A Fragile City?

1
A Fragile City?

• Gernet The impression of order and prosperity
  given by the South China is illusory. The
  edifice was fragile and ready to collapse at the
  first vigorous push administered by the
  barbarians.
• But Quanzhou, before and after the Mongol
  conquest, seemed anything but fragile
• Ibn Batista Great city, superb indeed
• about one hundred huge junks together
• it is the greatest city in the world
• Friar Odoric Pordenone of Friuli All Italy has
  not the amount of ships that this one city has

2
Foreigners in Zaitun (Quanzhou)

• Quanzhou was a vast coastal metropolis, with a
  changing and heterogeneous population
• A city in social and cultural flux
• Large foreign colonies of merchants, including
• Franks (Western Christians),Saracen (Muslims),
  Jews
• Archaeologists found proofs to confirm economic
  activities of foreign peoples
• Inscriptions of Muslim, Nestorian Christian,
  Catholic, Manichaean, and Hindu

3
Free Trade Economy?

• The large volume of growth in trade made Quanzhou
  a teeming metropolis characterized by its intense
  commercial activity and development
• Did this lead the city to become a free trade
  zone similar to certain entrepôt in the modern
  world?
• Gernet no! because of bureaucratic controls
• Dancona yes! Based on what he witnessed
• Evidenced by the citys thriving mercantile
  economy, vigorous manufacture, and lavish
  consumption
• Powerful and freethinking merchants were engaged
  in a struggle for dominance with the mandarinate
  and were able to get the mandarinate involved in
  trade

4
Merchants and City Life

• Merchants and craftsmen organized guilds
• The jewelers, pawnshops, food, gilders,
  apothecaries and doctors
• Guilds too many and fell into confusionpeople no
  longer followed the rule
• Many rich merchants became richer and tried to
  raise themselves to the rank of nobles
• They were ready to pay the price to buy the title
  of nobility
• They spent greatly adoring themselves with silks,
  caps and high shoes of nobles
• Merchants and their trade led people to wander
  about the city at night
• They taught the common people to devour all that
  comes in their path.

5
Products

• Silk of all colors
• Including cloth of green and gold silk which was
  a wonder to behold, the workmanship never before
  seen in the entire world (p.141)
• There were also rich satins, of which the world
  has not seen the like, the richest being sewn
  with small pearls (p.141)
• Spices
• Sugar, saffron, ginger, galingale, cassia and
  camphor, indigo, and alum
• Porcelains
• Iben Batista China made the most beautiful
  porcelains in the world