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For Leslie
Acknowledgements
Many people have helped me materially with the writing of this book, across the six years, 2016–22, of the book project from start to finish. I hope that I have named them all here; I have anyway tried to, helped by my email files, and I can only apologize to anyone whom I have missed out. To start with, several people read chapters or sections of this book and gave me essential critiques: Lucia Arcifa, Pamela Armstrong, Giovanna Bianchi, Lorenzo Bondioli, Leslie Brubaker (who read all of it), Sandro Carocci, Wendy Davies, Lisa Fentress, Alison Gascoigne, Sauro Gelichi, Caroline Goodson, Paolo Grillo, John Haldon, Patrizia Mainoni, Eduardo Manzano, Alessandra Molinari, Annliese Nef, Sheilagh Ogilvie, Rob Portass, Elena Salinas (who also gave me a four-hour tutorial on Andalusī ceramics which was indispensable for Chapter 5), and Stefanie Schmidt. I am also very grateful to the people who invited me to give papers during these years, in which I had the opportunity to try out drafts, less or more finished, and got in every case very useful (often crucial) feedback in return: first of all Peter Gray and the Wiles Trust, who invited me to give the Wiles Lectures in November 2021, and the invited guests whom I brought, who turned the discussions afterwards into a brainstorming meeting, Lorenzo Bondioli, Leslie Brubaker, Sandro Carocci, Caroline Goodson, Eduardo Manzano, Alessandra Molinari, plus Bruce Campbell, who was on the spot; and, for other invitations, Maria João Branco, Maria Elena Cortese and Paola Guglielmotti, Jean-Pierre Devroey, Hugh Doherty, Stefano Gasparri, Jessica Goldberg, Stefan Heidemann, Marek Jankowiak, Rutger Kramer, Cristina La Rocca, Iñaki Martín, Elvira Migliario, Maureen Miller, Cecilia Palombo, Steffen Patzold, Pino Petralia, Walter Pohl, Sebastian Richter, Marina Rustow, Diego Santos, Jana Schulman for the Kalamazoo congress committee, Tamás Kiss, Alexis Wilkin, Simon Yarrow, and Luca Zavagno.
Particular thanks are owed to the people who helped me with the geniza material: Maayan Ravid and Netta Cohen, who translated for me many of Moshe Gil’s translations into Hebrew; Lorenzo Bondioli, who followed up several queries on the originals, Jessica Goldberg for an array of good ideas and advice, and Marina Rustow for more advice and for giving me the run of the database behind the marvellous Princeton Geniza Project website. And, in addition to that, I thank Andreas Kaplony and his team, who run and develop the equally marvellous Arabic Papyrology Database, which makes Arabic-script documentary texts unusually accessible. Without the people in this paragraph, I could not have
written Chapter 2 of this book, and the book would have been very different (and much shorter).
And I relied on very many more people for more specific help, in sending me texts (often unpublished ones), locating particularly difficult-to-find material (including photos—see the picture credits), talking to me about problems I was finding, and answering questions I sent them, often out of the blue. Again in alphabetical order, they are (or include) Paul Arthur, Rafael Azuar, Denise Bezzina, John Bintliff, David Bramoullé, Rebecca Bridgman, Federico Cantini, Claudio Capelli, Mayte Casal, Alexandra Chavarría, Ann Christys, Francesca Colangeli, Simone Collavini, Adele Curness, Koen De Groote, Federico Del Tredici, Mariette de Vos, Carolina Doménech, Laurent Feller, James Fentress, Alberto García Porras, Roland-Pierre Gayraud, Roger Gill, Sophie Gilotte, Susana Gómez, Sonia Gutiérrez, Catherine Holmes, Dario Internullo, Jeremy Johns, Anna Kelley, Fotini Kondyli, Eve Krakowski, Philippe Lefeuvre, Marie Legendre, Francisco López-Santos, Elisa Maccadanza, Tom McCaskie, Nicola Mancassola, Cristina Menghini, Antonino Meo and Paola Orecchioni and the rest of the SicTransit team, Alex Metcalfe, Nicolas Michel, Antonio Musarra, Alessandra Nardini, Elisabetta Neri, Hagit Nol, James Norrie, Elisabeth O’Connell, Vivien Prigent, Natalia Poulou, Juan Antonio Quirós, Riccardo Rao, Yossi Rapoport, Paul Reynolds, Catherine Richarté, Ana Rodríguez, Alessia Rovelli, Lucie Ryzova, Viva Sacco, Fabio Saggioro, Marco Sannazaro, Nadine Schibille, Phillipp Schofield, Valerie Scott, Simone Sestito, Petra Sijpesteijn, Andrew Small, Julia Smith, Alessandro Soddu, Lorenzo Tabarrini, Catarina Tente, Paolo Tomei, Francesca Trivellato, Marco Valenti, Anastasia Vassiliou, Joanita Vroom, Mark Whittow, Gregory Williams; and from OUP Stephanie Ireland, who encouraged this project from the start, and Cathryn Steele, Emma Slaughter, and Donald Watt, who guided it into port. Finally, I am indebted to Clare Whitton for the index.
