The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

by Frankopan, Peter

  Such fluctuations in prices and in wealth paled when compared with the transformation of the Mediterranean triggered by the impact of the Crusade. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, wrote the North African historian Ibn Khaldūn, Muslim fleets had such complete command of the seas that Christians were not even able to float a plank in it.15 But although the Muslims had long dominated the Mediterranean, they were about to lose control of the waves to a new set of rivals: the city-states of Italy were the latest additions to the great trading networks of the east.

  In truth, Amalfi, Genoa, Pisa and Venice had begun to flex their muscles well before the 1090s. In the case of the latter, trade in slaves and other commodities led to strong links being built up with towns on the Dalmatian coast such as Zara, Trogir, Split and Dubrovnik, which served as stepping stones along the Adriatic and beyond. These trading stations represented local market places and provided safe locations where long journeys could be broken. The fact that the Italian communes had permanent colonies of merchants in Constantinople, as well as in other cities in Byzantium, reveals their growing interest in trade with the eastern Mediterranean.16 This fuelled economic growth back in Italy, where such great riches were being generated in Pisa in the late eleventh century that the bishop and citizens imposed limits on the height of towers built by nobles keen to show off their wealth.17

  The Italian city-states were quick to grasp that the seizure of Jerusalem would open up exciting commercial possibilities. Even before the Crusaders had reached the Holy City, Genoa, Pisa and Venice had fleets out on the water, making for Syria and Palestine. In each case, the initiative to put to sea was either the direct result of appeals from the papacy to participate in the enterprise, or stemmed from the impulse to defend Christians from the horrific atrocities that were being reported by eyewitnesses and emissaries from Byzantium.18 But while spiritual motivations were an important factor, it quickly became apparent that there were significant material rewards on offer as well. The Crusaders were precariously placed after the capture of Jerusalem, in dire need of provisioning and desperate to establish links back to Europe. The fleets of the city-states put them in a powerful negotiating position when it came to dealing with the new masters of the Holy Land. Their hand was strengthened further by the Crusaders’ need to secure the littoral and ports such as Haifa, Jaffa, Acre and Tripoli where maritime power was essential in mounting a successful siege.

  Terms were struck which gave fabulous potential benefits in return for help. As reward for taking part in the siege of Acre in 1100, for instance, the newly arrived Venetians were promised a church and market square in every city captured by the Crusaders, as well as one-third of all plunder taken from the enemy and immunity from all taxes. It was the perfect example of what one scholar has termed the classic Venetian blend of ‘piety and greed’.19

  When Caesarea was besieged in 1101, it was the Genoese who were ideally placed to secure an impressive haul of booty together with favourable trading terms. Their position was further enhanced three years later when Baldwin I, King of Jerusalem, awarded the Genoese a sweeping set of tax exemptions as well as other legal and commercial rights – such as being free of royal jurisdiction in cases involving capital punishment. They were also awarded a third of the city of Caesarea, a third of the city of Arsuf and a third of Acre – with a generous proportion of the latter’s tax revenues. The king also committed to pay an annual retainer to Genoa, and to grant a third share of future conquests on the condition that suitable military support was given in return.20 Agreements like this were signs of the weakness of the Crusaders’ position in the east; but for the city-states they were the basis for fortunes that transformed them from regional centres into international powers.21

  Not surprisingly, such dizzying rewards sparked intense competition between Pisa, Genoa and Venice. Amalfi, which had been slow off the mark in getting ships out to the east, was unable to compete, excluded from the Great Game that now kicked off as the other rivals contended for access, concessions, lucrative trading terms. As early as 1099, the Pisans and Venetians came to blows, with the latter sinking twenty-eight of a fifty-strong squadron of Pisan ships off Rhodes. Hostages and captured vessels were then released in a show of magnanimity because, according to a later source, Venetians carried the cross of the Lord not only stitched into their tunics (as the Crusaders were instructed to do by the Pope) but also stamped on their souls.22

