I've just come back from a few days in Istanbul. As usual, trips out to the old capital of the Byzantine Empire do more than allow the chance to gawp at jaw-droppingly beautiful art or to admire monuments that in some cases are nearly two thousand years old. It is a stunning and captivating city (as it always has been). It is tempting to walk around the city as though it was a museum, taking in a 5th century bath-house here, a 10th century church there, mosques built at the height of Ottoman power peering out above the Byzantine city walls.
The Istanbul skyline I wanted to use my time in the city not for wonderment, but for more practical reasons. I have been working on a text that has long been attributed to the Emperor Leo VI, who ruled Byzantium between 886-912, and acquired the nickname 'the Wise', which as far as imperial/royal nicknames go, is a good one. (I have my doubts about the attribution of the text for a number of reasons, but that's another matter.
Known as the Book of the Eparch, the text deals with the regulation of trade in Constantinople. It sets out a blue-print for how commerce worked in the Byzantine capital. Business were clustered together, with silver-smiths in one area, grocers in another; candle makers were over here; blacksmiths were over there. Traders had to be members of guilds, each with their own code of practice - and with punishments too for as and when these were breached. If you let down your fellow saddle-makers, for example, you could expect to have your head shaved and be whipped.
Trade was supervised by an official - the Eparch - who was responsible for making business run smoothly. The Eparch and his team were like Trading Standards officers: they checked that no one was being ripped off, and that transactions were fair: one of the things they cracked down on was to stop sharp traders swindling their customers.
Trade was supervised by an official - the Eparch - who was responsible for making business run smoothly. The Eparch and his team were like Trading Standards officers: they checked that no one was being ripped off, and that transactions were fair: one of the things they cracked down on was to stop sharp traders swindling their customers.
The Grand Bazaar I headed to the Grand Bazaar to see if there were any lessons I could learn that would help me understand the Book of the Eparch better - and get a closer sense of how dealers that were ultimately competing also co-operated with each other. The guild structure was great if you wanted to keep rivals out of business; but not so good if you were selling the same product as the person on the stand next door: how could you stop margins being destroyed ? Is the Book of the Prefect, in other words, one of those Byzantine texts that is more than it seems, and less than it is?
Tamper-proof Enlightenment came quickly. The first thrill was finding the scales-shops. In a perfect echo from a thousand years ago, having accurate and certified scales was one of the key things that the Eparch and his team cracked down on. Frequent checks were made to check that scales were properly calibrated, to prevent wonky sets that enabled customers to be over-charged and let nifty dealers make tidy (and unethical) profits.
Silver goodies If the Eparch would have been pleased to see tamper-proof digital scales, then he'd have been satisfied too with the way that the precious metal dealers were also clustered together in a direct parallel with how they were bunched a millennium ago. This makes and made security easier (important when there are high value objects involved); it's important too because much of the silver trade now (and presumably then) is between dealers whose eye for spotting value is never sharper than when it comes to their competitors. Having dealers near each other helps rationalise prices - and that was good for the non-specialist consumer who could get second, third and fourth opinions from onlookers.
But the best lesson I learnt was from studying the layout of the many stalls in the bazaar. It occurred to me as I paced up and down that the stall-holders selling knock-off football shirts and flawless copies of Louis Vuitton suitcases function as members of guilds in all but name. They control the market - since the space in the Grand Bazaar is finite; they carry stock that ultimately comes from the same source - whether leaking out the back door of textile factories in Turkey or produced by skillful counterfeiters close by; and they all have a vested interest in getting sales without cannibalizing each others' business.
So I conducted a brief series of experiments, based on trying to see how where I said I came from, what I was wearing, and how interested I looked could condition the prices I was quoted. I set my self the task of trying to buy a Barcelona FC replica shirt - the closest parallel I could think of to the sort of foreign textiles that appear in the Book of the Eparch.
So I conducted a brief series of experiments, based on trying to see how where I said I came from, what I was wearing, and how interested I looked could condition the prices I was quoted. I set my self the task of trying to buy a Barcelona FC replica shirt - the closest parallel I could think of to the sort of foreign textiles that appear in the Book of the Eparch.
Do you have one with Lionel Messi ? Prices swung wildly, depending on the mood, personal outlook and day's business of the stall holders: some quoted nearly treble what others suggested; opening prices were considerably lower late in the day than in the morning; saying I was from Spain produced lower price-pointing than saying I was British; in a sign of the times, the highest prices came when I said I was Russian.
And in all this, the structure of the markets in medieval Constantinople became clearer, as did the point of the Book of the Eparch. The regulation of trade was not about imperial control, about market supervision or about preventing market abuse (the three elements normally focused on by modern scholars); in fact, it's all about free trade. If you want to buy a fake Bayern Munich shirt today, you know you have to head to the Bazaar; no one forces you to buy from one stall rather than another - so you have the choice. And no one forces you to pay a set price; it's all up to you. The joy of the free market....
And in all this, the structure of the markets in medieval Constantinople became clearer, as did the point of the Book of the Eparch. The regulation of trade was not about imperial control, about market supervision or about preventing market abuse (the three elements normally focused on by modern scholars); in fact, it's all about free trade. If you want to buy a fake Bayern Munich shirt today, you know you have to head to the Bazaar; no one forces you to buy from one stall rather than another - so you have the choice. And no one forces you to pay a set price; it's all up to you. The joy of the free market....
You have the choice too for how many stall-holders you want to bargain with, how many different traders you want to try to set off against each other to get the best deal. And therein lies the skill and the art for both seller and buyer. The dance is a painful one as my experiments showed: opening a discussion about pricing kicks off questions about my children, my jacket, my shoes, my knowledge of the country, my favourite food, whether I smoked, which music I liked. The purpose, like a spider spinning a web, is to entrap - and to do so by wearing you down: you can walk away at any time; but if you want to ask 40 stallholders how much that fake shirt will cost and to try to beat them down, it will take all day.
And at that point, equilibrium is reached: the trader's profit is balanced by the amount of energy and time the buyer is wiling to spend negotiating with multiple sellers. If the price is too high, it is worth moving on - even though that is normally the cue for the trader to restate his offer. But eventually, you reach a point where it is no longer worth squeezing the price lower and you succumb. Everyone wins - the stallholder gets his cash with whatever the profit is; the buyer gets his shirt; and the next door trader sits and waits for the next punter to fly past.
And at that point, equilibrium is reached: the trader's profit is balanced by the amount of energy and time the buyer is wiling to spend negotiating with multiple sellers. If the price is too high, it is worth moving on - even though that is normally the cue for the trader to restate his offer. But eventually, you reach a point where it is no longer worth squeezing the price lower and you succumb. Everyone wins - the stallholder gets his cash with whatever the profit is; the buyer gets his shirt; and the next door trader sits and waits for the next punter to fly past.
'Lovely jubbly' I've always thought the threat of shaving and flogging errant traders was a little unrealistic and unreasonable - not least since as anyone who's visited the Grand Bazaar will tell you, those traders have the gift of the gab. Lovely jubbly, the lucky man said, as he wrapped a Barcelona shirt into a bag for me. I'm still mulling what the equivalent would have been in 10th century Constantinople....
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