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An Incident at Damietta: 1733

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Interfaith Relationships and Perceptions of the Other in the Medieval Mediterranean

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Abstract

In 1733 a ship with a license for corsairing from Tuscany attacked a ship in the Ottoman port of Damietta, Egypt. The victimized ship captain pursued a legal case against his attacker and the narration of the incident provides a detailed description of an Ottoman Mediterranean port and its workings, something which is quite rare. This article, a microstudy of the port of Damietta, will identify what was distinctive about the city’s interface with the sea, through a close examination of the port itself, as well as a comparison with Rosetta and Alexandria. I shall argue that there was no one port of Damietta, but rather several key arenas of encounter that offered different levels of opportunity and risk. There have been quite a few studies of what are called “port cities” in the Mediterranean but invariably these are studies of cities, not ports. This article aims to open up a discussion of Mediterranean ports.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The literature is extensive. See Henk Driessen, “Mediterranean Port Cities: Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered,” History and Anthropology 16, no. 1 (2005): 129–41; Athanasios Gekas, “Class and Cosmopolitanism: The Historiographical Fortunes of Merchants in Eastern Mediterranean Ports,” Mediterranean Historical Review 24, no. 2 (2009): 95–114; Khaled Fahmy, “Towards a Social History of Modern Alexandria,” in Alexandria: Real and Imagined, ed. Anthony Hirst and Michael Silk (Burlington: Ashgate, 2004), 281–306; “Port-Cities of the Eastern Mediterranean 1800–1914,” special edition of Review: Fernand Braudel Center 16, no. 4 (Fall 1993); Olga Katsiardi-Hering, “City-ports in the Eastern and Central Mediterranean from the Mid-Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century: Urban and Social Aspects,” Mediterranean Historical Review 26, no. 2 (2011): 151–70.

  2. 2.

    Khaled Fahmy’s “Towards a Social History of Modern Alexandria,” however, does include a discussion of the dockyard built in the western harbor of the city.

  3. 3.

    Roxani Margariti notes this in her pioneering study of the port of Aden in the medieval period: “Scholars have not neglected Indian Ocean ports alone; rather, port cities of the Islamic world as a whole have received little attention. Even Alexandria, one of the most important ports of the medieval Mediterranean, is nowhere treated exhaustively as a maritime urban center.” Roxani Margariti, Aden and the Indian Ocean Trade: 150 Years in the Life of a Medieval Arabian Port (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 6.

  4. 4.

    Katsiardi-Hering, “City-ports,” 154.

  5. 5.

    Joshua White, Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018), 137. By the terms of the capitulations, ports were sites of Ottoman sovereignty whose violation was a serious matter. In 1638 Venice and the empire almost went to war over the entry of Venetian ships into the Adriatic port of Valona, in pursuit of some North African corsairs who had taken refuge there. The Venetians had the right to pursue corsairs at sea, but could not enter Ottoman ports in that pursuit. Kenneth Setton, Venice, Austria and the Turks in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1991), 108.

  6. 6.

    White, Piracy and Law, 161.

  7. 7.

    Daniel Goffman writes that “Frankish vessels sailed furtively into the port of Foça to buy provisions,” but it is not clear what it means to sail “furtively.” Daniel Goffman, Izmir and the Levantine World, 1550–1650 (Seattle: University of Washington, 1990), 36.

  8. 8.

    Goffman, Izmir, 38.

  9. 9.

    Ernst Pijning, “A New Interpretation of Contraband Trade,” Hispanic American Historical Review 81, nos. 3–4 (2001): 733–38, at 734–36.

  10. 10.

    Michael Reimer, “Ottoman Alexandria: The Paradox of Decline and the Reconfiguration of Power in Eighteenth-Century Arab Provinces,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 37, no. 2 (1994): 107–46, at 112.

  11. 11.

    Reimer, “Ottoman Alexandria,” 135. These officials were known as the qadi il-mina’, amin al-jumruk, agha al-hawala, muḥtasib, and dizdar al-qila’. Reimer’s 1994 article on Alexandria is one of the most valuable studies we possess of an Ottoman port.

