Like the place of congregation on judgment day: Maritime trade and urban organization in medieval Aden (ca. 1083--1229).

摘要

An important trading center for at least three distinct periods in its long history, and entrepot of the highly visible medieval trade between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, Aden owes much to its strategic geographical location. An exploration of the elements that define the longue durée of Aden's history, that is the sea, the rocky peninsula the city stands on, the availability of water, and aspects of its immediate and further hinterland, contributes to our understanding of why and how an important port and urban center flourished at a seemingly forbidding geographical location; it also illuminates the ways in which these elements underlie the middle-range structures of Aden's mercantile urban society and short-range events that took place in the city during the century and a half under consideration, from the late 11th-to the early 13th-century.; The urban institutions that were directly linked to trade and engaged the energies of the city's merchants and rulers emerge as important elements in the port's urban organization. As the state's paramount source of revenue, the customs house at Aden constitutes a tangible manifestation of the port city's ability to attract tremendous volumes of maritime commercial traffic; customs house administration reveals the state's determination and efficiency in profiting from the flow of merchandise through the city, and the nature of both private and state involvement in this endeavor. Far from being a passive collector of transit taxes, the city also played an active role in Indian Ocean maritime trade. Through flourishing shipping businesses and a shipbuilding industry, and, most importantly, by providing mercantile and legal services, the city's merchants secured a central position in regional and transregional mercantile networks. The fortunate preservation of merchants' papers in the document repository known as the Cairo Geniza provides this study with its most informative primary source. In addition to information gleaned from documents of Jewish merchants who lived and/or worked in the city, literary sources and environmental, archaeological, and epigraphic evidence contribute to this analysis of the connection between maritime trade and urban organization in medieval Aden.