Sardinia As A Crossroads In The Mediterranean 29
the Mediterranean.75 Abulafia asks the reader to consider parallels between
the interconnectivity of the three dominant cultures of the Mediterranean—
Christian, Muslim, and Jewish—and that of the relations between the domi-
nant eastern powers of Japan, China, and Korea. Innovative approaches to the
study of the Mediterranean that include Sardinia require diverse approaches
and cultural viewpoints, like those Abulafia proposes. Such perspectives can
be found, for instance, coded in languages. These include medieval and mod-
ern Sardinian idioms, Arabic, Aramaic, Latin, Italian, and Spanish. This kind of
reading will undoubtedly produce more sensitive and profound work. While
it is not always possible to find these exceptional characteristics in one au-
thor, edited volumes like this one—that welcome dissenting, contradictory, or
unique positions—can achieve the type of contrast that has become one of
the hallmarks of post-structuralist methodologies.
Michael McCormick also addresses previously marginalized subjects.
Blatantly missing in Sardinian historiography is the history of slaves and
slavery for the medieval and modern period. Besides writing extensively on
Mediterranean trade, McCormick looks at slave trading, some of which ap-
pears to have been channeled through Sardinia.76 In his Origins of the European
Economy, he alludes to the slave trade by Venetian merchants, who were travel-
ing to Rome to buy Christian slaves to sell to “pagan infidels” in Africa, during
the eighth century. Sardinians participated in the trade, guiding merchants
from the European continent to Africa. These findings on slavery emerged from
broader work on trade routes and coin analysis, where McCormick observes
the connections across the Mediterranean, mapping and dating Byzantine,
Arabic, and Lombard coins found in Sardinia from 300 to 900 AD.77
With the progressive dismantling of Muslim power in Latin Christendom,
Muslims were forced into slavery and expelled from places like Genoa
and Sardinia.78 Olivia Constable explains that, before the year 1000, most
information about the trade came from Arabic sources, while for the later pe-
riod, it is mostly non-Spanish, Christian records that survive. The records nota-
bly include notarial registers that describe Muslim slaves sold to Genoa just a
year after James I conquered Valencia in 1239. People were enslaved primarily
75 David Abulafia, “The Many Mediterraneans,” in Harris, Rethinking the Mediterranean.
76 Michael McCormick, The Origins of the European Economy. The Communications and
Commerce, A.D. 300–900 (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 520, 629, 772; see Appendix 3 for a detailed
description of the numismatic finds and their location. See above, note 49.
77 Ibid., Appendix 4, no. 157.
78 Brian A. Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom c. 1050–1614 (Cambridge, 2014).