Cahorsins

In medieval parlance, Cahorsins, alternatively spelled Caorcins, Caorsins, Caoursins or Cahursins,[4] included merchants from Cahors but also Cajarc, Capdenac, Cardaillac, Castelnau-Montratier, Figeac, Gourdon, Rocamadour, and Souillac[5][6] They were referred to as Caorsini in Italian, Cahorsijnen in Dutch, and Kawertschen in German.

[3]: 46  Despite major lapses in documentation, evidence for the long-distance merchant activity of Cahorsins goes back to the late 12th century, with their attested presence in Marseille and Saint-Gilles in 1178 and in La Rochelle in 1194.

[8][7]: 239 By the middle of the 13th century, Cahors played a larger rôle in long-distance trade than most other cities of southwestern France, including Toulouse.

[2]: 237  In the third quarter of the 13th century, the Cahorsins were major financial system participants in London and England, on a par with Italian merchants from Florence, Lucca and Siena,[3]: 57  and some of them took over the former properties of English Jews following the Edict of Expulsion in 1290.

They may have been related with the 1294–1303 Gascon War which put an end to their prior balancing act as subjects of the King of France in and around Cahors, but active in English lands in Aquitaine and Great Britain.

[14] As late as the mid-17th century, they were still lambasted as "worse than Jews" by a legal scholar in Bordeaux, echoing similarly stereotypical language formulated in the mid-1230s by Matthew Paris.