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Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier’s archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright  Author's personal copy Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Medieval History journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ jmedhist Avorio d’ogni ragione: the supply of elephant ivory to northern Europe in the Gothic era Sarah M. Guérin* Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, 826 Schermerhorn Hall, 1190 Amsterdam Avenue, MC 5517, New York, New York 10027, USA a b s t r a c t Keywords: Medieval art This article accounts for the hitherto unexplained increase in the Ivory availability of ivory in mid-thirteenth-century France through an Textile industry alteration in the medieval trade routes that brought elephant tusks Trade from Africa to northern Europe. A newly-opened passage through Economic history the Straits of Gibraltar allowed a small amount of luxury goods to Eleventh-fifteenth centuries be shipped together with bulk materials necessary to the flour- ishing textile industries of northern Europe. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. An ivory statuette of the Virgin and Child from the mid-thirteenth century, known as the Barroux Virgin (Fig. 1), stands 52 cm tall. The great size of the piece and its existence itself pose an important question for scholars of Gothic ivories: why, after a scarcity of elephant ivory in northern Europe during the twelfth century, was there sudden access to such large tusks around 1240? For the art of ivory carving to occur, the raw material itself must be present. Yet the full impact of this simple truth has not been sufficiently absorbed into the scholarship on French Gothic ivories. Although many have noted that there was a dearth of the material in northern Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries fol- lowed by a surfeit in the fourteenth century, the cause of the influx of elephant ivory in France in the mid-thirteenth century has not been identified or explained. What can account for the renewed appearance of ivory in Europe? A shift in the last portion of the extensive trade routes that carried elephant tusks 16,000 km over land and sea brought tusks to the markets of northern France in great number. Mapping the complex networks of political and mercantile relationships stretching from the interior of south-east Africa, through the Indian Ocean, via the Red Sea, into the Mediterranean and finally to northern Europe illustrates the interconnectedness of global economies in the thirteenth * Tel.: þ1 212 854 1938; fax: þ1 212 856 7329. E-mail address: sg2720@columbia.edu 0304-4181/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmedhist.2010.03.003  Author's personal copy S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 157 Fig. 1. Barroux Virgin. Ivory, H: 52 cm; D: 16.5 cm. Paris, c.1250. Paris, Musée national du Moyen ÂgeeThermes et hôtel de Cluny (Cl. 1954). Photograph courtesy of Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY. century and sketches a framework with which to understand ivory as a commodity in thirteenth- century France.1 The network of the intercultural ivory trade, although explored in detail for other periods, has not been fully charted for the thirteenth century and a tangible explanation for the sudden increase in ivory availability in the 1230s has yet to be offered.2 The objective of the following article is to follow the ivory 1 For a detailed exploration of the broader international picture in this period, see Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European hegemony. The world system AD 1250e1350 (New York, 1989). For a theoretical consideration of the implications this economic ‘world system’ had on arts and culture, see Eva R. Hoffman, ‘Pathways of portability: Islamic and Christian interchange from the tenth to the twelfth Century’, Art History, 24 (2001), 17e50. 2 For the late antique and Byzantine routes, see Anthony Cutler, The craft of ivory (Washington, 1985), 20e37; and Anthony Cutler, The hand of the master. Craftsmanship, ivory and society in Byzantium (9the11th centuries) (Princeton, 1994), 56e65. For the routes that brought ivory to al-Andalus, see Avinoam Shalem, ‘Trade in and the availability of ivory: the picture given by the medieval sources’, in: The ivories of Muslim Spain. Papers from a symposium held in Copenhagen from the 18th to the 20th of November 2003, ed. Kjeld von Folsach and Joachim Meyer, 2 vols (Copenhagen, 2005), vol. 2:1, 25e36. In a recent article outlining the ivory trade throughout the middle ages, Danielle Gaborit-Chopin stressed the need for an explanation of why ivory supplies increased in northern Europe during the Gothic period. Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, ‘Le Commerce de l’ivoire en Méditerranée durant le moyen âge’, Bulletin Archéologique, 34 (2008), 23e33. See also her earlier delineation of this subject, Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux: VeeXVe siècle (Paris, 2003), 19e25.  Author's personal copy 158 S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 trade routes from Africa to northern France, paying special attention to changes and developments that manifested themselves in the thirteenth century. The influx of elephant ivory in this period is linked directly to the economies of the textile-producing cities of the Netherlands, England and northern France. Ivory tusks are the elongated upper incisors of various species of elephants, composed of dentine, a collagen-infused material.3 The ivory used in thirteenth-century France was primarily from the African savannah elephant, not from the Asian elephant.4 The identification of African ivory is based on two points. First, even though the Far East enjoyed its own supply of ivory from Asian elephants, African ivory was one of the luxury products consistently imported into China throughout the middle ages, as the Chinese demand for ivory far surpassed the supply the Asian elephant provided.5 Secondly, the enor- mous size of ivory available in France identifies an African source: many pieces are over 11 cm in diameter, which is the maximum size of Indian tusks, and thus offers a threshold measurement by which ivories can be tentatively localised.6 For example, the diameter of the Barroux Virgin is 16.5 cm, a measurement that makes an African provenance of the ivory indisputable (Fig. 2). The tusks of the African savannah elephant can measure up to 3.75 m in length and can weigh up to 100 kg each.7 Although the typical weight of an African elephant tusk today is between 20e45 kg, the average historical weight was heavier, perhaps 45e60 kg.8 3 Cutler, Craft of ivory, 1e7; The carver’s art. Medieval sculpture in ivory, bone and horn, ed. Archer St Clair and Elizabeth Parker McLachlan (New Brunswick, NJ, 1989), 1e6; and Olga Krzyszkowska, Ivory and related materials. An illustrated guide (Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, Classical Handbook 3, London, 1990). 4 The Asian elephant’s territory stretches from the Indian subcontinent through south-east Asia, including Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia and Vietnam. Jeheskel Shoshani, ‘The African elephant and its environment’, in: Elephant. The animal and its ivory in African culture, ed. Doran H. Ross (Los Angeles, 1992), 43e59. 5 Asian elephant tusks are smaller than African ones and only the male Asian elephants produce tusks, reducing the supply by at least half. See Wilhelm Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au moyen âge, 2 vols (Leipzig,1923), vol. 2, 629e30. The importance of ivory imports to China is further attested by Chu Yü, who wrote his P‘ing-chou-k‘o-t‘an (Pingchow’s Table Talk) in 1118e19, which noted the government’s control of ivory imports and sales. Ivory was subjected to clearance duties three times the average. As cited in Chau Ju-Kua. His work on the Chinese and Arab trade in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, entitled Chu-fan-chï (Description of the barbarous peoples), ed. and trans. Friedrich Hirth and W.W. Rockhill (St Petersburg, 1911; repr. Taipei, 1965), 21. Finally, Abu Zayd Ḥ asan ibn Yazid Sirafi wrote in the late ninth-century text, ’Akhbar al-Sin wa’l-Hind (Relations between China and India) that African ivory was consistently imported into both China and India: ’Akhbar as-Sin wa’l-Hind. Relation de la Chine et de l’Inde, rédigée en 851, ed. and trans. Jean Sauvaget (Paris, 1948), 14e16; quoted in Shalem, ‘Trade in and the availability of ivory’, 26. 6 Cutler, Craft of ivory, 27e9. Anthony Cutler and Anders Götherström have recently participated in an experimental analysis of elephantine DNA in historical ivories to ascertain whether Asian or African ivory was used in the middle ages. The Gothic statuette tested, an apostle from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (17.190.196), showed polymorphisms that led the authors to conclude the ivory was Asian. Given that only one statuette was tested, the experimental nature of the protocol, the uncertain provenance of the statuette, and the small number of polymorphic sites assayed (four, two of which are fixed in both species), this data does not seriously affect the following study. It remains, however, a distinct possibility that a small number of Asian elephant tusks did join the African ivory imported en masse to Europe in the thirteenth century. Anthony Cutler and Anders Götherström, ‘African or Asian? DNA analysis of Byzantine and western medieval ivories’, in: Elfenbein und Artenschutz/Ivory and species conservation. Proceedings of INCENTIVSdmeetings (2004e2007) (Bonn, 2008), 73e80. 7 The largest recorded weight and measurement of an African elephant tusk is 102.7 kg and 3.26 m. Shoshani, ‘The African elephant’, 48. See also The carver’s art, ed. St Clair and McLachlan, 1. Al’Mas’udi (896e956) lauded the enormous elephant tusks d up to 150 kg each d to be found on the eastern coast of Africa. This weight should be understood as a literary hyperbole. Al’Mas’udi, Les Prairies d’or, trans. Barbier de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille, ed. Charles Pellat, 5 vols (Paris, 1962), vol. 1, 7e9. 8 Current weights cannot be seen as representative of the historical average weight. Extensive poaching in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries significantly decreased the average weight of tusks: elephant populations were not allowed to mature fully and poachers therefore took increasingly younger animals. Ahmed (d.1974), a Kenyan bull elephant who managed to live to the respectable age of 55 and died of natural causes, displayed tusks that weighed 67 kg and were 3.26 m long. Assuming that Ahmed was genetically well endowed, 45e60 kg seems like a reasonable average for tusks when elephants are allowed to mature fully. See United Nations Environment Programme, The African elephant (Nairobi, 1989), 4e8; and Shoshani, ‘The African elephant’, 48. A thirteenth-century Chinese source corroborates this deduction. Chau Ju-Kua (1170e1228), a superintendent of maritime trade during the Chinese Song dynasty (960e1279), wrote his Description of the barbarous peoples (Zhufan zhi or Chu-fan-chï) in 1226. In this geographic and anthropological text he compiled from older sources and supplemented them with new observations from returning sailors. He noted that elephant tusks from Arab traders (which, as discussed below, ultimately came from East Africa) were better than the more local Asian ivory. The Arab tusks are ‘straight and of a clear white colour and show a pattern of delicate streaks’, and weigh from 50e100 catties. The pre-colonial (before 1858) Chinese mercantile catty weighed 601.1 grams, making the tusks approximately 30e60 kg. See Chau Ju-Kua. His work on the Chinese and Arab trade, ed. Hirth and Rockhill, 232; and Horace Doursther, Dictionnaire universel des poids et measures anciens et modernes (Brussels, 1840), 92e3.  