Leonie, Lia, Hugas and Rojs
Commercial Exchanges
There is extensive trade between the Muslim world and the Christian West.
In Baghdad, the souks offer wonders from all around the world.
From the 11th century onward, trade develops rapidly:
Italian merchants sign agreements with the Arabs
and with the Byzantine emperor. In Constantinople, they buy
spices, silk, and precious stones.
Military Confrontations
The Crusades arise from the Christian world’s desire to retake Jerusalem.
The Byzantines, Eastern Christians, seek to protect their threatened empire.
The Muslim world controls vast territories around the Mediterranean
and stands at the heart of the major trade routes, which increases tensions.
Cultural Exchanges
A large part of Western knowledge comes from the Muslim world:
astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, agriculture, and especially medicine.
Thanks to the Canon of Medicine, Europeans discover new plants
and make progress in medical practices. In Baghdad, the House of Wisdom
translates many ancient texts and encourages advances in geography:
it is there that Al-Idrissi creates the first major map of the medieval world.
Iris, Alicia and Nina
Encounters and Contacts in the Muslim World
There were different types of contacts in the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages: some were positive, others negative.
Commercial exchanges
First, there were exchanges between the Latin states of the East and the Byzantine Empire between the 6th and 10th centuries.
From the 11th century onward, these exchanges grew significantly: spices, silks, ivory, precious stones from Asia, and many other goods were transported to the West,
where merchants often resold them.
Cultural exchanges
There were also intellectual exchanges. In 832, al-Rashid founded the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, a major center of knowledge where scholars from different backgrounds met.
A world map was produced there, representing the known world of that time.
The university also had a library where many foreign works were translated into Arabic.
For example, Avicenna, a famous Muslim physician, wrote the Canon of Medicine, a work explaining both Muslim and Western medical practices.
This work was later translated into Latin, which helped spread it in Western Europe.
So — from which civilization did knowledge mainly come at that time?
The holy wars between Christians and Muslims
There were several holy wars between Catholics and Muslims.
Christians called them Crusades, while Muslims used the term jihad when defending or reconquering their territories.
The Christian Crusades took place between the 11th and 13th centuries to recover the holy places, especially Jerusalem.
The First Crusade began in 1095 at the call of the Pope of the West: knights left to free Christ’s tomb.
It lasted three years, ending with the Christians taking the city.
During the Fourth Crusade, in 1204, the Venetians sacked Constantinople, creating a definitive divide between Western Catholic Christians and the Orthodox Christians of the Byzantine Empire.
In total, there were eight holy wars.
Liam, Paulin and Thibault:
Wars, Trade and Cultural Exchanges in the Muslim World
The paragraphs below outline the wars as well as the commercial and cultural exchanges between the Muslim and Christian worlds during the Middle Ages.
The wars
Christians fought several wars between the 11th and 13th centuries, mainly to defend their holy places that had come under Muslim control.
Two crusades ended in failure, one was a victory (the First Crusade), and one resulted in a sack: the Sack of Constantinople in 1204.
Commercial exchanges
Trade occurred between all regions of the world. Major trading centers included Baghdad, Alexandria, and Venice. Merchants exchanged all sorts of goods.
Goods also arrived from South India: silk, spices, paper, gold…
And primarily gold and slaves from Africa.
With the development of global commerce, tensions sometimes arose. This led, for example, the Venetians to persuade the Crusaders to divert their expedition to Constantinople.
Trade relied on both land and sea routes, following the itineraries previously studied.
There were three types of cities: exporting cities, transit cities, and importing cities.
Examples:
– Transit city: Alexandria
– Buying city: Marseille
– Selling city: Aix-la-Chapelle
Cultural exchanges
Empires around the Mediterranean exchanged a great deal of knowledge: mathematics, techniques, translations, and much more. Many scholars from all over the world gathered in Baghdad.
A lot of Muslim and Byzantine knowledge was transmitted to Western Europe.
Examples of transmitted knowledge:
– Paper manufacturing
– Chess
– Mathematics
– Medicine
– Scientific instruments
– Book translations
– And many other fields of knowledge.
Nanami,Matis and Timothée:
Combat, commerce, and culture in the Mediterranean.
In the Middle Ages, in the Mediterranean, there were several types of contact between Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and Catholics.
The first type of contact is combat.
Between the 11th and 13th centuries, Christians participated in several crusades to reclaim the holy places. For example, in 1187, Sultan Saladin retook Jerusalem.
From the 12th to the 16th century, Christians also began to use medicine developed by Muslim scholars. This transmission of knowledge sometimes resulted from peaceful exchanges, sometimes from wars.
The second type of contact is trade.
One of the great trading and spice cities is Baghdad, at the center of the Muslim world. There are many souks there and goods coming from very distant regions.
From the 9th to the 12th century, other major trading cities developed: Genoa, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Venice.
The products traded include gold, slaves, silk, perfume, precious stones, as well as paper.
Finally, there are cultural exchanges.
Scholars from across the Mediterranean translated books, exchanged their knowledge, and spread their learning. For example, Caliph Harun al-Rashid founded the House of Wisdom in Baghdad.
In conclusion, in the Middle Ages, the Mediterranean was a space of intense contact:
— conflicts (such as the crusades),
— trade (gold, slaves, spices, silk…),
— and cultural exchanges (translations, scientific knowledge…).
It was a place where three great civilizations—Christian, Muslim, and Orthodox—met, clashed, and influenced each other.