Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean
The Geniza Merchants and their Business World

This book reconstructs the business world of the eleventh-century Geniza merchants and, in doing so, rewrites medieval Islamic and Mediterranean economic history.

Jessica L. Goldberg (Author)

9781107519299, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 10 March 2016

450 pages, 13 b/w illus. 22 maps
23 x 15.3 x 2.5 cm, 0.55 kg

'Succeeds in painting a coherent and compelling picture of a trading community, while still maintaining technical precision. The result is that one learns, and even enters, a world of foreign categories and remarkable social-economic mechanisms.' Joshua Holo, H-Judaic

The Geniza merchants of the eleventh-century Mediterranean - sometimes called the 'Maghribi traders' - are central to controversies about the origins of long-term economic growth and the institutional bases of trade. In this book, Jessica Goldberg reconstructs the business world of the Geniza merchants, maps the shifting geographic relationships of the medieval Islamic economy and sheds new light on debates about the institutional framework for later European dominance. Commercial letters, business accounts and courtroom testimony bring to life how these medieval traders used personal gossip and legal mechanisms to manage far-flung agents, switched business strategies to manage political risks and asserted different parts of their fluid identities to gain advantage in the multicultural medieval trading world. This book paints a vivid picture of the everyday life of Jewish merchants in Islamic societies and adds new depth to debates about medieval trading institutions with unique quantitative analyses and innovative approaches.

1. Introduction: two tales
Part I. Institutions: 2. Merchants in their community
3. The uses of commercial correspondence
4. The nature of merchants' trade
5. The human landscape: business relationships, institutions of law and government
6. Conclusion to Part I
Part II. Geographies: 7. The geography of information
8. Commodities in a regional market
9. Individual geographies of trade
10. The contracting geography of the eleventh-century merchant network
11. Conclusion: the Mediterranean through the eyes of Geniza merchants
Glossary of terms
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], European history [HBJD]