Author's personal copy S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 159 Fig. 2. Base of the Barroux Virgin. Ivory, H: 52 cm; D: 16.5 cm. Paris, c.1250. Paris, Musée national du Moyen ÂgeeThermes et hôtel de Cluny (Cl. 1954). Photo by author with permission. In the ancient and early medieval worlds, the nucleus of the ivory trade was the eastern coast of Africa, an area that capitalised on its ideal position in relation to the monsoon-driven trade routes of the Indian Ocean (Map 1).9 The dominant participants in the international trade routes were the ancestors of the Swahili, an African society with a mercantile economy.10 The Swahili were one of many varied but interdependent groups who occupied a narrow strip of land along the eastern African coast from Moga- dishu to Kilwa, approximately 10 km wide and 2400 km long. While the Swahili were united by language and culture, the cities were never unified as a state or empire, but rather functioned as independent city- states. Since at least the first century AD, when an anonymous Greek merchant sailor first recorded these trading routes in writing, the ancestors of the Swahili filled the cultural niche of perceptive urban busi- nessmen who orchestrated the redistribution of goods among African and international cultural groups.11 The Swahili had access to two elephant reservoirs that supplied international demand for ivory: the source closest to the eastern coast was in modern-day Kenya and a second, slightly farther afield, was in southern Mozambique and Zimbabwe (the Zimbabwe plateau and the Limpopo river basin, both of 9 The monsoon winds and currents of the Indian Ocean are seasonal and reverse their direction every six months: December to March the prevailing wind is north-easterly, leading from the African coast to the Persian Gulf and the western coast of India; from April to November it is south-westerly, facilitating the return trip; Philip D. Curtin and others, African history (Boston, 1978), 153. 10 Swahili is a north-eastern Bantu language whose vocabulary is characterised by many loan words from Arabic and other foreign tongues. The peoples who speak this language also share an urban, mercantile, literate and Islamic history. Although some scholars object to the use of the linguistic term Swahili to designate the ancestors of the modern inhabitants of the East African coastal regions, the lack of another term necessitates its use. Graham Connah, African civilizations. Pre-colonial cities and states in tropical Africa, an archaeological perspective (Cambridge, 1987), 151e2. While scholarship previously argued that the sophisticated and literate Swahili must have been Arab immigrants to the African coast, recent archaeology has decisively proved that the Swahili were an indigenous African culture that adopted Islam as one of many strategies to optimise trading relations with the Indian Ocean. See Mark Horton, Shanga. The archaeology of a Muslim trading community on the coast of East Africa (London, 1996), 1e4. 11 Periplus maris Erythraei, ed. and trans. Lionel Casson (Princeton, 1989). For a discussion of the dating of this text see Mark Horton, ‘Review article: the Periplus and East Africa’, Azania, 25 (1990), 95e9. See also Cutler, Craft of ivory, 21e3. Although the Periplus is widely accepted as evidence for the presence of proto-Swahili on the coast as early as the first century, no archaeological site of such an early date has been excavated. In fact, the earliest site is sixth century and the majority of excavated centres begin in the eighth or ninth centuries. Horton, Shanga, 407.  Author's personal copy 160 S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 which are now protected wildlife reserves).12 Throughout the middle ages, Swahili traders maintained mercantile relationships with pastoralists, foragers and agriculturalists with whom they shared the coastal lands. These groups extended their territory into the adjacent river valleys and plains that had access to the elephant herds. No trade, however, was unilateral and the interdependent groups sup- ported one another with commodities that complemented their subsistence structures. For example, foragers exchanged elephant tusks and other products (honey, wax, skins of big cats, rhinoceros horns, and so on) with Swahili merchants for shells and items manufactured by Swahili artisans specifically for inland trade, including glass beads, metal knives, arrowheads, spears and jewellery.13 The flour- ishing local trade between the coast and the interior was a necessary means of redistributing essential goods characteristic to each distinct cultural group d pastoralist, agriculturalist, foragers and the Swahili manufacturing sector. Although luxury goods were included in this vibrant network, they were not ultimately its primary motivation. The second elephant population, farther south and much farther inland from the Swahili coast, gave rise to a more elaborate trade network. The southerly elephant territories in the Zimbabwe plateau and the Limpopo river valley were populated with Bantu-speaking agriculturalists.14 Between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries the Limpopo river valley was unified as the kingdom of Mapungubwe, having its capital at Mapungubwe from the mid-eleventh until the late-thirteenth century when it moved, due to environmental constraints, to the site of Great Zimbabwe.15 Archaeological excavations recovered few signs of foreign trade at Mapungubwe and at Great Zimbabwe, but discovered that the luxury goods of the region, predominantly gold and ivory, were assembled for trade at seasonal trading posts downriver, closer to the coast.16 One such site, Chibuene, was intermittently occupied between the eighth and the thirteenth centuries.17 Swahili merchant sailors travelled down the African coast in mtepe,18 carrying local as well as foreign commodities to trade with Mapungubwe merchants.19 In return, the Swahili obtained gold, ivory, and rock crystal, which were ultimately destined for international markets. Political and mercantile allegiances of the Swahili largely determined the supply of African ivory to the rest of the world. In the eighth and ninth centuries, traders from the Persian Gulf, departing from Siraf and Sohar, dominated the Indian Ocean routes and were the Swahili’s major commercial partners.20 12 For a detailed map of contemporary African wildlife reserves see Karl Gröning, Elephants. A cultural and natural history (Cologne, 1999), 463. 13 Chapurukha M. Kusimba, The rise and fall of Swahili states (London, 1999), 82e5. 14 Kusimba, Rise and fall of Swahili states, 84. 15 Mapungubwe: ancient Bantu civilization on the Limpopo. Reports on excavations at Mapungubwe (Northern Transvaal), ed. Leo Fouché (Cambridge, 1937); A. Meyer, The archaeological sites of Greefswald. Stratigraphy and chronology of the sites and a history of the investigations (Pretoria, 1998), 261e4; and Elizabeth A. Voigt, Mapungubwe. An archaeozoological interpretation of an Iron Age community (Pretoria, 1983). The kingdom of Mapungubwe thrived in large part due to its access to and exploitation of local gold deposits. Duncan Miller, Nirdev Desai and Julia Lee-Thorp, ‘Indigenous gold mining in southern Africa: a review’, Goodwin Series, 8 (2000), 91e9; see esp. 96e7 for a discussion of the place of gold and ivory in the development of international trade networks. For an overview of the archaeological site, see P.S. Garlake, Great Zimbabwe (New York, 1973). 16 Connah, African civilisations, 152; Horton, Shanga, 412. 17 Paul Sinclair, ‘Chibuene d an early trading site in southern Mozambique’, Paideuma, 28 (1982), 149e64. 18 The mtepe, made of African teak lashed with coconut-husk rope, were extremely well suited to navigating shallow coastal waters, though less well adapted to the open sea. Persian and Arab merchants did not venture this far down the coast as the south-west monsoon winds and currents stopped at 17 degrees south latitude d the mid-point on the Mozambique Channel d making different ships and sailing skills necessary for navigating the coastal waters. A.H.J. Prins, ‘The mtepe of Lamu, Mombasa and the Zanzibar Sea’, Paideuma, 28 (1982), 85e100. For the implications of the monsoon on trade patterns, see William Kirk, ‘The N.E. monsoon and some aspects of African history’, Journal of African History, 3 (1962), 263e7; and Ross E. Dunn, The adventures of Ibn Battuta. A Muslim traveller of the 14th century (Berkeley, 1986), 118. 19 Swahili goods included beads, cowrie shells, pottery, salt, and cotton and silk textiles. Sinclair, ‘Chibuene’, 161e3. The Swahili additionally brought items sourced from around the Indian Ocean, such as blue and red dyed cottons, porcelain, copper goods and beads from as far afield as Arikameda in south-eastern India. Marilee Wood, ‘Making connections: relationships between international trade and glass beads from the Shashe-Limpopo area’, Goodwin Series, 8 (2000), 78e90. 20 Al’Mas’udi noted: ‘It is from this country (the land of Zanj) that come elephant tusks weighing 50 pounds and more. They usually go to Oman, and from there are sent to China and India. This is the chief trade route, and if it were not so, ivory would be common in Muslim lands.’ G.S.P. Freeman-Grenville, The East African coast. Select documents from the first to the earlier nine- teenth century (Oxford, 1962), 15. See also Horton and Middleton, The Swahili, 73e6; and Horton, ‘The Swahili corridor’, Scientific American, 257:3 (1987), 86e93 (89).  