  12. 12.

    Goffman, Izmir, 42.

  13. 13.

    Goffman, Izmir, 100.

  14. 14.

    It seems likely that the Ottomans would have been in closer contact with officials in Izmir than they would have been with those in the port cities of Egypt, but research has not yet been done which would allow us to compare the level of correspondence between Istanbul and the various ports of the empire. The Ottomans did correspond with Egyptian ports throughout the eighteenth century. Qadis in Alexandria and Damietta copied Ottoman fermans and other official documents into local court records. Ottoman documents disappear from the court records of Rosetta after 1765 for reasons that are unclear; possibly the Ottomans decided to centralize operation of the port through Alexandria. I thank Zoe Griffith for providing me with this information on Ottoman documentation in the Egyptian court records of Alexandria, Rosetta, and Damietta. Email correspondence: February 28, 2016.

  15. 15.

    Goffman, Izmir, 112.

  16. 16.

    The story is told in Bruce Masters, The Origin of Western Economic Dominance in the Middle East: Mercantilism and the Islamic Economy in Aleppo, 1600–1750 (New York: New York University Press: 1988), 16–17. Goffman’s account of the move back to Tripoli in 1609 is rather different; he says it was done because Alexandretta was too exposed to piracy. Goffman, Izmir, 67. Masters implies that Alexandretta became an “official” port once the Ottomans established a customs station there. This may well be the case but the general question of how to classify Ottoman ports has not yet been studied.

  17. 17.

    Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power (London: Palgrave, 2009), 311.

  18. 18.

    Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 294. The arsenal at Basra seems not to have outlasted the sixteenth century. Galleys were permanently stationed at Kavalla, Lesbos, and Rhodes; other Aegean Sancaks could be required to supply a galley as need required.

  19. 19.

    Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 301.

  20. 20.

    Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 313.

  21. 21.

    Daniel Sabatier, “La Caravane Française en Égypte, dans La Deuxième Moitié du XVIIIe Siècle,” in Αφιερωμα στο Νικο Σβορονο, ed. Vasilēs Kremmydas, Chryssa Maltezou, and Nikolaos M. Panagiotakes (Rethymnon: University of Crete Publications, 1986), 180–201, at 188.

  22. 22.

    See Linda Darling, “The Mediterranean as a Borderland,” Review of Middle East Studies 46, no. 1 (Summer 2012): 54–63, for a discussion of the conceptual issues in borderland and frontier studies.

  23. 23.

    Colin Heywood, “A Frontier without Archeology? The Ottoman Maritime Frontier in the Western Mediterranean, 1660–1760,” in The Frontiers of the Ottoman World, ed. A.C.S. Peacock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) (Proceedings of the British Academy 156), 493–508. Heywood’s bibliography includes a two-volume study of the coastal fortifications of Tunisia that was published 20 years ago: Neji Djelloul, Les fortifications côtières ottomanes de la régence de Tunis (XVI–XIXe siècles) (Zaghouan: FTERSI, 1995).

  24. 24.

    Heywood, “A Frontier,” 500.

  25. 25.

    Amnon Cohen, “Ottoman Rule and the Re-Emergence of Coastal Palestine (17th–18th Centuries),” Revue de l’Occident musulman et de la Méditerranée 39 (1985): 163–75, at 164.

  26. 26.

    Zoe Griffith’s 2017 PhD dissertation, based on the court records of the cities of Rosetta and Damietta, will be a tremendous contribution when published. Zoe Griffith, “Egyptian Ports in the Ottoman Mediterranean, 1760–1820” (PhD. diss., Brown University, 2017).

  27. 27.

