Al-Masāq, 2013
Vol. 25, No. 1, 1–8, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2013.767010
Forgotten Connections? Medieval Material Culture
and Exchange in the Central and Western
Mediterranean
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ALEXANDER METCALFE and MARIAM ROSSER-OWEN
This special issue takes as its theme the interconnections of material culture and
exchange across the central and western Mediterranean encompassed by the Iberian
Peninsula, North Africa (Libya, Ifrı̄qiya and the western Maghrib), Sicily and southern
Italy. Our chronological focus is the long medieval period, whose parameters here are
from the first/seventh to the ninth/fifteenth century. By presenting studies that prioritise
connections and comparisons between these areas our aim is to contribute to an
increasingly inter-regional trend in historical research, which seeks to move beyond
insular studies focused on singular geopolitical entities to investigate interconnectivity
in an impartial way, as advocated by Horden and Purcell in The Corrupting Sea.1 By
focusing “impartially” on the central and western Mediterranean regions, scholars
are forced to give due attention to the role of North Africa, a key economic and cultural
region in its own right but also significant for its links to the rest of the Mediterranean.
This region has been side-lined in art historical studies of recent decades, although
much data for the exchange and development of material culture and exchange can
be, and has been, elicited from the passage of peoples: adventurers and sailors, travellers
and pilgrims, colonists and settlers, refugees and exiles. Indeed, trade across the region
during Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period has been of pivotal importance, and
economic factors emerge as one of the key themes of the six articles assembled here.2
The broad historical frameworks of these three regions are not always as secure as
they might be, leaving many opportunities to explore new avenues and to probe
older areas of contention both within and across these frameworks. Such a task is
not without its challenges, exacerbated by a certain asymmetry between regional
research trajectories since studies of each region have developed at different rates, hindering the establishment of parallels, links and comparative histories. This is most
evident in the case of North Africa, where scholarship has struggled to maintain
momentum in the postcolonial era due to a variety of factors including shifts in economic and research priorities as well as political uncertainties. Such vicissitudes are
reflected in the fate of the Revue Africaine. Published annually from 1856 until Algerian
independence, it suddenly stopped after 106 volumes but has recently been salvaged
Correspondence: Alexander Metcalfe. Department of History, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YG.
E-mail: [email protected]. Mariam Rosser-Owen. Asian Department, Victoria and Albert
Museum, London, SW7 2RL. E-mail: [email protected]
1
Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2000), p. 17.
2
For further observations on how North Africa can be integrated into art historical studies, see Mariam
Rosser-Owen, “Mediterraneanism: how to incorporate Islamic art into an emerging field”, in The Historiography of Islamic Art, ed. Moya Carey and Margaret Graves, special issue of the Journal of Art Historiography 6 (June 2012), no page numbers.
© 2013 Society for the Medieval Mediterranean
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2
Alexander Metcalfe and Mariam Rosser-Owen
by the digital age, and is now freely available online.3 Many seminal articles in that
series were penned by the great North Africanists of their day. Reference to their
work is still made, attesting to the quality of that pioneering scholarship, but also to
the relative dearth of material that has followed in its wake. The same might be said
of art historical studies in Morocco: much ground-breaking work was undertaken by
scholars such as Henri Terrasse and Georges Marçais in the 1940s and 1950s, and
their publications remain fundamental reference works today, largely because little
of significance was added in the following generation. New archaeological excavations
in recent decades have begun to redress this gap in the scholarship, including work at
Volubilis conducted by Elizabeth Fentress, at Jerba by Renata Holod, and at other sites
across the region as outlined in the contribution presented here by Corisande Fenwick,
“From Africa to Ifrı̄qiya: Settlement and Society in Early Medieval North Africa (29–
184/650–800)”. Focusing on the early period of transition from Romano-Byzantine
Africa to Islamic Ifrı̄qiya, Fenwick critically re-examines the scattered archaeological
record across the vast area of medieval North Africa, as retrieved through the most
recent excavations and surveys, to qualify and correct assumptions of urban decline
and industrial fragmentation following the Arab conquests. Her contribution not
only shows the inestimable value of current and future archaeological investigation
in North Africa, but also provides a “state-of-the-question” for the subject.