Author's personal copy S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 161 Sailors from the Persian Gulf purchased luxury goods (gold, ivory, ambergris and tortoise shell), timber and slaves from the African coast: the latter two were destined for local use in and around Baghdad and the luxury goods were traded in China for oriental spices to satisfy the tastes of the Abbasid Caliphate.21 The Zanj slave rebellion of 868e83 d during which enslaved Africans on the Arabian Peninsula forcefully liberated themselves, forming armies that sacked and pillaged southern Iraq, laying siege to Baghdad in 883 d deterred trade between the Persian Gulf and the Swahili coast in the late ninth and tenth centuries. A diminished, although not altogether discontinued, trade with the Persian Gulf created a vacuum where another powerful trading partner might enter. A new market developed for the riches of East Africa with the founding of the Fatimid Caliphate (909e1171) in northern Africa and Egypt.22 Although only a relatively short distance apart geographically, treacherous waterways had hitherto discouraged intense trade between Egypt and the eastern coast of Africa. Indian Ocean monsoon winds strongly favoured a clockwise route from the Swahili coast to Persia and India rather than a counter-clockwise entry into the Red Sea.23 Furthermore, the Red Sea itself was extremely dangerous, plaguing sailors with irregular currents, coral reefs and shoals; its shores offered only the coastal barrenness of the Saharan-Arabian desert for much of the route.24 It can be argued from archaeological evidence, nevertheless, that direct and intense trade did occur between Fatimid and Swahili traders during the tenth and eleventh centuries.25 Fatimid merchants were mainly interested in the Swahili’s supply of gold, ivory and rock crystal, the last renowned for its exceptional levels of clarity.26 Fatimid access to East African ivory contributed not only to a flourishing of Egyptian ivory carving in the tenth and eleventh centuries,27 but also, because Egypt was the gateway to the Mediterranean, to a similar blossoming in Byzantium, the Ottonian Empire, Norman Sicily and al-Andalus.28 The reliability of the trade routes eventually succumbed to the political volatility of the era: the Fatimid kingdom was significantly weakened in 1060s when the north-western provinces seceded to become their own Sunni state and Egypt experienced what are known as the ‘Days of Trouble’.29 After a century of control by military wazirs, the dynasty ended in 1171 when the last wazir, Saladin, retained control after the Caliph’s death.30 The lack of political stability in the eleventh and twelfth centuries reduced, but in no way extinguished, international trade. This disruption affected the availability of ivory in Europe in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, contributing to the often-noted scarcity of elephant tusks throughout this period across the Mediterranean world. What changed, then, in the mid-thirteenth century to encourage the shipping of ivory to northern Europe in increasingly large amounts? Part of the answer lies in the relay system of trade that developed during the twelfth-century 21 Horton and Middleton, The Swahili, 73e6. 22 The Shi’ite Fatimid Caliphate was founded in the Maghrib in 909 (proclaimed in 910), with their capital at first in Qayrawan (in modern-day Tunisia). In 969, after having conquered Egypt, Cairo was established as the dynasty’s capital. The Fatimids ruled northern Africa, Egypt and many parts of the Levant until 1171, when Saladin, the last of the wazirs, ended the dynasty. For a detailed summary of Fatimid history, see Paul E. Walker, Exploring an Islamic empire. Fatimid history and its sources (London, 2002), 17e90. 23 Kirk, ‘The N.E. monsoon’, 242. 24 Dunn, Adventures of Ibn Battuta, 110. See also William Facey, ‘The Red Sea: the wind regime and location of ports’, in: Trade and travel in the Red Sea region, ed. Paul Lunde and Alexandra Porter (Oxford, 2002), 7e17. 25 Two pieces of evidence are especially strong. Fatimid dinars in the hoard found at Mtambwe Mkuu on the Island of Pemba date after 1066. G.S.P. Freeman-Grenville, ‘A find of silver pieces at Mtambwe Mkuu, Pemba Island, Zanzibar, Tanzania’, Anti- quaries Journal, 66 (1986), 373e4, 397; Horton, ‘The Swahili corridor’, 91. Secondly, a new type of building construction common in Red Sea settlements, using carved and dried Porites coral, is recorded along the East African coast as early as 920, suggesting cultural as well as economic ties between the two regions. Horton and Middleton, The Swahili, 79; Horton, ‘The Swahili corridor’, 90e1 and Horton and Middleton, The Swahili, 78e80. 26 Horton and Middleton, The Swahili, 80; Horton, ‘The Swahili corridor’, 86; Carl J. Lamm, Mittelalterliche Gläser und Steinschnittarbeiten aus dem nahen Osten, 2 vols (Berlin, 1929), vol. 1, 511. 27 The most extensive catalogue of Fatimid ivories remains Ernst Kühnel, Die islamischen Elfenbeinskulpturen, VIII.eXIII. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1971). See also Jonathan Bloom, Arts of the City Victorious. Islamic art and architecture in Fatimid North Africa and Egypt (New Haven, 2007), 89e115 (107). 28 Horton and Middleton, The Swahili, 79e80; Horton, ‘The Swahili corridor’, 86e7; and Shalem, ‘Trade in and the availability of ivory’, 29. 29 Horton and Middleton, The Swahili, 80; for the period of instability, see Walker, Exploring an Islamic empire, 62e8. 30 Walker, Exploring an Islamic empire, 84e90.  Author's personal copy 162 S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 instability in Egypt. It was this system that remained in place throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when ivory once again streamed into the ports of northern Europe. Merchants quickly adapted to the political instability of the late Fatimid period by developing short interconnecting regional trade networks to replace long uni-directional ocean voyages.31 The new system encouraged the development of trading hubs, and the city of Aden, in modern-day Yemen, rose to unprecedented prominence as an entrepôt for African, Arab, Indian and Persian merchants.32 In response to changing realities of the international trade networks, the Swahili took a more active role in the Indian Ocean trade; a fact attested to in the thirteenth century by the presence of mtepe in the ports of Aden that had sailed from Mogadishu, Kilwa and Madagascar.33 At the same time, foreign ships still plied the eastern coast of Africa, as attested by Ibn Battuta (1304e69) who travelled from Aden to Mogadishu and then Kilwa on an Arab dhow.34 In exchange for the ivory, gold, tortoiseshell and ambergris that Swahili merchants brought to Aden, they sought luxury household items for domestic consumption d Chinese celadon pottery, silk, cotton, books, paper, glassware and distinctive Yemeni black-on-yellow pottery.35 A number of documents chronicle Aden’s flourishing merchant economy, most notably the al’Daftar al- Muzaffari, a book of custom regulations written under the second Rasulid sultan c.1295. The al’Daftar recorded six different types of ivory, in addition to the myriad foodstuffs, raw manufacturing materials and other luxuries that were taxed.36 Ivory was differentiated based on destination: India, Egypt, the Dahlak archipelago off the Eritrean coast in the Red Sea37 and inland Yemen. Ivory going to India was measured and charged based on the bahar, which equalled 217.8 kg,38 and was charged 6¼ dinar 4 fils. Shipments to other destinations were assessed by the 20 ratl,16.25 kg,39 and were charged between 35/6 dinar and 115/24 dinar 2 fils per 20 ratl depending on export location. The larger unit of measure of the India trade (bahar 31 Horton and Middleton, The Swahili, 80. Substantial evidence for this fact is offered by the Cairo Genizah, which has preserved a large assortment of documents relevant to the Indian Ocean trade routes. In this period the addresses of those sending and receiving letters reflect this network: no letter went from Egypt to India, but only from Egypt to Arabia, or Arabia to India. The same was true for the opposite direction: all letters from north-western Africa, Spain and the Mediterranean stopped in Egypt and none were sent further on, into the Indian Ocean. See S.D.F. Goitein, ‘Letters and documents on the India trade in medieval times’, in: S.D.F. Goitein, Studies in Islamic history and institutions (Leiden, 1966), 333. 32 The most comprehensive recent account of Aden as a mercantile centre in the middle ages is: Roxani Eleni Margariti, Aden & the Indian Ocean trade. 150 years in the life of a medieval Arabian port (Chapel Hill, 2007). 33 Ibn al-Majawir, writing in 1232e3, described the sailing prowess of the Swahili: ‘From Aden to Mogadishu is one mawsim [a voyage not needing landfall], from Mogadishu to Kilwa is a second mawsim, and from Kilwa to Madagascar is a third mawsim. This people [the Swahili] used to combine the three mawsims into one. A boat made its way from Madagascar to Aden [directly] by this route in the year 626 (1228e9); it sailed from Madagascar aiming for Kilwa but made its landfall at Aden.’ Trans. in J. Spencer Trimingham, ‘The Arab geographers and the East African coast’, in: East Africa and the orient. Cultural syntheses in pre- colonial times, ed. H. Neville Chittick and Robert I. Rotberg (New York, 1975), 125. 34 Dunn, Adventures of Ibn Battuta, 122e8; Travels of Ibn Battuta in Asia and Africa 1325e1354, trans. Hamilton A.R. Gibb (London, 1929), 110e11. 35 Horton, Shanga, 416e18; Chau Ju-Kua specifically mentioned red and white cotton, porcelain, and copper explicitly as Arab and Indian products traded with the Swahili coast. Chau Ju-Kua. His work on the Chinese and Arab trade, ed. Hirth and Rockhill, 126. The high quantity of Yemeni black-on-yellow pottery in the material record of Swahili cities, especially during the years 1250e1350, attests to increased contact with the southern Arabian Peninsula. Horton and Middleton, The Swahili, 80e1. 36 Nayef Abdullah al-Shamrookh, ‘The commerce and trade of the Rasulids in the Yemen, 630e858/1231e1454’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, 1993), Appendix I, 315e36. 37 This ivory was undoubtedly also ultimately destined for Egypt. The Genizah documents record a shipment of spices that stopped in Badi’, Dahlak, Nizala, Suwakin, and finally in ‘Aydhab. See Margariti, Aden & the Indian Ocean trade, 136. Jacob d’Ancona stopped at the Dahlak archipelago on his return journey from China in 1273. Jacob d’Ancona, The City of Light, ed. and trans. David Selbourne (London, 1997), 343. 38 The bahar d a popular unit of measure in the Indian Ocean trade routes d is difficult to quantify, as there were different bahar for each commodity. A sixteenth-century Portuguese trading treatise records that the bahar for cinnamon, fine aloe wood, ivory, sandalwood, Chinese camphor, walrus teeth, wax, sulphur and tin weighed 217.8 kg. See Walther Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte. Umgerechnet ins Metrische System (Leiden, 1955), 8e9. 39 The ratl is also difficult to estimate, in this instance because each centre maintained a different standard. The Arabian standard in the thirteenth century was 1 ratl ¼ 812.5 g; whereas in Egypt the ratl was almost half the weight at 437.5 g. Hinz was able to ascertain the weight of the ratl based on extant standard weights for each geographical region recovered archaeologically. I have used the Arabian Peninsular standard in my calculations for Aden. See Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte, 28e9.  