The Genoese Predicament : Christian–Muslim Communication in the Annales Ianuenses (c. 1099–1293)

Abstract

Building on research that presents Jews and Muslims as an integral part of Genoese history, this article analyses the development of Genoese–Muslim interaction in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to understand the challenges of interreligious communication in the pre-modern Mediterranean. It treats the Annals of Genoa as a collective psychogramme that provides insight into the commune’s shifting attitudes towards Muslims. While acknowledging the Annals’ obvious biases, the article argues that the multiple authors of this work of historiography faithfully depicted the problems encountered by the Genoese in their communication with Muslim interlocutors from the perspective of those in power. Consequently, the Annals allow us to trace how Genoa established cooperative relations with Muslim-ruled North Africa in the wake of the First Crusade and how it successfully weathered turbulences caused by political shifts in the Mediterranean of the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. The Annals suggest that the destabilization of the western Mediterranean and intensifying inner-Christian strife began to jeopardize Genoese communication with Muslim-ruled societies in the 1230s. During the remainder of the thirteenth century, it seems, the commune was torn between different loyalties and thus unable to pursue a coherent communicative approach to Muslim-ruled societies.