The Crusades, the Genoese and the Latin East - DSpace at ...

The Genoese inhabitants of the kingdom of Jerusalem after 1187
The Genoese community in the Latin East after 1187 had been through long trail of hardship until
it established itself as a functioning body with basic facilities that could support the community.
Despite the fact that, as was already demonstrated, concessions were generously bestowed on the
Genoese between 1187 and 1195, the community had many basic needs, from housing and
commercial facilities to spiritual rights. The move to Tyre also meant relocation of the Genoese
who already lived in the kingdom of Jerusalem. One of the questions is who were the Genoese
who settled in Tyre? Were they refugees from the rest of the kingdom or predominantly new
immigrants, crusaders and merchants from Genoa? The issue of the 1187 refugees and their place
of refuge are interesting. The notarial records from 1190 to 1192 do not provide much evidence
about refugees from the crusader states in Genoa itself. Perhaps it should not be surprising
considering that if people escaped as refugees they probably had no capital to invest in Genoese
trade. Perhaps they could not afford to pay the notaries. It should be also made clear that there is
not much evidence in the cartularies of traffic coming from the Latin East to Genoa even in
peaceful times. Merchants who travelled in that direction carried out their legal arrangements in
front of notaries in Acre or in Tyre. Shelomo Gotein found evidence of a similar process in the
case of merchants who travelled to Genoa from Old Cairo 553 With this in mind, it is interesting to
find several cases that seem to be related to the fall of the first kingdom of Jerusalem. One such
case is of Magalda, wife of lohannes from Jerusalem who was in Genoa on 08 April 1190. She
went to see the notary Oberto Scriba with her sons Wuilielmus and Martinus. Magalda and
Wuilielmus made a contract with Martinus and handed over to him a large sum of £370 that he
was to take to his siblings, Iohannes, Symon, and Adalaxia:
Confesi fuerunt... Magalda de Jerusalem et Wuilielmus eius filius quod per Martinum
filium predicte Magalde mitebant Ultramare Johanni et Symoni et Adalaxie filiis predicte
Magalde et fratribus prefati Wuilielmi L370... Et beize fuit cunfesus Martinus quod
predictas res portal... 554
Although the document does not specify so, the other children and siblings must have
been in Tyre at the time. This is unfortunately all the information provided in the record.
Furthermore, in the cartulary of Oberto Scriba it is the only example that seems to be linked to the
fate of the refugees in 1187. The contract fails, however, to tell the complete story. Magalda and
553 Oberto de Bramante is one such notary who is known to have worked in Acre in 1218 and 1222. See the
summary of the proceedings of a court case from 1224, which mentions the role of Oberto as notary in
Acre in 1218: Mag. Sal., nos. 736-739, pp. 308-316; Oberto is also mentioned as the notary of Acre in
documents from 1222 which were published as an appendix to Favreau-Lilie's article, 'Friedenssicherung
and Kofliktbegrenzung', pp. 444-447. Shelomo D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: An Abridgment in
One Volume, ed. Jacob Lassner, (Berkeley, 1999), pp. 36-38,312-3.
5340S9 1190, no. 356. The Latin names of these individuals was used here because
their identity and
language are not known.
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