  The background to this particular fracas was that in 1092 Venice had been granted extensive trading concessions across the Byzantine Empire as part of a grand strategy by the Emperor Alexios to stimulate the economy. This saw the Venetians awarded landing pontoons in the harbour of Constantinople, and being exempted from taxes on both imports and exports.23 The primary motivation of the Venetians seven years later, therefore, was to keep Pisa out of this market place, and in doing so to protect the highly attractive terms that they had negotiated with the Emperor. As part of the settlement with Venice, the Pisans were forced to agree that they would never again enter Byzantium ‘for the sake of trade, nor fight against Christians in any manner whatsoever, unless on account of devotion to the Holy Sepulchre’. That, at least, was how the Venetians reported what happened.24

  Enforcing such treaties was easier said than done, and in fact, by the early twelfth century, the Byzantine Emperor had granted Pisa its own privileges that were not dissimilar to those previously granted to Venice, if not quite as generous. Although they too were granted a quay and anchorage in the imperial capital, Pisan merchants were offered only discounted customs duties, rather than full exemption from them.25 This was a case of trying to water down a monopoly that threatened to give the Venetians an excessive advantage over their competitors.26

  The scramble between the city-states of Italy for trading dominance in the eastern Mediterranean was frantic and ruthless. But it was not long before Venice emerged as the clear victor. This owed much to the city’s geographic position in the Adriatic, which meant a shorter sailing time to Venice than the trip to either Pisa or Genoa; it also helped that anchorages on this route were better, making it a safer journey too, at least once the treacherous Peloponnese had been negotiated. That Venice’s economy was stronger and more developed was also important, as was the fact that the city had no local competitor to bog it down – unlike Pisa and Genoa, whose intense rivalry removed both from the Levant at crucial moments as they competed over control of their coastlines and above all that of Corsica.27

  This played to Venice’s advantage when a large army of western knights was comprehensively routed in what became known the battle of the Field of Blood in 1119, a defeat that dealt a shattering blow to Antioch’s viability as an independent Crusader state.28 With Pisa and Genoa caught up in their own squabbles, desperate appeals were sent from Antioch to the Doge in Venice, begging for help in the name of Jesus Christ. A powerful force was put together because, as one generous contemporary commentator put it, the Venetians wanted ‘with the help of God to extend Jerusalem and the area adjacent, all for the advantage and glory of Christendom’.29 Significantly, however, the pleas for assistance from King Baldwin II were accompanied by the promise of new and additional privileges in return.30

  The Venetians used this opening to teach the Byzantines a lesson. The new Emperor, John II, who succeeded his father Alexios in 1118, had concluded that the domestic economy had recovered sufficiently to justify refusing to renew the concessions given to the Venetians more than two decades earlier. As a result, as the Venetian fleet made its way east towards Antioch, it laid siege to Corfu and threatened further action if the Emperor did not renew the award. A stand-off followed until the Emperor backed down and reconfirmed the privileges first granted by his father.31

  This success was more than matched by the gains made when the Doge’s ships finally reached the Holy Land. Gauging the situation shrewdly, the Venetians made a loan to the western leaders in Jerusalem to enable them to fund their own forces to launch an attack on the por
ts that were held by the Muslims. A hefty premium was extracted in return. Venice would receive a church, a street and a square of good size in every royal and baronial city in the kingdom of Jerusalem. An annual fee would be paid to the Venetians, secured on the substantial future tax revenues of Tyre, the leading trade emporium in the region. When that city fell following a siege in 1124, Venice’s status in the region was transformed by the granting of extensive concessions that would apply throughout the kingdom of Jerusalem. From having a mere foothold, the Italian city had engineered a position of such strength that some realised it threatened to compromise the authority of the crown and immediately attempted to water down some of the terms.32

  This was ostensibly a time of faith and intense religious conviction, a period marked by self-sacrifice in the name of Christianity. But religion had to jostle alongside realpolitik and financial concerns – and the church hierarchy knew it. When the Byzantine Emperor John II tried to assert his claim over Antioch, the Pope issued a declaration to all the faithful, telling them that anyone who helped the Byzantines would face eternal damnation.33 This had everything to do with keeping Rome’s allies happy, and little to do with theology or doctrine.

