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North Africa and Europe in the Early Middle Ages
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
Extract
Recent discussions about Mediterranean trade in the early Middle Ages have tended to be based on two main assumptions. First, trade has been regarded as trade between ports in the eastern and western parts of the Mediterranean. Secondly, as a result of this view, the attention of historians has concentrated on the advance of the Arab fleets in the seventh and eighth centuries, which disrupted regular commerce and temporarily diminished the importance of the trading cities of Italy and Provence.
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References
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page 69 note 2 Vitensis, Victor, Historia persecutionis, i. 4Google Scholar. Roman state organizations such as the navicularii evidently went out of business in this period. See Courtois, C., ‘De Rome a l'Islam’, Revue Africaine, lxxxvi (1942), 27Google Scholar.
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page 69 note 4 Tablettes Albertini, p. 84. In all the transactions the vendor is described as selling his rights to the purchaser in the formula ‘ut [is] earn rem habeat, teneat, possideat, utatur, fruatur, ipse heredesve eius in perpetuum’. Cf. Frank, Tenney, AJP, xlvii (1926), 166Google Scholar.
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page 70 note 2 Ibid., pp. 192–3.
page 70 note 3 Ibid., p. 175.
page 70 note 4 Cassiodorus does not say that the oil came from Africa, but he uses the term orcae in which the African oil was shipped. I am accepting Pirenne's view (op. cit., p. 93) that the merchant John who was supplying the bishop of Salona originally got his cargo from Africa (Cassiodorus, , Variae, iii. 7Google Scholar; ed. Mommsen, in M.G.H., Auct. Antiq., xii. 83Google Scholar).
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page 71 note 1 A study on the early history of the Louata is badly needed. They appear to have spread across the Gulf of Sirte from Cyrenaica during the fifth century until they reached the area of Leptis Magna c. 500. References to them have been collected by Bates, O., The Eastern Libyans (London, 1914), pp. 69–70Google Scholar.
page 71 note 2 Suggested in a well-documented article by Gsell, S., ‘La Tripolitaine et le Sahara au IIIe siècle de notre ère’, Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, xliii (1933)Google Scholar. See also the valuable discussion of the evidence by Leschi, L., Rome et les Nomades du Sahara central (Algiers, 1942)Google Scholar, and Gautier's, E. F. forceful pages in Le Passé de l'Afrique du Nord (Paris, 1937), pp. 210–14Google Scholar.
page 71 note 3 Caesar, , for instance, in Bellum Africum, 68.4Google Scholar, reports the capture of twenty-two camels which belonged to King Juba.
page 71 note 4 Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii. 6. Cf. Oates, , art. cit. (above, p. 65, n. 1), p. 112Google Scholar.
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page 71 note 6 Late, perhaps even seventh-century Berber ruins have been located along the Oued Itel some thirty-five miles south of the limes at Gemellae, in country which is to-day desert (Blanchet, P., B.A.C., 1899, pp. 137–40Google Scholar). See also Baradez, J., op. cit., pp. 141–2Google Scholar.
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page 72 note 2 Procopius, , De bello Vandalico, iii. 9, 3Google Scholar. Cf. Ferrandus, , Vita Sancti Fulgentii (ed. Lapeyre, R. P.), p. 30Google Scholar.
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page 72 note 5 Ibid., iv. 24, 7.
page 72 note 6 Procopius, , De bello Vandalico, iv. 23, 27, 28, 52Google Scholar.
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page 73 note 4 En-Noweri, (ed. de Slane, , Appendix i to Khaldoun's, IbnHistoire des Berbères, p. 341)Google Scholar. See also Marçais, G., La Berbérie musulmane et l'Orient au moyen age (Paris, 1946), p. 23Google Scholar.
page 74 note 1 al Hakam, Ibn Abd, op. cit., pp. 44–5Google Scholar.
page 74 note 2 Poinssot, and Lantier, , art. cit., p. lxxxiiiGoogle Scholar.
page 74 note 3 Gregory, of Tours, , Historia Francorum, iv. 43Google Scholar. Also v. 5.
page 74 note 4 Information from C. A. Raleigh Radford, F.S.A., who conducted the excavations.
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page 74 note 7 Ibid., i. 214. Cf. En-Noweri (ed. de Slane, p. 341).
page 75 note 1 See E. F. Gautier's excellent analysis of the campaigns fought between the Arab, and Berber, armies in the last half of the seventh century, Le Passé de l'Afrique du Nord, pp. 247–54Google Scholar.
page 75 note 2 Khaldoun, Ibn, Histoire des Berbères, i. 237Google Scholar.
page 75 note 3 Berthier, A., Les Vestiges du christianisme antique dans la Numidie centrale (Algiers, 1942), p. 172 (decay of churches in Numidia)Google Scholar.
page 76 note 1 Berthier, A., Tiddis, antique Castellum Tidditanorum (Algiers, 1952), pp. 50–2Google Scholar.
page 76 note 2 Goodchild, , The Limes Tripolitanus (II), p. 37Google Scholar.
page 76 note 3 Analysed by Marçais, G. in ‘La Berbérie au IXe siècle d'après el Ya'koubi’, Revue Africaine, lxxxv (1941), 42 ffGoogle Scholar.
page 76 note 4 Khaldoun, Ibn, op. cit., i. 233–4Google Scholar.
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page 76 note 6 Cited from Pirenne, , Mahomet and Charlemagne, pp. 89–90Google Scholar.
page 76 note 7 El-Idrisi, , Description d'Afrique et de l'Espagne, p. 149Google Scholar.
page 76 note 8 Al-Muqaddasi (writing c. 980), Description de l'Occident musulman au IX–X siècle (ed. and tr. Pellat, G.. Algiers, 1950)Google Scholar.
page 77 note 1 El-Idrisi, , op. cit., p. 141Google Scholar. The merchants seem to have penetrated lands occupied by negroes and obtained gold from them.
page 77 note 2 van Berchem, M., ‘Uncovering a lost city of the Sahara’, Illustrated London News, 31 01 1953Google Scholar.
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page 77 note 5 al Hakam, Ibn Abd, op. cit., p. 77Google Scholar; also Khaldoun, Ibn, Histoire des Berbères, i. 215Google Scholar.
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page 78 note 3 Seston, , op. cit., pp. 121 ffGoogle Scholar. As late as 1140 the Aghlabids were using Christians or converts to Islam in the army and administration.
page 78 note 4 Tchalenko, G., ‘La Syrie du Nord: Etude économique’, Actes du VIe Congrès international des études byzantines (Paris, 1950), ii. 389–97Google Scholar.
page 79 note 1 Sites such as Gasr ed-Dauun in Tripolitania where smaller buildings have been built in the ruins of large olive farms have been surveyed but not yet excavated.
page 79 note 2 Khaldoun, Ibn, Prolegomènes (ed. de Slane, , i. 309)Google Scholar. See also Schumpeter, J., ‘Les Conquêtes musulmans et l'Impérialisme arabe’, Revue Africaine, xciv (1950), 283–97Google Scholar.
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page 79 note 4 See Gautier, , Le Passé de l'Afrique du Nord, pp. 281 ffGoogle Scholar.
page 80 note 1 Lopez, in Camb. Econ. Hist. ii. 261Google Scholar.
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