The 24th International Congress of Byzantine Studies

The Use of Non-Commercial Networks for the Study of Byzantium’s Foreign Trade

The Case of Byzantine-Islamic Commerce in the Early Middle Ages

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Abstract

Building upon the anthropological studies, I would like to put forward a fresh outlook on the nature of Byzantium’s foreign exchanges in the example of the Byzantine-Near Eastern relations from the 7th to the 11th centuries. Examining the types of objects/people/information exchanged (i.e. diplomats, merchants, booty, gifts, military technology etc.) and the ways they moved through different modes of exchange (commerce, plunder etc.) critically and comparatively would help every Byzantinist elucidate areas that are less well understood, such as commercial exchanges; it also makes us aware of the fact that the categories presented above are ideal types, and that objects and people had multiple and changing identities while different modes occasionally coalesced.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: Oct. 25, 2021 | Accepted: Feb. 9, 2022 | Published Aug. 22, 2022 | Language: en

Keywords Plunder • Commerce • Tribute • Byzantine trade • Theories of exchange • Byzantine-Islamic relations • Economic and non-economic exchange • Gifts

Copyright © 2022 Koray Durak. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-590-2/023


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