Archaeological finds continue to enhance our understanding of settlement and
economic patterns in the region, and in the future will reveal new evidence of material
culture. For example, new work is underway to improve our understanding of transSaharan trade routes, commodities and trading stations, through excavations at key
staging posts such as Awdaghust, Tādmakka, Aghmat and Igilliz. These are being conducted by international collaborative teams: their finds are widely disseminated at
international symposia, and their reports increasingly published online – a welcome
shift away from situations in the past when excavation reports were sometimes
never published, or took decades to appear, and the scholarly community remained
in ignorance of finds that could transform our understanding.
Aside from incomplete datasets for archaeology, art history and material culture,
research has also been hampered by document loss, especially of chancery and notarial
records. For Aghlabid, Fātimid and Zı̄rid Ifrı̄qiya, as for pre-Norman Sicily, this
˙ total. In al-Andalus, the loss of Arabic documents is
absence of evidence is almost
less severe, for the Nasrid period. Nonetheless, cross-regional comparisons have
been, and can be, made, ˙thus allowing gaps in the evidence to be filled by interdisciplinary hypotheses pieced together from a splintered range of sources. On the face of it, the
similarities and modalities between al-Andalus and Sicily are striking. Apart from the
ethnically and confessionally mixed populations, the influence of like-minded jurists,
and the stylistic correspondences of much of their material culture, likenesses are
further supported by a miscellany of first-hand reports and later narrative accounts.
Some of these connections are discussed by Lev Kapitaikin in his essay, “‘The Daughter of al-Andalus’: Interrelations between Norman Sicily and the Muslim West”,
although more links doubtless remain to be elucidated in this emerging and contentious debate. On the other hand, there are inescapable differences between medieval
Maghribi and Sicilian histories. Aside from the vast scale of North Africa or the
Iberian Peninsula, which dwarfs insular Sicily by comparison, the languages and
3
The Revue Africaine is now available online at: www.algerie-ancienne.com/livres/Revue/revue.htm
(accessed: 23 October 2012).
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Forgotten Connections?
3
cultures found among the autochthonous population of Visigothic Spain stand in clear
contrast to those of Byzantine Sicily. Besides which, the start of the Muslim conquest
phases took place over a century apart and met with very different levels of armed resistance and support. When we take into account disparities such as migration patterns
and the chronology of Christian conquest, at least some “familial resemblances”
may turn out to be false friends, particularly if understood as directly analogous.
Take, for example, the intricate debate about the husūn “system” of al-Andalus,
˙
which embraces issues of defence, irrigation, and territorial organisation, but which
has sometimes informed considerations about the extent and nature of so-called incastellamento in Sicily. In this volume, the question of settlement nucleation and protection is the starting point for new archaeological work recently conducted by
Emanuele Vaccaro, which sheds new light on the economic situation between the
late Byzantine and early Islamic periods in Sicily, setting out an array of evidence for
shifting forms of material continuity between the two (see his article, “Sicily in the
Eighth and Ninth Centuries AD: A Case of Persisting Economic Complexity?”).
