The crafts and craftsmen in Cyprus from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries

The main task of this work is to study a history of the craft, to identify the craft professions, the types of professional associations of craftsmen and handicraft production, the continuity and discontinuity of Byzantine and Western European forms of craft organization in Cyprus in the XIII–XV centuries. The author comes to the conclusion that an eclectic craft system has been formed under the Lusignan in Cyprus, combining Western European and Byzantine traditions. The kings did not interfere with the Greek handicraft structures that had been established before the crusaders, and allowed the Greek Cypriots to retain the corporate forms of craft organization inherited from Byzantium. The Kings of Cyprus adopted the Byzantine corporate system of handicrafts and artisans in the most profitable areas of economy: sugar, salt and camelot production. In other fields dominated the “free craft”. Cypriot handicraft as a whole is characterized by weak competition, weak ties between artisans, free access to the market of Western European craftsmen who were not subjects of the king, and by difficult access to the international market of local producers.