Trade and immigration in early af id Tunis: evidence from Genoa

In the 1220s, the af ids inherited the administration of Tunis, which was to become one of the most important port cities of the Western Mediterranean. Managing economic and political relations with a number of competing and mutually hostile European powers remained a critical task for the early af id rulers. Like their Almohad predecessors, the af ids sought both to encourage foreign trade and to closely monitor the presence and activities of the merchants involved in it, particularly when these were associated with powerful and potentially antagonistic European Christian rulers. This paper analyses the relationship between the af ids and the city of Genoa during this period (roughly 1220 to 1280 CE), deploying evidence from the Genoese state archives and from recently published letters from European mendicants active in Tunis in the early 1230s. Analysing these sources reveals the diversity of the social groups and commodities that changed hands across the Mediterranean during the early decades of af id rule in Ifriqiya, and argues that Tunisian presence in Genoa, while still small, was larger and more complex than has been assumed.