The politico-religious dynamics that emerged in Sicily and al-Andalus were also
sharply divergent: the independent Spanish Umayyad caliphs did not recognise the
authority of ʿAbbāsid Baghdad, and were consciously anti-Fātimid. Sicily and
Ifrı̄qiya under the Aghlabid amı̄rs remained nominally loyal to the˙ ʿAbbāsids, while
both regions post-909 became part of the realm of the Fātimid imām-caliph. Sicily,
˙ as a colony of Ifrı̄qiya,
for much of its history under Muslim rule, was governed
which acted as the “hub” of the Mediterranean, as Goitein so pertinently put it, and
maintained its connective importance in pre-Fātimid, Fātimid and post-Fātimid
˙
eras.4 Indeed, another theme of the issue might be ˙said to be˙the continued relevance
of Goitein’s ground-breaking work on the Cairo Geniza, and the ever-expanding
importance of that unique archive to enhance our understanding of the medieval Mediterranean. One point that emerges here is the need to be clear about the geographical
region we are referring to when we use the umbrella term “Fātimid”. This has come,
especially in art history, to be synonymous with Fātimid rule in˙ Egypt (358–566/969–
˙
1171), and a correlative assumption has been that Muslim
Sicily tended to look east for
inspiration. But there was a seventy-year-long North African period for the Fātimids,
˙
and it is important to take the local Maghribi and Ifrı̄qiyan traditions that contributed
5
to their rise into equal account. For example, recent archaeological excavations in
Cairo may have located the first Fātimid walls built in the pisé technique characteristic
˙
6
What else might the Fātimids have
of Maghribi and Andalusi wall construction.
˙
imported into Egypt from their North African wellspring?
Parallels between Sicily and al-Andalus extend to striking coincidences in historical “rhythm”, notably in the period of political consolidation under ʿAbd alRahmān III (r. 300–350/912–961) on the one hand, and the apogee of Fātimid–
˙
˙
4
“Medieval Tunisia: The Hub of the Mediterranean”, chapter 16 in Shelomo Dov Goitein, Studies in
Islamic History and Institutions (Leiden: Brill, 1966), pp. 308–328.
5
See Michael Brett, The Rise of the Fatimids: The World of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the Fourth
Century of the Hijra, Tenth Century CE (Leiden: Brill, 2001); Jonathan M. Bloom, The Arts of the City Victorious:
Islamic Art and Architecture in Fatimid North Africa and Egypt (New Haven and London: Yale University Press
in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2007), chapter 2, “Fatimid Art in North Africa”, pp. 15–49.
6
Our thanks to Stéphane Pradines of the Aga Khan University, London, for bringing this find to our attention
and sharing his preliminary excavation report, “Murailles de Caire”, Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale
(IFAO), Cairo, December 2011. The results will be published in Antiquity in 2013. This construction technique is the same as that called in Spanish tapial, from Ar. tabiya.
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4
Alexander Metcalfe and Mariam Rosser-Owen
Kalbid rule in Sicily that culminated during the mid-350s/960s on the other. In
both Córdoba and Palermo, this “Edwardian summer” (to borrow Hugh Kennedy’s phrase7) unexpectedly gave way to political fragmentation and decentralisation
from the 420s/1030s. Unlike in al-Andalus, where this so-called tāʾifa period pro˙ contemporary
duced a cultural flourishing in confident, new provincial centres, the
political implosion in Muslim Sicily cast the island into a vicious circle of fiscal and
military crises leading to a debilitating civil war. The resulting “dark age” is confirmed by the relative absence of any significant commercial, religious, artistic or
architectural outputs. This crisis-cum-diaspora period in Sicily lasted from the
420s/1030s to the 450s/1060s, after which it was prolonged for a further three
decades by the Norman Conquest. We should perhaps not be surprised if no palatial-quality ateliers from the Islamic period had survived for the Norman rulers to
inherit. Indeed, this may help to explain why the Christian kings later had to bring
in highly skilled Muslim artisans from abroad, consciously re-importing artistic
influences based on models found in the Islamic world into their royal palaces
post-1130.
