16 chapter one
to acquire the slaves which they imported from the regions north of the
Black Sea in numbers sufficient to turn back the Mongols in 1261 and to
keep them from crossing the euphrates in subsequent decades. It was
no secret that the sultans’ fabulous wealth came from levies imposed on
transit trade especially in spices from India; the Venetian Marino Sanudo
says that the customs levy was one-third of the value of goods, while other
sources put it at 10% or 20%.47 Such high levies were possible because of
the reduced costs of transport, almost entirely by water, across the Indian
ocean and the red Sea, then after a short overland portage, along the nile
as far as the port of alexandria,48 which William of tyre justifiably called
forum publicum utrique orbi.49 the city held the staple right and offered
Italian merchants, mostly Venetian, spices and other botanicals in much
greater quantities and at much lower prices than anywhere else on the
Mediterranean.50
alexandria enjoyed uncontested pre-eminence at least from the tenth
century, but was pushed aside by portuguese entrepreneurs in the space
of only a few years. the portuguese had rounded africa under Vasco da
Gama and landed on the Western coast of the Indian subcontinent for
the first time on 20th May 1498. his compatriots then launched expedi-
tion after expedition at a feverish rate, buying spices directly at source,
and in a short time succeeded in making Lisbon the principle market-
place in Western europe for oriental wares. the diversion of the flow of
trade around the cape of Good hope was already causing a collapse on
the egyptian market in 1502, along with a substantial increase in prices,51
which led to concern in Venice, whose merchants had traditionally been
the most important Western and central european importers and redis-
tributors of these goods. the Senate was aware that the fate of the repub-
lic was at stake, and in the same year they sent Benedetto Sanudo to the
47 Sanudo/Bongars, p. 23; cf. ciocîltan, Mongolii, p. 72 note 60, Labib, “policy,” p. 74.
48 Labib, “policy,” pp. 64–65: in the tenth century the centre of the spice trade shifted
from Baghdad to cairo.
49 heyd, Histoire, I, p. 378: until the circumnavigation of africa, this route was the most
convenient connection between east and West, since it minimised the costs and the risks
of transport. egypt took advantage of the opportunities thus obtained in antiquity as in
modern times (ibid.).
50 Labib, “policy,” p. 71: “Being forbidden to carry on trade in cairo itself, the Franks
confined themselves to the commercial ports of the Mediterranean, above all alexan-
dria”; p. 73: “Like Venice, egypt was a commercial middleman,” and their own merchants
(karīmī) acquired and reexported products arriving from the Indian ocean and from the
Mediterranean, with pepper being the most important ware (ibid., pp. 70–73).
51 heyd, Histoire, I, p. 519.