    I am currently researching the reason for the importance of this particular lawsuit, which was originally published by the notaries Giacomo Conti and Pier Francesco Mormorai in a report dedicated to the Grand Duke of Tuscany: Relazione a sua Altezza Reale… nella causa di pretesa preda vertente fra il capitano Francesco di Gio. corsaro, e il capitano Demetrio Licudi, e suo equipaggio (Florence: Domenico Ambrogio Verdi, 1733). That topic falls outside the bounds of this article. For the Ruota fiorentina see Giuseppe Pansini, “Le cause delegate civili nel sistema giudiziario del principato mediceo,” in Grandi Tribunali e Rote nell’Italia di antico regime, ed. Mario Sbriccoli and Antonella Bettoni (Milan: Giufré, 1993), 605–41. In the nineteenth century, in the context of the codification of law, two major collections of important court cases were assembled in Florence. This case appears in A. Bartolommeo and C. Marzucchi, Raccolta delle decisioni della Ruota fiorentina dal MDCC al MDCCCVIII, disposte per ordine cronologico (Florence: L. Marchini, 1836–1866), 9: 110–37, with only slight variations from the 1733 text. I thank Guillaume Calafat for his indispensable help in understanding the judicial institutions of Florence, as well as publishing practices.

  28. 28.

    “Pregandolo, se VS avesse raccolto qualche poco sego di portarmelo a bordo, che poi del favore li resterò obbligato, e se volessero riscattar questi Mori, che tengo dentro, possono venire liberamente senza nessun sospetto…” Bartolommeo and Marzucchi, Raccolta, 131. Sego was a material, either an animal fat or a tropical plant, used in the manufacture of candles. I thank Konstantina Zanou for explaining to me the meaning of the word.

  29. 29.

    Bartolommeo and Marzucchi, Raccolta, 130. The Rada is repeatedly identified as a place in the document. Paul Masson, in his multi-volume study of French trade, also identifies the rada of Damietta as a place “très bonne où les navires avaient l’habitude de mouiller, à deux lieues environ de l’embouchure ou Bogas.” Paul Masson, Histoire du Commerce Français dans le Levant au XVIIIe Siècle (Paris: Hachette & cie, 1911), 603.

  30. 30.

    In Piri Reis’s map of Damietta, the place is not marked on the map but appears in the textual description. Piri Reis, Kitab-i Bahriye (Istanbul: Devlet basımevi, 1935), 720.

  31. 31.

    The English Pilot, Describing the sea-coasts, capes, head-lands, bays, roads, harbours, rivers and ports…in the whole Mediterranean Sea (London: Printed for W. and J. Mount, T. and T. Page, 1736), 82.

  32. 32.

    Margariti, Aden and the Indian Ocean Trade, 70.

  33. 33.

    Masson, Histoire du Commerce Français dans le Levant au XVIIIe Siècle, 603–4.

  34. 34.

    We know this from the document. “Egli era entrato nel Bugasso di Damiata col Sambecchino per caricarlo.” Bartolommeo and Marzucchi, Raccolta, 133.

  35. 35.

    It is clearly identified as such. Piri Reis, Kitab-i Bahriye, 721.

  36. 36.

    In the letter Giovanni wrote on April 22 he invited Licudi to come on board. Bartolommeo and Marzucchi, Raccolta, 133.

  37. 37.

    Bartolommeo and Marzucchi, Raccolta, 131: “Noi Capitano sottoscritto permettiamo al Signor Demetraci di venire dal Bugaso di Damiata, e di poter caricare, essendo nella detta Rada le Germe, quali verranno al suo servizio, senza darli alcuna molestia, nè impaccio: si intende, che Noi vogliamo, che il presente scritto abbia forza finchè noi faremo vela dalla Rada di Damiata. Fatto nel Bordo del Vascello li 27 Aprile 1733.”

  38. 38.

    “Che dopo passato il biglietto, continovò egli a stare nella Rada ancorato col suo vascello, per due, o tre giorni, quali passati, fece vela, e si allontanò da terra soltanto, che perdesse di vista Damiata.” Bartolommeo and Marzucchi, Raccolta, 131.

  39. 39.

    Bartolommeo and Marzucchi, Raccolta, 131.

  40. 40.

