Italians in Egypt: travel narratives as sources for Mamluk History
A Blog Post by Gianluca Ratti
To Egypt, 128 years apart
On September 27th, 1384, at sunset, the Pola, a large Venetian round ship, placidly approached the Northern Coast of Africa, and set its anchors. In front of it, a city at least one thousand years old: Alexandria of Egypt. For many occupants of the Pola, this was their last stop of this voyage, and just the start of the successive one, to Jerusalem. This choice was unusual: the Republic of Venice conveniently sailed large galleys from the Adriatic capital towards the Holy Land, making port every night and taking advantage of the ever growing Venetian colonial empire. Instead, many of the pilgrims on the Pola had made a different choice: jump on a large cog, visit Egypt, and then go to Jerusalem. Round ships could transport huge amounts of merchandise, and Alexandria was an important trading centre. As such, routes like this one for trade were common, and this particular voyage had gone fairly smoothly; the end, in sight.
Spending the night aboard an anchored ship, though, was not pleasant. With the winds picking up, Lionardo Frescobaldi [1] , wrote: “We stayed since sunset to the first light in such affliction that in Hell one would struggle to receive any more of it” [2] . At sixty years old, the Florentine pilgrim was not exactly the youngest onboard, and he had been battling tedious fevers for weeks. His Venetian friend Romigio Soranzo had warned him: “You people from Florence are not used to rough seas like we [the Venetians] are…even while being the healthiest, in a such a journey from here to Alexandria any sailor would find their body broken…we advise you not to take to the seas” [3] . Frescobaldi did not listen and indeed he had suffered his fair share. In the fourteenth century, Mediterranean travel by ship required great patience, especially when dealing with such a delicate phase of one’s journey: the arrival at the Mamluks. At sunbreak, the arrival procedures began, and with them the charades of mutual excitement and suspicion that accompanied new arrivals at the main port of the Mamluk Sultanate. Passengers in the Pola were observed, counted, searched, observed and counted again, both on the ship or, eventually, at port. Crates were opened, baggages came undone: Frescobaldi did not appreciate the thoroughness of the Mamluk official, but these were the rules, and finally the travellers were free to begin the next part of their journey.
The small adventures of Frescobaldi’s arrival are narrated in detail in the piece he composed retelling his travels to the Mamluks. In the late Middle Ages writing about one’s travel became ever more common among those who were able to do it. Indeed, recounting the Jerusalem pilgrimage was a favorite for Italian travellers, so much so that it became a real literary genre, with precise topoi and complex intertextualities. [4] The narratives, though, also give us something else: the impression of the Other upon the writers, and the Other’s way of living. When confronting the complex socio-political reality of the Mamluk Sultanate, this kind of detailed observation can be really valuable, especially if compared with many of the similar types of writing that surrounds it. We can take another example, in comparison, to show how one can find differences and continuities in travel narratives in Mamluk Egypt, and compare the narrative of Lionardo Frescobaldi with the one written by Zaccaria Pagani, travel companion of the illustrious Venetian ambassador Domenico Trevisan. They travelled from Venice to Cairo in 1512 to entertain diplomatic relations with the Sultan Qāniṣawh al-Ghawrī. As we will see, while the two travels happen at opposite ends of the Mamluk political chronology (one at the dawn of the Circassian Mamluk dinasty, the second closer to the dusk of the Sultanate as a whole), narratives can recount with surprising similarity the more diverse matters, even when narrating more inconsequential vicissitudes. I have chosen the episode of the travels between Alexandria and Cairo to answer the question: What can late medieval Italian travel narratives tell us about the Mamluk sultanate?