  But the best example of the blending of the spiritual and material came after the loss of Edessa to the Muslims in 1144 – another major reversal for the Crusaders. Calls went out across Europe for reinforcements to take part in an expedition that would become the Second Crusade. The cheerleading was led by Bernard of Clairvaux, a charismatic and energetic figure, who was realistic enough to understand that the remission of sins and the possibility of salvation through martyrdom might not persuade everyone to head east. ‘To those of you who are merchants, men quick to seek a bargain,’ he wrote in a letter that was circulated widely, ‘let me point out the advantages of this great opportunity. Do not miss them!’34

  By the middle of the twelfth century, the Italian city-states were lucratively exploiting the enviable positions they had so brilliantly built in the east. With preferential access to Constantinople as well as to the main cities on the coast of both the Byzantine Empire and Palestine, Venice’s stepping stones now extended right the way across the eastern Mediterranean, not only to the Levant, but before long to Egypt too. Some looked on jealously, like Caffaro, the most famous Genoese historian of the Middle Ages. Genoa ‘was asleep and suffering from indifference’, he wrote mournfully of the 1150s; it was ‘like a ship sailing across the sea without a navigator’.35

  This was something of an exaggeration, revealing a little of the author’s disapproval of the powerful families who dominated Genoese politics. In fact, Genoa was also thriving in this period. As well as making sure that its privileges in the Crusader states were regularly reaffirmed, the city built ties in the western Mediterranean. In 1161, a truce was agreed with the Almohad Caliph in Morocco, which provided access to markets and protection from assault. By the 1180s, trade with North Africa accounted for more than a third of Genoese commercial activity, and an extensive infrastructure of warehouses and hostels had sprung up along the littoral to support merchants and enable business to take place smoothly.36

  Genoa, Pisa and Venice stimulated the growth of a string of other towns around them – just as Kiev had done in Russia. Cities like Naples, Perugia, Padua and Verona expanded rapidly, with new suburbs expanding so fast that city walls were repeatedly rebuilt further and further out from the centre. Although assessing population sizes is difficult in the absence of clear empirical data, there is no doubt that the twelfth century saw a major surge in urbanisation in Italy as markets boomed, middle classes formed and incomes rose.37

  Ironically, the basis for this growth in the age of the Crusades lay in the stability and good relations between the Muslim world and the Christians, both in the Holy Land itself and elsewhere. Although there were regular clashes in the decades after the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, it was only in the late 1170s that there was a dramatic escalation of tension. On the whole, Crusaders learnt how to deal with the majority Muslim populations that came under their sway, and with those further afield. Indeed, the King of Jerusalem regularly brought his own lords to heel, preventing them from launching reckless forays on passing caravans or on neighbouring cities that might antagonise local leaders or demand a major reaction from Baghdad or Cairo.

  Some new arrivals to the Holy Land found this hard to understand and were a constant source of problems as a result, as local observers recognised. Newcomers could be incredulous that trade with the ‘infidel’ was taking place on a daily basis, and took time to realise that in practice things were not as black and white as they had been painted back in Europe. In time, prejudices wore off: westerners who had been in the east for a while ‘are much better than those recently arrived’, wrote one Arabic author who was appalled by the crude and uncouth habits of new arrivals – as well as by their attitudes to anyone who was not Christian.38