Author's personal copy S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 163 versus ratl) implies that the volume of trade with India far surpassed that with the Red Sea, a fact also reflected in the relative amount of taxes; tariffs levied on ivory bound for India were one tenth of that destined for the Red Sea. The low taxes on India-bound ivory indicate both a government initiative to stimulate the more profitable Indian trading routes and reflect the larger market for ivory in the east. Furthermore, the al’Daftar statistics on ivory demonstrate that in the thirteenth century the majority of Swahili ivory passing through Aden’s storehouses was bound for India, in keeping with documentation from earlier periods. This suggests that only a relatively small proportion of ivory from the bounteous Swahili reservoirs would eventually make it to Mediterranean markets. By the late-thirteenth century when the al-Daftar was written, however, the import of elephant tusks into northern France was near its height. A supplementary source of ivory in addition to the traditional Swahili stock must have been tapped in the mid-thirteenth century to account for the large amount of tusks available in northern Europe. As an entrepôt, Aden’s location was necessary as well as strategic. The ocean-going dhow and mtepe were unsuitable for the dangerously shallow waters of the Red Sea. In Aden, even if the merchandise did not change hands, it certainly did change ships, and the Indian, Persian and African merchants would frequently accompany their goods aboard smaller vessels, such as felucca or sambuk for the voyage to the Egyptian markets.40 Merchant ships entering the Red Sea were almost exclusively destined for the Nile valley and ‘Aydhab seems to have been the most popular Red Sea port; located across the sea from Mecca, it served additionally for pilgrimages.41 Goods were unloaded at ‘Aydhab and transferred by caravan through the Nubian Desert to an entrepôt on the Nile (either Qus or Aswan), where the commodities were reloaded onto river barges for the last leg of their journey to the markets of Cairo.42 Cairo was the main commercial centre of Egypt in the Fatimid (969e1169), Ayyubid (1169e1250) and Mamluk (1250e1517) periods.43 Here shipments were easily unpacked from Nile barges, and goods were stockpiled and sold. Although Cairo was the main commercial centre, Alexandria was Egypt’s chief Mediterranean port.44 Goods bound for the lesser ports of Damietta or Rosetta continued along the branches of the Nile, but to reach Alexandria the last stage of the journey had to be made either by an artificial canal, which functioned only when the Nile was high, or by caravan, which took, on average, five or six days.45 40 Margariti, Aden & the Indian Ocean trade, 154; James Hornell, ‘The sailing craft of western India’, Mariner’s Mirror, 32 (1946), 195e217; George F. Hourani, Arab seafaring in the Indian Ocean in ancient and early medieval times, ed. John Carswell, 2nd edn (Princeton, NJ, 1995), 89. 41 Walter J. Fischel cites the good harbour facilities, its high water level and the easy accessibility of their ships for the popularity of ‘Aydhab. Walter J. Fischel, ‘The spice trade in Mamluk Egypt’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 1 (1958), 157e74 (162). William of Tyre also mentions ‘Aydhab as a major Red Sea port: ‘Ad hec ex utraque India, Saba, Arabia, ex utraque etiam nichilominus Ethiopia, sed et de Perside et aliis adiacentibus provinciis quicquid aromatum, margaritarum, gemmarum, Orientalium gazarum et peregrinarum mercium, quibus noster indiget orbis, per Mare Rubrum, unde gentibus illis ad nos iter est, in superiores partes Egypti, ad eam urbem que Aideb dicitur, supra ripam eiusdem maris sitam, infertur, id totum ad flumen et inde Alexandriam descendit.’ William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. R.B.C. Huygens, 2 vols (Corpus Christianorum continuatio mediae- valis 63, 63A, Turnhout, 1986), vol. 2, 903 (19.27). On returning from Mecca in the fourteenth century, Ibn Battuta also called at ‘Aydhab; Dunn, Adventures of Ibn Battuta, 52e4. Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant, vol. 1, 379. 42 Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant, vol. 1, 380e1. In the fourteenth century there is evidence that ivory was given directly to the Mamluk sultan in Cairo as tribute, rather than arriving in Cairo via the free market Indian Ocean trade routes. The Bedouin of Upper Egypt (southern Egypt) were required to send 80 slaves, 800 camels and 30 kantar of ivory d around 1350 kg or between 30 and 45 tusks d to Cairo to affirm their allegiance to the Mamluks. These caravans travelled overland rather than by sea. From where exactly the ivory came is open to question. The Bedouin did not hunt the ivory themselves, as the northern African elephant had become extinct in late antiquity; see Cutler, Craft of ivory, 23e4. The Bedouin might have confiscated the ivory from caravans travelling through their territory (between the Red Sea and the Nile). Sabhi Y. Labib, Handelgeschichte Ägyptens im Spätmittelalter (1171e1517) (Wiesbaden, 1965), 87e9. 43 The Cairo Genizah documents give ample evidence of this fact. The most extensive analyses of the Genizah documents is S.D.F Goitein, A Mediterranean society. The Jewish communities of the Arab world as portrayed in the documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols (Berkeley, 1967). For Cairo-Alexandria relations, see also Abraham L. Udovitch, ‘Medieval Alexandria: some evidence from the Cairo Genizah documents’, in: Alexandria and Alexandrianism. Papers delivered at a symposium organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Center for the History of Art and Humanities and held at the Museum April 22e25, 1993 (Malibu, 1996), 273e84; and Abraham L. Udovitch, ‘A tale of two cities: commercial relations between Cairo and Alexandria during the second half of the eleventh century’, in: The medieval city, ed. Harry A. Miskimin, David Herlihy and Abraham L. Udovitch (New Haven, 1977), 143e62. 44 Udovitch, ‘Medieval Alexandria’, 279; Goitein, A Mediterranean society, vol. 1, 209e29. 45 Goitein, A Mediterranean society, vol. 1, 298e9.  Author's personal copy 164 S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 Alexandria was the largest Mediterranean port and the second-largest market in Egypt next to Cairo.46 Prices were notably higher in Alexandria47 and supplies of basic items often ran short because the main warehouses were in Cairo.48 Given the characteristically aggressive nature of European Christian interaction with the Islamic world during the age of the crusades, it comes as no surprise that the western merchants, merchants from the Dar al-Harb (Land of War), were limited to trade in the coastal cities of Alexandria and Damietta alone. Their access to Cairo with the wholesale markets and the Nile d the source of eastern luxuries d was purposely circumscribed.49 Stringent regulations charac- terised the western merchant’s experience of Egyptian markets in general. Dar al-Harb ships were required to wait in harbour until all European vessels had arrived for the trading season, a manoeuvre that levelled individual advantages of arriving early or late. Once all ships had arrived, the personnel and cargo remained on board until the head of customs came to register the goods and to inspect permits. In the city itself, Europeans were required to reside in specified funduks directed by their own country where their own laws applied.50 All of these regulations underline the fact that the Ayyubid and Mamluk governments of Egypt recognised the lucrative trade opportunities with the Mediterranean and astutely demanded the upper hand European merchants tolerated the harsh conditions because Egypt controlled the Mediterranean monopoly on many of the eastern goods purchased in Aden d spices, dyestuffs, and luxury materials such as ivory d which the European markets so earnestly desired. This detailed investigation of the ivory trade routes has not furnished an answer as to why there was an influx of ivory in northern Europe in the mid-thirteenth century. The power and influence of the Fatimids’ far-reaching trade networks stimulated the eleventh-century blossoming of ivory carving in many centres across the Mediterranean. Trade in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, however, was characterised by individual mercantile corporations in both the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. There is ample evidence of ivory’s availability in other Mediterranean centres in the twelfth century, while it was scarce in northern Europe. Salerno and Amalfitan ivories, Siculo-Arabic boxes and oliphants are just a few examples of the availability, if not abundance, of ivory in the twelfth- century- Mediterranean.51 The extreme veneration with which ivory was treated when any piece of the material did arrive in northern Europe in the twelfth century is evidenced by the uniformly sacred nature of the few objects produced: croziers, appliqué plaques for reliquaries and portable altars, crosses, and crucifixes.52 Around 1240, however, unprecedented amounts of ivory began to reach northern Europe. Ivory tusks did not arrive in northern France through the most obvious route, that is, through the thriving Mediterranean ports of southern France: Marseilles, Aigues-Mortes or Montpellier. There is no evidence of ivory in these places either in the documentary record or, more compellingly, as extant objects.53 Even though a few works in ivory were carved in this region during the eleventh 46 Udovitch, ‘Medieval Alexandria,’ 280; Goitein, A Mediterranean society, vol. 1, 223. 47 Goitein discusses comparative prices of various commodities represented by the Genizah documents in A Mediterranean society, vol. 1, 218e29. 48 A late eleventh-century merchant in Alexandria writes to a colleague in Fustat: ‘Please take note that neither pepper, cinnamon nor ginger are available in Alexandria. If you have any of these commodities then keep them, for the Byzantine merchants are keen solely on them.’ Udovitch, ‘Medieval Alexandria,’ 279; Cambridge University Library, Taylor-Schechter 12, f. 369v, lines 9e16. See also Fischel, ‘The spice trade in Mamluk Egypt’, 163. 49 Jean de Joinville (1224e1317), biographer of Louis IX and chronicler of the crusades, reiterated the popular conception that spices and eastern luxuries flowed out of earthly Paradise on the Nile: Jean de Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, Credo et Lettre à Louis IX, ed. and trans. Natalis de Wailly (Paris,1874),104. The 1245 crusade of Louis IX, directed against Egypt, was partially motivated by a desire to control the source of these luxuries. P. Freedman, Out of the east. Spices and the medieval imagination (New Haven, 2008), 89. 50 Abu-Lughod, Before European hegemony, 240. Labib, Handelgeschichte Ägyptens, 160e2 and 243e4. 51 Robert Bergman, The Salerno ivories. Ars sacra from medieval Amalfi (Cambridge, MA, 1980); Perry Blythe Cott, Siculo-Arabic ivories (Princeton, 1939); and Avinoam Shalem, The oliphant. Islamic objects in historical context (Boston, 2004). 52 Adolph Goldschmidt, Die Elfenbeinskulpturen aus der Zeit der karolingischen und sächsischen Kaiser, 4 vols (Berlin, 1914e26), vols 3 and 4; La France romane au temps des premiers Capétiens (987e1152), ed. Danielle Gaborit-Chopin (Paris, 2003), nos 79, 230, 233, and Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires du moyen âge (Fribourg, 1978), 98e113. 53 The extensive commercial contracts from thirteenth-century Marseilles do not once mention ivory, compelling evidence that the material was not available in southern French ports. See Louis Blancard, Documents inédites sur le commerce de Marseille au moyen âge, 2 vols (Marseilles, 1885). See also A. Germain, Histoire du commerce de Montpellier, 2 vols (Montpellier, 1861); Kathryn L. Reyerson, The art of the deal. Intermediaries of trade in medieval Montpellier (Boston, 2002); Georges Jehel, Aigues- Mortes, un port pour un roi. Les Capétiens et la Méditerranée (Roanne, 1985).  