136 chapter three
ghazan also made a name for himself with his initiatives to impose
some order on the actual workings of commerce itself. he ordered that
merchants’ account books be checked rigorously, but also that profit mar-
gins and prices should be within reasonable limits.333
ghazan and his immediate successor Öljeitü had justified reputations
as promoters of commerce, and showed much more concern than any
other ilkhan to secure the infrastructure needed for trade to flourish:
under their patronage, an entire merchant quarter was built at tabriz,
with 24 large caravanserais, 1,500 shops of all kinds and countless crafts-
men’s workshops.334
there were other attractions however which encouraged the Western
merchants to make the long journey from the Black sea to mongol persia,
more even than these amenities.
above all we should note the extraordinary variety and abundance of
goods brought to tabriz from all corners of the known world. the politi-
cal geography of the chinggisid era had made the city the commercial
crossroads of the most significant trade routes.335
the ilkhans thus secured the fundamental preconditions for an increase
in trade, very attractive for Western merchants: as well as providing secu-
rity, they contributed in two ways to ensuring that the prices for goods
from distant persia were competitive on mediterranean markets, where
many of the goods, particularly spices, faced fierce competition from
wares offered in the ports of nearby egypt.336
information at ayas, knew quite well the route linking that port in asia minor to tabriz,
but he clearly knew less about the trebizond-tabriz-ormuz route than might be expected
from his perspective on the sidelines.
333 spuler, Mongolen, pp. 335, 358.
334 Karpov, Impero, p. 32.
335 see above, pp. 47–49.
336 if we bear in mind that sea transport makes goods cheaper whilst transport over-
land makes them dearer, we can well understand that the mamluk state had incompa-
rable advantages in its ability to levy customs duties on the traffic on the shortest land
route between the two great sea basins which produced complementary wares, the indian
ocean and the mediterranean. sanudo/Bongars, p. 23, describes the situation as follows:
Per magnam vero commoditatem navigii sive dextrum, quam vel quod habent Saraceni,
maior pars speciariae et aliorum mercimoniorum quae ab India conducuntur ad Occidens,
ab ista parte [= cairo] in Alexandriam conducuntur; de quibus percepit Soldanus in diver-
sis locis tantum de thelloneo quod tertium valoris omnium specierum aerarium suum intrat,
propter quod thezaurizat, preter immensam utilitatem quam mercatores et populi sui exinde
consequuntur. By comparison, the spices brought into Western europe suffered economi-
cally from having arrived by the longer route through the ilkhanate and the Black sea
(cf. chapter 1.1.3).