the medieval mediterranean 85
formation” (Abu-Lughod, 1989), providing an interface that allowed African gold,
oriental spices, or central Asian slaves to reach European ports, from which they were
transported north to Champagne, England, or Flanders. In comparison to the previ-
ous period, the centers of this new organization of trade were all located in Europe,
in the north-west Mediterranean. Though Cairo, Tunis and Constantinople remained
leading political and economic capitals, their merchants no longer controlled mari-
time trade, which now passed almost entirely into the hands of the Latins. Even the
maritime trade within the Muslim world was henceforth largely conducted on
Christian vessels, and sometimes even by Christian merchants themselves.
The reasons for this major shift are still widely debated by historians today, espe-
cially since the question is linked to that of the so-called “Muslim decline.” We can
leave aside the thesis, based on dubious considerations of a supposed “Muslim men-
tality” (Planhol, 2000), that Muslims were never interested in the sea. Some histori-
ans underscore the lack of wood in the Muslim world, especially after the loss of the
forests of Sicily and Syria in the eleventh century (Lombard, 1959). But though this
probably played a role for the Egyptian fleet in the age of the Crusades, the explana-
tion does not hold for the Maghreb, with its significant forests. Against claims that
Muslims had not mastered techniques of ship construction or of navigation, we can
point to the fact that there were no major differences between Muslim and Christian
vessels (Pryor, 1988); in any case, the importance of Almohad or Marinid fleets and
Muslim piracy, not to mention Muslim navigation in the Indian Ocean, show that
these techniques were perfectly known. Nor is the idea of the incompatibility of Islam
and capitalist development convincing (Rodinson, 1974). Political choices, more than
technical or “mental” disabilities, explain this decline. The explanations lie, first, in
the competition by Catalan or Italian merchants and shipowners, and in the dyna-
mism of capitalism in Europe, which enabled investments in industry (especially tex-
tiles) and in long-distance maritime trade. In the Muslim world, if the existence of a
merchant milieu, sometimes rich and powerful, is well attested, political power still
remained in the hands of military elites whose legitimacy derived from religious
authorities. As a result, the pressure to promote a policy of commercial expansion was
probably weaker than in Latin Europe, where urban bourgeoisies (in the Italian com-
munes, but also in the Crown of Aragon) played an active part in political life.
Furthermore, Muslim jurists’ opposition to their co-religionists’ residence in infidel
lands made it difficult for sultans to lend public and official support to this activity,
even if the actual trade of Muslim merchants in Europe was more or less tolerated.
One important consequence of this policy is that Christian merchants in Muslim ports
were allowed fondacos and consulates, providing both a material and legal framework
for their stay and activities (Constable, 2003); in contrast, Muslims found such insti-
tutions only in ports, recently conquered by the Christians (as in Spain or Sicily), that
still had Muslim minority communities. Muslim rulers then favored a policy based on
the importations of goods, facilitated by the monopoly of the transit of gold (Maghreb)
and spices (East) into the Mediterranean, which provided both regular tax revenue
and foreign products for the ruling elite (Cahen, 1964).
On the other hand, the Asian and African hinterlands were most often closed to
Christian merchants: if the thirteenth-century pax Mongolica allowed merchants like
Marco Polo to travel overland to China, access to the Indian Ocean (through the Red
Sea) and the trans-Saharan gold route remained the monopoly of the Muslim merchants,