Author's personal copy S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 165 and twelfth centuries,54 such products are completely absent in the next two centuries when ivory carving thrived in the north. The dearth of any trace of ivory in southern and central France throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries implies that raw ivory was simply not available there during this period, even though the Provençal ports were intimately connected to the Medi- terranean trade routes. The locations where elephant ivory was carved in the first half of the thirteenth century d where there is positive proof of its commercial availability d are Picardy, Denmark and Flanders.55 These are coastal regions abutting the English Channel and the North Sea, which promotes the conclusion that ivory was shipped by sea from Alexandria, across the Mediterranean, through the Straits of Gibraltar, and northward along the coasts of Spain and France until it reached the northern countries.56 This deduction, however, begs many questions. Why was ivory not available in Provence yet offered for sale in the north?57 Why were tusks rare in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, and why did their availability increase steadily throughout the thirteenth century? The economies of the areas identified above, especially Flanders and Picardy, were renowned in the late middle ages for one thing above all else: the large-scale manufacture of textiles for the interna- tional export market.58 Vital to the thirteenth-century ‘commercial revolution,’ the region encom- passing modern Belgium and north-east France pioneered the industrial production of textiles.59 Such was the potential of this region for production that by the twelfth century it was importing raw wool from England to furnish its looms, fulling mills and dyeing vats. Wool, however, was not the only raw commodity needed for the various manufacturing processes. Although some dyestuffs were produced locally, namely madder, woad and weld, others were imported from lands as far away as south-east Asia. Alum was another substance necessary to the textile industry that was imported to northern Europe. It was the standard mordant used in medieval cloth industries, and western European sources 54 A mid-twelfth-century crozier from Arles (Trésor de Saint-Trophime) and an eleventh-century comb from Auch (Musée du Gers) only highlight the total lack of ivory products in Provence in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires du moyen âge, no. 161; and France romane, no. 209. These are localised to southern France primarily by find-site and secondarily through stylistic analysis. There were, furthermore, numerous Roman and late antique ivories in church treasuries. For example, the famous Barberini plaque at the Louvre (OA 9063) was in Aix-en-Provence until the seventeenth century. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux, no. 9. An ivory belt buckle, made in Provence before 543, was kept in the treasury of the Church of St-Blaise in Arles from the ninth century until the Revolution. It is now in Arles at the Musée de l’Arles Antique: Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires du moyen âge, no. 36. The presence of these objects bar the argument that Provençals were simply not interested in carving ivory because they had no indigenous tradition: the material held the same prestige in meridional France as it did in the north. 55 These localisations are based on both stylistic analysis and find sites. Picardy: the Block-style Group, 1230e40 and the Davillier Group, 1240e50; Denmark: Herlufsholm Corpus, 1220e30 and the Adoration of the Magi Group, 1240e50; Flanders: Paris, Musée du Louvre (OA 10925), 1220e30, the Vierge d’Ourscamp Group, 1230e40, and the Large Thomson Virgin, 1240e50. See William Monroe, ‘A French gothic ivory of the Virgin and Child’, The Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Studies, 9 (1978), 6e29; Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, ‘Paris ou Amiens? Le Groupe de la Vierge Davillier’, in: Études d’histoire de l’art offertes à Jacques Thirion, ed. Alain Erlande-Brandenburg, Jean-Michel Leniaud and Xavier Dectot (Paris, 2001), 85e98; Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires du moyen âge, no. 196; Patricia A. Young, ‘The origin of the Herlufsholm ivory crucifix figure’, Burlington Magazine, 119 (1977), 12e17, 19; The year 1200. A centennial exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1970), no. 74; Dany Sandron, ‘La Sculpture en ivoire au début du XIIIe siècle, d’un monde à l’autre’, Revue de l’Art, 102:4 (1993), 48e59; Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux, no. 92; John Lowden and John Cherry, Medieval ivories and works of art. The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, 2008), no. 13. 56 Raymond Koechlin has already suggested this trajectory in Ivoires gothiques français, 3 vols (Paris, 1924), vol. 1, 29e30. Koechlin posited, however, that Norman merchants sailed to and from the Mediterranean, a position that lacks evidence: he relied on a set of Norman customaries that mention ivory (ivuirre), which he believed to be thirteenth century but are in reality twelfth century. In all likelihood, the ivory mentioned in these sources was local walrus ivory and not foreign elephant tusks. For an in- depth discussion of this evidence see Sarah M. Guérin, ‘“Tears of compunction”: French Gothic ivories in devotional practice’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 2009), 52e5. The Atlantic route is also supported by Gaborit-Chopin in Ivoires médiévaux and ‘Le Commerce de l’ivoire’. Gaborit-Chopin, however, fails to address the question why use of the Atlantic route began in the thirteenth century and how the trade of ivory fits within the larger picture of the thirteenth-century economy. 57 Koechlin also noted the lack of gothic ivories in southern France: Ivoires gothiques français, vol. 1, 18. 58 The dominant role of the Netherlandish textile industry in the emerging capitalism in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was a thesis set forth by Henri Pirenne, Economic and social history of medieval Europe, trans. I.E. Clegg (New York, 1937). This view has been tempered and nuanced by later scholarship. For a summary and historiographic context of recent work on the socio-economic history of medieval Europe, see Steven A. Epstein, An economic and social history of later medieval Europe, 1000e1500 (Cambridge, 2009). 59 Robert Lopez, The commercial revolution of the middle ages, 950e1350 (Cambridge, 1976).  Author's personal copy 166 S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 were of inferior quality.60 High-quality alum, however, was abundant in North Africa and Egypt, southern Spain and the Black Sea, making it a principal commodity of the bulk trade routes of the thirteenth century. The luxury trade d with ivory among those luxuries d existed in a symbiotic relationship with the expansive, and expanding, network that was required to fuel the textile industry in Flanders and northern France in the thirteenth century. The Genoese, with their privileged position on the edge of the Mediterranean and at the foot of the Alps, were the main purveyors and distributors for the northern textile centres. In the twelfth century, the Genoese interacted with the textile towns primarily at the cyclical Champagne fairs d in Troyes, Provins, Lagny and Bar-sur-Aube. The counts of Champagne provided highly desirable services to merchants, namely active protection of the men and goods travelling to the fairs, and thus promoted their territory as the pre-eminent emporium of the Christian west.61 Although the location of the Champagne fairs was partway between Genoa and the northern textile regions, an arduous overland, transalpine journey was nevertheless required for the Mediterranean merchants.62 The taxing route persuaded many prosperous Genoese merchants to employ middlemen to transport their wares to the Champagne markets.63 To the fairs the northern French and Flemish merchants primarily brought reams of cloth, from the luxurious to the pedestrian in weights and finishes.64 They traded cloth with the Genoese (or their representatives) for imported raw materials necessary to textile production: alum and such foreign dyestuffs as brazil wood, indigo and kermes. Additionally, the Italian merchants brought to Champagne a sampling of the spices, sweets and other luxuries that could be obtained on the Mediterranean markets: black and white pepper, saffron, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, rhubarb and ginger; dates, honey, almonds, raisins and figs; silks, damask cloth, gold, coral, precious stones and gems.65 The few documentary sources that describe materials sent to the Champagne markets do not explicitly mention ivory tusks among their wares, though the overland caravan shipments surely account for the trickle of ivory that arrived in northern Europe prior to the 1230s.66 The fact that these tusks were carried on carts and pack mules is reflected in the generally smaller size of Gothic ivories before 1230: an average size of about 10 cm tall compared to the monumental Vierge Barroux (Fig. 1) which stands at over half a metre.67 60 Alum permitted non-fast dyes such as madder (red) and weld (yellow) to form a permanent chemical bond with wool fibres. See Medieval science, technology, and medicine. An encyclopedia, ed. Thomas F. Glick, Steven John Livesey and Faith Wallis (New York, 2005), s.v. Alum; and Charles Singer, The earliest chemical industry. An essay in the historical relations of economics & technology illustrated from the alum trade (London, 1948), 312. The Parisian gild regulations of Étienne Boileau expressly forbid ‘alum de bouquam’, or alum mined at the island of Vulcano, off the southern coast of Italy: Étienne Boileau, Les Métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris. XIIIe siècle, ed. René de Lespinasse and François Bonnardot (Paris, 1879), 112. 61 Abu-Lughod, Before European hegemony, 55e77. The foremost text on the Champagne fairs remains Félix Bourquelot, Études sur les foires de Champagne, sur la nature, l’entendue et les règles du commerce qui s’y faisait aux XIIe, XIIIe, et XIVe siècles, 2 vols (Paris, 1865). 62 See Richard Face, ‘Symon de Gualterio: a brief portrait of a thirteenth-century man of affairs’, Explorations in Economic History, 7 (1969), 75e94. 63 Richard Face, ‘The Vectuarii in the overland commerce between Champagne and southern Europe’, Economic History Review, second series 12 (1959e60), 239e46. 64 From primary documents, Bourquelot compiled a list of northern towns that brought cloth to market in Champagne: Rouen, Louviers, Bernay, Caen, Neuchatel, Montevilliers, Arras, Amiens, Beauvais, Roye, Peronne, Montcornet, Montreuil, Paris, St Denis, Chartres, Toulouse, Montpellier, Aurillac and Limoges; Malines, Ypres, St Omer, Diest, Ghent, Valenciennes, Huy, Lille, Bruges, Namur, Douai, Dixmude, Hesdin, Cambrai, Louvain and Brussels. Bourquelot, Etudes sur les foires de Champagne, vol. 1, 249; cited in Abu-Lughod, Before European hegemony, 66. For a discussion of the qualities of northern cloth on the international market, see Patrick Chorley, ‘The cloth exports of Flanders and northern France during the thirteenth century: a luxury trade?’, Economic History Review, second series 40 (1987), 349e79. 65 Renée Doehaerd distilled this list from Genoese notarial documents: Renée Doehaerd, Les Relations commerciales entre Gênes, la Belgique et l’Outremont d’après les archives notariales Génoises aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles, 3 vols (Brussels, 1941), vol. 1, 231e2. 66 A pair of tusks sold in Genoa in 1182 for 42 lire, however, might have continued their journey north to the Champagne fairs. See note 77. 