The Text Meeting the Material

The purpose of this introduction is to foreground a series of textual sources—some of which have not been systematically examined before—that relate to Crete’s economy and particularly its commerce. These sources span the period from the expansion of the Muslims into the Mediterranean in the 7th century to the 11th-12th centuries, a period marked by the arrival of the Crusaders and the Turks as well as the growing influence of the Italians in Mediterranean commerce. The focus will be on three main bodies of evidence, which have not yet been fully utilized in modern scholarship: (a) the Islamic geographical genre ranging from the well-known Mashriqi authors to the less frequently cited Maghrebi geographers that offer valuable information on the island’s principal products, (b) the medical and pharmacological literature, which provides an intriguing list of medicinal substances exported from Crete to the wider Mediterranean world, and (c) the Genizah documents, which contain significant data on the Cretan economy, its trade networks and its channels of communication with the Islamic world. This tabulated presentation is intended to offer a comparative framework for assessing results derived from the archaeological evidence presented by the other participants in the round table. Through such comparison, textual and material evidence may confirm, refine, or challenge one another, offering insights not only into the character of Crete’s economy but also into the very nature and interpretive limits of each category of evidence.