The Mediterranean in the 14th century

Jewish merchants in the 14th century

María José Cano

The Jews are well known for their role in the development of the commercial system throughout history. This role became especially important in the Mediterranean region in the Middle Ages.

In the 14th century, as had been the case in previous and subsequent centuries, successful commercial transactions relied largely on good personal relationships between merchants – the precarious nature of commercial networks required complete trust in each and every link of the network.

A prosperous family, co-religionist business

Family relationships, in the broad Semitic meaning – almost tribal and clan-oriented – were the main protagonists. When these failed, however, they were substituted for co-religionist relations. In the case of the Jews, one kind was as common as the other. This is understandable if we think that they were a religious minority everywhere, in a universe dominated by religions. As a consequence, commercial networks were made up of members of the same religious tradition: Jews with Jews, Christians with Christians and Muslims with Muslims, although this did not prevent business being done between members outside the religious community in question in the initial and final stages. Specifically speaking, trade between Christian Europe and the Muslim countries depended largely on Jewish traders living on the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, who traded in the southern ports with Muslim merchants, and in the north with Christians. Commercial ethics were very similar amongst members of the three Abrahamic religions, allowing for relatively easy “inter-religious” commercial transactions.

The majority of Jewish merchants belonged to a group that could be called professionals, made up of the grand merchants, delegates, representatives and agents or intermediaries. Travellers going on pilgrimages to holy locations, especially Jerusalem, also traded sporadically, as did scholars who came to study under famous erudites, making the most of the long journey to trade and pay for part of it with the profits. Sometimes business was conducted privately, although in the majority of cases it involved transport of goods for third parties, and these transactions were always smaller than those of the professional merchants. 

 Abundant documentation that survives on Jewish merchants shows how they did not all belong to the same social class, and it also shows that there was a spirit of equality, that can only be explained by the shared responsibility between all the players in a commercial transaction. The documents – contracts, letters, travel diaries, etc. – show how trade was marked by insecurity and slow communications on commercial routes which, fundamentally, made use of boats and caravans to transport goods. Good results in business depended on being able to maintain the fragile equilibrium between buyers, sellers and intermediaries, who began to purchase goods at their place of origin, finishing up with a good sale at the destination. Nevertheless, this equilibrium depended, above all, on the intermediary stages where goods awaiting their next destination would be traded – they were sold to buy other goods – or they were lost. As a consequence, trust between all the members of the commercial network was fundamental.

The networks were formed, above all, by members of the major merchants’ families, such as sons, sons-in-law and people very close to the family, who acted as delegates or agents. These were in charge of buying and selling goods and would usually live in the most important trading enclaves. At the beginning of the 14th century, the most important Jewish merchants came from the Muslim world. Hence, it was common to find networks where, for example, a Jewish merchant from Cairo had delegates residing in enclaves in the Muslim West, who would maintain the Sijilmasa-Fez-al-Andalus route. From here they would trade with the Christian kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula or with Qairawán-Sicily. From Sicily the route forked again, one heading into Europe via Italy, another to the Eastern Mediterranean and another towards Cairo, headquarters of the network, where, in turn, goods were received from India via Aden and the Nile, imported into Christian Europe and the Muslim West.

Authentic trading companies

The relationships between merchants and their agents and representatives were usually maintained for life, and even lasted from generation to generation. These consolidated relationships sometimes coexisted with other sporadic ones, established for the purposes of one single commercial transaction. Until the beginning of the 14th century, the major Judeo-Arab merchants had sufficient capital to finance their own business and commercial expeditions, and all the intermediaries received a percentage of the profits of transactions.

The big merchants often set up associations with other traders, creating real “monopolies”. These companies were reinforced with matrimonial alliances, although the professional associations were above these alliances, as can be seen in the odd case of divorce, where the company would outlast the marriage. The trading companies shared out the profits and financed operations jointly, but the properties of its members would remain separate. This custom was even applied to children; how strictly it was observed varied from one region to another and from one period to another, although in north Africa it was practised from Roman times to well into the Modern Age, with almost no variation.

During the 14th century, as in the rest of the medieval period, the Jews, being minority communities, were ruled by their own laws in both Christian and Muslim kingdoms. They would only be subject to central jurisdiction in cases of mixed litigation, that is where Christians or Muslims were involved in the case. This situation gave a degree of uniformity to the legislation that governed the life of Jews from East to West, encouraging trading relationships between them and making these relationships easier to establish. In the Middle Ages, the great Rabbis often made rulings on commercial questions.

Myths about Jewish merchants

The fact that the Jews maintained rigid commercial networks, often within families, and that they were governed by their own laws, unknown and strange to the gentiles, gave rise to the appearance of legends surrounding the Jewish merchants: their mythical wealth or their practise of money-lending at exorbitant rates. However, they were neither all grand merchants nor moneylenders. What is definitely true is that legislation in gentile countries that prohibited Jews from owning and cultivating land, from holding posts in the administration and in the majority of liberal professions, lead the Jews into trade and money-lending as the only way they could maintain a basic standard of living.

