The Mediterranean in the 14th century

Ibn Khaldun and his time

The Rise and Fall of Empires

Jerónimo Páez López

El legado andalusí Foundation

 

“Empires fall, races decline, the strong become weak and beauty dies amidst wrinkles and grey hairs. Life never stops in its eternal function, and with the causes that fall down into old age, the paths of youth on the rise meet and cross one another. You will always find powerful empires, strong races, fresh, original ideals and beauties; here, along with the drain of death, are the springs of constant, fertile birth...”.

 

 

Benito Pérez Galdós, Aita Tetuan

 

 

 

The 14th century was, without doubt, a bad time for humanity. There were many years of anxiety, uncertainty and pain, with the feeling that there was no future at all. Violent crises shook the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, at both internal level – within the empires and kingdoms already in existence or being formed –and at international level, between the different powers in existence at the time

 

As American writer and historian Barbara Tuchman states in her book “A distant mirror”, there were not four, but rather seven riders of the Apocalypse: plagues, wars, banditry, bad government, outrageous demands, insurrections and religious wars. Even Mother Nature, with epidemics, droughts and atmospheric disturbances, helped alongside human rationality to make this century one of the most calamitous in history. In some ways it was similar to the moments we are living today. The different countries of the time were deep in a process of transformation and this century would see a series of relevant events that would change the political map, marking out the subsequent process of development.

Migratory movements

In the East, the advance of the Mongolian hoards in the 12th and 13th centuries provoked major migratory movements in Turkish-Ottoman tribes who occupied the lands of Anatolia and threatened the power of the Byzantine Empire. At the beginning of the 13th century, troops who made up the so-called “Fourth Crusade” destroyed Constantinople, which never recovered from this devastation. Some authors have said that the sacking of this city meant a greater loss to civilisation than the destruction of Rome in the 5th century. In any case, the Byzantine Empire never recovered its former strength, nor the majority of its possessions, and it was left severely mutilated and weakened to face the Ottoman violence.

 

Strangely, Venice, which was one of the States that had contributed most to development and progress in the Mediterranean, lead by the ambition of its mastiff, Enrique Dándolo (in his 80s and all but blind), would be the main artifice of the destruction of Constantinople and, beyond that, of the Byzantine Empire. Thanks partly to this, the Ottomans managed to consolidate their empire on the vast plains of Anatolia, and they became the only power with specific policy and objectives, who had sufficient military force and authority to control a large territory. Later, they advanced towards the Balkans, crossing into Europe via the Dardanelle Straight, and they dominated the European principalities of Macedonia, Albania and a large part of the Balkans. This advance coincided with a period of political fragmentation in the region and with the division brought about by the pure hatred that orthodox Greeks felt towards any kind of integration or advance of “Latin” Christianity in the region.

 

Constantinople

Constantinople became an island in the Ottoman sea. Despite its repeated requests for help from the rest of the Christian world, it did not get the necessary help – they had managed to do so years back – and it was left at the mercy of the Ottomans.

 

The Turkish advance came to a halt at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, as a consequence of the rise of the Mongolian Tamerlane Empire, which stood out for some years and destroyed Damascus in 1401. Ibn Khaldun himself went there to see Tamerlane in a failed attempt to convince him not to sack the city. Nevertheless, nothing could stop the subsequent advance of the Ottoman Turks some years later.

 

On Tamerlane’s death, his kingdom disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared and the Ottomans managed to take control of Constantinople in 1453. For the subsequent three centuries, the Turks were the greatest territorial and military power in the Mediterranean. They brought about the end of Mamluk reign in Egypt and dominated the majority of the territories of the Middle East and north Africa.

 

At the other end of the Mediterranean, a political/military situation was developing that can be seen as the other side of the coin. The Christian kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula were consolidating their power. In the mid 12th century, Fernando III “the Saint” took Cordoba and Seville, and Nasrid Granada was left as the only Muslim kingdom in Spain, occupying a small area of territory in Eastern Andalusia, with its capital, the city of Granada.

