Local Trade Networks in Medieval Sicily: The Evidence of Idrisi

Historians of the kingdom of Sicily, myself included, have been strangely reluctant to make use of the information about the economy contained within the Book of King Roger by the north-African scholar Muhammad al-Idrisi. In part this was the result of the poor reputation of existing editions and translations. The nineteenth-century translation into French by Jaubert, for all its faults, has provided a basis for the accessible new version of the sections dealing with Europe and Africa by Henri Bresc and Anneliese Nef. ¹ Even the edition and translation by the distinguished scholars Amari and Schiaparelli contained uncertainties about places and identities. ² Other editions and translations concentrated on particular regions described by Idrisi, such as Spain, North Africa, the Indies and even Finland and Poland. ³