Preliminary Programme

This paper, based on source material from French, Italian, and Spanish archives, explores the historical dynamics of a particular sector of early modern trans-cultural exchange in the Mediterranean, one which was closely linked to corsairs' activities by both Christian and Muslim powers in the 16th and 17th centuries. In this perspective, the frictions and conflicts across religious differences are considered as resources for intense interaction, creating new opportunities through the mediation of exchange and ransoming of captives. The paper argues the importance of the analytical distinction (existing in the contemporary Mediterranean languages) between slaves and captives, due not to a difference of status but of destination (to be ransomed), thus avoiding mixing up the traditional slave trade in the Mediterranean since ancient times and the distinct phenomena of “ransom slavery” in the early modern period.
This is not to claim a kind of a very specific and somewhat exceptional sector of “captives trade”. On the contrary, the paper tries to show the intimate links between ransoming and trade in the exchange between the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean. Attention will be paid especially to the actors and brokers of intercultural exchange, their particular capacities and resources and their integration in the networks of early modern Mediterranean trade.
Some long-term figures and practices (alfaqueque, alafía, albarano) illustrate how ransoming and trade have been closely linked, allowing a closer look to how, by gestures, anticipating action, etc., an “untrusted credibility” was to be established. Challenging a somewhat romantic picture of what should have been cross-cultural exchange in the early modern Mediterranean, the paper questions notions as third space, middle ground, or hybridity, and tries to give a more sober and realistic view of trans-cultural Mediterranean trade and its real, yet surprising, impetus to the historical dynamics. (Show less)

The aim of this paper is to better understand the dynamics of Muslim and Jewish collaborations in nineteenth-century caravan trade based on evidence derived from legal and commercial records. While Jews must have preceded Muslims in organizing caravans, it is not until the fifteenth century that written evidence describes their presence in West African markets. The exodus of the Jews in the course of the Spanish Reconquista led the Sephardim to Timbuktu, according to local historian Ismaël Diadié Haïdara, who claims Sephardic descent. When and under what circumstances these Jewish families would have converted to Islam is not clear. But in the late 1490s, the legal opinions of Al-Maghili convinced the ruler of West Africa’s Songhay Empire to ban Jews from trading in his realm. From then onwards, Jewish merchants had few options but to contract Muslims to trade for gold and other West Africa products on their behalf. Access to both capital and international trade networks was what motivated Muslims to partner with Jews.
Centuries later, when Mardochée Aby Serour, a Jewish trader from southern Morocco, decided to venture on a caravan to trade in Timbuktu in the mid-nineteenth century, he incurred the violent wrath of resident Muslim Maghrebis. Yet he managed to secure the protection of the regional Caliph and a Jewish community of about ten men strong would maintain a short-lived presence in the famed city. Based on the experiences of Aby Serour and those of other Jewish traders whose commercial records are preserved in several archival repositories in Timbuktu, I examine contractual agreements drafted between Maghrebi Jews and Muslim partners, and fatwas produced by legal scholars that deliberate the laws governing such interfaith transactions. Relying on the scholarship of Diadié Haïdara for Timbuktu, Daniel Schroeter and Michael Abitbol on Maghrebi Jews, and S. D. Goitein for patterns of Muslim-Jewish trade in an earlier period, my preliminary conclusion is that many Muslim legal scholars condoned interfaith commerce which was advantageous and usually profitable to all parties involved. (Show less)