Exploring Alexandria
Domenico Trevisan had been somewhat of a self-made man, but the 1512 embassy to Cairo was really not his first ride. At sixty-six, he had been ambassador to the Maximilian of Habsburg, to Milan, to the Papal State and to Ottoman Constantinople. [5] This new commission brought him to the Sultan of Cairo, hopefully to find common ground on the spice trade from the East, an economic flow from which the Venetians and the Mamluks had gotten great profit, and which in that moment looked to be threatened by Portuguese expansionist policies. On April 17th, 1512, Trevisan and his entourage (comprising Zaccaria Pagani) had arrived in Alexandria. The Mamluk received him excellently, first accompanying him to show his credentials, and then to his luscious temporary residence, a building so beautifully decorated Pagani describes it as costing the huge sum of seventy-thousands ducats. Pagani then goes on to describe the city: “A city built by Alexander the Great, larger than Treviso, though it is longer than it is wide” [6] , though he adds that Alexandria was in such a state that “The ruin of Candia [Crete] is nothing compared to this”. [7] The reason for this economic and social downturn, Pagani adds, is the practices of the Mamluks, whose main policies are damaging to a flourishing economy. Nonetheless, ancient (somewhat mis-attributed) traces are still visible: “One can still find a large column, outside the walls, where Pompey was decapitated, after he had escaped from Rome to Egypt”. [8]
Figure 1 : A photo of the Column of Diocletian, traditionally identified at the time as the Pillar of Pompey. It still exists in Alexandria today.
Pagani concludes with a description of Alexandria’s ports, with the Old port being the best, and inaccessible to Christian vessels, while the New port is fortified and armed, apt to oversee the arrival of foreign ships.
Did Frescobaldi give a different impression of the city, when he visited in 1384? Well, quite. Frescobaldi’s description of the city begins with an excellent comparison: “Alexandria exists around the port, and it is as large as Florence, a land of merchants, mostly of spices, sugar, silk”. [9] Alexandria is at that moment a bustling mercantile urban center and together with Damascus is second only to Cairo (“the imperial city” [10] ). Frescobaldi does not refrain from recounting traditional Christian stories related to the city, such as the broken columns related to the martyr of Saint Catherine, but he is much more preoccupied to recount Muslim religious practices related to the many mosques, and what that entails for the resident Christian population, for example, in describing a complex social and religious layering in the city.
While the writers of this narratives do have different backgrounds, the image painted by Frescobaldi of a city much richer and at the center of an important trade flow compared to the bleak description of Pagani shows us at least how these types of sources can be used to slowly reconstruct a detailed background of the places that these people travelled to.
Differences and continuities on the Nile
Another interesting aspect in comparing these two narratives is the way they describe their travels from Alexandria to Cairo. We can find relevant differences, but also surprising continuities. Frescobaldi describes hopping on a river boat and travelling southwards on the canal that connected the city to the major left branch of the Nile Delta. He spends the majority of his narrative completely enchanted by the variety of fruits, vegetables and plants that the Delta plain could support, all while passing the old city of Diminos (probably Damanhur) and finally exiting into the river. Frescobaldi then interestingly conceptualizes the entirety of the Nile Delta as an island, “Among the two branches of the Nile, on the third side, the sea…This island measures five hundred miles all around and it is rich and abundant”. [11]
Figure 2 : A modern satellite image of the Nile Delta. Frescobaldi described the two branches of the Nile as the Mediterranean Sea as “surrounding” the Nile Delta plain as if it was an island.
But Frescobaldi is just really fascinated by the incredible variety of wildlife: “We found on the shores of the Nile a snake, the length of eight braccia [470 cm]” [12] and by the seasonal floodings of the Nile, and how these are exploited for cultivation. All in all, Frescobaldi almost encompasses both an ecosystem and a civilization with his brush strokes, but he still seems to do it from a position of calculated stupor.
The narrative by Pagani is quite a bit more practical and tells another side of living on the Nile Delta. He begins with a more traditional comparison to a known place of his own, describing Rosetta as “a beautiful place, without defensive walls, but large and inhabited by as many as in Cividale, or maybe even more, with elegant houses”. [13] In Rosetta, the party of Trevisan visits the governor, who receives him and hosts him until a ship (sailing from Alexandria to Rosetta to enter the Nile with them) has arrived. While the group indeed sails from Rosetta to Cairo Pagani demonstrates a more simple, observational narrative, that does still notice hydraulic infrastructure (“where they would transport water through ingenious contraptions, with the energy of the oxen… as it never rains” [14] ) and the construction practices of Egyptian villages (“They have homes made and roofed with hardened mud; if it rained, they would be destroyed in a couple of days” [15] ).
