Radhanite

Only a limited number of primary sources use the term, and it remains unclear whether they referred to a specific guild, to a clan, or generically to Jewish merchants in the trans-Eurasian trade network.

Many scholars, including Barbier de Meynard and Moshe Gil, believe it refers to a district in Mesopotamia called "the land of Radhan" in Arabic and Hebrew texts of the period.

[2] Two western Jewish historians, Cecil Roth and Claude Cahen, have suggested a connection to the name of the Rhône River valley in France, which is Rhodanus in Latin and Rhodanos (Ῥοδανός) in Greek.

[4] The activities of the Radhanites are documented by Ibn Khordadbeh – the postmaster, chief of police (and spymaster) for the province of Jibal, under the Abbasid Caliph al-Mu'tamid – when he wrote Kitab al-Masalik wal-Mamalik (Book of Roads and Kingdoms), in about 870.

As a result of the revenue they brought, Jewish merchants enjoyed significant privileges under the early Carolingian dynasty in France and throughout the Muslim world, a fact that sometimes vexed local Church authorities.

[10] They engaged in this trade regularly and over an extended period of time, centuries before Marco Polo and ibn Battuta brought their tales of travel in the Orient to the Christians and the Muslims, respectively.

[13] This system was developed and put into force on an unprecedented scale by medieval Jewish merchants such as the Radhanites; if so, they may be counted among the precursors to the banks that arose during the late Middle Ages and early modern period.

Sefer haDinim, a Hebrew account of the travels of Yehuda HaKohen ben Meir of Mainz, named Przemyśl and Kiev as trading sites along the Radhanite route.

[18] The slave trade appears to have been continued by other agents, for example, for the year 1168, Helmold von Bosau reports that 700 enslaved Danes were offered for sale in Mecklenburg by Slavic pirates.

Map of Eurasia showing the trade network of the Radhanites (in blue), c. 870 AD , as reported in the account of Ibn Khordadbeh in the Book of Roads and Kingdoms ; other trade routes of the period are shown in purple.
A caravan of dromedaries in Algeria . Much of the Radhanites' overland trade between Tangier and Mesopotamia was by camel.
Much of the Radhanites' Indian Ocean trade was via coastal cargo ships such as this dhow .