Travelling and Trading Through Mamluk Territory : Chancery Documents Guaranteeing Mobility to Christian Merchants

Résumé En

The article offers an overview of the documents adopted by the Mamluk chancery to allow European traders to enter and travel through the sultanate for the purpose of carrying out commercial activities. The study re-evaluates some historiographical ideas concerning the amān (safe-conduct). This term has often been used by scholars to designate a specific – in fact the only – document conferring freedom of movement on non-Muslims visiting a medieval Muslim state. Contrary to this received idea, the author demonstrates that the Mamluk chancery resorted to different kinds of written instruments (truces, letters, decrees) to ensure that European merchants could move freely around its domains. The analysis of these documents led me to address some theoretical issues related to the interaction between the Mamluks and their diplomatic interlocutors. Deconstructing the use of significant terms such as “treaty” or “privileges”, I redefine some significant aspects such as the relations between the Mamluk government and the Europeans and the nature of the commercial rights granted to the European trading communities operating in cities like Alexandria.