Trade and traders in Muslim Spain

the long version

This volume surveys Iberian international trade from the tenth to the fifteenth century, with particular emphasis on commerce in the Muslim period and on changes brought by the Christian conquest of much of Muslim Spain (al-Andalus) in the thirteenth century. From the tenth to the thirteenth century, markets in the Iberian peninsula were closely linked to markets elsewhere of the Islamic world, and a strong east-west Mediterranean trading network linked Cairo with Cordoba. Following routes along the North African coast, Muslim and Jewish merchants carried eastern goods to Muslim Spain, returning eastwards with Andalusi exports. Situated at the edge of the Islamic west, Andalusi markets were also emporia for the transfer of commodities between the Islamic world and Christian Europe. After the thirteenth century the Iberian peninsula became part of the European economic sphere, its commercial realignment aided by the opening of the Straits of Gibraltar to Christian trade, and by the contemporary demise of the Muslim trading network in the Mediterranean.