“An Unknown Minority between the dār al-ḥarb and the dār al-islām”

By crossing references from both arabic sources and Genoese and Venetian archives, this article approaches a minority involved in the commercial and cultural crossroads of the Eastern Mediterranean, a place where linguistic and religious groups frequently trumped political borders. I will be referring to a group of people designated in fifteenth-century Venetian sources as Fazolati and by Genoese ones as Faiholati. The term’s precise meaning is obscure and has long resisted identification by specialists, yet my focus will go to a jurisdictional conflict in 1421, triggered by the Sultan’s attempt to expel all foreigners infringing Islamic rules of extraterritoriality. The role played by the Fazolati during this episode can help us understand, I argue, how Mediterranean peoples dealt with dār al-ḥarb / dār al-Islam divide in their daily contacts at marketplaces and in courts.