The Identity of the Monti di Barca in Late Medieval European Sources

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ABSTRACT In numerous documents from archives in Catalonia, Provence, Italy (especially Sicily), and Malta dating from the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, there is mention of a region called the “Mountain(s) of Barca,” which is often cited as a place from which slaves were obtained. Modern historians have assumed that the term was a synonym for Cyrenaica (eastern Libya) and that Cyrenaica was therefore a major centre of the trans-Saharan slave-trade. This article will show that, in many cases, “Mountain(s) of Barca” was a vague term that referred to a larger area than Cyrenaica proper and that Arabic sources do not indicate the existence of any noteworthy centre of trade in Cyrenaica during this period.