Aden and the Indian Ocean Trade: 150 Years in the Life of a Medieval Arabian Port (review)

This book about the physical-spatial and institutional development of the Indian Ocean/Yemeni port of Aden between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries draws together both archaeological and documentary sources. It argues that trade, not religion or politics, was the main force behind the urban development of this Arabian entrepôt.

Aden was a great entrepôt throughout the medieval period. Evidence of its much earlier existence goes back to the first-century Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. Emerging as a major emporium in the ninth and tenth centuries, when the Indian trade shifted away from the Persian Gulf and Iraq toward Fatimid Egypt and the Red Sea, it was regarded as one of the three foremost commercial cities in the entire Indian Ocean area by the late fifteenth/early sixteenth century, on a par with Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and Malacca on the Malay peninsula. These three leading ports had in common that they controlled the entrances to the most important maritime passages of the medieval world. The impressively fortified city of Aden, at the entrance of the Red Sea, was in a position to dominate the traffic between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.

This well-researched book focuses on Aden when it was still in a formative period, filling a gap in the much-neglected historical study of Islamic port towns. Margariti rightly observes that most of our current knowledge of western Indian Ocean ports of the medieval period—for example, Siraf, Julfar, Suhar, Kilwa, Manda, Shanga, Ayla/Aqaba, and Qusayr—is derived from the work of archaeologists. Aden is somewhat exceptional among medieval Islamic port cities in that it offers a wealth of written documentation in addition to archaeological data about Aden (particularly concerning the city's harbor works and water supply), its environs, and its hinterland. Aden stood at the center of the Yemeni Jewish diaspora. Among the written sources about it, a body of Judeo-Arabic documents (written in the Hebrew script) preserved in the Cairo Geniza, comprising letters, lists, accounts, and legal documents, is the most prominent.

This book is a welcome addition to the never-completed work on the Indian Ocean trade by Shelomo Dov Goitein, which is otherwise known as the "India Book," now located in the S. D. Goitein Laboratory for Geniza Research at Princeton University. Among contemporary authors on Aden, the most important ones for this study are Ibn al-Mujawir (fl. ca. 626/1228) and Abu Makhrama (870–947/ 1465–1540). These sources cover two discrete eras of city politics: the first from 476/1083 to 569/1173, when Aden was ruled by a local dynasty called the Zurayids; and the second from 569/1173 to 626/1228, when the city was under the Cairo-based Ayyubid dynasty and no longer autonomous. The Ayyubids initiated major innovations and expansion of the commercial infrastructure and institutions.

Margariti's noteworthy conclusions fall into two categories: They are concerned either with changes in the physical structure and layout of Aden or with the social and economic history of the entrepôt. The first underscore the insularity of Aden's peninsula as a key factor in sustaining its independent and dominant position in the region, the importance of anchorage arrangements, underwater constructions, fortifications (Aden attracted the predatory interest of other maritime powers), storage facilities, the location and character of merchants houses, and the like. The second category is concerned, above all, with issues of taxation; the administrative structure of the customs house; the shipping industry (Aden was a major center for shipbuilding); the world of shipowners, captains, sailors, naval fighters, divers, porters, and harbor boatmen; and maritime policing, salvage, mercantile and legal services, community leadership, mercantile representation, the practices of business and deal-making, and record keeping.

The book presents precious information about all of these issues in detail clearly and accurately. The title of the...