67 Pre-1230 ivory objects rarely reach over 15 cm. The Hamburg Virgin and Child (1210e20, English or North German; Hamburg, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, 1893.199) stands at 11.8 cm; a Virgin and Child from Flanders (1220e30; Paris, Musée du Louvre, OA 10925) is 10.9 cm tall; and a petite Virgin and Child in Princeton (Northern German, 1220e30; Princeton University, Art Museum, 49.120) is merely 5.6 cm. The large statuettes of the Vierge d’Ourscamp group (Flanders, 1230e40: Paris, Musée du Petit Palais, SL 70.821; Paris Musée national du Moyen ÂgeeThermes et hôtel de Cluny, Cl. 498; St Petersburg, Hermitage, f 33) reach as much as 36 cm tall. Their size alone signals a shift in the international trade routes in the 1230s. See Sandron, ‘Sculpture en ivoire’.  Author's personal copy S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 167 In the twelfth and early-thirteenth centuries, the Genoese merchants sourced the majority of the alum, spices and luxury goods they sold at the Champagne fairs in Alexandria. A treatise on the commercial transactions of the Ayyubid government written in 1191 by a senior finance official, al- Makhzûmî, describes the special monopoly the government held on the production and export of alum.68 The Matdjar, the commerce bureau, was concerned primarily with acquiring goods necessary to the state’s military machine: namely, wood, iron and pitch for shipbuilding.69 Loathe, however, to pay for these commodities completely in cash, the government instead controlled the distribution and export of western merchants’ most desired good: alum. Ibn al-Mammâtî, a slightly younger colleague of al- Makhzûmî, recorded that alum was mined and refined in the desert of Upper Egypt and that the Matdjar was its sole distributor.70 When the Matdjar purchased materials for their armies,71 they paid with alum and gold. Ibn al-Mammâtî records that two thirds of the price was given in alum, one third in gold coin.72 Genoese merchants participated in both a luxury trade and a bulk trade in Alexandria. Bulk merchandise, namely the wood, iron and pitch needed for shipbuilding, was brought from European shores to Alexandria and traded for alum. For the luxury trade, the Genoese brought the sumptuous woollen textiles fabricated in northern Europe and exchanged them for the spices, dyestuffs and precious materials of the eastern world.73 The bulk trade in relatively low-cost, utilitarian goods would not have been feasible in the middle ages without the luxury trade which balanced the merchant’s books.74 There is no doubt that ivory tusks were one of the luxury goods acquired by Italian merchants in Alexandria along with alum and other materials for the textile industry: in December 1226, several Venetians had cargo on a Lombard ship (most probably Genoese) coming from Alexandria. Together, the Venetians’ goods consisted of 54 baskets of dates, 9 baskets of alum, 10 sacks of wool and 2 of linen, a basket of gum arabic, 2 bundles of brazil wood and 7 of the largest elephant tusks (sette denti grandissimi d’elefante).75 This document not only provides concrete evidence for the circulation of ivory in the Mediterranean on Genoese ships in the thirteenth century, but it also illustrates the types of merchandise with which it was shipped. The majority of items were destined for the textile industry (alum, brazil wood, gum arabic, linen and wool), while dates were likely for local consumption. Whether the elephant tusks were to be distributed to other trading sites or were to be used locally is impossible to tell.76 Contrary to expectations, elephant tusks make few appearances in Genoese notarial records. In 1182, a pair was sold for 42 lire.77 In this period, the salary of a governor of a colonial territory was 68 Claude Cahen, ‘Douanes et commerce dans les ports méditerranéens de l’Égypte médiévale d’après le Minhadj d’al- Makhzumi’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 7 (1964), 217e314, see esp. 257e62. 69 Cahen, ‘Douanes et commerce’, 258. 70 Cahen, ‘Douanes et commerce’, 260. Ibn al-Mammâtî, writing around 1193, also noted that alum was in high demand among the Rûm (Byzantines) because it was not available to them locally. Cited in Claude Cahen, ‘L’Alun avant Phocée: un chapitre d’histoire économique islamo-chrétienne au temps des Croisades’, Revue d’Histoire Économique et Sociale, 41 (1963), 433e47 (434). Cahen cites evidence that Saladin (d.1193) thought the alum trade important enough to send troops ‘pour garder la route de Haute-Egypte par laquelle on transportait l’alun destiné au pays des Francs’. The document from which this passage was taken seems to be a journal kept by Saladin’s secretary and chief of staff, Qâdî al-Fâdil. Cahen, ‘Alun avant Phocée’, 436. 71 Interdicts by the Pope against arms dealing with Egypt were issued numerous times in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (1179, 1215, 1245). None of these measures seems to have been effective deterrents to trade. Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant, vol. 1, 385e7. 72 Cahen, ‘Alun avant Phocée’, 435. Though with a less detailed description, there is evidence that this system persisted into the thirteenth century; Cahen, ‘Alun avant Phocée’, 444. 73 Eleanora Carus-Wilson remarked that it was the production of luxury textiles in the north that redressed the balance of trade between European and near-Eastern markets. Instead of using cash to pay for spices, silk, ivory and gold, the high-quality woollens could be used instead. Eleanora Carus-Wilson, ‘The woollen industry’, in: Cambridge economic history of Europe, volume II. Trade and industry in the middle ages, ed. M.M. Postan, Edward Miller and Cynthia Postan (Cambridge, 1987), 613e90 (629). 74 Cahen, ‘Douanes et commerce’, 234. 75 Il Liber Communis detto anche Plegiorum del R. Archivio di Venezia, ed. and trans. R. Predelli (Venice, 1872), 116. 76 There is some evidence for Venetian ivory carving in the thirteenth century, though which pieces should be considered ‘Italo- Byzantine’ and which should be labelled Byzantine proper is under much discussion. See, most recently, Anthony Cutler, ‘Mistaken novelty: problems of ivory carving in the Christian east (12th and 13th centuries)’, Biuletyn Historii Sztuki, 70 (2008), 269e84. 77 Archivio di Stato Genova, min. 2, f. 23v, act of 6 December 1182, cited in George Jehel, Les Génois en Méditerranée occidentale (fin XIèmeedébut XIVème siècle). Ébauche d’une stratégie pour un empire (Amiens, 1993), 350.  Author's personal copy 168 S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 about 75 lire per year and 10 to 25 lire could buy a knight’s horse, while a galley cost between 150 and 200 lire.78 Given these numbers, the ivory tusks sold were superlatively expensive. Probably purchased in Alexandria and bound for the fairs of Champagne, it is curious that the only mention of ivory in Genoese documents is from the period of relative dearth on the other side of the Alps. It suggests that when the trade in ivory was at its height, from the mid-thirteenth to the late-fourteenth century, although the material was handled by Genoese merchants, it did not pass through their home port, a matter to which we will return. Although Alexandria was the primary venue for purchasing alum (and ivory) in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the Genoese were simultaneously diversifying their trading partners to increase alum supplies.79 The Genoese, unable to compete with the Venetians in the eastern Mediterranean, developed trade with settlements across North Africa, from Tripoli to Tunis and Béjaia (Bougie) to Ceuta (Map 1).80 Genoese notarial documents record outgoing shipments to these entrepôts as early as the mid-twelfth century. Maghrib-bound cargo was largely composed of northern textiles purchased at the Champagne fairs.81 Documents relate that for the return journey, the ships were filled with alum, goat-, cattle- and lamb-skins, and dates, sugar and gold. The amount of alum exported from the Maghrib destined for textile-producing regions of the north is attested to by references to alum from Béjaia and Banzart (Biset) by name in contemporary northern textile gild documents.82 Alum was not, however, mined in the Maghrib itself, but was transported by way of the trans- Saharan caravan routes (Map 1). Arab sources tell of two important alum mines along the main trails through the Sahara desert in the middle ages. The Kawar oasis (today Bilma, Niger) was the mid-point on the eastern Saharan route, and the alum available there was described by al-Idrisi as ‘unequalled in quality’.83 Alum from Kawar was brought by camel caravan by way of Fezzan, a major trading centre today in Libya, to the Mediterranean markets of Tripoli, Gabès, Tunis and Béjaia. The second alum mine lay on the western trans-Saharan trail. The Taghaza salt oasis, which al- Qazwini (1203e83) tells us was also a source of alum, lies in the midst of the Saharan desert and was the mid-point on the extremely important SijilmasaeTaghazaeWalatan route between the Maghrib and the gold stores of Bilad al-Sudan, ‘the Southern Country’.84 The ‘blue sands’ of Taghaza supplied both the Mediterranean with alum and also the states south of the Sahara with much-needed salt. The ‘Southern’ regions were ruled consecutively by two great empires: that of Ghana 78 Van Doosselaere compiled a very useful chart of sample prices and incomes in Genoa. Those quoted span the time frame 1150e1225. Quentin van Doosselaere, Commercial agreements and social dynamics in medieval Genoa (Cambridge, 2009), Appendix A, 215e16. 79 Clearly the markets in northern Europe were sufficiently elastic to welcome more alum than Alexandria could supply. 80 Robert Sabatino Lopez, ‘Market expansion: the case of Genoa’, Economic History Association, 24 (1964), 445e64; Jehel, Les Génois en Méditerranée occidentale. 81 Hilmar C. Krueger, ‘The wares of exchange in the Genoese-African traffic of the twelfth century’, Speculum, 12 (1937), 57e71. Krueger also enumerates raw cotton and linen, canvas, rugs, saffron, lac, spices, pearls and precious stones among shipments to North Africa. 82 In 1270 the textile gilds of St Omer banned the use of any alum other than those from Castile, Banzart and Béjaia, and those who did not follow this rule were subject to a fine of 60 livres: ‘On a conmandei ke nus tainteliers ne taigne, fors de 3 manieres d’alun: c’est Biset, Castille et Bougie, sor 60 li.’: Recueil de documents relatifs à l’histoire de l’industrie drapière en Flandre, ed. G. Espinas and H. Pirenne, 4 vols (Brussels, 1906e24), vol. 3, 240, no. 62. 83 Al-Idrisi (1099e1165), an Arab geographer and cartographer in the Sicilian court of Roger II, mentioned no less than five towns of the Kawar Oases that traded in alum. Of this material he also says: ‘The alum of the land of Kawar is of supreme quality, and is found in abundance. Every year it is exported to other countries in uncountable quantities and immeasurable weight, yet the mines do not decrease greatly. The inhabitants there say that it sprouts and grows every time in proportion to what is taken away from time to time. Otherwise, they would have exhausted the whole land because of the vast quantities that are extracted from it and exported all over the world.’ Corpus of early Arabic sources for West African history, ed. N. Levtzion and J.F.P Hopkins (Cambridge, 1981), 124, no. 27. 84 Al-Qazwini, an Iranian geographer, further noted that the Bilad al-Sudan was the source of gold and had marvellous wild beasts such as elephants, rhinoceros and giraffes. Corpus of early Arabic sources, ed. Levtzion and Hopkins, 178, no. 37. See also Basil Davidson, West Africa before the colonial era. A history to 1850 (New York, 1998), 26. When Ibn Battuta travelled to ‘Black Africa’ in the fourteenth century, he went by this well-trodden route. