400 fred astren
or part-way to the letter’s destination. Such letters are often described as having been
sent “in the ships,” indicating that several copies were dispatched in different ships in
the hopes of at least one copy arriving at its destination. The informality of this
method of correspondence is highlighted by the expression commonly marked on the
outside of the folded letter promising divine compensation, “Deliver and you shall
receive reward!” Its tenuousness is marked by occasional mention of concern that the
letter might fall into the wrong hands (Goitein, 1967–88: 1:281–295, 1:305–306).
The informality of seaborne mail points to the central role of personal relations
rather than institutional organization in all aspects of Geniza-documented business.
Geniza merchants managed risk and traded over vast distances by using a variety of
formal and informal partnerships, working with family members, friends, and trusted
associates, and at every level giving high value to personal reputation (Goldberg,
2012b). The resulting pastiche of differentially-articulated personal relationships
operated both at regional and trans-regional levels so that the most successful of these
merchants were able to participate in production as well as redistribution, both at
local and trans-Mediterranean levels. In the case of flax, so important in Geniza cor-
respondence, merchants are found supervising production in villages of the Egyptian
countryside (Goitein, 1967–88, 1:104–105, 224–128, 455–457). From there the
flax might be purchased at local exchanges and then traded, often in very large quan-
tities. In the 61 letters of Joseph ibn ‘Awkal, an eleventh-century “merchant prince
and communal leader,” Norman Stillman identified 20 categories of goods. These
begin with flax, but include bulk items such as compounds for dyeing, lacquer, olive
oil, and soap, but also luxury goods and spices, such as pepper, saffron and sugar,
along with aromatics and medicinals such as camphor, musk, and the Indian fruit
myrobalan (Stillman, 1973; see also Goskar, this volume). From the broader outlines
of this activity, conducted by Muslims and Jews, both horizontally and vertically,
Jessica Goldberg has shown that Geniza trade networks are markers of an economy
that reconfigures ancient Roman trans-Mediterranean connections between the great
agriculturally productive regions of Egypt, Ifrı̄qiyya (Roman Africa), and Sicily into
an eastern Mediterranean pattern whose reach only marginally might extend to
Christian shores of the sea or even al-Andalus. Goldberg’s advancement of our under-
standing of Geniza trade and economy puts “the Islamic world back into the
Mediterranean economy” (Goldberg, 2012a: 337–350).
The type and range of Geniza merchant activity could be limited for a variety of
reasons, one of which resulted from a lack of connections in a specific place that
would force a merchant to pay higher “foreign” rather than local custom rates
(Goldberg, 2011: 179–180). Surprisingly, although the Geniza merchants do not
seem to have traded with Jewish merchants living on the northern, Christian shores
of the Mediterranean (Citarella, 1971), commercial connections between Jews of
Christendom and Jews of Islam could be strong (Grossman, 1996). Beyond com-
merce, influential religious connections attest to a different kind of Jewish–
Mediterranean connectivity. Before their decline, the rabbinic academies in Iraq issued
responsa to halakhic queries that originated in Spain, Qayrawān, and other locales
(Brody, 1998: 185–201), where also funds for the academies were collected (Ya’ari,
1977: 197–220) and from whose ports pilgrims set out for the Holy Land (Grossman,
1983; Gil, 1983). The most famous pilgrim is the late twelfth-century Benjamin of
Tudela, whose journey from Navarre to Palestine (and possibly beyond) is richly