    Bartolommeo and Marzucchi, Raccolta, 132.

  41. 41.

    Bartolommeo and Marzucchi, Raccolta, 132–33.

  42. 42.

    بروج Piri Reis, Kitab-i Bahriye, 721. In the medieval period the city had been fortified, but in 1250 the Mamluks “demolished all the ramparts, razing them to the ground and in order to prevent the Christians from ever making use of the city, they took all the Stones and carried them to the River Nile.” The early fourteenth-century traveler Ibn Battuta noted that the town was “recent construction.” Megan Cassidy-Welch, “‘O Damietta’: War Memory and Crusade in Thirteenth-Century Egypt,” Journal of Medieval History 40, no. 3 (2014): 346–60, at 346–47. At least among the Europeans, however, there was a memory of the city’s past. The German traveler Johann Vansleb, in Damietta in the 1670s, wrote the following about the tower on the east bank of the Nile just above Damietta: “As soon as we enter into the River, from the Sea, we find on the East-side, at the Mouth, an old Castle ruinated but final; which, as the Francs say, was built by S. Lewis, the French king, when he had Damietta.” Johann Vansleb, Present State of Egypt, or, A new relation of a late voyage into that kingdom performed in the years 1672 and 1673 (London: Printed by R.E. for John Starkey, 1678), 66.

  43. 43.

    Vansleb, Present State of Egypt, 66.

  44. 44.

    The following account is drawn from Robert Dankoff, An Ottoman Mentality: the World of Evliya Çelebi (Brill: Leiden, 2006), 141–42.

  45. 45.

    Reimer, “Ottoman Alexandria,” 116.

  46. 46.

    Sabatier, “La Caravane Française,” 188.

  47. 47.

    Daniel Crecelius, The Roots of Modern Egypt (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1981), 156.

  48. 48.

    As was the case, in fact, with the port of Damietta. The activities of French merchants at Damietta where, for example, they illegally exported rice to Europe, caused endless troubles for the French merchants operating in Cairo and Alexandria. Daniel Crecelius and Hamza Abd al-Aziz Badr, “French Ships and their Cargoes Sailing Between Damiette and Ottoman Ports 1777–1781,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 37, no. 3 (1994): 251–86, at 258.

  49. 49.

    Crecelius and Badr, “French Ships,” 262. During the crusades the Europeans viewed the Nile at Damietta with great foreboding. They “had to gaze across it for fourth months in 1219 before they found a way to get to the city itself.” It was, for them, “a moody river” which disgorged crocodiles and corpses. Cassidy-Welch, “O Damietta,” 348.

  50. 50.

    Masson, Histoire du Commerce Français, 603.

  51. 51.

    Masson, Histoire du Commerce Français, 603–4.

  52. 52.

    Vansleb, Present State of Egypt, 65.

  53. 53.

    Crecelius and Badr, “French Ships,” 256 and T. Philipp, The Syrians in Egypt, 1725–1975 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1985), 24, on the absence of a French consul.

  54. 54.

    Although the physical presence of French merchants was carefully controlled, there was clearly an appetite for French merchandise. We know this because as early as the 1730s, the French consuls in Cairo were complaining about Syrian Christians from Damietta showing up in Cairo, selling French textiles at cut rate prices. This testifies to Damietta’s status as a rogue port, at least from the point of view of state authorities. The absence of an official French representative thus allowed French ships, which went to Damietta to buy cargoes of rice, to sell textiles on their own account for less than the monopoly price established by the Marseille Chamber of Commerce, given that there was no one there to stop them. T. Philipp, The Syrians in Egypt, 24.

  55. 55.