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 317e19.  Author's personal copy S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 169 Map 1. Ivory trade routes, c.1240  Author's personal copy 170 S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 (c.1050e1240), the capital of which was close to Audaghost, and Mali (1240ec.1450), with its capital city of Niani in modern-day Guinea. Both empires closely supervised trade throughout the region and were exceptionally wealthy as a result of the gold mines they controlled in what is today Senegal and Guinea.85 The trade in gold dust d for the rulers of Ghana and Mali wisely kept all gold nuggets for themselves so as to not flood the market d made the dangerous and difficult crossing of the Sahara highly profitable.86 A fourteenth-century account described business transactions across the Sahara desert in the thirteenth century: the Maqqari family of five brothers settled in towns along the trade route (Tlemcen, Sijilmasa and Walata), so that they could make minute adjustments according to supply and demand on both sides of the Sahara.87 Their trade goods consisted not only of gold, but also of animal skins, kola nuts and ivory.88 Ivory available in Maghrib ports came from western savannah elephants, whose territories spanned from modern-day Senegal to Nigeria.89 Unlike the ivory that came from the Swahili coast to Alexandria, this western elephant reservoir was untapped by the Far East market, meaning that Mediterranean-oriented merchants did not have to compete with Chinese and Indian agents for the precious material.90 Goods brought to Sijilmasa on the northern ‘shores’ of the Sahara were dispersed throughout the Maghrib and were brought to such port cities as Salé, Ceuta, Oran and Béjaia. Just as in Alexandria, therefore, although the main commodities the Genoese sought in the Maghrib were alum and animal skins, luxury goods such as gold and ivory were purchased as well to augment the value of individual shipments and subsidise a bulk-shipping route. The pursuit of trade with North Africa gradually turned the Genoese towards the Straits of Gibraltar, which had been the natural edge of the Mediterranean world since antiquity.91 The Straits strongly favour eastern voyages and make leaving the Mediterranean extremely treacherous. A combination of geographic conditions privileges sea traffic from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and strongly discourages the return trip.92 Indeed, the western (Atlantic-bound) voyage is near impossible for ships relying solely on sails and requires the extra power provided by oars.93 For much of the twelfth century there was further discouragement for European merchant sailors; even if a ship successfully man- oeuvred the difficult passage, it emerged into hostile waters populated with ships from Cadiz, Seville or the Algarve.94 Over the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, however, Genoese merchants gradually overcame these oceanographic and political hurdles through a variety of strategies. First was the development of a new vessel type, the tarida, which combined the shipping capacity of the sailing 85 Davidson, West Africa, 33. 86 Davidson, West Africa, 31. 87 A prominent member of the Granada court, Lisan al-Din Ibn al-Khatib (1313e75) wrote a comprehensive history of Granada including much about contemporary politics and geography. Ibn al-Khatib recorded his conversation with a visitor from Tlemcen, Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad al-Maqqari, in May of 1356. The visitor told of his ancestors whose mercantile alliance spanned the trans-Saharan networks. Although it records an oral report from a century later, fairly precise dating is possible because al-Maqqari also tells of the Mali invasion of Walata, which occurred in the 1240s. Corpus of early Arabic sources, ed. Levtzion and Hopkins, 306e8, no. 50. 88 Corpus of early Arabic sources, ed. Levtzion and Hopkins, 307. 89 See The African elephant, 4e8 90 There is evidence, furthermore, that North African Islam considered ivory to be an unclean substance, not to be dealt with by Islamic merchants. The Imam Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (922e49) taught that the feathers, horns, hoofs and tusks of animals not ritually slaughtered should not be used. He disapproved particularly of the use of elephant tusks. This prohibition was still current in the eleventh century, when the tale of a man rejecting his inheritance because it was gained through the sale of ivory was retold by al-Maliki. Corpus of early Arabic sources, ed. Levtzion and Hopkins, 55, no. 18, and 61, no. 21. This perhaps explains why traffic in ivory tusks was not substantial before the thirteenth century. 91 Archibald Lewis, ‘Northern European sea power and the Straits of Gibraltar, 1031e1350’, in: Archibald Lewis, The sea and medieval civilizations. Collected studies (London, 1978), 139e64 (139e41). 92 The Atlantic waters have a lower salt content than the Mediterranean, due to slower evaporation rates. The waters of the Atlantic are therefore lighter than the Mediterranean waters; in addition, the basin of the Mediterranean is lower than that of the Atlantic. The combination of these factors results in the abnormal situation where the colder Atlantic waters flow above the warm Mediterranean back-flow. Furthermore, the strong eastern current is supported by a predominantly eastward-blowing wind. See Lewis, ‘Northern European sea power’, 140e1; and Robert Sabatino Lopez, ‘Majorcans and Genoese on the North Sea route in the thirteenth century’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 39 (1951), 1163e79. 93 Lewis, ‘Northern European sea power’, 140. 94 Lewis, ‘Northern European sea power’, 140e1.  Author's personal copy S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 171 ship (navis) with the oar-power characteristic of the galley (galea).95 The tarida allowed the Genoese to pass through the Straits by means of oar-power while still carrying a substantial load of goods for exchange. Secondly, the Genoese ambitiously cultivated trading relations with the Islamic states on either side of the Straits of Gibraltar, both on the Iberian Peninsula and in the Maghrib. A key component in securing Genoese supremacy in the western Mediterranean and beyond was the establishment of a trade treaty with the Islamic rulers of the Balearic Islands in 1181.96 The Balearic Islands controlled access to the Straits of Gibraltar and the western Mediterranean; whoever ruled these islands influenced international trade routes. If a ship were able wait in a Balearic port for favourable winds and weather, its odds of crossing the difficult passage were much improved. In 1182, a year after the Genoese-Balearic treaty, the first notarial evidence for the Genoese trajectory of Genoa-Majorca-Morocco was recorded.97 After King James I of Aragon conquered Majorca in 1229 and Menorca in 1231, the Genoese were quick to reinstate their privileged position in the Balearic economy.98 While the Genoese promptly resumed their trans-Gibraltarian trade missions to the nearby ports of Seville, Salé and Anfa (Casablanca),99 they simultaneously began experimenting with a longer and more ambitious route to northern Europe. The vast amount of alum required in northern Europe to sustain the textile industry was unwieldy to transport by caravan to the Champagne fairs. The Genoese, already successful in finding new sources of the commodity, were keen to leverage their dominance of the western Mediterranean and to streamline their business operations.100 The Atlantic sea route, along the western Iberian coast, across the Bay of Biscay, and around Normandy to the markets of northern Europe eliminated the costs associated with overland transport, allowed for much larger shipments of alum, and bypassed the many tariffs and taxes demanded by rulers along the land route.101 Nautical innovations at this time eventually allowed merchants to sail further out across the Bay of Biscay, shortening the voyage to northern France and Flanders significantly.102 Even with the additional crew needed to man the oars, the Genoese ships could transport a considerable amount of goods, between 50,000 and 75,000 kg of cargo.103 The majority of that weight would have been alum with a small percentage made up of luxury goods (pepper, spices, jewels, silks and ivory) d the small amount of luxury goods augmenting the profitability of bulk commodities on long-distance routes. Altogether, the Genoese profits were substantial and worth the circuitous route.104 If 5 per cent of the total cargo consisted of luxury goods (2500e3750 kg), and only 5 per cent of that was ivory, then each Genoese galley might still have carried four to six elephant tusks to northern shores.105 95 E.H. Byrne, Genoese shipping in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Monographs of the Mediaeval Academy of America 1, Cambridge, MA, 1930), 5. 96 David Abulafia, A Mediterranean emporium. The Catalan kingdom of Majorca (Cambridge, 1994), 108e9. 97 Abulafia, A Mediterranean emporium, 109. 98 As early as 1230 the Genoese merchant Andrea Caffaro was petitioning to recover trading rights granted by the former Islamic government. By 1233, a Genoese quarter was established in the city of Majorca. Abulafia, A Mediterranean emporium, 112e13. 99 Abulafia, A Mediterranean emporium, 109. Majorca, the largest of the Balearic Islands, was also home to the largest mercantile port. 100 The overland caravans from Genoa to northern Europe were managed by separate, small corporations, the so-called vec- tuarii. The large seafaring companies, however, no longer wanted to deal with small-middlemen who cut into their profit margin. Face, ‘The Vectuarii’, 239e46. 101 Face, ‘Symon de Gualterio’, 75e7; Léone Liagre, ‘Le Commerce de l’alun en Flandre au moyen-âge’, Le Moyen Âge, 61 (1953), 177e206. 102 Chief among these innovations was the box-compass. Archibald Lewis, Naval power and trade in the Mediterranean, AD 500e1100 (Princeton, 1951), 156e7; Frederic Lane, ‘The economic meaning of the compass’, American Historical Review, 68 (1963), 605e17; and Barbara Kreutz, ‘Mediterranean contributions to the medieval mariner’s compass’, Technology and Culture, 14 (1973), 367e83. 103 That is, between 1000 and 1500 cantaria of merchandise, where each cantar weighs approximately 50 kg (essentially the Arabic quintal). Lopez, ‘Majorcans and Genoese on the North Sea route’, 1169, n. 1. For an in-depth discussion of ships, see Jehel, Les Génois en Méditerranée occidentale, 247e50. 104 Lopez, ‘Majorcans and Genoese on the North Sea route’, 1169. 105 A number that approximates to the seven tusks brought to Venice on a Genoese ship from Alexandria discussed above.  