It was also during the civil war and conquest periods in Sicily that merchants
disappeared in search of new markets, and many Muslim notables left the island
never to return. These self-imposed exiles chose their primary destinations in
Ifrı̄qiya, al-Andalus and, to a lesser extent, Egypt. Famously, the poet Ibn
Hamdı̄s found refuge at courts in Seville and Mahdiyya, and other émigrés can
˙ traced overseas from their names with the locative nisba “the Sicilian”: as
be
Kapitaikin points out in his article, the architect of the Almohad minaret at
Seville, now known as the Giralda, was one Abū Layth al-Siqillı̄. From the
˙ Sicily and alNorman Conquest in the mid-400s/1000s, movement between
Andalus was increasingly bilateral in a way that it was not under the Umayyad
and Fātimid rulers. Indeed, from this time, influence from the Iberian Peninsula
˙ more clearly visible in Sicily. The likely presence of Andalusi Muslims
becomes
on the island raises many controversial and unresolved questions, especially
during the confusion of the conquest period. Was the last Muslim ruler of
Palermo, Ibn al-Baʿbāʿ, from an Andalusi kin-group? Was Elias Cartomensis,
the Muslim convert mentioned by Malaterra who raised troops for the
Normans during the conquest, a Cartomeño – that is to say, from Cártama, a
day’s journey from Málaga? Had the former rulers of Málaga, the Banū
Hammūd, migrated to Sicily during the 440s/1050s to become key Norman
˙
allies
and assume the hereditary leadership of the Sicilian Muslims?8 Indeed,
was Roger II’s royal geographer, al-Idrı̄sı̄, from this same kin-group? The later
cultivation of high-level marriage and kin-group connections are of course well
known from Christian ruling families.9
7
Hugh Kennedy, Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus (Harlow: Longman, 1996),
p. 122.
8
For the development of this argument, see Allaoua Amara and Anneliese Nef, “Al-Idrı̄sı̄ et les Hammū˙
dides de Sicile: Nouvelles données biographiques sur l’auteur du Livre de Roger”, Arabica 48 (2001):
121–127. However, see also Jeremy Johns, Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily: The Royal Dı̄wān (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 234–242.
9
For example, Elvira, daughter of Alfonso VI of Castile and his Muslim convert wife, who married Roger
II in 1117, or later the marriage of Margaret of Navarre to William I. Many of the political connections,
especially among “Latins” were recently discussed in greater detail by Paul Oldfield, “The Iberian imprint
on Medieval Southern Italy”, History 93 (2008): 312–327.
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Forgotten Connections?
5
Given a century of disjuncture and decline between the Sicilian tāʾifas and the coro˙
nation of Roger II in 1130, art historians have increasingly looked beyond
Sicily for precedents for the Norman palaces. An almost unidirectional trajectory between Sicily and
Fātimid Egypt has taken hold in recent scholarship, especially in connection with the
˙
painted
decoration of the Cappella Palatina ceiling; but increasingly this focus on
twelfth-century Fātimid art has not provided the answers to other questions, such as
˙
the source of the geometric
patterns employed in the Cappella’s opus sectile pavement,
or the architectural forms of features such as square minaret-like towers like the
Torre Pisana. Recent work by Jonathan M. Bloom and David Knipp has opened up
the question of western Islamic influences – especially from the Maghrib and alAndalus – on other artistic features employed by the Normans in Sicily.10 Even the
origin of the technique of muqarnas to make the Cappella Palatina ceiling is now
˙
sought in the western Mediterranean, where examples in the Qarawiyyı̄n mosque in
Fez (530–537/1136–1143) and the Dār al-Saghı̄r at Murcia (c. 542–567/1147–1172)
pre-date any other surviving muqarnas vaults˙ in the Mediterranean region.11 Lev Kapi˙
taikin’s article grapples with these questions, opening them up beyond the hitherto
almost exclusive focus on the Norman palace chapel to consider other features –
such as calligraphic scripts, leaf motifs, arch profiles – that might draw on Maghribi
and Andalusi artistic traditions. His article seeks to establish more wide-ranging connections between Sicily and the western Mediterranean, confirming the eyewitness
travel accounts of Benjamin of Tudela and Ibn Jubayr, thereby suggesting avenues
for further research. Continuing connections between Sicily and Iberia during the
period when the island became part of the Crown of Aragón merit further study from
an art historical point of view – such close ties might, for example, be one explanation
for the very similar kind of gilt-copper metal mounts that adorn ivory caskets and
other precious objects in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Among under-studied episodes that stand to benefit from further scrutiny are the
Normans’ interventions in Ifrı̄qiya, especially between 543/1148 and 555/1160
when they controlled the key littoral towns and many of the trade routes, making for
ambivalent and fractious politico-religious relations between areas that had both
been part of the Fātimid empire.12 To date, trade, material culture and artistic transfers
have remained less˙ well explored, but are an important vein for comparative studies,
even if sources for the material culture of sixth/twelfth-century Ifrı̄qiya are not apparent
in great abundance. The value of links between men of consequence in Zı̄rid and
Norman court circles have become increasingly appreciated in recent times with the
10
Jonathan M. Bloom, “Almoravid Geometric Designs in the Pavement of the Cappella Palatina in
Palermo”, in The Iconography of Islamic Art: Studies in Honour of Robert Hillenbrand, ed. Bernard O’Kane
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), pp. 61–80; David Knipp, “Almoravid Sources for the
Wooden Ceiling in the Nave of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo”, in Die Cappella Palatina in Palermo:
Geschichte, Kunst, Funktionen, ed. Thomas Dittelbach (Künzelsau: Swiridoff Verlag, 2011), pp. 571–578.