Another of the legends surrounding Jewish merchants was that they concentrated on trade in luxury goods. It is true that there were Jewish merchants who controlled a large part of the market in ornamental objects – pearls, gemstones, glass beads, lapis lazuli, mother-of-pearl, coral…the price-volume ratio was very favourable in these items and, in the case of persecution, something all together too common, they were easy to hide and transport. These were, for example, the preferred goods chosen for trade by travelling pilgrims and scholars, thanks to their “convenience”. Nevertheless the Jews traded in all types of things, and were also particularly active in the minerals market, which was an entirely different case – here it was necessary to deal in large quantities: they imported iron from India and Arabia and, from there, to the Mediterranean countries, where other Jews has transformation industries. Copper, solder, silver and lead were exported from al-Andalus. The gold market was another where Jewish merchants played an important role from the first centuries of the Middle Ages onwards. They brought this precious metal from Sub-Saharan Africa via Sijilmassa, and from the 12th century onwards they would import it from Sudan.

Merchants opted for one type of goods or another, firstly according to market demand, but also largely according to the activities of the merchant’s home community. It was frequent among the Jews to trade in products related to transformation industries in the hands of their own communities. For example, it was very common for the Jews of al-Andalus to trade in silk and products related to the textile industry, such as so-called Indian red dye, which they imported from India and Yemen to Granada, to then export the woven, dyed silk. Egyptian linseed was also exported to Tunisia and Sicily to be treated. Once processed it was imported by other countries, including Egypt.

Venice and Genoa in control of maritime trade

In the middle of the 14th century, the traditional trade routes described above began to decline, and trade with the Eastern Mediterranean underwent considerable growth; it was at this time that the Italian maritime republics of Genoa and Venice began to control trade to the detriment of the Muslim countries of the Western Mediterranean. The expansion and consolidation of the Ottoman Empire (although Constantinople would not be taken until 1453) contributed to this change, accelerating the rhythm of trade in this region. The Genoese and Venetians were forced to extend their routes towards Syria, Egypt and Constantinople. The Egyptian cities of Alexandria and Cairo, along with the ports of Sicily would continue to be major commercial enclaves; at the same time, new commercial centres would emerge, such as the islands of Corfu, Rhodes and Cyprus, the Greek enclaves of Salonica, Corinth and Constantinople, and the Syrian-Lebanese cities of Tripoli, Aleppo, Damascus, etc. It is well known that the Jewish populations in these places increased considerably: the Jews, drawn by the commercial prosperity of these cities, emigrated from the West, especially from Italy and Sepharad. For example, when there were outbreaks of anti-Jewish sentiment in the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon in 1391, many Jews who maintained commercial contacts with the Jewish communities of the East opted to emigrate there, given that the new Ottoman Empire offered them better opportunities and more protection and freedom.

The fact that control of trade in the Mediterranean passed from Muslim to Christian hands had a profound affect on Jewish traders, on account of the different way they were regarded by one community and the other – a people of the Book or a people responsible for deicide. This is reflected in relationships with the Christian merchants embodied in laws of the time. This was the case with Venetian maritime legislation. In the 14th and 15th centuries it considered Jewish merchants to be rivals and proposed they be excluded from the commercial system. Although these regulations never came to be applied, their freedom of movement was limited. In the 14th century, Jewish merchants were not allowed to own or charter their own ships. Instead they were obliged to use the maritime services offered by dominant countries in maritime trade, which were at that time, fundamentally Venice and Genoa. Even when they were accepted, they had other problems. Sometimes it was Jewish laws themselves – on diet, purity, feasts…- which made their passage on gentile vessels more difficult; others were the Christian ports they put into, where the Jews were sometimes prohibited and persecuted. One great scourge of Jewish merchants in this century was to be piracy; this problem affected all traders, and would be especially hard on the Jews who were attacked more viciously and were not defended under the pretext of religion. It was often clear that the number of Jews taken captive was significantly greater than that of Christians, regardless of the religion of the corsairs.

Confined in ghettos

In Christian cities, even in the colonies, Jewish merchants, along with other “foreigners”, were obliged to shut themselves away for the night with their goods in hostels, separated from the Christian merchants, although this separation was especially emphatic in the case of the Jews, who had to spend the night in hostels located in the Jewish quarters. The existence of all-Jewish inns in the high Middle Ages is well documented: one in Tortosa in 1328, another in Bologna at the end of the 14th century, and one belonging to the crown of Naples (king Roberto) in 1317.

A clear example of the attitude towards Jewish merchants at the end of the 14th century is that held in Venice: Throughout the Middle Ages, the Venetians had reservations about the Jews, but there were never persecutions, and in the 14th century they were given rights to residency in the Veneto neighbourhood and complete freedom to carry out their business interests. The commercial boom in the city meant many Jewish merchants came to settle there, including some who arrived from Sepharad. Authorisations to live in the city continued to be granted until 1513, although now limited to the island known as the New Ghetto, where, from 1516, Jews were obliged to remain within the neighbourhood after sunset.

Despite all the difficulties that Jews had to face in Christian territories, when European institutions developed a more modern trade system based on the implication of investors at the close of the century, many Jewish merchants adopted this new system and were notably prosperous in comparison with their colleagues who continued using the Muslim business system that was much more personalised. Christian merchants living in the East made use of their minority status – their business dealings were regulated by the laws of their countries of origin, recognised by Muslim authorities. The Jews made use of this right and they took advantage of the trade laws that favoured them most, whether these were Jewish, Muslim or of any Christian country.

The relationship with Christian merchants made Jewish merchants change many of their habits. For example, from the 13th century they changed the trade route for diamonds from India. Up until then they had been distributed through Egypt, but now they passed through Venice, where Venetian Jews began the diamond cutting industry. The modern art of diamond cutting has its origins in this period.

To sum up, it can be said that during the 14th century, Jewish merchants did not only continue to play the same prominent role in the commercial system of the West that they had been playing for centuries before, but that they also opened up to new horizons, such as the Slavonic territories.