84 dominique valérian
communication during the first centuries of Islam: if the Muslims did control most
parts of the sea, transport could also be effected on land along the southern shore of
the Mediterranean. What the oldest texts reveal is the importance of the caravan trade
and the organization of networks of land exchanges. It is only in the ninth century
that we can see a real revival of sea trade in the Muslim Mediterranean, contemporary
with the conquest of the major islands (Majorca, Sicily, Crete) that allowed the con-
trol over navigation in the southern part of the Mediterranean. In the tenth century,
the foundation of two new and rival caliphates, the Umayyad (in al-Andalus) and the
Fatimid (in Ifriqiya, then in Egypt and Syria), both with active naval policies, helped
to encourage maritime trade. These Islamic networks were structured by three eco-
nomic and commercial centers: the two caliphal capitals of Cordoba and Cairo, and
Ifriqiya (Kairouan and Tunis) in the central Mediterranean, which served as a pivot for
those networks (Picard, 2013). In the Byzantine Empire, the ninth and tenth centu-
ries were likewise marked by growing interregional maritime trade, with major ports
like Constantinople or Thessalonike, and the export of products from Central Asia or
Syria (spices, textiles). In this first phase of the reconstruction of Mediterranean trade
networks, maritime commerce thus developed above all within the borders of an
empire; even if the Muslim empire ceased to exist politically in the middle of the
eighth century, its economic unity persisted. Between these two blocks, contacts were
limited, occurring more across land borders (Iberian Peninsula, Syria) than through
maritime trade. Western Europe, for its part, was too weak to act as an important
motor for long-distance trade, despite some clear signs of economic growth.
Significantly, the first development of the maritime trade of Venice and Amalfi, in the
tenth and early eleventh centuries, took place within these two networks, Byzantine
and Muslim, which structured Mediterranean trade.
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, change was rapid and massive, correspond-
ing to political changes: within a few decades, control of the networks passed from
Byzantine and Muslim hands to those of Latin merchants, first of northern Italy and
then of Provence and the Crown of Aragon. Tellingly, the territorial expansion of the
Latin west began with the conquest of the island of Sicily, key to the control of naviga-
tion in the Mediterranean, followed by that of other large islands. Nevertheless, this
expansion was above all economic and commercial. It relied on the economic growth
of Latin Europe and a proto-capitalism in the merchant cities of southern Europe.
Wars—in particular the Crusades—never completely interrupted trade, despite papal
prohibitions on commerce with the Muslims, which in any case were never total. The
change was not just quantitative, driven by a good economic conjuncture; above all,
previously independent networks were interconnected. The result was an intensifica-
tion of the north–south relations that had greatly diminished with the Muslim con-
quests, and by the real, if uneven, integration of different Mediterranean regions into
extensive trade networks. Navigation benefitted from the diffusion of new technolo-
gies such as the compass or the stern rudder; of a better knowledge of the sea, thanks
to portolans and marine charts; and of an increase in the storage capacity of the ships,
which facilitated long journeys. Though navigation following the coastlines remained
the rule, it was now possible to limit the stops and to sail directly across the high sea
(see also Savage-Smith, Gertwagen, this volume).
Connecting regions as distant as sub-Saharan Africa, the Far East and north-west
Europe, the Mediterranean played an essential role in this “world economy in