11
On the Qarawiyyı̄n mosque, see Henri Terrasse, La Mosquée al-Qaraouiyin à Fés: avec une étude de
Gaston Deverdun sur les inscriptions historiques de la mosquée (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1968). On the Dār alSaghı̄r paintings, see Fatma Dahmani, “Remarques sur quelques fragments de peinture murale trouvés
˙
à Murcie”, Tudmir 1 (2008) 1–12.
12
David Abulafia, “The Norman Kingdom of Africa and the Norman Expeditions to Majorca and the
Muslim Mediterranean”, in Anglo-Norman Studies VII. Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1984 (1985),
pp. 26–49; Michael Brett, “Muslim Justice under Infidel Rule: The Normans in Ifriqiya 517–555 AH/
1123–60 AD”, Cahiers de Tunisie 41–42/155–156 (1991): 325–368, revised and reprinted in Ibn Khaldun
and the Medieval Maghrib (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999); Johns, Arabic Administration, 80–90; Alexander
Metcalfe, The Muslims of Medieval Italy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), pp. 160–180.
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6
Alexander Metcalfe and Mariam Rosser-Owen
“discovery” of al-Maqrı̄zı̄’s biography of the former Zı̄rid minister, George of Antioch;
the Sicily–Ifrı̄qiya letters of Abū l-Dawʾ who hailed from a powerful Palermitan kin˙
group, the Banū Rajāʾ; and the sojourn
of the Zı̄rid prince and historiographer Ibn
Shaddād at the court of William I in 1156–1157.13 Indeed, the movement of personnel
along the Sicily–Ifrı̄qiya axis in the documentary record is more easily traceable than
the transfer of material culture – although, of course, the two may be closely intertwined. Ifrı̄qiyan elements within the wider population of Norman Sicily are amply
attested in chancery records, as is the ebb and flow of those caught in the midst of
an expanding Norman kingdom and an imploding Zı̄rid amı̄rate. In Muharram 543/
June 1148, when the Normans, led by George of Antioch himself, captured˙ Mahdiyya,
they found the Zı̄rid palace complex intact with the women of the harem still in their
quarters.14 We can but guess whether the spoils of this campaign were triumphantly
shipped back to Palermo, though this is by no means an improbable scenario. Certainly, a few years later, al-Idrı̄sı̄ recorded that rebellious Jerbans were transported to
Palermo after the sacking of their island in 1153.15
To date, relatively little has been written about Norman Mahdiyya as a colonial
and ecclesiastical centre, in part because its embryonic development was abruptly
halted with its fall to the Almohads in 555/1160 and the humiliating evacuation of
its Christians. Nonetheless, such episodes suggest that more studies of the Ifrı̄qiyan
material may yield highly valuable insights and raise fundamentally important questions – for example, the extent to which the Ifrı̄qiyan Zı̄rids borrowed or inherited
models from the Fātimids; or the levels of cultural exchange across the Sicilian
˙
Channel. To what extent
can the architectural ancestry of the Norman palaces be
found in extant examples such as the Qalʿat Banı̄ Hammād? When, in 1143, Philagathos of Cerami reported that the silk hangings of ˙the Cappella Palatina were made
by “Phoenicians” or “Carthaginians” (Φοίνικες), did he use this classicism to mean
that they were the work of contemporary Ifrı̄qiyans?16 Sericulture and silk production had a long tradition in Ifrı̄qiya, pre-dating the Islamic period but continuing
to flourish under Muslim patronage: one of the earliest datable Islamic silk textiles,
the so-called “Marwān tirāz”, is connected to Ifrı̄qiya, though it was probably not
˙
inscription provides the only historical evidence
woven there.17 Its embroidered
13
Al-Nuwayrı̄, Nihāyat al-arab fı̄ funūn al-adab, ed. S. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, volumes I–XXXI (Cairo: Dār alKutub al-Misriyya, 1923–1992), XXIII: 319.