This is over a hundred people, friends and colleagues, who were all happy to help push this project along and save me from gaps and errors. They did so without any visible concern that I might not agree with their own views. Thank you all. This is what research should be like: generous and collaborative. I shall be only too happy to repay it all in kind, now and into the future.
I have tried to keep up to date with all the regions of this book, up to at least the middle of 2021; I have not tried very hard to incorporate material from after the end of that year. I will have missed things, but from the start of 2022 onwards I won’t feel guilty about it.
Birmingham
June 2022
3.
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
4.
4.1
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
5.
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
5.5
6.
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
6.5
6.6
6.7
7.
8.
List of Maps
1. The Mediterranean: Regional case studies xv
2. The Mediterranean in 970: Political xvi
3. The Mediterranean in 1050: Political xvii
4. The Mediterranean in 1180: Political xviii
5. Egypt: General xix
6. Egypt: The Fayyūm eastwards to the Nile xx
7. Egypt: Internal trade routes xxi
8. Ifrīqiya: General xxii
9. Ifrīqiya: Political and trade routes xxiii
10. Sicily: General xxiv
11. Sicily: Trade routes, 1000 xxv
12. Sicily: Trade routes, 1150 xxvi
13. The Byzantine Empire: Political xxvii
14. The Aegean Sea: Trade routes, 1000 xxviii
15. The Aegean Sea: Trade routes, 1150 xxix
16. Al-Andalus: General xxx
17. Al-Andalus: Archaeology xxxi
18. Al-Andalus: Internal trade routes, 1100 xxxii
19. North-central Italy: General xxxiii
20. The central and eastern Po plain xxxiv
21. Tuscany xxxv
22. Mediterranean trade routes, 950 xxxvi
23. Mediterranean trade routes, 1050 xxxvii
24. Mediterranean trade routes, 1150 xxxviii
25. City maps of Fustāt-Cairo, Constantinople, Palermo xxxix
26. City maps of Córdoba, Genoa, Pisa xl
Illustrations of Ceramic Types
1. ‘Fayyumi
3.
4. Raqqāda
5. Tunis cobalt and manganese
6. Palermo yellow glaze
7. Palermo amphora, Sacco 11
8. Gela ware
9. Byzantine globular amphora
10.
11. Günsenin 1 amphora
12. Günsenin
13.
and manganese
18. Maiolica arcaica pisana
19. Pietra ollare (tenth-century)
20. Piadena ware
Credits and copyright, and thanks: 1 British Museum, 2 Sworders Fine Art Auctioneers, 3 Walters Art Museum (CC-BY-SA), 4 Richard Mortel (CC-BY-NC-SA), 5 Alessandra Molinari and Paola Orecchioni, 6, 7 Viva Sacco, 8 I, Sailko (CC-BY-SA), 9 Anastasia Vassiliou and the Byzantine Museum of Argolis, 10 Giovanni Dall’Orto (CC-BY), 11, 12, 13, 14 Joanita Vroom, 15, 16 Susana Gómez Martínez, 17 Julio Navarro Palazón, 18 Giovanna Bianchi (from G. Bianchi, G. Berti, eds., Piombino: La chiesa di Sant’Antimo sopra i canali (All’insegna del Giglio, Florence, 2007)), 19 Museo Archeologico Ambientale, San Giovanni in Persiceto (CC-BY-NC-ND), 20 Nicola Mancassola.
List of Abbreviations
Arabic-script original documents and letters are universally cited in this book according to the conventions of the APD (see below), normally in the format P.Cair.Arab., P.Marchands, P.Mozarab, etc., in every case denoting published texts. Hebrew-script texts from the Fustāt geniza are, instead, cited according to their manuscript collocation, most commonly T-S (see below), but also Bodl., CUL, ENA, etc., according to the conventions of the PGP (see below); but in each case I also cite the publication, if there is one (very commonly as Gil K and Gil P; see below), and any published translation (very commonly as S; see below).
I cite in this book every published primary source together with the name of the editor (and/or translator) of the version I have used; the exceptions are MGH editions (see below), and those of the Archives de l’Athos (see the Bibliography under Actes), where I have left editors out, as the editions tend to be cited in sets and the footnotes would often become too unwieldy. They all appear in the Bibliography; so do the full citations for the monographic works listed below.
