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A Late Mamluk Document Concerning Frankish Commercial Practice at Tripoli

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

D. S. Richards
D. S. Richards
Affiliation:
Oriental Institute, Oxford
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Extract

Much has been written about the trading relations of the Italian states with the Levant in the period of the Crusades and the late Middle Ages. The bulk of the material that has made these studies possible has been provided by the voluminous archives of the various Italian cities, which also contain a few treaties and letters that originated from Muslim authorities (largely of the Mamluk period) and have been preserved in the original and/or in translation. The document to be presented here was addressed to various officials in Tripoli, that is, Tarābulus al-Shām, and dates from near the end of the Mamluk sultanate. It is an order for the attention of the Mamluk authorities only, intended to govern commercial dealings in Tripoli as they were unilaterally understood. The document is not to be thought of as comparable with the so-called ‘treaties’, which were draw up after a process of negotiation although they were ultimately expressed as independent decrees of the Sultan. One can only wonder at the chance survival of this undoubtedly genuine piece. It is now held in the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago, under the number OIM 13787. It was purchased in 1929 from Dr Bernhard Moritz, one-time librarian of the Khedivial Library in Cairo, and its provenance beyond that point is unknown. Three other Mamluk documents of the same period, which are relevant to affairs at Tripoli, survive in the archives of St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, namely nos. LXIX, LXX and LXXI of those published by Ernst. The first of these three refers to the monastery's waqf property at Tripoli, but the other two have absolutely no connection with any interests or affairs of the monastery, and it is difficult to imagine how they found their way there.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , January 1999 , pp. 21 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1999

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References

1 The present writer is grateful to the authorities of the Oriental Institute Museum of Chicago for permission to publish this document.

2 Ernst, Hans (ed.), Die mamlukischen Sultansurkunden des Sinai-Klosters (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1960).Google Scholar

3 An idea of the appearance and content of the turra may be gained from the document published by Wansborough, J.. ‘A Mamlūk commercial treaty concluded with the Republic of Florence 894/1489’, in Documents from Islamic Chanceries, (ed.) Stern, S. M. (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1965), 39–79Google Scholar, see PI. XXI.

4 Qānṣūh al-Ghūrī became sultan on 1 Shawwāl 906/20 April 1501, and met his death in battle against the Ottomans at Marj Dābiq on 25 Rajab 922/24 August 1516.

5 Mantran, Robert and Sauvaget, Jean, Règlements fiscaux ottomans: les provinces syriennes (Beirut: Institut Français de Damas, 1951), 69.Google Scholar

6 An early name for this product was ushnān, while a more popular term was al-qati (alkali). In al-Bustānī's Muhīt al-Muhīt, bals is denned as ram¯d al-qalī.

7 For a general survey of the volume and significance of this trade, discussion of the plant sources and of prices etc., see Ashtor, E., ‘Levantine alkali ashes and European industries’, in Technology, industry and trade: the Levant versus Europe, 1250 1500, ed. Kedar, B. Z. (Variorum, 1992), no. VIIGoogle Scholar. See Jacoby, David, ‘Raw materials for the glass industries of Venice and the Terraferma about 1370—about 1460’, in Trade, commodities and shipping in the medieval Mediterranean (Variorum, 1997), no. IX, p. 68Google Scholar: ‘The calcined residue of these plants solidified in hard chunks, and it was shipped in this form to Venice; there it was crushed or pulverised in a mortar or mill before being added to the glass batch.’

8 Clause XIII of the 1489 Florentine ‘treaty’ expressly states that potash (qatt) should not be sold to them at a higher price than the Venetians pay (see Wansborough, ‘A Mamluk commercial treaty’, 56 7, 65).

