Medieval traders as international change agents: A comment

Accounting Historians Journal, The, Jun 1994 by Scorgie, Michael

Parker [1989: 113] cited Goitein's [1967] opinion on the relative development of bookkeeping by the Jewish merchants and he noted that "the Geniza accounts, kept by Jewish merchants, were not as detailed as those kept by Italians in the late Middle Ages." Goitein [1966b: 281] stated that he "has worked through all the known collections of Geniza material," he translated and analyzed thousands of fragments held in nineteen libraries around the world. He described how the original collection had been dispersed "page 1 of a book or letter may be found in Cambridge, page 2 in New York, and page 3 in Leningrad" [Goitein, 1955: 95].

Goitein's magnum opus, based on the Genizah fragments, was a five volume set entitled A Mediterranean Society. The first volume, Economic Foundations dealt with "more than six thousand passages" from Fragments related to the world of commerce and finance [Goitein, 1967: xi]. Many of the fragments were difficult to read and Goitein acknowledged that his translations and analysis contained inaccuracies. He sought advice from experts in fields, such as accounting, in which he had no prior knowledge or experience. Yet his works showed that he had an inadequate understanding of accounting concepts and terminology and that his translations and analysis were not verified by someone who possessed these skills. For example, his description of cash receipts and payments related to the management of a house by a collector and paymaster of a charitable organization stated "His balance sheet showed the revenue on the right side, and the expenditure on the left" [Goitein, 1971: 116]. Goitein [1967: viii] regarded his work as being "that of an historian and philologist, not that of expounder of socioeconomic or political theories." Consistent with this statement, Goitein, in general, avoided making comments on the form of accounts; he preferred to leave it to others more expert than himself to describe the historical significance of the techniques revealed by the Genizah fragments. He suggested that a description of the form of the accounts ought not to accompany a translation of accounting fragments, rather that "a discussion of such details is better left to an edition of the originals" [Goitein, 1973: 273]. Such an edition has not been published.

Goitein [1966a: 28-66] described a selected set of eleventh and twelfth century accounting fragments which he attributed to bankers. Goitein's [1966a] translations and illustrations of the accounts showed that the Jewish bankers and merchants recorded cash receipts in one column and cash payments in another. From time to time the columns were footed and a balance struck. I compared Goitein's [1966a] illustrations of accounts against the original fragments held in the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection and there is no doubt that they have a bilateral form akin to a modern T account. Goitein [1966a: 30], in the presentation of the bankers' accounts, rendered one Arabic word frequently used at the beginning of an entry as debit and another word used similarly as credit. The rendering of alayhi as debit and lahu as credit is confirmed in a work produced at Cambridge by Khan [1992: 96]. He found the same Arabic words used on eighth and ninth century papyrus documents.