CHAPTER VI

JEWS AND COMMERCE

IT is usually assumed that there is a natural tendency in the Jewish character toward commerce. This was certainly not the case in Bible times. The Israelites, perched up on highlands, far from the two main caravan routes, from Damascus to Egypt, had little occasion to engage in traffic. Each household produced all the food, clothing, timber, and tools it needed, and only for a few luxuries did it have resort to "wanderers," known invariably as foreigners-Canaanites,' Midianites, and Ishmaelites.3 The mere fact that there was no coined money used in Israel until the time of the Maccabees would be alone sufficient to prove how little trade was current among the Israelites. How little popular it was, even in the times of the Mishnah (first two centuries, C.E.), is shown in the maxims, "Have

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little business"; "The less trading, the more Torah." The ideal of the Israelite was to repose in the shade of his own fig-tree, but not to have a large number of figs to trade with. Josephus gives the reason: "We do not dwell in a land by the sea and do not therefore indulge in commerce either by sea or otherwise." 3

It is to the dispersion and wanderings of the Jews that we can trace the growth of a taste or addiction to trading as a means of livelihood. It is indeed extraordinary how widespread the Jewish communities had become by the end of the first century. They were the only body of men in the Roman empire who could retain their communion and identity, while so widely dispersed, because of their religion, which had no trace of local restriction, like all the other cults of antiquity. A Jew could worship God in Antioch, Alexandria, or Rome, whereas an Athenian would feel himself debarred from communion

The latest enumeration is that given by J. Juster, Les Juifs dans l'Empire romain, i, pp. 180-209, mainly from recently discovered inscriptions. Less complete accounts in Schürer and T. Reinach s.v. "Diaspora” in Jewish Encyclopedia, iv, 561-2.

with Athena unless he resided within an easy ac cess of the Acropolis, or of a similar fane in one of the Athenian colonies. Yet most Jews retained the practice of visiting the Temple, enjoined by the Law, and this would lead to just those wandering tendencies which, in biblical times, they had associated with the alien merchant. Their concentration, too, when sold as slaves, in the imperial towns would tend to divorce them, for the most part, from the pastoral and agricultural life to which they had hitherto been accustomed, and we accordingly find them in the Roman empire also artisans and small traders as well as farmers and colonists.

Except, however, in Egypt, where they are found as important merchants in Alexandria, almost from the foundation of the city, there is no evidence of any exclusive or predominant addiction to commerce on the part of Jews till the rise of Islam in the seventh century. Still less is there any evidence before that time of a tendency toward general trading for speculative purposes; previously we find them restricting their commercial activity to one particular line of goods. The earliest instance of such general trading I find in connection with one of the seven wonders of the

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world. When the Colossus of Rhodes fell in 653 it was a Jewish merchant of Emessa who purchased the débris and carried it off on nine hundred camels.2

Though in the early days of Islam the motive for conquest appears to have been, according to modern research, rather tribute than conversion, as soon as the various Emirates were organized, the greatest pressure was brought to bear upon the non-faithful to induce them to accept Islam. It is true that Christians (and "Sabæans"), as well as Jews, as "People with Scriptures," were also permitted to reside among Muslim peoples, though with certain disabilities. But Jews had been used to similar restrictions previously, whereas Christians found it hard to accept the yoke of the Muslim. Any movement backward and forward of Christians from the Muslim states would naturally be regarded with suspicion when there was practically a perpetual state of war between the countries of the Crescent and the Cross. Besides, the Christians of the East were Nestorians, Jacobites, or Orthodox, and regarded as heretics by those of the West. In 1 See J. Juster, op. cit. ii, 294-309. 2 Paulus Diaconus, 656.

Christian lands the peaceful presence of a Muhammedan was scarcely conceivable till the tide of Spanish conquest brought the Moriscos under Christian domination. Accordingly, the Jew was the only person who could pass freely from the Muslim to the Christian sphere of influence. Thus in less than a couple of centuries after the Hegira we find him practically monopolizing the trade between the two spheres.

In 847 the Postmaster-General of the Caliphate of Bagdad, named Ibn Khordadhbeh, wrote, in his Book of Ways, a full description of the routes taken by such Jewish intermediaries; his account, as we shall see, gives the key to the whole economic history of the Jews in the Middle Ages, and therefore deserves to be given here in its entirety.2

"ROUTES OF THE JEWISH MERCHANTS CAalled

RADANITES

These merchants speak Arabic, Persian, Roman (Greek), the language of the Franks, Andalusians, and Slavs. They journey from west

1 De Goeje's edition in Bibl. Geogr. Arab., vi, 114.

2 Prof. I. Friedlaender has been good enough to check my translation and supplement my information in numerous ways.