Some details, though, are strikingly similar. This is not always meant to be a surprise. Pagani notices how many children would roam the villages “roasted by the sheer heat of the sun…naked” [16] and so does Frescobaldi, who observed “so many young boys and girls of fourteen years of age, all completely naked” [17] , and it is not unreasonable to believe that in 128 years the day-to-day living practices of the population on the Nile had not changed much. Maybe more surprising is the attention that both writers dedicate to the “musa”, a term most probably used to indicate a species of the modern-day banana. Frescobaldi writes that they are “similar to cucumbers but sweeter than even sugar”. [18] But they are also “very similar to cucumbers – writes Pagani – sweet like figs and you can peel them the same way”. [19] He adds that they have such a good taste that it would be impossible to describe them, so much so that “people say that it is the fruit with which Adam sinned” [20] , would conclude Frescobaldi in this hypothetical conversation about bananas in the Mamluk Nile Delta. [21]
In conclusion, the attention to details of Italian travellers who witnessed first-hand the world of the Mamluk Sultanate can indeed enrich and deepen our knowledge and understanding of this civilization in several layers, showing their importance as a source for the Mediterranean in the late Middle Ages.
[1] Gabriella Bartolini, ‘FRESCOBALDI, Lionardo’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 1998.
[2] A. Lanza and M. Troncarelli, eds., Pellegrini scrittori. Viaggiatori toscani del Trecento in Terrasanta (Ponte alle Grazie, 1993), 174.
[3] Lanza and Troncarelli, 172.
[4] See for example Franco Cardini, In Terrasanta: pellegrini italiani tra Medioevo e prima età moderna, Storica paperbacks 1 (Bologna: Società Editrice Il Mulino, 2005); Ilaria Sabbatini, L’Oriente Dei Viaggiatori: Diari Di Pellegrinaggio Fiorentini Fra XIII e XV Secolo (L’Aquila: Textus Edizioni, 2021).
[5] Giuseppe Gullino, ‘TREVISAN, Domenico’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 2019.
[6] Zaccaria Pagani, Da Venezia al Cairo: il viaggio di Zaccaria Pagani nel primo Cinquecento, ed. Laura Benedetti and Enrico Musacchio (Padova: Il poligrafo, 2021), 63.
[7] Pagani, 63.
[8] Pagani, 64.
[9] Lanza and Troncarelli, Pellegrini scrittori. Viaggiatori toscani del Trecento in Terrasanta, 177.
[10] Lanza and Troncarelli, 177.
[11] Lanza and Troncarelli, 179.
[12] Lanza and Troncarelli, 179.
[13] Pagani, Da Venezia al Cairo, 66.
[14] Pagani, 67.
[15] Pagani, 67.
[16] Pagani, 67.
[17] Lanza and Troncarelli, Pellegrini scrittori. Viaggiatori toscani del Trecento in Terrasanta, 180.
[18] Lanza and Troncarelli, 179.
[19] Pagani, Da Venezia al Cairo, 67.
[20] Lanza and Troncarelli, Pellegrini scrittori. Viaggiatori toscani del Trecento in Terrasanta, 179.
[21] This discussion also in Pagani, Da Venezia al Cairo, 67.
The Birth of the Archive of the Crown of Aragon
A Blog Post by Queralt Penedès Fradera
In the 13th and 14th centuries, Barcelona emerged as one of the major political, economic and cultural centers of the Mediterranean. Its decisive support for the conquests of Mallorca, Valencia, Sicily and Sardinia not only reinforced the territorial expansion of the Crown of Aragon but also secured the city a dominant position along the region’s trade routes, often contested with powers like Genoa. This dynamism led to the rise of a commercial and financial elite, which invested its wealth in the promotion of urban, architectural and cultural infrastructures.
In this context of prosperity, the Gothic style prevailed as a visual language of power and prestige. Buildings like the Royal Chapel of Santa Àgata and the monumental Saló del Tinell, part of the Palau Reial Major, embodied not only religious or political authority but also became functional spaces for administration.
