Amalfi

A port on the western coast of southern Italy, Amalfi survived as an independent duchy until 1131, when it was incorporated into the kingdom of Sicily. It was an important trading center in the early and central Middle Ages. Amalfitan merchants were already present at Constantinople by 944, and were trading with Egypt by the late tenth century. Around 1080, Amalfitans founded a hospice for pilgrims in Jerusalem, from which the Order of the Hospital (St. John of Jerusalem) later developed, but they appear to have played no part in the First Crusade (1096-1099), and consequently did not receive commercial privileges in the Holy Land, unlike the ports of northern Italy. Although they held property in Outremer during the twelfth century, their role in Western trade with the Holy Land was relatively minor, and they never possessed quarters in its ports. In 1190 Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, granted Amalfi a customs exemption at Acre and the right to its own officials there, but this appears to have remained a dead letter.

During the twelfth century, the Amalfitans seem to have increasingly concentrated their attention on the internal trade of the Sicilian kingdom, and the city’s maritime power suffered both from the attacks of the Pisans (who sacked Amalfi in 1137) and competition from other south Italian ports, notably Salerno and Naples. After 1200 Amalfitan commercial activity was very much in decline. Although Amalfitans were still occasionally found in the Holy Land in the thirteenth century, and in Cyprus even after 1291, they were very few and usually associated with the Genoese.

-G. A. Loud

Bibliography

Falkenhausen, Vera von, “II Commercio di Amalfi con Costantinopoli e il Levante nel secolo XII,” in Amalfi,

Genova, Pisa e Venezia: Il Commercio con Costantinopoli e il vicino Oriente nel secolo XII (Roma: Pacini, 1998), pp. 19-38.

Figliuolo, Bruno, “Amalfi e il Levante nel medioevo,” in I Comuni Italiani nel regno crociato di Gerusalemme, ed. Gabriella Airaldi and Benjamin Z. Kedar (Genova: Universita di Genova, Istituto di Medioevistica, 1986), pp. 573-664.

Heyd, W., Histoire du commerce du Levant au Moyen-Age, trans. F. Reynaud, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1885-1886).