Author Description

Madmun the Nagid played a very central role in the India trade, at least as far as this trade is reflected in the Genizah documents. The corpus of correspondence between Aden and India and Aden and the West is the most important body of documents relating to economic history preserved in the Cairo Genizah. His home served as a storehouse for goods from the Orient and the West; it was there that negotiations were conducted, and he was the person in whose hands money was entrusted, or goods of traders who had drowned at sea. He also owned ships, and established a maritime service between Aden and Ceylon.