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

within cities along the shoreline. This evidence thus calls us to re-examine Jonathan Riley Smith'
hypothesis that the number of Europeans who were `engaged in the traffic of merchandise... and
organising caravans from Damascus and other Muslim centres to the Levantine sea-board must
have been negligible. "99 The merchants who headed north in 1203 faced some complicated
challenges. The Continuation of William of Tyre described how a small group of crusaders left
Acre in the same year and travelled towards Antioch. On their way they passed by enemy
territory, not far from Jabala, which was in the hands of the ruler of Aleppo. They were attacked
by the Muslims and were eventually defeated near Latakia 200 According to Heyd, the hostile
atmosphere between the Christians and Muslims in the northern regions of the crusader states
remained so until 1207. Heyd believed that 1207 marked a turning point in the relations between
Christians and Muslims in the north, when a commercial pact was signed between Venice and al-
Malik az-Zähir, son of Saladin201 Evidence from the notarial contracts provides a different
impression of the relationship between Christian travellers and the Ayyubids at the beginning of
the thirteenth century, especially with regard to commercial relations. How should the evidence
from the Genoese sources be interpreted? The contracts were the fruits of a political change that
must have taken place before 1203. When did the relations with Aleppo change, and what
motivated such a change?
The importance of Aleppo had already been recognised at the time of the First Crusade.
Aleppo was considered a strategic key place in the eyes of the Muslims in Syria as well as the
crusades and the Latin inhabitants of the northern states. Aleppo was considered an important
agricultural centre especially for the production of cotton and it was famous for its glass
industry202 More importantly, however, was the location of Aleppo because it stands in a junction
of one of the leading trade and hajj routes between the Mediterranean and the east (Figure 4).
Evidence from the beginning of the twentieth century reveals that Aleppo maintained its
centrality as late as the First World War (see Figure 5).
''Jonathan Riley Smith, `Government in Latin Syria and the Commercial Privileges of Foreign
Merchants', in Derek Baker, ed., Relations between East and West in the Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 1973),
115.
2La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, in RHC. Oc., vol. 2, pp. 247-249; Wilhelm von Heyd, Histoire du
commerce du Levant au moyen-age (Amsterdam, 1959), vol. 1, p. 373.
201 Heyd, Hisotire de commerce, vol. 1, pp. 374-375; Eliyahu Ashtor, A Social and Economic History of the
Near East in the Middle Ages (London, 1976), pp. 240-241.
202 Ashtor, A Social and Economic History, pp. 97,242-3,275-8; David Abulafia, `Trade and Crusade:
1050-1250', in Michael Goodich, Sophia Menache and Sylvia Schein, Cross Cultural Convergences in the
Crusader Period. Essays Presented to Aryeh Grabois on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (New York, 1995), p. 15.
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