Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
A historical study of how lodging, trade, and travel institutions developed across the Mediterranean from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages.
Work Information
The history of inns, trade, and travel becomes a way to reread the interconnected Mediterranean world.
Tracing the changing forms of institutions such as the pandocheion, funduq, and fondaco, the book carefully follows the history of commerce and mobility. It is a substantial scholarly work with comparative reach.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Published
- 2004-01-15
- Pages
- 440 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 15.88 x 3.18 x 24.13 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780521819183
- ISBN-10
- 0521819180
- Price
- 18319 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Professional & Technical/Accounting & Finance/Economics
The Greek pandocheion, Arabic funduq, and Latin fundicum (fondaco) were ubiquitous in the Mediterranean sphere for nearly two millennia. These institutions were not only hostelries for traders and travelers, but also taverns, markets, warehouses, and sites for commercial taxation and regulation. In this highly original study, Professor Constable traces the complex evolution of this family of institutions from the pandocheion in Late Antiquity, to the appearance of the funduq throughout the Muslim Mediterranean following the rise of Islam. By the twelfth century, with the arrival of European merchants in Islamic markets, the funduq evolved into the fondaco. These merchant colonies facilitated trade and travel between Muslim and Christian regions. Before long, fondacos also appeared in southern European cities. This study of the diffusion of this institutional family demonstrates common economic interests and cross-cultural communications across the medieval Mediterranean world, and provides a striking contribution to our understanding of this region.
Olivia Remie Constable is an associate professor in the History Department at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian Peninsula 900–1500 (CUP, 1994) and Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources (1997).