Commerce and Networks of Exchange between the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Near East from the Early Ninth Century to the Arrival of the Crusaders

Thesis Type:

Abstract:

There is no modern work devoted to trade relations between the Byzantines and Near Easterners in the central Middle Ages, with the exception of David Jacoby's articles investigating specifically the trade relations between Byzantium and Fatimid Egypt from the tenth to the twelfth centuries. The purpose of the present research is to fill in this gap in scholarship. The movement of commodities, the merchants who traded them, and the routes that these merchants used to travel between the Islamic Near East and the Byzantine Empire in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries are the focus of this dissertation.

In order to address these issues, we employ a tripartite approach: making full use of the sources, such as Arabic geographies and Byzantine saints' lives, which have previously been only partially studied; consulting other written sources that have not been used at all, such as medicinal writing in Arabic and Greek and belles-lettres works in Arabic; and investigating the relationship of objects that moved via non-economic means, such as diplomatic gifts and booty, to commodities. Based on our findings, we present observations concerning the nature of Byzantine-Islamic trade, the role of the Byzantine provinces in long-distance trade, and the role of Byzantium in the trade between northern Europe and the Islamic Near East.

Our findings show that in the ninth and early tenth centuries, the Byzantine Empire was an exporter of silk and expensive objects to the Islamic markets; it imported luxury objects in return; and the merchants from Islamic lands did not penetrate the Byzantine provinces. By the eleventh century, the Byzantine Empire exported textiles of different types as well as vessels, utensils, and foodstuffs; and merchants from Islamic lands were present in Byzantine provinces such as western Asia Minor and Bithynia. The turning point seems to have been sometime in the mid- or late tenth century. We also observe that the gift exchanges and looting (noneconomic exchanges), which took place between Byzantium and the Islamic Near East, were economic phenomena: gifts were used as promotional items to increase demand of the item in question, and looted items were sold back to the looted party for profit.

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