The problems faced by the government after the loss of the eastern provinces to Islam in the 630s and 640s is reflected in the crisis measures it adopted to deal with them, and in particular by the transformation in the role of officials called kommerkiarioi, the earlier comites commerciorum. These officials had been originally under the authority of the comes sacrarum largitionum, although during the sixth century they had come under the praetorian prefecture. Their chief role lay in supervising the production and sale of silk, which was a state monopoly, and in functioning as customs officials dealing with imports and exports of precious goods. During the middle years of the seventh century they were also made responsible for supplying troops with equipment and provisions, and the levying and storing of fiscal income in kind. The high-ranking kommerkiarioi and the warehouses (apothekai) which they supervised and administered seem to have filled a gap created by the new situation, with which the administration of the prefecture could not cope. The essential task of supplying the army fell to them because of the suitability of their administrative competence and the network of state warehouses they managed.
Map 6.6 Provinces/ports associated with imperial kommerkia from 730.
This arrangement operated until certain reforms and changes were introduced c. 730 by Leo III (717-741).
From about 730/731 there seems to have taken place a gradual reduction in the importance of individual kommerkiarioi: instead of high-ranking general kommerkiarioi associated with warehouses there appear instead kommerkiarioi associated with no specific region and with no warehouse. Institutions called imperial kommerkia appear at this time, and seem to have fulfilled a related but more limited function until the first decades of the ninth century, when the establishment of the thematic protonotarioi and the system of supplying the armies which they administered from their themata made them redundant. The kommerkiarioi themselves appear thereafter in association with specific military provinces (themata) or, more usually, specific ports or entrepots, underlining their reversion to the role of customs officials controlling trade and exchange activities with regions outside the empire. From the later eighth century a duty on trade was levied, the kommerkion, and kommerkiarioi were associated with its collection.
The kommerkiarioi often worked in partnerships, sharing responsibility for their allotted tasks, and frequently managed several different warehouses at the same time. Since these were not necessarily geographically contiguous, nor constituted, apparently, on an annual or five-yearly basis, and since the same combinations were not repeated with any degree of regularity or frequency, it seems that they were not associated with regular taxation, which took place on an annual, or at least a regular and repeated basis. On the other hand, some evidence suggests that the coincidence of groups of warehouses or provinces under a single or several kommerkiarioi with certain military events must reflect a relationship between the two. On this evidence (although the issue is still debated), the system of warehouses administered by the kommerkiarioi was associated with supplying and equipping, and probably also feeding, expeditionary or field forces assembled for particular campaigns.
After the early ninth century the more regular system managed by the thematic protonotarioi was made permanent (it had been developing probably since the middle of the eighth century) and the activities of kommerkiarioi appear to be wholly connected with trade and customs dues. But with the expansion of the empire and the offensive warfare which predominated in the later ninth century onwards this system too began to change. The marginalisation of the thematic militias, as they had become, meant that the partially ‘selfsupporting’ theme armies were more and more replaced by professional mercenaries, who were maintained both by the collection and delivery of supplies as before, but in addition were often quartered on the provincial populations, whom they were permitted to exploit in terms of accommodation, food and other necessities, thus placing an increasingly heavy burden on the tax-payers. During the second half of the eleventh century this placed increasing strains on the taxation system and on the producing population.
World History