 

The Nasrid kingdom was left at the mercy of the Christian advance, and at the same time it became a refuge and headquarters for Spanish Muslims who established themselves there in the face of the “Christian re-conquest”. This was the precursor to the emigration of Spanish Muslims to north Africa. At that time, with the decline of the Almohad Empire after its defeat at the battle of Navas de Tolosa in 1212, a major emigration began of the elite of al-Andalus society to north Africa, and Tunisia in particular. Abu Zakariya, the last Almohad governor of Seville, consolidated the Hafsí dynasty there and would govern Tunisia for several centuries to come. It was also at this time that the family of Ibn Khaldun emigrated to Tunisia. He was born in this city in 1332.

Conflict between the Castilian kingdoms

The Nasrid kingdom of Granada was able to survive in power thanks to the conflicts that arose between the Castilian kingdoms, to their struggles to consolidate the various dynasties, and also to the support that they received from the Merinid dynasty, which governed the kingdom of Morocco after the fall of the Almohads, establishing its capital in the city of Fez. In the 14th century, Fez and Granada were politically fragile and unstable kingdoms. Nevertheless, they were also highly cultured and developed, having created a style of architecture that would endure as the quintessential mark of Hispano-Moorish exquisiteness. For years, these two kingdoms were the political and cultural home to some of the most brilliant Moorish intellectuals of the time, such as Ibn Khaldun, Ibn al-Khatib and Ibn Marzuq. These authors monitored the ups and downs of power. Ibn Khaldun lived in Fez and ended up going to the kingdom of Granada thanks to his friendship with Ibn al-Khatib. He was sent from Granada as emissary of the Nasrid court, to meet king Pedro I in Seville. He finally returned to Granada and then to north Africa. Ibn al-Khatib became a political émigré in Fez, where political intrigues eventually brought about the end of his life.

 

At that time, north Africa had fragmented after the period of splendour and unity (although itself not free from conflict) that the Almohad dynasty had symbolised. In the words of professor Halima Ferhat, it had now entered a period of conflict. “The domestic north African wars were longer and more devastating than those against the Christian kingdoms had been.”

 

Deep dissention and struggles between aspiring factions to the throne were also present in the Christian world, although a complete process of consolidation of the Christian States had begun, where this was not the case in the Arab-Muslim world. This would allow for subsequent economic, military and technological development in the West.

 

The Castilian kingdoms now dominated the area of the Straight of Gibraltar, which had been under Muslim control since the 8th century. This was at the root of potential southward expansion by the emerging kingdoms of Castile and Portugal. The conquest of Ceuta by the Portuguese in 1415, and of the kingdom of Granada by the Castilians would mean, from the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, that the world would no longer focus on the Mediterranean, but would look to its future in the Atlantic. Portuguese maritime expansion towards the south of Africa and its arrival in Asia, after sailing the Cape of Good Hope, along with the “discovery” of America, would be a point of inflexion in the history of human kind.

 

The Atlantic, and not the Mediterranean, would be the neuralgic centre of European history in subsequent centuries.

 

 

Consolidation of political power

 

It would not be correct to understand this entire world of advances and retreats, of cultural development and human, economic and social exchange, solely as a world of conflict between Christians and Muslims. The Turks made frequent alliances with the orthodox Greeks and the Balkan principalities, while the Nasrid kingdom oscillated between its alliances with the Christian monarchs and its ambiguous relationships with the Merinid kingdom of Fez. The world was already globalised, and relationships were established between the most far-removed states and kingdoms, both geographically and ideologically. The exploration of Marco Polo would be highly significant, connecting the European world, especially the great trading cities of Italy, with distant China. Ibn Battuta was from Tangiers and travelled all over the Muslim world, including Persia and the distant lands of the Caucasus; Baybars, the Mamluk, sent a delegation to the court of Castile; the king of Mali went to Mecca on his famous expedition, weighed down with gold which would be appropriated by the traders of Cairo; the Castilian ambassador, Ruy González de Clavijo, would go as far as Samarcanda.

 

Beyond the realm of conflict, commercial relationships were gradually weaving a dense network that would bring continents, states and kingdoms together. Mediterranean vitality would centre on trade, universities and the consolidation of political power, removed from religious influence and control. Venice and Genoa would be at the forefront of major commercial expansion of the European Mediterranean in its relationship with the East, with the Crown of Aragon joining in, starting its own expansion in the Mediterranean, dominating the island of Sicily and later trading with north Africa. Mamluk Egypt would dominate commercial relations with Africa and Asia.

