Diplomatic and commercial relations of the Mamluk Sultanate with the Byzantine Empire and the Kingdom of Cilician Armenia: a new approach for the Eastern Mediterranean trade and the traders (1260-1291)

This thesis addresses a new perspective in the Eastern Mediterranean trade by way of the diplomatic and commercial relations of the Mamlûk Sultanate with the Byzantine Empire and the Kingdom of Cilician Armenia in the second half of the 13th century. In this context, diplomatic and political procedure run by the Bahrî Mamlûks between the dates 1260-1291 was evaluated by focusing on the commercial relations. Moreover, slave, timber and iron trades conducted in the region towards the harbours of Egypt was studied with the merchants who had involved in these trading activities. The thesis opens a discussion about identities of these merchants by revisiting definitions stated by modern scholars. By paying special attention to the identities of the merchants who conducted interstate trading in Mamluk lands, this study proposes the necessity of re-evaluating the Muslim merchants, a poorly defined term dominating the modern literature. Later on, contemporary Islamic, Latin, Byzantine, Armenian and Assyrian sources are analyzed in the light of Paul Licoeur's threefold mimesis theory, and then, instead of the aforementioned term, the Mamluk merchants will be taken into consideration with the relevant evidences. This study also investigates the incentives the Mamluks gave in order to become a part of the trading activities in the region by demonstrating various precautions against prohibitions, embargoes and piracy. The study also demontrates the deceptive tricks and other fraudulent menthods of the merchants who intended to circumvent such prohibitions, and the trading goods, their varieties, quantities, price and the merchants who used these tricks were presented in the contemporary documents in aforementioned time period.