 1100–1400 (London, 1987), essay xv.

  27. J. Prawer, Crusader Institutions (Oxford, 1980), pp. 230–37, 241.

  28. R. C. Smail, The Crusaders in Syria and the Holy Land (Ancient Peoples and Places, London, 1973), pp. 74–5 (with map); M. Benvenisti, The Crusaders in the Holy Land (Jerusalem, 1970), pp. 97–102; Prawer, Crusader Institutions, pp. 229–41; P. Pierotti, Pisa e Accon: l’insediamento pisano nella città crociata. Il porto. Il fondaco (Pisa, 1987).

  29. J. Riley-Smith, ‘Government in Latin Syria and the commercial privileges of foreign merchants’, in Relations between East and West in the Middle Ages, ed. D. Baker (Edinburgh, 1973), pp. 109–32.

  30. C. Cahen, Orient et occident au temps des croisades (Paris, 1983), p. 139.

  31. D. Abulafia, ‘Crocuses and crusaders: San Gimignano, Pisa and the kingdom of Jerusalem’, in Outremer: Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem Presented to Joshua Prawer, ed. R. C. Smail, H. E. Mayer and B. Z. Kedar (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 227–43, repr. in Abulafia, Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, essay xiv.

  32. D. Abulafia, ‘Maometto e Carlo Magno: le due aree monetarie dell’oro e dell’argento’, Economia Naturale, Economia Monetaria, ed. R. Romano and U. Tucci, Storia d’Italia, Annali, vol. 6 (Turin, 1983), pp. 223–70.

  33. Abulafia, Two Italies, pp. 172–3, 190–92.

  34. D. Abulafia, ‘Henry count of Malta and his Mediterranean activities: 1203–1230’, in Medieval Malta: Studies on Malta before the Knights, ed. A. Luttrell (London, 1975), p. 111, repr. in Abulafia, Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, essay iii.

  35. Ibid., pp. 112–13.

  36. Cited in ibid., pp. 113–14, nn. 43, 46.

  37. Brand, Byzantium Confronts the West, p. 16.

  38. Abulafia, ‘Henry count of Malta’, p. 106.

  39. Brand, Byzantium Confronts the West, p. 209.

  40. Ibid., pp. 210–11; Abulafia, ‘Henry count of Malta’, p. 108.

  41. J. Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople (London, 2004); J. Godfrey, 1204: the Unholy Crusade (Oxford, 1980); D. Queller and T. Madden, The Fourth Crusade: the Conquest of Constantinople (2nd edn, Philadelphia, PA, 1997).

  42. D. Howard, Venice and the East: the Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture 1100–1500 (New Haven, CT, 2000), pp. 103, 108.

  43. J. Longnon, L’Empire latin de Constantinople et la principauté de Morée (Paris, 1949); D. Nicol, The Despotate of Epiros (Oxford, 1957); M. Angold, A Byzantine Government in Exile: Government and Society under the Laskarids of Nicaea (1204–1261) (Oxford, 1975).

  44. Abulafia, ‘Henry count of Malta’, pp. 115–19.

  45. S. McKee, Uncommon Dominion: Venetian Crete and the Myth of Ethnic Purity (Philadelphia, PA, 2000).

  46. Howard, Venice and the East, p. 93.

  47. Brand, Byzantium Confronts the West, p. 213.

  48. Leonardo Fibonacci: il tempo, le opere, l’eredità scientifica, ed. M. Morelli and M. Tangheroni (Pisa, 1994).

  49. C. Thouzellier, Hérésie et hérétiques: vaudois, cathares, patarins, albigeois (Paris, 1969).

  7. Merchants, Mercenaries and Missionaries, 1220–1300

  1. D. Herlihy, Pisa in the Early Renaissance (New Haven, CT, 1958), pp. 131–3.

  2. D. Abulafia, The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms 1200–1500: the Struggle for Dominion (London, 1997), pp. 35–7.

  3. Benjamin of Tudela, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, ed. M. N. Adler (London, 1907), p. 2.

  4. S. Bensch, Barcelona and its Rulers, 1096–1291 (Cambridge, 1995).

  5. J.-E. Ruiz-Domènec, Ricard Guillem: un sogno per Barcellona, with an appendix of documents edited by R. Conde y Delgado de Molina (Naples, 1999); but cf. Bensch, Barcelona, pp. 85–121, 154–5.

  6. S. Orvietani Busch, Medieval Mediterranean Ports: the Catalan and Tuscan Coasts, 1100–1235 (Leiden, 2001).


  7. Abulafia, Western Mediterranean Kingdoms, p. 52.

  8. Bernat Desclot, Llibre del rey En Pere, in Les quatre grans cròniques, ed. F. Soldevila (Barcelona, 1971), chap. 14; D. Abulafia, A Mediterranean Emporium: the Catalan Kingdom of Majorca (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 7–8.

  9. James I, Llibre dels Feyts, in Les quatre grans cròniques, ed. F. Soldevila (Barcelona, 1971), chap. 47, cited here with modifications from the translation of J. Forster, Chronicle of James I of Aragon, 2 vols. (London, 1883); Abulafia, Mediterranean Emporium, p. 7.

  10. James I, Llibre dels Feyts, chaps. 54, 56.

  11. Abulafia, Mediterranean Emporium, pp. 78–9, 65–8.

  12. Ibid., pp. 56–64.

  13. See A. Watson, Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World: the Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques, 700–1100 (Cambridge, 1983).

  14. R. Burns and P. Chevedden, Negotiating Cultures: Bilingual Surrender Treaties on the Crusader-Muslim Frontier under James the Conqueror (Leiden, 1999).

  15. L. Berner, ‘On the western shores: the Jews of Barcelona during the reign of Jaume I, “el Conqueridor”, 1213–1276’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1986).

  16. Abulafia, Mediterranean Emporium, pp. 78–9, 204–8; A. Hernando et al., Cartogràfia mallorquina (Barcelona, 1995).

  17. R. Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Cambridge, 2009).

  18. R. Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond: the Disputation of 1263 and its Aftermath (Berkeley, CA, 1992).

  19. Best edition: O. Limor, Die Disputationen zu Ceuta (1179) und Mallorca (1286): zwei antijüdische Schriften aus dem mittelalterlichen Genua (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Munich, 1994), pp. 169–300.

  20. H. Hames, Like Angels on Jacob’s Ladder: Abraham Abulafia, the Franciscans, and Joachimism (Albany, NY, 2007).

  21. Ibid., pp. 33–4.

  22. H. Hames, The Art of Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden, 2000); D. Urvoy, Penser l’Islam: les présupposés islamiques de l’“art” de Lull (Paris, 1980).

  23. D. Abulafia, ‘The apostolic imperative: religious conversion in Llull’s Blaquerna’, in Religion, Text and Society in Medieval Spain and Northern Europe: Essays in Honour of J. N. Hillgarth, ed. L. Shopkow et al. (Toronto, 2002), pp. 105–21.