    In the literature Greek boats are invariably described as small. Sabatier, “La Caravane Française,” 188, writes that the corsairs liked to prey on Damietta because the boats tended to be small and not well-armed. It seems that Licudi’s boat was equipped with at least some arms because arms (armi) are included in the order for restitution: Conti and Mormorai, Relazione, 4. A sambeco was a combined sailing and oared ship. The use of the diminutive, sambecchino , in the text indicates a small ship. Giuseppe Boerio, Dizionario del Dialetto Veneziano, 2nd ed. (Milan: A. Martello, 1971), 597. Apostolos Delis describes a sambecchino as a small chebec, the classic Mediterranean sailing ship used primarily for trading. Apostolos Delis, “From Lateen to Square Rig: The Evolution of The Greek-Owned Merchant Fleet and its Ships in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” The Mariner’s Mirror 100, no. 1 (February 2014): 44–58, at 46. The Italian antiquarian Giovanni Mariti, on a voyage along the Syrian coastline toward the end of the eighteenth century, mentioned an encounter with a “Sambechhino di Damiata,” suggesting perhaps that this type of ship was associated with Damiata. Giovanni Mariti, Viaggio di Gerusalemme per le coste della Soria (Livorno: Stamperia di Tommaso Masi, e compagni, 1787), 84.

  56. 56.

    Bartolommeo and Marzucchi, Raccolta, 132.

  57. 57.

    The Ottoman Turkish text is in Piri Reis, Kitab-i Bahriye, 717. The English translation appears in Piri Reis: the Book of Bahriye, ed. Bülent Özüken (Istanbul: Boyut Yayıncılık, 2013), 224.

  58. 58.

    Masson, Histoire du Commerce Français, 408. Also see note 49 (above) for the foreboding with which the crusaders viewed this spot.

  59. 59.

    The Italian is rather ambiguous. “Egli era entrato nel Bugasso di Damiata col Sambecchino per caricarlo.” Bartolommeo and Marzucchi, Raccolta, 133. This could seem to be saying that he was loading his sambecchino in the bugasso, but for reasons I explain above, it makes more sense to read it as saying that he was in the bugasso, headed for the port of Damietta. See Masson, Histoire du Commerce Français, 407, for the presence of Greek boats at Damietta.

  60. 60.

    “Il fatto stesso mostra ad evidenza la frode, e il suo mal’animo; poichè ben conoscendo il Capitano Licudi, avendo seco prima trattato…” Bartolommeo and Marzucchi, Raccolta, 132–33.

  61. 61.

    “Li passò il biglietto per indurlo ad uscire, ed ancorarsi nella Rada.” Bartolommeo and Marzucchi, Raccolta, 133.

  62. 62.

    The “rade of Aboukir” was about 15 miles to the east of the port itself. Masson, Histoire du Commerce Français, 405.

  63. 63.

    G. P. Bognetti, “Note per la storia del passaporto e del salvacondotto,” Studi nelle scienze giuridiche e sociali publicati dall’istituto di esercitazioni presso la facolta di giurisprudenza 16 (1931): 269–323. I thank Ian Hathaway, whose recently (2019) completed dissertation is on paperwork in the early modern Mediterranean, for this reference and for his valuable insights on the question of the biglietto.

  64. 64.

    White, Piracy and the Law, 56.

  65. 65.

    Vansleb, Present State of Egypt, 106.

  66. 66.

    Vansleb, Present State of Egypt, 67.

  67. 67.

    Sabatier, “La Caravane Française,” 188.

  68. 68.

    Reimer, “Ottoman Alexandria,” 112. But see Alan Mikhail’s Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 151 where he suggests that, prior to the nineteenth century, navigation between Alexandria and the Nile had never been possible.

  69. 69.

    Reimer, “Ottoman Alexandria,” 113, quoting from Wyndham Beawes’ Lex mercatoria rediviva, or the merchant’s directory (London: Printed for J. Rivington, T. Longman, B. Law, S. Crowder, T. Becket, T. Cadell, Robinson and Roberts, and R. Baldwin, 1771).

  70. 70.

    Reimer, “Ottoman Alexandria,” 114.

  71. 71.

    Vansleb, Present State of Egypt, 67. Masson also describes Damietta as “the finest built city in Egypt after Cairo” in the seventeenth century. Masson, Histoire du Commerce Français, 406.

  72. 72.

