The middle men

On summarising the last decades of Visigothic rule, let's consider the social implications of a generation-long drought. We're looking into the kings Egica 687-702/3, then Wittiza.

I'd start the clock at Heraclius' adventures, including edicts against the Jews.

As long as Spain was trading with Carthage and Sicily, Spain was trading with Christians. Problem: Spain's Visigoths had started, like the Vandals, as "Arian" Eunomians; Spain's peasantry was Catholic. The Catholics were well-entrenched in North Africa also, no longer under Vandal Eunomians. Heraclius was creating the polar opposite (dogmatically): a Monothelete Mediterranean. Constans II even moved his capitol to Syracuse in Sicily. The Greeks, on occasion, attempted to get Baetica back; or at least to impose Monothelete bishops upon the local "Arians". Even if they were Dyotheletes they could be called Arian or at least Nestorian.

You know who can trade across confessional borders? The... sigh... Jews can. Crypto-Jews would be their interface around the ports. Whatever the wealth of Christendom, trade came to be monopolised by the children of Abraham; and their charity did not flow to Christians.

Indeed: why would Jews help those who don't help them? Spain (mostly Toledo) reacted by various Church councils; the policies of Wamba and Erwig are oft-noted as antiSemitic. The Doctrina Jacobi remained fresh in the minds of the borderlands along the western Maghreb. Anastasius of Sinai had issued anti-Jewish texts; plenty others were around as well. And there were apocalyptic texts; I don't know that the Pseudo-Methodius was as anti-Jew as some, but the Jews had their own pseudo-'s, in the names of Zerubbabel and Bar Yohai. Egica at least didn't suppress conversos, like that Jacob; but in AD 694 he created more of those, forcibly baptising Jewish minors.

I think the AD 680s Visigoths would have been pro-Martin / pro-Maximus dyothelete Catholics and, anyway, Constantine IV and prince Justinian had returned even the Greeks to communion with Rome and Africa. Spanish / Carthage trade should have been fine, as of the later AD 680s.

Starting around AD 698, things get a little more in-flux. There's another 'Abd al-Rahman - Ibn al-Ash'ath - keeping the Umayyads from pushing their advantage; so Spaniards at least are not suffering raids. But the Greeks aren't in the game either, with the naval admiral Apsimar having taken over Constantinople as "Tiberius III" and, likewise, dealing with the east. I wrote a whole book on this, Throne of Glass.

In Spain, the drought just kept worsening. Also even if they're not needing to defend the kingdom they still aren't doing a lot of trade, eastward. Now the Jews were middlepeople again. But under a drought it was worse. In the cities, it was Jews who could afford food.