A Puzzling Question concerning the Relations between the Jewish Communities of Christian Europe and Those Represented in the Geniza Documents

Abstract

The Geniza documents contain frequent references to economic and commercial contacts of Jewish merchants from Egypt and North Africa with European merchants. These contacts, however, were exclusively with Christians. This is rather puzzling because there were at the time numerous flourishing Jewish communities especially in Southern Italy which maintained, moreover, extensive religious and cultural relations with Jewish communities in the Middle East and Egypt. The question is: if cultural contacts were practicable, why were commercial relations not possible? The answer proposed is that while the Jewish communities of the Carolingian empire were kept away from the sea and direct communication with Africa and the Middle East by the blight of the coastal area between the gulf of Lyon and Civitavecchia, in Venice and the maritime towns of Southern Italy the newly arising class of native merchant-sailors managed to control all overseas traffic excluding everybody else, including the local Jews.