    Vansleb, Present State of Egypt, 105–6.

  73. 73.

    Mikhail, Nature and Empire, 104–5 and 85.

  74. 74.

    Sabatier, “La Caravane Française,” 188. The Greek petitioners who went to Malta to try and recover goods which had been taken from them in a corsairing attack were most often attacked as they were leaving Damietta. Molly Greene, Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants: A Maritime History of the Mediterranean (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 117.

  75. 75.

    Greene, Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants, 124 and Peter Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), 27. It is true that the convent was destroyed more than once by the local population but it was always rebuilt.

  76. 76.

    Masson, Histoire du Commerce Français, 604. An attempt to install a vice-consul in 1731 failed. Philipp has this to say: “This was the one Egyptian port where the French consuls and the Chamber of Commerce of Marseille could not exert their control. It was here that the Greek Catholics achieved their first important entry into the trade with Europe—much to the chagrin of French merchants, in Alexandria, Rosetta and Cairo.” Philipp, The Syrians in Egypt, 24.

  77. 77.

    Crecelius and Badr, “French Ships,” 272.

  78. 78.

    Crecelius and Badr, “French Ships,” 257. Eyal Ginio, too, notes the close connection between Thessaloniki and Rosetta. “When Coffee Brought About Wealth and Prestige: The Impact of Egyptian Trade on Salonica,” Oriente Moderno n.s., 25 (2006): 93–107.

  79. 79.

    For a discussion of the origins of the maritime communities in Rosetta and Damietta see Greene, Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants, 122–31.

  80. 80.

    His job was to receive the merchandise from its owner and to certify that it had been loaded on board. Crecelius and Badr, “French Ships,” 251 and 268.

  81. 81.

    I thank Zoe Griffith for this very valuable information from the court records of Damietta and Rosetta. Email correspondence February 28, 2016.

  82. 82.

    “Damiette is the earliest base of the immigrants in Egypt.” Philipp, The Syrians in Egypt, 21.

  83. 83.

    Although they did pay an annual tribute to the Orthodox Patriarch in Alexandria in order to keep the peace. Philipp, The Syrians in Egypt, 21.

  84. 84.

    Philipp, The Syrians in Egypt, 25.

  85. 85.

    Philipp, The Syrians in Egypt, 24. According to Philipp, the trade in cloth was consistent enough and lucrative enough that the Syrian traders made their first fortunes in Egypt with smuggled merchandise from France, by underselling the accredited French merchants.

  86. 86.

    Despite its development in the eighteenth century, Rosetta’s shipping access did not improve. In fact, Masson wrote that by then the Nile at Damietta could accommodate larger ships than Damietta. Masson, Histoire du Commerce Français, 603.

  87. 87.

    Mikhail, Nature and Empire, 56–57. In one case the river (a branch of the Nile) had become so shallow that a land bridge now connected an island to a village. The villagers, previously not present on the island, quickly moved in to start farming, thus provoking the ire of two other villages that had traditionally farmed on the island.

  88. 88.

    Vansleb, Present State of Egypt, 103.

  89. 89.

    Vansleb, Present State of Egypt, 103. According to Piri Reis, writing in the sixteenth century, galleys (kadırga) could sail down the Nile from Damietta all the way to Cairo. Piri Reis, Kitab-i Bahriye, 721.

  90. 90.

    Darling, “The Mediterranean,” 54.

  91. 91.

    Darling, “The Mediterranean,” 54.

  92. 92.

    Darling, “The Mediterranean,” 60.

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  1. Department of History, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Molly Greene

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  1. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Sarah Davis-Secord

  2. Salisbury University, Salisbury, MD, USA

    Belen Vicens

  3. St. Thomas University, Fredericton, NB, Canada

    Robin Vose

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Greene, M. (2021). An Incident at Damietta: 1733. In: Davis-Secord, S., Vicens, B., Vose, R. (eds) Interfaith Relationships and Perceptions of the Other in the Medieval Mediterranean. Mediterranean Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83997-0_12

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