It was within this Gothic framework that King James II promoted a key initiative: the creation of a permanent royal archive — not merely as a bureaucratic tool, but as a symbol of order, legitimacy and governance. The archive collected, ordered and preserved the documents that articulated the government of an increasingly complex set of territories. Thus, the Gothic was not only the style of an era, but also the physical and ideological framework where the memory of royal power was organized and projected.
The archive, therefore, was founded in 1318 by James II, a late date if we consider the large number of documents of the counts of Barcelona and kings of Aragon from the previous centuries that have been preserved. It should be noted, however, that the concept of archival, in the legal sense of the Roman tradition —that is, as a reference to a place where public documents are kept, whose creation corresponds only to the sovereign, and which guarantees its authenticity— does not begin to be known until the recovery of Roman law from the late twelfth century, and its use is not habitual in the field of the Crown of Aragon until a century later.[i]
“(…) [King James II] ordered and commanded you verbally to have a vaulted house built on the site of his palace chapel in Barcelona, in which the records, privileges, and other documents of his chancellery, as well as other matters of his court, would be placed and preserved (…).” [Translation provided by the author]
ACA, RP, Maestre racional, vol. 627, f. 137v-138r
It is necessary to wait for James II for there to be a substantial change and lasting consequences in the framework of a profound reorganization of the royal administration. James II had previously reigned in the Kingdom of Sicily, where he encountered some of the most advanced administrative and archival practices of the medieval world. Inspired by models such as Emperor Frederick II’s legislation on the probative value of documents, and likely by the organizational systems of the papal archives, James II realized the importance that a well-organized archive had for the development of the political and diplomatic activity of a monarch. James returned to the Crown of Aragon with a clear understanding of the strategic power of written records. [ii] After the death of King Alfonso (1285–1291), James II returned from Sicily to assume the leadership of the Crown of Aragon. His experience in Sicily had given him a clear sense of the value of documentation as a tool of political and legal power. Under his rule, the system for recording royal documents —initiated in the mid-13th century— was both consolidated and expanded.
This development is key to understanding the creation of the Royal Archive. [iii] The accumulation of serial documentation naturally required its preservation — to be stored securely and made accessible to the issuing authority. Over time, this system was further refined into clearly defined thematic series —Comune, Gratiarum, Curiae, Pecuniae, Solutionum, among others— forming an archival structure that remained largely unchanged until the 18th century.
During James II’s reign, both the volume and the typology of documentation expanded significantly. He was notable for an exceptionally high output of written material. A decisive factor in this growth was the use of Royal Diplomatic Letters, written on paper, which became the primary means of communication between the king and both his subdits and foreign powers.
The king’s activity in this regard has been described as “a real fever for the written document,” [iv] given the volume of letters preserved, which exceed in several thousand those of the other monarchs. As for the registers, there was a similar production, which diversified more fully and definitively by series. [v]
Relations with the Mamluk Sultanate within the records of James II
Within the 337 preserved registers of James II’s Royal Chancellery, we find an extraordinarily rich and diverse documentary production. This bureaucratic activity reflects both the scope of royal authority and the Crown’s capacity to manage an expanding territory and increasingly complex diplomatic relations. Among the most outstanding areas are the documentation relating to diplomatic relations with other Mediterranean powers, such as the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt.
The presence of a significant number of Arabic documents—many of them originating in Egypt—provides first-rate evidence of sustained interactions between the Crown of Aragon and the Mamluk world. These documents, often translated by interpreters and copied into the Crown’s registers, include official letters sent by the sultans as well as materials produced by Islamic institutions. Together, they form an exceptional corpus for the study of medieval diplomacy. [vi]
These relations were formalized by issuing official letters, receiving letters sent by the sultans—often written in Arabic and translated by interpreters—and sending ambassadors or special agents. The registers preserve texts such as embassy introductions and letters of credence, which allow us to trace in detail the diplomatic network constructed under James II.
For DiplomatiCon, the analysis of the least exploited records provides new knowledge and, above all, to be able to cross data and better understand the agents who participated in the diplomatic relations between the Crown of Aragon and the Mamluk Sultanate. While some of these documents have already been edited or studied, they still represent only a fraction of the extensive material preserved in the archives.
