ABSTRACT
Historians of Mediterranean trade have been more circumspect, but nevertheless the weight of academic opinion sees the merchants exercising their great jurisdictional and commercial rights to the detriment of Latin Syria in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The complaints of Marsiglio Giorgio also contained a reference to the government’s attempts to prevent the Venetians from taking advantage of their privileges by shipping merchandise they themselves had acquired in a Muslim centre directly to Europe. The rulers of Latin Syria seem to have tried to discourage their own subjects from buying goods in the exempt markets. They appear to have had no objection to foreign merchants from Damascus and elsewhere, once they had sold their merchandise in the royal markets, going down to the European funduqs to acquire commodities to load their camels for their return home - the gate officials would of course tax what they took out of the city.
