‘Stuffing the Beaches’

In 905, Bertha, Margravine of Tuscany (c. 863–925) sent her regards to Al-Muktafi, the Abbasid Caliph (r. 902–908) in Baghdad. She sent him ‘50 swords, 50 shields, and 50 lances of the type used by the Franks, 20 garments woven with gold, 20 Slav eunuchs, 20 beautiful and elegant Slav slave girls,’ as well as birds of prey, silks, and other impressive gifts. ¹ If the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries witnessed contraction, regionalization, and abatement in long-distance trade networks, then the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries witnessed an expansion and intensification of long-distance trade; the resultant intensification of long-distance trafficking is the focus of this section. Michael McCormick has found patterns of communication and trade routes that broadly follow a Northern Arc and a Southern Arc in the ninth century. I have found similar patterns in human trafficking activity between the ninth and eleventh centuries, which is not surprising because traffickers followed trade routes wherever possible. In this chapter, therefore, I have borrowed McCormick’s model of a Northern and a Southern Arc and adapted it to the study of human trafficking patterns. I do not mean to suggest that local and regional trafficking were absent. Regional networks were the links in the chains of long-distance trade, the building blocks of the long-distance trafficking networks that we will examine, and local trafficking was certainly common, as the ninth-century deeds explored in the Introduction make clear.