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1. Introduction The Levant trade is defined as the trading relations between Central and Western Europe and the Levant (from the Italian  levante, “rising [sun],” i.e. the east) – the regions of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East (Mediterranean world). Ever since the first edition of Wilhelm Heyd’s Geschichte des Levantehandels (1858), there has been an abundant and uninterrupted tradition of research on the Levant trade [7].From the Roman Imperial period, merchants obtained goods from the Orient and Far East, in particular spices by sea (Persian…

1. Introduction 1.1. Structural features and problems of researchThe specialization of ethnic and religious minorities in particular branches of trade, within which they attained a strong and sometimes dominant position amounting to a “trade diaspora” or a “middlemen minority,” is a phenomenon observable since the Middle Ages. Jewish merchants, for instance, already had an important position in trade on the European continent and in the Mediterranean by the High Middle Ages, and the Jewish trade diaspor…

1. Introduction Terminology varies in commercial documents and inventories of the early modern period for the trade in carpets. A distinction in manufacture type must be drawn between the Oriental knotted carpet and the European woven carpet (tapestry) [4. 9]; [10. 3 f.]; [1]. The channels of distribution for the two categories were quite different, so that it is sensible also to distinguish two market systems.Heinrich Lang 2. Oriental knotted carpets Visual sources, especially Renaissance paintings, attest to the widespread use of Oriental knotted carpets as fl…

1. Introduction 1.1. Definition“A world economy,” wrote Fernand Braudel, “always has an urban pole, a city at the logistical hub of its trade. Information, goods, capital, credit, people, orders, and commercial correspondence flow into it and out from it. Great merchants, often rich to excess, call the shots there” (“Une économie-monde possède toujours un pôle urbain, une ville au centre de la logistique de ses affaires; les informations, les marchandises, les capitaux, les crédits, les ho…