Division of labor: millers and bakers

Important as meat and olive oil were in the daily diet of Jerusalemites, for the majority of the population bread was the most essential staple. The demand for meat was curbed to some extent by its relatively high price. Olive oil was cheaper, easier to procure and store and, as we have seen, was very widely used. Bread, however, was the major source of calories and other nutritional elements for all social strata. Due to its lower price, in its various forms it tops the list of foodstuffs consumed in sixteenth-century Jerusalem; it was readily available and production and supply were quite dependable. To encourage the town's merchants to engage in the economic activities involved in bread-making and in order to keep the price down, grains imported for bread were tax-exempt. The kanunname of Jerusalem which set the rates for the various taxes to be levied on goods imported to the town specifically stated: “from wheat nothing shall be levied.” Although barley was not mentioned, one may assume that by the same logic, it too was tax-free.