Author's personal copy 172 S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 Although the first notarial documentation concerning the Genoese Mediterranean-North Atlantic voyage only dates from 1277,106 there is ample evidence that the trade route was active before that point. In 1232, a ship belonging to the Genoese merchant Gherardo Pessagno docked at La Rochelle, now in Poitou-Charentes.107 This constitutes decisive evidence that the Genoese were at least attempting the Atlantic route to the English Channel at this early date.108 Additionally, Majorcan goods, namely rabbit skins de Meligres, were purchased for the royal court in London in 1237, suggesting that five years after the La Rochelle landing Genoese merchants had successfully reached the English Channel by the Atlantic route.109 In the early 1240s, large amounts of Flemish cloth from Arras, Ypres, Ghent and St Omer were sold in Majorca to merchants who transported the material to eastern Mediterranean ports.110 Although it is conceivable that the cloth came through river courses from the Champagne fairs to a Provençal port (Aigue-Mortes, Montpellier or Marseilles) and then by sea to Majorca, given the previous evidence it is more probable that these shipments of cloth came directly by the sea route through the North Atlantic to Majorca. Initially, the Balearics were a way station for ships already filled and packed in Alexandria and other ports with alum, dyestuffs, cotton and such luxury goods as silk, spices and ivory. The new Christian government of the Balearics, however, sought to increase the importance of their kingdom in inter- national markets and to enjoy the monetary benefits that came therewith. There were incentives to encourage merchants other than the Genoese to come to their ports, and those from the nearby Maghrib ports were quick to comply. The capital city of Majorca, therefore, grew in importance as an emporium in the second half of the thirteenth century.111 As Genoese trade routes further diversified d namely into the eastern Mediterranean after they helped the Palaeologians regain the bruised Byzantine Empire in the 1261112 d the Balearics became a convenient location for exchanging and consolidating merchandise destined for the long Atlantic voyage to northern Europe. The Genoese impresario Benedetto Zaccharia, one of the Zaccharia brothers who ran the rich Foça alum mines in Asia Minor, acquired a decommissioned galley in 1283 for the sole purpose of shipping Foça alum to Majorca.113 By the last quarter of the thirteenth century, Majorca was the main western Mediterranean entrepôt for most commodities. Francesco Pegolotti, the fourteenth-century Florentine merchant and statesman, listed the myriad goods available in Majorca. Among the spices, sweets, drugs, perfumes, aromatics, dyestuffs, raw cottons, linens, wools and silks, finished cloths from every corner of the 106 The document, dated 17 April 1277, is a contract for two mariners to take a shipment of goods (unfortunately not described) to Flanders, for a payment of 15 lire 40 soldi. Doehaerd, Les Relations commerciales, vol. 3, 744e5, no. 1334. Another Genoese notarial document records a business transaction from spring of 1274 of the loan of a large sum for a business venture to Majorca and ‘wherever beyond God would lead for the best’: Abulafia, A Mediterranean emporium, 192. 107 Michel-Giuseppe Canale, Nuova istoria della repubblica di Genova, del suo commercio e della sua letteratura, 4 vols (Florence, 1858e64), vol. 2, 530; cited in Adolf Schaube, Handelgeschichte der romanischen Völker des Mittelmeergebiets bis zur Ende der Kreuzzüge (Munich, 1906), 333. 108 It is no coincidence that the Pessagno family came to dominate the English markets in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. See Gabriela Airaldi, ‘Due fratelli genovesi: Manuele e Antonio Pessagno’, in: Estudos em homenagem ao Professor Doutor José Marques, 4 vols (Porto, 2006), vol. 1, 139e46. 109 Abulafia suggests they came overland, though given the earlier evidence of the ship in La Rochelle, an overseas voyage is most likely: Close rolls of the reign of Henry III, preserved in the Public Record Office, AD 1234e37 (London, 1905), 479; Abulafia, A Mediterranean emporium, 194. 110 ‘The island evidently functioned as a clearing house for European and Andalusi cloths destined for markets in the Islamic world’: Abulafia, A Mediterranean emporium, 122e3. 111 Abulafia, A Mediterranean emporium, 103e28. 112 Individual Genoese businessmen acquired numerous alum mines across Asia Minor. Alum mines at Qarahisar (ancient Colonia and close to modern-day Denizli), inland from Aleppo where the mineral was brought to market, was noted in the hands of the Genoese Nicola de San Siro and the Venetian Bonifacio de Molinis in 1255 by Friar William of Rubruck, though perhaps it was so as early as 1228. Cahen, ‘L’Alun avant Phocée’, 442e3. The Zaccaria brothers acquired the mines at Foça in 1264 from the Palaeologians in recompense for aiding with the 1261 battle to recapture Constantinople. Roberto Lopez, Genova marinaria nel duecento. Benedetto Zaccaria. Ammiraglio e mercante (Messina, 1933). After 1261 and their new-found access to the Black Sea, the Genoese began shipping slaves required for the Mamluk armies. For approximately 50 years, the slave trade was an extremely profitable endeavour for the Genoese and gave them even greater buying power in Alexandria. See Andrew Ehrenkreutz, ‘Strategic implications of the slave trade between Genoa and Mamluk Egypt in the second half of the thirteenth century’, in: The Islamic Middle East, 700e1900, ed. A.L. Udovitch (Princeton, 1981), 335e45. 113 Lopez, Genova marinaria nel duecento.  Author's personal copy S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 173 Mediterranean and beyond, base metals, skins and leathers, he also mentioned ivory.114 Both denti di liofante and avorio d’ogni ragione were sold by the Majorcan cantar, equal to 104 Majorcan pounds.115 ‘Ivory from every region’ substantiates the deduction that merchants brought ivory and alum from Alexandria and the numerous ports of the Maghrib, in addition to other goods from around the Mediterranean, to Majorca from whence it could be shipped to northern Europe. Ivory and spices, therefore, piggybacked on the bulk shipping routes that sustained the textile trade between the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic (Map 1). It is no small coincidence that the regions producing high-quality textiles correspond exactly to the areas where ivory was carved in the second quarter of the thirteenth century: Flanders, northern France and England. A burgeoning economy in the northern textile centres provided the disposable income to purchase foreign luxury goods, even those as expensive as ivory. By the 1290s, many Genoese merchants made regular yearly voyages to England, northern France and Flanders, explaining the increased availability of ivory in these centres.116 The profitability of this trading route was so high that other Italian merchant mariners, namely Venetians and Florentines, were plying the Atlantic routes by the turn of the fourteenth century, further increasing the supply of ivory and decreasing its cost.117 The last leg of ivory’s journey from Alexandria or the Maghrib to northern Europe, therefore, took place courtesy of Italian merchants, at first Genoese and then others. The elephant tusks were brought to Majorca, where they were loaded with a large volume of alum and a small quantity of other precious goods on ships destined for the textile centres of the north. The increased supply of ivory in northern Europe echoes precisely the increasing frequency of these Mediterranean-Atlantic voyages: prior to the first Majorcan evidence in the 1230s there was very little elephant ivory available in the north. What little there was probably came overland from Genoa to the fairs of Champagne, also following the textile trade routes. Furthermore, the Genoese initiative in expanding alum supply, tapping Maghrib sources, opened markets with access to an untouched reservoir of elephant tusks. When Pegolotti enumerated avorio d’ogni ragione with the hundred other commodities available in Majorca, he confirmed that ivory came from both Alexandria and North Africa. The Balearic Islands acted as a fulcrum for Mediterranean trade destined for Flanders and northern France. Thirteenth-century France typically conjures images of the high Gothic cathedrals of Amiens, Reims, and Beauvais. These monuments in stone were financed by the successful textile industries that transformed northern France in the thirteenth century.118 The export of textiles generated unprece- dented capital in the region, for producers, merchants and both the secular and ecclesiastic aristo- cracies, while simultaneously stimulating a new direct route with the vibrant and international Mediterranean markets. The new Atlantic shipping route specialised in the mordant alum and brought, too, a choice selection of foreign luxuries sourced in Africa, Arabia and beyond. While alum fed the engines of commercial production, the luxuries stoked desire for foreign goods among the wealthy elite. The same socio-economic forces that engendered the building of the great cathedrals lay behind another characteristic, though lesser known, thirteenth-century product: Gothic ivories like the Barroux Virgin. 114 Francesco Pegolotti, writing between 1335 and 1343, enumerated well over a hundred commodities for sale in Majorca. Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, La pratica della mercatura, ed. Allen Evans (Cambridge, MA, 1936), 122e5. 115 Pegolotti, La pratica della mercatura, 123. Pegolotti notes that the Barberesco cantar (that of the Maghrib) was 121 Majorcan pounds, while the Majorcan cantar was only 104 of its own pounds. The Barberesco cantar was approximately 50.9 kg in the fourteenth century, thus making the Majorcan cantar approximately 43.75 kg. One Majorcan cantar was thus equal to about one average-sized elephant tusks (45e60 kg) from the middle ages. See note 8 and Franco Borlandi, El libro di mercatantie et uzanze de’ paesi (Torino, 1936). That Pegolotti mentions both elephant tusks and ivory suggests that he copied earlier lists and did not necessarily comprehend the nature of each commodity he entered into his text. In the list of nomi di spezierie (names of commodities) that concludes La pratica, Pegolotti only mentions elephant tusks (Denti di liofante), not ivory (avorio) itself, 293e7. 116 Abulafia, A Mediterranean emporium, 105. 117 For evidence of the Venetian trading routes in the second half of the fourteenth century, see Tarifa zoè noticia dy pexi e mexure di luogi e tere che s’adovra marcadantia per il mondo (Venice, 1925). The ivory was purchased directly in Alexandria where it was ideally grossi e blanqui e ben saldi (big, white and quite solid). The trade between Flanders (Bruges) and Venice is described in detail, where tute spezie menude and tute spezie grose were sold (36e7). 118 Henry Kraus, Gold was the mortar. The economics of cathedral building (Boston, 1979).  Author's personal copy 174 S.M. Guérin / Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010) 156e174 Sarah Guérin, currently a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Art and Archaeology at Columbia University, is an expert in medieval ivories, especially those of northern Europe of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Her multifaceted approach to this corpus of objects merges traditional methodologies of stylistic and formal analysis with discourses of religious history, the anthropology of the image, and material culture. She is preparing a manuscript on the devotional function of the so- called Soissons group of ivory diptychs and triptychs. A new project considers the position, both physical and theological, of ivory statuettes on the ceremonial stage of the mass, the altar.