by Leonard P. Liggio
The FINANCIAL TIMES (May 7-8, 2011) contained a major book review: The Great Sea: A Human History of the Meditarranean (London, Allen Lane, 783 pages) by David Abulafia, professor of history at Cambridge University.
Abulafia comes from a line of Sephardic Jews and has written Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor (Oxford University Press). The book stretches from early antiquity, through the Romans, Middle Ages, the Suez Canal to the present. Abulafia’s earlier Frederick II provides a centerpiece to the new book. Frederick II (1194-1250) was Holy Roman Emperor through his father (Henry VI of Swabia) and King of the Two Sicilies through his mother, Constance, daughter of Roger II. His parent died early. Brought up in the Palatine Palace in Palermo he lived as a street child among the Arab, Greek and Latin inhabitants of the busy port.
He is described as red headed, myopic and with green eyes like a serpent by Sibt ihn al-Jawzi from Damascus who saw Frederick when he went on a crusade to Jerusalem . Frederick spoke Sicilian, Latin, Arabic, Greek, German and French. His court in Palermo was filled with Greek, Arab, Jewish and Latin advisors and scholars interested in science. His royal guard was composed of Arabs (as Francisco Franco’s were Moroccans) and he had Arab military units who would be loyal even in the face of Papal excommunication (which did occur). Frederick minted gold coins. After the deaths of his sons, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was seized by the brother of King Saint Louis of France, whose forces were expelled in the Sicilian Vespers (1282) when the King of Aragon beat out the Byzantine Emperor for control. (Cf. Ernst Kantorowicz, Frederick the Second (1931, 1957); Steven Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers (1958); Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean … in the Age of Philip II (2 vols.) (New York, Harper & Row, 1973).)
The book review is by Simon Sebag Montefiore who notes that Abulafia’s ancient family appears in the book, sometimes as rabbis, sometimes as traders. He singles out Abulafia’s description of the Cairo Geniza. Cairo was a new city founded after 900 A. D. by the Fatimid Caliphs (who had close relations with the kings of Sicily who succeeded the Fatimids as overlords of Sicily). The synagogue of Cairo included Jewish merchants trading to the west (Maghrib): Palermo, Tunisia, Morocco.
Since their documents contained holy words, they must not be burned, but were placed in a store-room (Geniza) behind the synagogue. At the end of the nineteenth century, these contracts were found and deposited at Cambridge University, in Berlin and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (NYC). They have been published in a multi-volume edition by University of California Press (S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, I, Economic Foundations (1967). They provide invaluable information about medieval trade and business organization (Cf. Avner Greif, “Reputation and Coalitions in Medieval Trade: Evidence on the Maghribi Traders” in Daniel Klein, editor, Reputation: Studies in the Voluntary Elicitation of Good Conduct(Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1997); also see a new book by Adina Hoffman & Peter Cole, Sacred Trash, The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza (Schocken Books). I have written about the Geniza in this earlier Atlas publication.
Montefiore focuses on the role of the fleets of Genoa and Pisa in the First Crusade, essentially rescuing the motley crusaders in the siege of Jerusalem in 1099 by dismantling their ships and using the wood to build siege engines. Montefiore is fascinated by Abulafia’s explanation of the origin of the word Admiral. King Roger of Sicily created the office of Amir of Amir, which was Latinized as amiratus.
This post was originally published here.