˙
14
“The Franks reached the town [of al-Mahdiyya] and entered it without hindrance or opposition. Jirjı̄
[i.e. George of Antioch] went into the palace and found it as it was: al-Hasan [the Zı̄rid amı̄r] had
˙
taken only the light items of royal valuables. A group of his concubines were there too. He [George]
saw storerooms [khazāʾin] full of precious treasures and every type of wondrous object the likes of
which are scarce. He closed them off and gathered together the concubines in the palace”. Ibn alAthı̄r, al-Kāmil fı̄ l-taʾrı̄kh, volumes I–XIII (Beirut: Dār Sādir, 1965–1967), XI: 127.
˙
15
“[The Jerbans] revolted against the authority of the great king Roger, so he attacked them in this year
[528/1153–4] with the fleet. He conquered them for a second time and deported all the prisoners to
Palermo”. Al-Idrı̄sı̄, Nuzhat al-mushtāq, in Biblioteca arabo-sicula, ed. U. Rizzitano et al., volumes I–II
(Palermo: Accademia Nazionale di Scienze Lettere e Arti, 1987, 2nd rev. edn.), I: 74.
16
“A great many curtains are hung, the fabric of which is threads of silk, woven with gold and various dyes
that the Phoenicians have embroidered with wonderful skill and elaborate artistry”. For the text and above
English translation of Philagathos of Cerami’s homily, see Jeremy Johns, “The Date of the Ceiling of the
Cappella Palatina in Palermo”, in The Painted Ceilings of the Cappella Palatina, ed. Ernst J. Grube and
Jeremy Johns (New York: Bruschettini Foundation for Islamic and Asian Art, 2005), 1–14 (pp. 5–6).
17
Mina Moraitou, Mariam Rosser-Owen and Ana Cabrera, “Fragments of the So-Called Marwan Tiraz”,
in Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition, exh. cat., ed. Helen C. Evans and Brandie Ratliff [New York,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art] (London: Yale University Press, 2012), cat. 173, pp. 238–241.
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Forgotten Connections?
7
we have for the existence of a dār al-tirāz in Ifrı̄qiya as early as the reign of Marwān II,
˙
in the mid-second/eighth century. Luxury
silk textile production and trade was one
of the most significant means by which the regions of the western Mediterranean had
been tied together since the mid-fourth/tenth century, when the Amalfitans were
already trading Ifrı̄qiyan and Byzantine silks in Umayyad Córdoba.18 Such issues
are considered by Isabelle Dolezalek in her article, “Textile Connections? Two Ifrı̄qiyan Church Treasuries in Norman Sicily and the Problem of Continuity across
Political Change”, in which she discusses two twelfth-century church inventories
from Ifrı̄qiya transferred to Sicily after the Norman occupation of Mahdiyya. The
list includes a large number of silk textiles used as vestments and other ecclesiastical
furnishings. Examining the descriptions in these inventories allows us to infer how
the textiles – some of which were old and particularly precious – were made and
used. One implication is that silks of comparable quality were produced in both
Ifrı̄qiya and Sicily in the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries, but were nevertheless traded between the two regions.
