斡脱錢とその背景(下) : 十三世紀モンゴル＝元朝における銀の動向

Abstract

During the first half of the 13th century, silver which had been. held by the people of North China dried up due to the more or less forcible introduction into the same region of the Ortaq qian 斡脱錢 money being lent by the Ortaq merchants at usurious rates. Moreover, most of silver thus absorbed from the people fell not into the hands of the members of the Mongol ruling class who invested the Ortaq qian but into the hands of the Ortaq merchants who were entrusted with the management of it. It is unbelievable that those Ortaq merchants who consisted of Uighurs and Saracens did not carry this silver to the West. The reasons for this inference are first, because it was almost impossible for the merchants to buy the special products of China such as silk, tea and porcelain in north China during this period ; second, and mainly, because the silver price continued to be extraordinarily high in the Eastern Islamic world in this period. As the shortage of silver in the Eastern Islamic world had started in the 10th century and lasted up to the first half of the 13th century, this drain of Chinese silver to the West, a phenomenon which was owing to this gap in silver prices between the East and the West, can not be regarded as having started only in the 13th century. When we study the overland trade between the East and the West since the Five Dynasties 五代 period from this viewpoint, we will find a trend towards the purchase of silver by the Uighur merchants even in the Northern Song 北宋 dynasty which abounded in the special products of China. As, a result of this drain of Chinese silver, silver price continued to rise even during the Northern Song period when the output of silver must have reached to an enormous amount thanks to the exploitation of the silver mines in the territory to the south of the Yangtze River. It rose higher in the Liao 遼 and the Jin 金 dynasties which had no silver-producing areas in their spective territories. And in the beginning of the Yuan period the silver price was double that at the beginning of the Northern Song period. Thus we must accept the fact that there was a continuous drain of Chinese silver to the West behind this phenomenon of the rise in the silver price. Here a general study of the Ortaq qian will be given a new historical importance.