The Harbour of All This Sea and Realm: Crusader to Venetian Famagusta ed. Nicholas Coureas, Tamás Kiss, and Michael Walsh (review)

The Harbour of All This Sea and Realm: Crusader to Venetian Famagusta’s title immediately refers to the economic and political significance of this Cypriot city, inhabited by Greeks, Franks, Italians, Syrians, and Arabs, because of its role as a trading hub in the eastern Mediterranean. The articles gathered in this volume are the result of an international symposium on Famagusta, Historic Famagusta: A Millennium in Words and Images, hosted at Central European University in 2012, with scholars from European and Asian universities represented (4).

The three editors of this volume, Michael Walsh, Tamás Kiss, and Nicholas Coureas, contribute their own introductions in the opening section. First, Michael Walsh discusses the challenges of academic research in Famagusta because of the Turkish occupation of North Cyprus, which has led to the poor state of conservation for many monuments within historic Famagusta. He advocates for the increased recognition of Famagusta in the international sphere, which would include its potential status as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Altogether, Walsh makes the reader aware that massive resources are needed in order to preserve Famagusta’s heritage. In the second introduction, Tamás Kiss offers brief descriptions of the articles collected within the volume and describes their main topics and messages. According to Kiss, the theme of this volume is “… telling the story of Famagusta’s diasporas and cultural hybridity… ” (9).

Finally, Nicholas Coureas summarizes the existing corpus of primary and secondary sources directly discussing Medieval and Venetian Famagusta, in order to “assist those wishing to better understand the present state of research on the subject” (13). In terms of primary sources, he lists the known surviving Genoese and Venetian notarial and ecclesiastical document collections. For the secondary sources, Coureas provides an extensive list of scholars who have worked “on the institutional, commercial, civic, judicial, and architectural aspects of the history of medieval and renaissance Famagusta,” (14) as well as a few art historical studies describing the monumental paintings within this city’s churches. Altogether, the introduction provides the reader with a full understanding of the editors’ goals in publishing this volume, the layout and content of the articles, the main theme connecting these articles, and an extensive bibliography for further reading on Famagusta.

This volume’s articles are divided into two sections, the first with historical studies and the second with art historical studies. The majority of the historical studies aim to explain Famagusta’s role as an international harbor while using the city as a means to understand similar trends elsewhere in the Mediterranean. “Nicosia and Famagusta in the Frankish Period (1192–1474): Two Capitals for a Kingdom?” by Philippe Trélat explores how these two key cities of Cyprus played distinct roles, namely that Nicosia was the political center for the Kingdom of Cyprus while Famagusta served as the chief harbor of Cyprus and a secondary spiritual center for the Kingdom of Jerusalem (10). “Stephen of Mezel Bishop of Famagusta and his Age (1244–1259)” by Pierre-Vincent Claverie attempts to identify a bishop of Famagusta assassinated in the war of Saint-Sabas in 1259 (43, 50) as Stephen of Mezel, who was one of several Auvergnat clergymen serving in Cyprus. “Refugees from Acre in Famagusta around 1300” by David Jacoby discusses how the Latin refugees fleeing Acre in 1291, after its takeover by the Mamluks (53), contributed to a substantial population increase in Famagusta and established themselves within the city’s economic and social networks (9–10). “Apprentice Artisans and Craftsmen in Famagusta in the Notarial Deeds of Lamberto di Sambuceto and Giovanni da Rocha, 1296–1310” by Nicholas Coureas analyzes the types of apprenticeships listed in the deeds—mostly related to the nautical and textile industries, takes note of their wages and term lengths, and links the length and wages of the apprenticeships to the economic health of Famagusta...