A particularly striking example is found in Register 252 (dated 1292), where instructions are given to the ambassadors Romeu de Marimon and Ramon Alemany, who were to travel to Egypt to negotiate with the Sultan. In this document, James II outlines the state of his relations with Castile and Portugal, proposes a potential alliance with the Mamluks, and requests the release of Aragonese captives. The king emphasizes that the envoys have also been instructed to deliver some messages orally and asks the Sultan, al-Ashraf (1290-1293), to receive them in good faith.
The document begins with:
« To the magnificent Prince Melich Alexaraf, king of Alexandria and Babylon and its parts, James, by the grace of God [King of Aragon, Sicily, Majorca, and Valencia, and Count of Barcelona], sends greetings and grace. We are sending to you, for the purpose of a legation, our beloved counselor, close companion, and faithful servant Romeu de Marimon, vicar of our city of Barcelona and of Vallès, to whom we have associated our faithful Ramon Alemany, citizen of Barcelona, and to whom we have entrusted certain matters to be conveyed to you orally on our behalf: We earnestly beseech Your Magnificence to give credence to our aforementioned envoys regarding all the matters they shall convey to you orally on our behalf. Given at Barcelona, on the 10th of August, in the year of Our Lord 1292. »[vii] [Translation provided by the author]
The letter continues with several chapters, each of which sets out in detail the messages that the envoys are to deliver to the Sultan on behalf of the king. It concludes with a sixth chapter, in which James II appeals directly to the Sultan:
« Moreover, the lord King begs to the said Sultan that for his love and as a sign of the special love between them, and so that they soon will know and be aware of this love, and so that the enemies shall be displeased and irate while friends shall be pleased, that the captives who are from the land of the no ble lord King of Aragon and from the land of the honorable kings of Castile and Portugal, who are all [joined] in one concord and will be friends og the Sultan, be realeased from imprsonment and dispatched to the said lord King of Aragon. » [viii][Translation provided by DiplomatiCon members]
This letter, therefore, stands as an extraordinary example to the diplomatic relations of the Crown of Aragon at the end of the 13th century. It is not only an example of the political strategies employed by James II, but also a powerful illustration of the importance of written documents as tools of negotiation and trust.
Documents like this are preserved today in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon, founded in the very heart of Gothic Barcelona. Thanks to the archive established by James II, we now have access to the strategies, the negotiations — ultimately, the voices — of that time. These preserved records are not just relics of the past; they continue to offer vital insights into the workings of medieval diplomacy and the enduring importance of written memory. Most importantly, they allow us to rediscover and study individuals — envoys, ambassadors, interpreters —who played a key role in shaping the Crown’s relations with other Mediterranean powers.
[i] Torra Pérez, A. (2022). L’Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó. Set-cents anys d’història. Catalan Historical Review, (15), 183–192. https://raco.cat/index.php/CatalanHistoricalReview/article/view/405556raco.cat
« en lo mes de juyol del any M CCC XVIII lo senyor rey, estant en Barchinona, ordonà e feu manament a vós de paraula que faéssets obrar una casa de volta en aquell loch on solia ésser la capeyla sua del palau de Barchinona, en la qual cassa fossen possats e conservats los registres, els privilegis e altres scrits de la sua cancelleria e dels altres fets de la sua cort. »
[ii] Udina Martorell, F. (1986). Guía histórica y descriptiva del Archivo de la Corona de Aragón. Ministerio de Cultura
[iii] Torra Pérez, A. (2022). L’Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó. Set-cents anys d’història. Catalan Historical Review, (15), 183–192. https://raco.cat/index.php/CatalanHistoricalReview/article/view/405556raco.cat
[iv] Baiges i Jardí, I. J. (2003). Aportació a l'estudi de la gènesi documental del nomenament reial: els nomenaments d'oficials reials de Jaume II. Universitat de Barcelona. https://diposit.ub.edu/dspace/handle/2445/68734diposit.ub.edu+1diposit.ub.edu+1
[v] Udina Martorell, F. (1986). Guía histórica y descriptiva del Archivo de la Corona de Aragón. Ministerio de Cultura
[vi] Jaspert, N. (2019). The Crown of Aragon and the Mamluk Sultanate: Entanglements of Mediterranean Politics and Piety. In S. Conermann & M. Winter (Eds.), The Mamluk Sultanate from the Perspective of Regional and World History (pp. 197–217). V&R unipress.
