ABSTRACT
In the third/ninth century, we have scarce information about long-distance commerce and it regards mostly the Jewish merchants called Radhanites who specialized foremost in the export of slaves from the West to the East. The activities of the urban sūq between the fourth/tenth and the seventh/thirteenth centuries, are detailed in the treatises of ḥisba dealing with the policing of the market. The practices of irrigated agriculture are also documented by the agricultural manuals. But not much information is available on the extension of such practices and on the manner in which agricultural activities in their entirety were articulated with the urban market. The same lack of information affects our knowledge of the organization of rural society. For the Nasrid period, attention has to be paid to the insertion of the Granada kingdom in the commercial circuits controlled by European merchants.
