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Byzantine Emporia Profile picture
@byzantinemporia
Jun 5 • 8 tweets • 3 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
Mansa Musa was unfathomably rich, owing to the productive gold mines of Mali. He was so liberal with his wealth that, during his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324, he was said to have crashed the value of the gold dinar in Cairo.

How true is the legend? Thread. Image
This story was repeated by several Arabic authors in various forms. Different versions state that the value of a gold dinar in Cairo dropped anywhere from 2 to 6 silver dirhams in value (a dinar was worth 20-25 dirhams at the time).
The earliest of these reports was from al-Umari, a historian who lived in Cairo not long after Musa’s hajj. He stated that the dinar dropped in value by over 3 dirhams—from 25 to less than 22—a 12% drop that persisted for over a decade. twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Egyptian gold dinars were historically of excellent quality, following the earliest Islamic standard of 1 mithqal (4.25 g) of nearly pure gold.

This was standard was maintained by the Fatimids and continued under the Ayyubids and Mamluks. twitter.com/i/web/status/1… Image
(It was also imitated by the Crusaders, with interesting results)
The Mamluks were also notable for maintaining an excellent issue of silver dirhams. These were approximately 3/4 a mithqal by weight, composed of 2/3 silver and 1/3 copper. twitter.com/i/web/status/1… Image
As a result, Egypt’s economy was mostly silver based: gold dinars were used for international trade and as a money of account, dirhams were used for everyday exchange and taxation.
byzantinemporia.com/money-of-accou…
On the surface, then, the story is very plausible: even a small increase in the quantity of circulating gold could reduce the dinar’s value. How does this compare with the numbers?

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More from @byzantinemporia

Byzantine Emporia Profile picture
Jun 7
If Venice was so susceptible to entangling wars on the mainland, why wasn’t Genoa—a mercantile republic of comparable strength at the opposite corner of the Italian peninsula?

A combination of geography and politics made it not just difficult, but undesirable. Thread. Image
Geography was the most obvious reason.

Genoa was less defensible than Venice: though protected by a mountain range, it was not an island, and had a powerful neighbor in Milan to the north. This was a strong incentive to maintain its natural border and not pick fights. ImageImage
By the same measure, it was less economically vulnerable than Venice. It didn’t rely on the Po valley for distribution, but instead traded across the western Mediterranean: Spain, France, and Sicily. This meant it didn’t need to get involved in Italy.
twitter.com/i/web/status/1… Image
Read 9 tweets
Byzantine Emporia Profile picture
Jun 2
The withdrawal of Andronikos Doukas from the field at Manzikert doomed the Byzantine army to one of its most infamous defeats in history.

He had been tasked with a critical role in the Byzantine system of warfare—a system that stretched back to the Roman Republic. Thread. Image
A distinguishing feature of Byzantine tactics was how they always fought in multiple lines—at least two plus a baggage guard—spaced several hundred meters apart. Although this reduced the width of the front, it brought many more advantages if used correctly. Diagram from the Strategiko...
It was very rare for disciplined troops to break at the first enemy charge. So long as they maintained formation, casualties were usually light and they could keep fighting cohesively. Discipline was a defining trait of Byzantine arms, giving them a huge advantage over enemies. Image
Read 23 tweets
Byzantine Emporia Profile picture
May 31
In the 15th century, Venice got sucked into wars on the Italian mainland which diverted its energies from its mainstay of seaborne commerce. But the precedent was set by a series of earlier wars which showed just how wide a gap Venice’s commercial empire had to straddle. Thread. Image
Venice’s earliest mercantile successes were limited to the Adriatic, where by the year 1000 the city had become the dominant power. This gave them access to the Po valley, an enormous drainage basin whose many tributaries gave direct access to most of northern Italy. Image
Even the Byzantine alliance was founded on Venetian ability to police the Adriatic—as, for instance, when the Normans invaded the Balkans in 1081. Trade with Constantinople only grew in importance after Alexios I’s grant of privileges in 1082.
Alexios I
Read 15 tweets
Byzantine Emporia Profile picture
May 29
One way to look at Byzantine politics post 1350: a dispute over receivership for a bankrupt entity, with civil wars over who got to auction off state assets to their private sponsors.
After the devastating civil war of 1341-47, which saw many outside actors jump into the fray to their own benefit, Byzantium was swept by the Black Death, devastating an already shattered empire.
In 1348, John VI made one last attempt to reassert Constantinople's control over the lucrative Black Sea trade. This resulted in an inconclusive war with Genoa, followed by a Venetian alliance and another war with Genoa which went poorly.
Read 9 tweets
Byzantine Emporia Profile picture
Mar 29
I just finished @JudithHerrin2’s ‘Ravenna’, a history of the city from the 4th to the 9th century. Two things especially stood out (thread).

1. It focuses on a time period that is usually treated as intermediate: from the end of the western Roman Empire until the Carolingians. Image
Ravenna’s independent history starts with the move of the western imperial court there under Valentinian III, then served as capital of a Byzantine enclave from Justinian’s reconquests until the Lombard’s captured it in the middle of the 8th century. Image
It also stood between many worlds: Roman and Germanic, Latin and Greek, Chalcedonian and Arian, Rome and Constantinople. It tended more Latin over time, and the iconoclasm of the east caused the final break with Byzantium (pics: 6th-c. Gothic Bible, an exarch’s Greek epitaph). ImageImage
Read 19 tweets
Byzantine Emporia Profile picture
Jan 26
Cyprus, Byzantium, and Richard the Lionheart

Richard’s conquest of the island en route to the Holy Land was more than a chivalrous sideshow. It marked a major shift in the region, presaging Byzantium’s rapid loss of influence with the 1204 sack of Constantinople. Thread. ImageImage
Cyprus was one of the territories captured in the reconquests of the 10th century that was not lost after Manzikert. It played a subtle but important role in Byzantium’s regional hegemony, especially once the Crusaders established themselves in the Levant. Image
Emperors Alexios I and John II reopened the coastal route across Anatolia, which allowed Byzantine armies both to assist the Crusaders and to assert their sovereignty. For this, it helped to have a strong island garrison just off the coast. Image
Read 26 tweets

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