[vii] Capmany y de Montpalau, A. de. (1779). Memorias históricas sobre la marina, comercio y artes de la antigua ciudad de Barcelona (Vol. II). Imprenta de Don Antonio de Sancha. https://repositorio.bde.es/handle/123456789/2656repositorio.bde.es+1burjcdigital.urjc.es+1
Magnifico principi Melich Alexaraf, regi Alexandiie ilomorumque Babilonie et ipsarum partium, Jacobus, Dei gratia [rex Aragonuni, Sicilie, Maioricarum et Valentie, ac comes Barchinone], salutem et gratiam. Cum nos mittamus ad vos causa legacionis dilectum consiliarium, familiarem et fidelem nostrum Romeum de Mariniundo, civitatis nostre Barchinone vicarium ac Vallensis, cui associavimus fidelem nostrum Raimundum Alamanni civem Barchinone, et comiserimus eisdem legatis nostris quedam vobis ex parte nostra oretenus refferenda; Magnificenciam vestram attente rogamus quatenus predictis legatis nostris credatis de omnibus /iis que ex parte nostra vobis oretenus duxerint refferenda. Datum Barchi-
none, IIII idus augusti [anno Domini miuesimo ducentésimo nonagésimo secundo
[viii] Masià de Ros, À. (1951). La Corona de Aragón y los estados del norte de África: Política de Jaime II y Alfonso IV en Egipto, Ifriquía y Tremecén. Instituto Español de Estudios Mediterráneos.
“Encara prega lo senyor rey lo dit Solda que per amor dell e en senyal d amor especial qui es entre els, e perço que cuyt sapien e coneguen aquest amor, e quals enemics sien despagats e irats e quels amics n aien pagament quels catius qui son de la terra del noble senyor rey d Arago e de la terra dels honrats reys de Castella e de Portogal qui son tots en una concordia e seran amics e bensvolents del Solda que sien absolts de la preso, e trameses al dit senyor rey d Arago”
Letters from the Mamluk Sultanate in Venice
A Blog Post by Michele Argentini
Carpaccio- Ritorno degli ambasciatori held in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Venice
On January 21, 1443, Andrea Donà returned to Venice after his successful diplomatic mission to the Mamluk sultan in Cairo. In addition to the sultan’s gifts for the doge, the ambassador also brought to Venice what the chronicles describe as a «very graceful» or «beautiful» letter written to the Most Serene Signoria of Venice. [1] It was common practice for sultans to write letters in response to Venetian diplomatic missions. Typically, sultans would state that they had received the Venetian emissary and treated him with honours appropriate to the status of the prince he represented. The letter would be delivered to the ambassador, who would take it back to Venice to present it to the Signoria as a testament to the mission and to the good treatment received in Egypt. The letters often enumerated gifts made by the sultan to the Signoria as a token of friendship, ranging from porcelain to medical drugs, such as balsam oil and theriaca, local products of Egypt. [2]
Unfortunately, these letters, the main witness to diplomatic contacts between the Republic of Venice and the Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo, have come down to us only in translation into the Venetian vernacular. Only one original in Arabic has come down to us. It is the letter from Sultan Qāʾitbāy (1468-1496) to Doge Nicolò Tron (1471-1473), which was written in response to a Venetian mission to Cairo in 1473. An embassy was sent to Egypt to complain, among other things, about the quality of the pepper Venice was buying in the sultan’s territories, which was considered «damp and full of stones», and about the mistreatment suffered there by its merchants. [3]
Qāʾitbāy’s letter consists of many sheets glued together, totalling almost six meters of document, and was originally presented as a roll. Today it is kept in the State Archives of Venice, in a fund called Miscellanea Egitto, along with two other documents linked to the relations the Republic had with the Mamluk Sultanate. One is a receipt, in Arabic, for the payment the Venetians made in 1489 for the purchase of the Kingdom of Cyprus, which at the time was tributary to the Mamluk Sultan, the suzerain of the island. The second document is a commercial treaty between the Republic and the sultan through his ambassador to Venice - the interpreter Taghrībirdī - in 1507. It was written in the Venetian vernacular with attestations in Arabic; a treaty, moreover, that was never ratified by the sultan. [4]