9 Sobernheim, M., Syrie du Nord, pt. 2 of Matériaux pour un Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum, Vol. 55 of Mémoires de I'lnstitut français d' Archéologie orientate du Caire (Cairo, 1909), no. 25.Google Scholar

10 A discussion of such undertakings (qasā' im sg. qasāma) with examples from earlier in the Mamluk period will be found in Richards, D. S., ‘The qasāma in Mamluk society: some documents from the Ḥaram collection in Jerusalem’, Annales Islamologiques, 25, 1990, 245–284.Google Scholar

11 The shāda was essentially a military official charged with overseeing a civilian operation. Qalqashandī mentions in the context of Tripoli a shādd al-bahr (Subh al-‘ashā’, vol. xn, 457), whom Gaudefroy-Demombynes describes as ‘une sorte de mohtasib des comerçants maritimes’ (La Syrie à l'époque des Mamelouks, Paris, 1923, 223 and n. 4). In connection with Alexandria an official called al-shddd bi-bab al-bahr is mentioned in Wansborough, ‘A Mamlūk commercial treaty’, see clause XXX.

12 Hans Ernst, Die mamlukischen Sultansurkunden, nos. LVII-LXXI.

13 See Sauvaget, J., ‘Décrets mamelouks de Syrie’, Bulletin d'Études Orientates, 3, 1933, no. 36.Google Scholar

14 This has to be interpreted as the masdar mīmī (in place of ibtiyā') and the following thulthamā … as the direct accusative after the masdar.

15 For the sense of the 5th-form verb compare the phrase ta‘alluqāt ṣahābat dīwān al-’;inshā in a fifteenth-century Damascus inscription. See Sauyaget, J., ‘Décrets mamelouks de Syrie’, Bulletin d'Etudes Orientates, 2, 1932, no. 11Google Scholar, where ta'alluqāt is translated as ‘revenus, recettes affectées à …’.

16 The Arabic text has no diacritical points, which means that several readings are theoretically possible, but no meaningful one springs to mind. A nisba adjective is likely, and the context suggests something meaning ‘ordinary’, ‘coarse’, the opposite of ‘expensive’ al-muthamana in this same line. Could it be from al-jaraj ‘stony, rough ground’ (see Lisdn al-'Arab, where one also finds al-jurja ‘a sort of clothing’)? Or should one be thinking of al-kharaj ‘a mixture of black and white’, although the adjectival form is given as akhraj?.

17 In Dozy, , Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes (Leiden, 1881)Google Scholar, s.v.janfās, ‘Canevas, serpilli`re’, and in Kazimirski, , Dictionnaire arabe-français (Cairo, 1875)Google Scholar, s.v. janfāsh, ‘etoffe grossiere pour emballages’.

18 There is really no doubt about the reading of this word, which means ‘crocodile’. Were skins exported from Egypt and imported into Syria by the Europeans?! However, the word appears in what is mainly a list of fabrics, so it coul perhaps be the name of a type of material? It has also been suggested to me that crocodile skins or fat may have had a medicinal use.

19 The normal spelling of the Arabic is with initial sīn, but a spelling with ṣad, as in this document, is found, for example, in Die Chronik des Ibn Ijās, ed. Mostafa, Mohamed, IV (Wiesbaden, 1960), 187, 200.Google Scholar

20 The types of material imported by Venetians and others into Tripoli according to the commercial arrangements of 979/1571 in Barkan's, edition (xv ve xvi asirlarda Osmanli Imparatorlugunda zirai ekonominin hukuki ve male esaslan, I: Kanunlar (Istanbul: Istanbul Universitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Yayinlarindan, 1945), no. 58, 211Google Scholar, and in the translation of R. Mantran and J. Sauvaget (Règlements fiscaux ottomans: les provinces syriennes, 59) were çuka (le drap), atlas (le satin), kemhā (la damasquette), kadife-i sade ve müzehheb (le velours uni oudoré), dibā (le brocat), hāre (la moire). The mention of gold-embroidered velvet reminds one of an earlier complaint against the Venetians, that their imported mukhmal manqūsh was mostly adulterated with copper, apart from the claim that they were reducing roll lengths (see Wansborough, J., ‘A Mamluk letter of 877/1473’, BSOAS, 24/2, 1961, 200–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see clause VIII).

21 The meaning of aṣndf al-mawzūn is not clear. Does al-mawzun mean ‘that which is purchased by weight’ as opposed to items taken in conventional quantities, such as bales of textiles? Note, however, from Serjeant, R. B., Islamic textiles: material for a history up to the Mongol conquest (Beirut, 1972), 141Google Scholar: ‘linen of the gold-embroidered (mawzūn) and plain (muyassar) kinds’.