Captivity in the medieval Mediterranean was the product of religious warfare, piracy, and violence between Christians and Muslims. Thousands of Christians and Muslims found themselves in enemy hands in the Middle Ages as prisoners of war. In some cases, captives were taken out of fear--an enemy traveling in foreign lands posed a security risk. In battle, the victors imprisoned the vanquished--for prize and for profit. Pirates and corsairs intercepted pilgrims as they sailed eastward on the Mediterranean sea, others were snatched from their homeland along the shores of North Africa or Spain. Even merchants conducting commercial business in foreign ports ran the risk of being seized and detained if relations between their homeland and host country soured. In such an environment of mistrust and suspicion, Christians and Muslims eyed each other warily.
Yet, while war, fear, or profit stood behind the detainment and enslavement of Christians and Muslims, the act of rescuing these captives proved to be a distinctly different form of interaction. Between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, both Christians and Muslims in the Mediterranean region had instituted administrative procedures and laws in response to the high volume of what we might call captive commerce. Exchanges were formalized and mechanisms developed to deter abuse of captive transactions. Agents practicing blackmail or agents who failed to insure the safe return of a captive, for instance, were punished by their own coreligionaries. Both Christian and Muslim courts entertained captive appeals and did not hesitate to strip of their commercial/redemptive privileges those renegade agents who did not honor their contracts.
Muslims and Christians engaged in captive redemption certainly had reasons not to act in a trustworthy fashion. Incentives for post-contractual opportunism did exist, so agents negotiating an exchange had reasonable cause to be suspicious of each other. Either party might be tempted to cheat the other, increase the ransom amount unexpectedly, alter the conditions of the contract, even perhaps recapture a captive after he or she had been ransomed. Eager for profit, a Christian, Muslim, or Jewish agent could always pocket the ransom money.
Despite such a priori handicaps, however, captive commerce flourished--and with it the formal and informal institutions that supported these redemptive practices. Captive trade ran at a fairly brisk rate, and communities, leaders, and agents were compelled to intercede on behalf of their coreligionaries again and again. Similar to medieval mercantile activity, the mechanisms of captive exchange were governed by the reputation, or notoriety, of individual agents; their respective skills in negotiation and diplomacy; and Mediterranean market conditions. Shared assumptions and a common language emerged. The ecumenical, international business sensibility of the captors and redeemers made religious boundaries more porous, and trade agents from all communities maintained channels of information (conditions under which a captive was apprehended, ransom price, etc.) that spanned the Mediterranean. An unremitting flow of correspondence between sultans, kings, and high-ranking officials shows persistent prompting on both sides to adhere to bilateral treaties and mutually agreed upon conventions of ransom and redemption.
My current research more specifically focuses on the behavior and practices of agents, particularly Christian and Muslim merchants, and the factors that influenced their relationship with their constituents. How was trust built and maintained across these social groups, among players who would seem to have strong incentives to renege on agreements with each other? What pressures were imposed by Muslim and Christian authorities, or their communities, on their intermediaries to strike a deal? Under what conditions were recognized conventions of captive exchange such as contracts and treaties violated? What were the commitment problems and how were they surmounted?
My paper is a case study of captive exchange and redemption in the port city of Tunis during the reign of the Hafsid ruler Abu Faris (1394-1434). Tunis flourished as an economic metropolis in the region, attracting Christian and Muslim merchants across the Mediterranean, while also serving as a center for captive exchange and ransoming. I discuss how Abu Faris legislated redemptive practices that best met his political and strategic interests, how he protected visiting Christian agents from abusive practices, and how he insisted that captive exchanges take place in a way that did not jeopardize existing international treaties. I argue that Abu Faris understood well the long-term implications of social networks across religious communities and was closely attentive to the needs and expectations of local Christian merchants. Surviving evidence shows that the Tunisian leader preferred long-term interfaith mercantile ties, rather than short-term profit; he recognized the importance of contracts and treaties rather than capricious or partisan-motivated acts of piracy, or the seizure of goods and persons in Tunisian waters. Combining economic pragmatism and diplomatic skill, the Hafsid ruler sought to cultivate a reputation for himself as a trustworthy broker in dealing with the competing demands from North African Islamic religious authorities and Mediterranean Christian officials with whom he consistently engaged. (Show less)

Bibliothèque Nationale de France preserves an Ottoman manuscript, conceived by François Savary de Brèves during his mission to the Ottoman Court (1593-1605), as a guidebook for the consuls of France in the Mediterranean. The manuscript is a collection of various types of documents, such as Imperial charters (‘ahdname-i hümayun), juridical opinions (fetva), orders (hüküm), Grand Vizier’s reports (telhis) and ambassadors’ petitions (‘arzuhal). The substance of the documents offers a complex picture of the Western trade and merchants (especially the French ones) in the main Mediterranean towns, harbors and regions. This manuscript is a basic source for researching the commercial and diplomatic relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in the Mediterranean in late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries.
According to the djihad doctrine, between dar al-harb (House of war) and dar al-Islam (House of Islam) should be a state of war. Consequently, to enter the House of Islam any inhabitant of the House of War (harbî) had to be granted a “temporary safe-conduct” (aman). Then, he would be called a “beneficiary of protection” (müste’min). In practice, peaceful relationships with non-Muslims proved necessary and various agreements were concluded between sultans and European rulers. They were called ‘ahdname in Ottoman-Turkish (Capitulations in Western languages), and implied a general permission for access and guarantee of safety (aman) for Western merchants, ambassadors or travellers entering and staying in Ottoman dominions.
A section of juridical opinions (fetva) issued by the Grand Mufti (sheykh al-Islam) were deliberately included by Savary de Brèves after the diplomatic section of this manuscript, to explain and legitimate - from the point of view of Islamic-Ottoman law - the commercial privileges and the juridical condition of the Western merchants in the Ottoman Mediterranean (known as «capitulatory régime»).
Finally, the attempts of the Ottoman central authorities to limit the abuses of local officials are proved by various Imperial commands (hüküm).
Despite the diplomatic interdictions, the French subjects were still robbed and made captives in the Ottoman dominions. As a consequence of these abuses, new stipulations on the free traffic and safe navigation were included in the ‘ahdnames of 1597 and 1604, granted to the King Henry IV of France. One can distinguish more situations in which the French subjects, considered 'beneficiaries of protection' (müste’min) during their stay in the Ottoman dominions, were abusively made captives and their belongings and merchandise were robbed.
a. When the Frenchmen were navigating on their own vessels into and from Ottoman dominions.
b. When the Frenchmen were engaged with their ships in a carrying trade of 'enemy' merchandise (harbî meta').
c. When the Frenchmen were navigating on a ship (harbî gemisi) belonging to a Western power, which was enemy to the Ottoman empire.
d. When the Frenchmen bought provisions from the Well-protected dominions and carried on to an enemy country.
The Ottoman manuscript from BNF offers the evidence for analyzing the four situations mentioned above. (Show less)