Instead, translations of the letters are preserved in the Libri commemoriali, parchment registers in which ducal chancellors transcribed the most important documents of the Venetian state, such as pacts with other states and correspondence received from foreign sovereigns. [5] Through the letters that sultans wrote to doges recorded in the Commemoriali, it is possible to trace the frequency of Venetian diplomatic missions to Egypt, such as the one already mentioned of Andrea Donà. However, not all such documents were transcribed in the records and preserved in the State Archives of Venice. We have information about some letters only because they were transcribed in other types of sources. For example, a letter of Sultan Qānṣūh al-Ghūrī (1501-1516) written to the Signoria in 1512, after Domenico Trevisan’s embassy, is known to us because it is transcribed in two contemporary works. One is the Diarii of Marino Sanudo the Younger (1466-1535); [6] the other, is the travel account of Zaccaria Pagani, who was part of the diplomatic personnel that accompanied Trevisan in Egypt. [7] Therefore, it is necessary to look also at what is preserved outside the Archives to get a complete picture of this kind of source.
Carpaccio- Ritorno degli ambasciatori (dettaglio lettera)
Returning to the Libri commemoriali, the records include not only letters from the sultans but also documents attesting to the commercial guarantees that Venetians enjoyed in the Sultanate. These guarantees are preserved in the form of translations of the decrees by which the sultans instructed the governors of their territories on how trade with the Venetians was to be regulated. As, for example, we have in the case of Sultan Al-Ẓāhir Jaqmaq, who in May 1449 issued several decrees in favour of the Venetians to the governors of Hama, Tripoli and Beirut, at the instance of Ambassadors Lorenzo Tiepolo and Marino Priuli. Most of these documents have been edited, some as early as the second half of the nineteenth century, [8] but they would need a treatment more suited to today’s scholarly research standards.
The deliberations of the governing councils of the Republic of Venice are of equal importance in tracing the lines of relations between the two powers on either side of the Mediterranean. The Senate, the body that dealt with foreign and commercial policy, kept records of its deliberations, transcribed in parchment registers. These were initially collected in the Misti series. Beginning in 1401 the Secreti series for political matters and international relations was detached; in 1440 the Misti were divided into Terra - for administrative matters relating to the city and the Stado da Terra - and Mar - relating to the Stado da Mar and maritime trade. To reconstruct Venetian-Cairene relations, elections of ambassadors, instructions for ambassadors, and letters from the Venetian government to the sultans can be used. These can be found among the Senate proceedings, along with other information on the state of relations between the two powers. However, one needs to consider the distinctions remembered above, because often many deliberations could be recorded in one series instead of the other. This material is mainly unpublished, so it is necessary to consult the original documents. In some cases, digital reproductions can be found on the website of the State Archives of Venice. [9]
Although the richness and continuity of these types of sources is not something to be overlooked, it must be kept in mind that they present a critical issue, namely that they can be biased by the fact that they were produced in Venice and represent the views of the governing councils on how relations with the Mamluks were meant to take place. In order to reconstruct how these encounters actually happened, it is necessary to turn to sources produced by the Venetians on the ground, that is, in the Mamluk Sultanate. Unfortunately, the documentation of the Republic of Venice diplomatic agents up to the first half of the 16th century was lost in two fires that affected the Ducal Palace in 1574 and in 1577. So preserved dispatches and letters from ambassadors and consuls in Egypt or Syria are rare and cover short timeframes. [10] Again, one has to look outside the Archives, Sanudo’s Diarii come in very handy, for they contain, for example, summaries of dispatches from consuls in Alexandria or Damascus, which have not come down to us in their original form. [11]
