Mallorcan merchants in the medieval Maghrib: mercantile strategies in the port of Hunayn in the mid-fourteenth century

Abstract

By the end of the Middle Ages, the Maghrib had become one of the largest suppliers of wool in the western Mediterranean. Its produce was soon forwarded to the marketplaces of the Crown of Aragon, where it would be redistributed to the textile centres of southern Europe. The boarding of a massive shipment of wool belonging to almost 100 Mallorcan merchants in a North African port gives us an insight into the procedures applied by the League of Hunayn in its attempts to monopolize the wool export trade in the sultanate of Tlemcen. This is the first record of a mercantile operation carried out by this association and sheds light on the mechanisms at work in the supply and transport of goods to the port of Mallorca. This wide-ranging commercial activity, which renewed trade with the Maghrib after the War of the Straits, required the chartering of a large ship from Barcelona which was used to cover the Sicilian and overseas routes, skippered by Arnau Espaer and Romeu d'Olzinelles. The particular details of this commercial undertaking are enriched by the ship's accounting records.