Mediterranean Historical Review, volume 36, issue 1 (2021). Byzantium between East and West, special issue in homage to the memory of David Jacoby.

CONTENTS INCLUDE

The commercial history of Trebizond and the region of Pontos from the seventh to the eleventh centuries: an international emporium
Koray Durak

This article examines the merchant and commodity networks of Trebizond as well as routes at the regional, interregional, and international levels that connected the city to Constantinople, the rest the Black Sea, Armenia, the Near East and the Caucuses in the early Middle Ages. After a brief survey of the commercial history of Trebizond from the late antique period to the eleventh century, the economy of the Pontic region and its commercial exchanges with various regions are investigated in detail. The available evidence shows that the list of commodities exchanged between Pontos and its neighbours were longer, and the networks of merchants and routes were more complex than assumed thus far. Trebizond’s advantage as a port town for landlocked territories to its south and east (especially the large Iranian and Iraqi markets at the end of the Silk/Spice Route), as well as its close ties with Constantinople and the rest of the Black Sea, established the Pontic capital as a vital emporium. Benefiting from the increasing economic development in Byzantium and its neighbours, the prosperity of the Pontic region and is main city Trebizond is most visible in the period from the mid-ninth to the mid-eleventh centuries.

The myth of phocaicus: new evidence on the silk industry in Byzantine Central Greece
Gang Wu

The article originates from a record David Jacoby drew attention to but left mostly unaddressed in his path-breaking article on the silk industry in western Byzantium. It examines three underexplored hagiographical texts concerning the endeavours of Arechis II, the prince of Benevento (758–787), in the translation of holy relics. These texts all feature the word phocaicus when describing the luxurious textiles Arechis dedicated to the relics. This article argues that this word is a geographical designation pointing to a so-far unidentified centre of the Byzantine silk industry sometime around 1050–1150, most likely Phokis in Central Greece.

Logistical modelling of a sea-borne expedition in the Mediterranean: the case of the Byzantine invasion of Crete in AD 960
Lucas McMahon

The Byzantine invasion of Crete in AD 960 provides a good opportunity to re-examine questions about the relative ease of supplying pre-modern armies by water in the Mediterranean basin. A combination of documentary, historical, and archaeological evidence suggests that the logistics behind supply by sea is more difficult than previously supposed. The army of Nikephoros Phokas besieged Chandax from July 960 to March 961 and had trouble supplying themselves with resources from the island. This paper creates a simple logistical model to get a sense of what the expedition required in terms of victuals and examines how they reached the army. The model suggests that previous work done on military supply in the classical period cannot be applied wholesale to the medieval Mediterranean.

Was the East Latin?
Avital Heyman

The concept that cultures are neither pure nor immutable but diverse and flexible is not a new one. Cultural hybridity reflects the effort to retain a sense of balance among traditions, beliefs, practices, institutions, rituals, and imagery within a multicultural venue. The cultural encounter that the conquering Crusaders experienced in the Latin East entailed the process of the hybridization of sociocultural constructs, resulting in a new, sophisticated identity that reflected a vital social organism, which resided both within and beyond the margins of country, race, ethnicity, class, and linguistic diversity. Strangers and conquerors in the Land of the Bible, the Latin Crusaders and pilgrims sometimes felt that “it would be long to tell” about that cultural and multi-creed blend. This paper refers to Queen Melisende (1105–1161) as the cultural agent who in herself represented hybridity, and in whose patronage the religious and public domain of Jerusalem was designed anew, demonstrating intriguing diversity and intrinsic artistic patterns of the Frankish contextualization of local Eastern and foreign occidental components within the political boundaries of the relocation. This article analyses three visual case studies that embody the new, Frankish performative imagery, and in particular that of Queen Melisende, who in all probability commissioned them. The selection of artefacts follows David Jacoby’s major research interests.