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in 1520 there were 945 families in Valona of which 528 were Jewish, in other words, 3,600 Jews in a population of less than 5,000. Bogumil Hrabak calls sixteenth-century Valona "preponderantly a Jewish town."⁹

Valona is a natural port. The Romaniot Jews with their connections with Greece and Corfu, the Spanish Jews and their relatives in Macedonia and Bulgaria, the Pugliese Jews and their connections in Italy, and the Portuguese Jews with their acumen in international commerce, banking, and shipping transformed Valona into a large commercial center.

The Jewish merchants imported products from the Balkans such as hides, carpets, and silk and reexported them. From Italy they imported silver and gold ornaments, glassware, and other European products for reexportation. The Balkan Jews produced olive oil, wine, honey, and additional agroindustrial products for export. The salt trade, a very important element for cattle breeding, was conducted along the line Corfu-Valona-Dubrovnik. Portuguese Jews established a line of trade for spices, Istanbul-Saloniki-Valona-Dubrovnik-Venice. Over land they usually traded through Sofia to Austria, Poland, and Russia.¹⁰

In his studies Bernard Blumenkranz of the Sorbonne came to the conclusion that there was almost a Jewish exclusivity of the line between Valona and Corfu and the line between Valona and Dubrovnik. Significant, too, was that the Valona Jews had a complete monopoly on the commerce in processed hides and in pitch extracted from pine trees. He also understands that all commerce from the port of Valona was in Jewish hands.¹¹

The commerce suffered considerably at the hands of pirates and bandits. Numbers show that almost half of the dispatches from Valona to Istanbul, and an even larger proportion of those from Valona to Dubrovnik were lost to banditry, pirates, sinking of ships, and fire. So Valona Jews founded insurance companies to facilitate this commerce.¹²

Valona also had a large shopping center where Jews owned shops selling imported goods, considered quite luxurious by the standards in the Balkans during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The interesting part about shop ownership is that Jewish shipowners in Valona entered into partnerships with Jewish shopowners in the Balkans, exchanging merchandise and sharing the profit. A typical example is a document detailing such a partnership and the results as decided by the Hahams (rabbis) regarding a partnership between a shop in Skopie and one in Valona.¹³

An interesting fact is that the son of Don Isaac Abarbanel, one on the leaders of Spanish Jewry and financial adviser to the Spanish kings, Don Samuel Abarbanel had such a shop in Valona.

If we follow the family names of the main Jewish merchant families, we find almost all the sources of Jews in Valona: Catinella, Graziano--Italy; Benvenisti, Cabillo--Spain or Portugal; Mazza - Corfu; Arah - Romaniote; Trink - Germanic origin.

The trade through consuls was another system adopted by merchants, a system that helped them direct their trade from one center to another. The consuls sat in ports on the trade routes between the Ottoman Empire and its neighbors. Merchants sent their merchandise to the consuls with explicit instructions concerning the destination of goods. The consul could send goods only after receiving such instructions, and until then he kept the goods in his stores. In payment, the consul received two percent of the merchandise's value for handling the transfer, another two percent for keeping the merchandise in stores, and three per thousand for handling bills of exchange.

Ivana Burdelez, in her study on Jews serving as consuls of Ragusa found that the Ragusa authorities usually decided to appoint Jews as their consuls in Valona.¹⁴

Isak Trink was the first Jewish consul of Ragusa in Valona in 1541, followed by his nephew Angelo Samuel. He was succeeded by Yaako Kodutto, member of a Jewish family from Ancona; he held office for twenty years. After him came Daniel Kodutto, Zakaria Graciano, Josip Maestro, and reverting to the Kodutto family in 1637, Angelo Kodutto.¹⁵

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