Trade is a key factor connecting the three regions of this special issue. Apart from
textiles, many other commodities were moved around the Mediterranean, ranging
from the essential, such as foodstuffs (grain, olive oil, wine), to the pragmatic (the
containers used for transporting such perishable goods, or ceramic tableware used
for eating and drinking), to the luxury. Another trend in the recent art history of
the Mediterranean has been to view Fātimid Egypt as the sole supplier of luxury
materials – such as ivory and rock crystal,˙both in their raw state and carved into precious objects – to the Mediterranean trading space. However, it is important to note
that Ifrı̄qiya, in particular during the Fātimid period, also looked west for its luxury
goods, especially to the gold-rich region˙of the Bilād al-Sūdān, here referring to the
ancient kingdom of Ghana situated in modern-day Mali and Guinea. This led the
Ifrı̄qiyan Fātimids into struggle with the Umayyads in al-Andalus for control of
˙
these all-important
trade routes and access to the gold they needed to pay for
their conquest of Egypt. Sarah M. Guérin’s article, “Forgotten Routes? Italy,
Ifrı̄qiya, and the Trans-Saharan Ivory Trade”, touches on these issues while proposing West Africa as an important and as-yet-unconsidered supplier of raw ivory to the
workshops of southern Italy. Discussing the transport of goods across the transSaharan routes, she proposes that the precious cargoes also included elephant
tusks destined for Ifrı̄qiya, which were subsequently traded on to the market-ports
of the southern Italian mainland. In the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries,
the abundant ivory supplied in this way fed the demand for luxury ivory caskets
such as those apparently made in Norman Palermo, and for oliphants, caskets and
ecclesiastical commissions such as those made in the southern Italian centres of
Amalfi or Salerno.
The theme of long-distance, interstate trade is the subject of Ádela Fábregas
García’s article, “Other Markets: Complementary Commercial Zones in the
Nasrid World of the Western Mediterranean (Seventh/Thirteenth to Ninth/
˙
Fifteenth
Centuries)”. Building on the economic history and trade connections
established in the earlier articles but focusing on the Nasrid period, Fábregas
˙
draws on the complex documentary evidence of Italian customs
registers and port
logs to chart the criss-crossing of the Mediterranean by Genoese ships in particular,
18
Patricia Skinner, “Amalfitans in the Caliphate of Cordoba – Or Not?”, Al-Masāq: Islam and the Medieval
Mediterranean 24/2 (2012): 125–138.
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Alexander Metcalfe and Mariam Rosser-Owen
to build a trading network that integrated the three regions covered in this volume.
These ships made regular calls at Nasrid ports in the normal course of their sailing by
˙
cabotage towards Flanders and Britain,
but Fábregas also shows that they often
sailed at Nasrid behest, importing Italian or Ifrı̄qiyan grains and cereals to feed
˙ Fábregas also examines the evidence for Nasrid merchants operating
the population.
˙ auspices of the Nasrid
directly in these Mediterranean spaces, sometimes under the
˙
rulers themselves. She uses the material evidence of Nasrid ceramics, especially lus˙
treware, found at sites across North Africa and into Egypt, to chart the extent of
Nasrid Granada’s economic relations with its trading partners across the
˙
Mediterranean.
To conclude, we would like to thank our contributors for writing such interesting
and stimulating articles, and all the colleagues who have given up their time to act as
anonymous peer reviewers for the articles assembled here, for generously sharing
their comments and expertise. We would also like to thank Tehmina Goskar for
her role in initiating this project by co-organising the panel at the Society for the
Medieval Mediterranean biennial meeting in July 2011, from which one article in
this collection of essays has been drawn. It is hoped that the themes, debates
and questions raised in these essays will encourage other scholars to retrieve the
“forgotten connections” that integrated the three regions of the central and western
Mediterranean basin in the medieval period.