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The Mongols and the Black Sea Trade in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: 20
Author(s): Virgil Ciocîltan (Author)
- Publisher: Brill
- Publication Date: 28 Sept. 2012
- Language: English
- Print length: 340 pages
- ISBN-10: 9789004226661
- ISBN-13: 9789004226661
Book Description
The inclusion of the Black Sea basin into the long-distance trade network – with its two axes of the Silk Road through the Golden Horde (Urgench-Sarai-Tana/Caffa) and the Spice Road through the Ilkhanate (Ormuz-Tabriz-Trebizond) – was the two Mongol states’ most important contribution to making the sea a “crossroads of international commerce”.
The closest recorded working relationship between European and Asian powers in the medieval period, achieved by the joint efforts of the Chinggisid rulers and the Italian merchant republics, was not realised via the usual geographic channels of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Fertile Crescent, but rather by roundabout routes to the Black Sea. Thus at the same time as the sea fulfilled its function as a crossroads of long-distance Eurasian trade, it was also a bypass.
The closest recorded working relationship between European and Asian powers in the medieval period, achieved by the joint efforts of the Chinggisid rulers and the Italian merchant republics, was not realised via the usual geographic channels of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Fertile Crescent, but rather by roundabout routes to the Black Sea. Thus at the same time as the sea fulfilled its function as a crossroads of long-distance Eurasian trade, it was also a bypass.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“…Ciocîltan distils with enviable dexterity material from a great many primary sources in Arabic, Persian, Latin, Italian, and a wide range of secondary literature, a significant proportion of it in Romanian and hence largely inaccessible to Western European readers. His insights into the economic policies of Mongol rulers (and their failures) are well sustained; and his reconstructions of the many episodes that our sources merely seem to obfuscate – particularly in the context of the Horde’s relations with the Genoese and Venetians – are consistently persuasive… We have good reason to be grateful that the author’s thesis has at last appeared in print in English.”
Peter Jackson, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Volume 77 / Issue 01 / February 2014, pp.244 – 246
Peter Jackson, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Volume 77 / Issue 01 / February 2014, pp.244 – 246
“Bubbling with fascinating detail and sustained by solid scholarship, Ciociltan’s work has an important place in the literature on the Black Sea under Mongol rule, medieval Mediterranean history, and indeed world history. That it can be appreciated by a specialist as well as the general reader is an additional merit.”
Nicola Di Cosmo,
“…the extensive footnoting displays the author’s knowledge of numerous languages and his study’s thorough grounding in the primary source ….this English translation of Ciociltan’s monograph is a welcome addition to the study of the Mongol-Tatars in the western Eurasian steppe area and to our appreciation of the importance of trade for the Mongol empire.”
Donald Ostrowski,
About the Author
Virgil Ciocîltan, Ph.D. (1998), is researcher at the Nicolae Iorga History Institute of the Romanian Academy (Institutul de Istorie ‘N. Iorga’ al Academiei Române) in Bucharest. He has published monographs and many articles on the history of Eastern Europe and the Black Sea in the Middle Ages.