  There were Muslim parallels to this way of thinking too. One fatwa, or declaration, issued in the 1140s urged Muslims neither to travel to the west nor trade with the Christians. ‘If we travel to their country the price of commodities will rise, and they will gather from us huge sums of money which they will use to fight Muslims and raid their lands.’39 By and large, however, for all the fiery rhetoric on both sides, relations were remarkably calm and considered. Indeed, in western Europe, there was considerable curiosity about Islam. Even at the time of the First Crusade, it had not taken long for some to form positive opinions about the Muslim Turks. ‘If only the Turks had stood firm in the faith of Christ and Christendom,’ wrote the author of one of the most popular histories of the expedition to Jerusalem wistfully – perhaps even hinting at the previous religious background of the Seljuks before they became Muslims; ‘you could not find stronger or braver or more skilful soldiers.’40

  It was not long either before the scientific and intellectual achievements of the Muslim world were being actively sought out and devoured by scholars in the west, such as Adelard of Bath.41 It was Adelard who scoured the libraries of Antioch and Damascus and brought back copies of algorithmic tables that formed the foundation for the study of mathematics in the Christian world. Travelling round this region was to have one’s eyes opened. When he returned home, he ‘found the princes barbarous, the bishops bibulous, judges bribable, patrons unreliable, clients sycophants, promisers liars, friends envious and almost everybody full of ambition’.42 These views were formed from the sanguine recognition of the east’s sophistication compared to the cultural limitations in the Christian west. Adelard’s view was shared by others – such as Daniel of Morley, who moved from England to study in Paris in the latter part of the twelfth century. The austere supposed intellectuals in that city flattered to deceive, simply sitting ‘still as statues, pretending to show wisdom by remaining silent’. Realising that there was nothing he could learn from these men, Daniel moved to Muslim Toledo ‘as quickly as [he] could, so that [he] could hear the wisest philosophers of the world’.43

  Ideas from the east were taken on eagerly, if unevenly. Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, which was the powerhouse of theological and intellectual thought in medieval France, arranged to have the Qurān translated so that he and other Christian scholars might better understand it – and, admittedly, use it to reinforce pre-existing views about Islam as deviant, shameful and dangerous.44 Nor was it only to the Muslim lands that western Europeans turned for inspiration. Texts produced in Constantinople were also translated into Latin, such as the commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachaean Ethics commissioned by Anna Komnene, daughter of Alexios I, which eventually found their way to Thomas Aquinas – and thence into the mainstream of Christian philosophy.45

  In the same way, it was not only trade with the Muslims that lay at the heart of the economic and social blossoming of Europe in the twelfth century, for Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire were a major motor in the commerce of the Christian Mediterranean – responsible for half the international t
rade of Venice, to judge from the surviving documents for this period.46 Even so, and while glass, metalwork, oil, wine and salt from Byzantium were exported to markets in Italy, Germany and France, it was products being brought from further afield that were most highly prized, sought after and profitable.

  The demand for silk, cotton, linen and fabrics produced in the eastern Mediterranean, in the middle of Asia or in China was enormous, as inventories, sales lists and treasuries of churches in western Europe make clear.47 Cities in the Levant capitalised on the emerging markets – with Antioch establishing itself as a trading centre where materials could shipped west, but also as a production centre in its own right. Textiles from the city such as ‘Cloth of Antioch’ were marketed so successfully and became so desirable that King Henry III of England (ruled 1216–72) had ‘Antioch Chambers’ in each of his principal residences: the Tower of London, Clarendon and Winchester Palaces, and Westminster.48

  Spices also began to flow to Europe from the east in increasing volumes. These reached three primary hubs – Constantinople, Jerusalem and Alexandria – and were then shipped to the Italian city communes and on to markets in Germany, France, Flanders and Britain, where there were fat profits to be made on the sale of exotic goods. In some ways the desire to buy expensive luxuries from the orient was a similar process to the steppe nomads’ demand for silk bolts from the Chinese court: in the medieval world, just as today, the wealthy needed to differentiate themselves by showing off their status. Although trade in expensive objects and goods involved only a small proportion of the population, they were important because they enabled differentiation – and therefore reveal social mobility and rising aspirations.