 

At the same time, major transformations would affect East and West alike. One of the unique features of the first decades of the 14th century, in contrast to what was to happen several centuries later, is that there was no hegemonic power. What existed was a series of interrelated political, economic and social systems and sub-systems. Cairo linked the Middle East with China and India, and also with the Sudan. Italian cities emerged as large, productive commercial centres. One specific characteristic of Western merchants, perhaps, centred on their dynamism, which took them to other countries in different civilisations, while Muslims considered Christian Europe to be a distant, under-developed world, and they paid it little attention.

 

It could also be the case that, for a large part of this century, the Muslim world had a prominent economic and cultural position as compared with Christian Europe, although here, in the latter, a lively political and social climate was developing that would quickly transform Europe.

 

Certain major upheavals affected the development of different countries, kingdoms and empires. Tamerlane’s Mongolian invasions and the Crusades had fragmented the major eastern trade routes. The Black Death, which distinguished between neither frontiers nor creeds, attacked and decimated the population of the Mediterranean world from one shore to the other. At the same time, in Christian Europe, major changes in economic, cultural, intellectual and social structures were taking place, along with important technological and intellectual innovations. Differentiation between religious studies and the humanities was consolidated.

 

There were neither concrete reasons, nor “inherent historical needs” to know how systems would evolve. In fact, bearing in mind the situation in the 14th century, evolution in the 15th and 16th centuries could hardly have been any different to what it was. It was a world in constant movement, of advances and retreats, of exchange. This exhibition, that we have titled “Ibn Khaldun. The Mediterranean in the 14th century: the rise and fall of empires”, speaks of this century and what it was like. As a central theme for the exhibition, we have chosen the life and work of Ibn Khaldun, this great Muslim thinker, who was born in Tunisia and died in Cairo in 1406. We also wanted to talk about the great civilisations that surrounded the Mediterranean, about their human, social, economic and cultural relationships. These two worlds tend to be described as separate entities, as civilisations in conflict, always set against each other and not related. We think that beyond the conflicts there were many interrelations, and that one cannot be explained without the other, that they both interrelated with each other in many aspects of their historical development. This is why the exhibition tells the story of Egypt, Algiers, Tunisia and Morocco, but also of Spain, of the Castilian kingdoms, the kingdom of Aragon, the Mediterranean islands, France, the Italian cities, the Ottoman Empire, and also of Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Dante, Petrarch, the archpriest of Hita, and, of course, of Ibn Khaldun, his life, his work and his travels – in short, of the world in which he lived, as described by Albert Hourani in his History of the Arab Peoples:

 

“It was a world full of reminders of the frailty of human endeavour. His own career showed how unstable were the alliances of interests on which dynasties relied to maintain their power; and the meeting with Timur before Damascus makes clear how it can affect the resurgence of a new power in the life of cities and peoples. Outside of the city, order was precarious: a government emissary could be waylaid, an out-of-favour courtesan could take refuge outside of the reach of urban control. The death of his parents in an epidemic, and of his children in a shipwreck represent a lesson regarding human impotence in the hands of destiny. We perceive something stable, however, or at least something which seems so. A world in which a family from the south of Arabia could move to Spain and return to their place of origin after six centuries, and find themselves in familiar surroundings, possessed a unity which transcended the divisions in space and time; the Arab language could open the door to high office and influence in any part of that world; a knowledge, transmitted across centuries by a known chain of masters preserved a moral community even if regimes changed; the places of pilgrimage, Mecca and Jerusalem, constituted immutable poles of the world of men, even if the reigning power changed its headquarters from one city to another; and the belief in a God who had created and sustained the world could give meaning to the injustices of destiny”.

 

 

 

This exhibition aims to describe life at the time, without forgetting that reality is a mixture of tragic, irrational components, but also elements of rationality, generosity, creativity and progress. Deep down, despite the pessimism that can sometimes be overwhelming when looking at history in detail, perhaps we, today, should take comfort in the knowledge that the human species has survived huge conflicts and tragedies – these were the general norm for the 14th century.

 

The exhibition tries to explain how this century was also the seed for and the start of periods of great advances in the development of human kind. We want to describe the splendour of al-Andalus and the court of Seville, and the significance of the great creative revolutions that took place in the Mediterranean countries. We also want to look at the commercial, political, intellectual and philosophical evolution that was to make way for the Renaissance, and European and Spanish expansion into the Atlantic.