Despite the presence of these edited texts, it is also advantageous to expand the research to other types of sources produced by the Venetians in the Mamluk Sultanate. In particular, the letters of Venetian commercial agents can be very helpful. In contrast to the other sources, the letters can be considered “private” because they usually come from the personal archives of merchants. They are kept in boxes, and sometimes they are difficult to find and even decipher. Although their focus was on the business of the merchants, an attentive reading of these sources can help outline some of the different levels of diplomacy carried out in the Mamluk Sultanate, principally the “lower” level, the one between non-sovereign actors (merchants, consuls, officials), akin to a day-to-day diplomacy. Notable examples of these letters can be seen in the archive of Biagio Dolfin, two-times consul of Alexandria (1408-1410 and 1418-1420), whose documentation (or at least a part thereof) of the second term is preserved in the Archives. [12] His records have been thoroughly studied, and they have shown exactly this dichotomy between how the Venetian ruling councils thought the encounters were supposed to happen and how Venetians in loco tried to manage them. [13]
In conclusion, to reconstruct the relations between the two powers on the opposite sides of the Mediterranean, one needs to take into consideration different types of sources. The “public” sources will help in providing a guideline for the large themes and reconstructing the highs and lows of the political-diplomatic connections between Cairo and Venice. While the “private” will help in understanding how these relations were conducted and in outlining the multiple layers of diplomatic activity that Venetians conducted in the Mamluk Sultanate. Therefore, studying these sources in conjunction will be beneficial for giving a complete picture of the connections between the two powers.
[1] Zancaruolo, Girolamo, Cronica Zancaruola, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, It. VII 50 (9275), f. 463rv; Sanudo, Marino the Younger, Le vite dei dogi, 1423-1474, ed. by Angela Caracciolo Aricò, vol. 1, p. 370.
[2] About gifts from the sultans of Mamluk Cairo, see Behrens-Abouseif, Doris, Practising Diplomacy in the Mamluk Sultanate: Gifts and Material Culture in the Medieval Islamic World, London New York: I.B. Tauris, 2016.
[3] Wansbrough, John, «A Mamluk Letter of 877/1473». Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 24 (1961): pp. 200–213.
[4] Bauden, Frédéric, «The Mamluk Documents of the Venetian State Archives: Handlist», Quaderni di Studi Arabi 20/21 (2002-2003): pp. 147–56.
[5] Predelli, Riccardo, I Libri Commemoriali della Repubblica di Venezia. Regesti, 8 vols, Venezia: Deputazione di storia patria per le Venezie, 1876-1914.
[6] Sanudo, Marino the Younger, I Diarii, ed. by Federico Stefani, Guglielmo Berchet, and Nicolò Barozzi, vol. 15. 58 voll. Venezia: Regia Deputazione di Storia Patria, 1886, coll. 264–66.
[7] Pagani, Zaccaria, Da Venezia al Cairo: il viaggio di Zaccaria Pagani nel primo Cinquecento, ed. by Laura Benedetti and Enrico Musacchio, Padova: Il poligrafo, 2021.
[8] For example, Thomas, Georg Martin, and Riccardo Predelli, (eds.), Diplomatarium veneto-levantinum sive acta et diplomata res venetas, graecas atque levantis illustrantia, 2 vols, Venezia: Deputazione di storia patria per le Venezie, 1880-1899.
[9] https://asve.arianna4.cloud/patrimonio/93c2fd98-dec6-4231-a745-8bb2e52a5d43/0040-fondo-senato.
[10] A significant, if limited, example is the copy-letter of the mission of Pietro Diedo, ambassador to Cairo between 1489 and 1490, ed. by Franco Rossi, Ambasciata straordinaria al Sultano d’Egitto (1489-1490), Venezia, Il Comitato editore, 1988.
[11] There is also a copy-letter from the consul of Damascus 1508-1510, Pietro Zeno, preserved in Biblioteca Museo Correr, P.D. c Dandolo 975, 51, partially edited in Lucchetta, Francesca, «L’Affare Zen in Levante nel Cinquecento», Studi veneziani 10 (1968): pp. 109–221.
[12] Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Procuratori di San Marco, Commissarie, Misti, bb. 180-181.
[13] Christ, Georg. Trading Conflicts: Venetian Merchants and Mamluk Officials in Late Medieval Alexandria. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2012.