In the late fifteenth century, a German pilgrim visiting Alexandria became lost in the city's unfamiliar twisting streets. After wandering for a period, he appealed to a local Muslim for guidance, using Latin because he knew no Arabic. “Fontico Cathalano” he said, probably speaking loudly and clearly as travelers often do in a foreign land, asking to be taken to the Catalan fondaco, the hostel in which he was lodging with other European pilgrims. To his great relief, he was immediately conducted to the desired location since the word he used – fontico – was very similar to the Arabic term, funduq, designating the same place. In fact, the two were cognates, and shared a long heritage going back to the classical Greek word pandocheion, an inn or hostelry.

This book traces the history of these closely related words and, more importantly, of the institutions to which they refer, from late antiquity until the eve of the early modern period in the Mediterranean world. It examines their evolution across time, space, and culture, looking at both continuities and changes. What happens to a family of institutions that endures for such a long period, in so many different places? Why does it survive, and what does this survival reveal about the thing itself and the world in which it existed? These questions can only be answered through analyzing these words and institutions within their particular cultural and chronological contexts.