Part 1192

"During the Tang Dynasty the intercourse between China and other considerable powers was not only closer but conducted on more nearly equal terms than at any other time. … The neighbouring kingdom of Tibet is first mentioned in the annals for 634 A. D. as sending ambassadors with tribute and being able to raise a large and formidable army. … Appeals from Persia and India for help against the Saracens were addressed to China more than once in the 7th and 8th centuries; and the heir apparent to the Persian throne resided for a time as hostage at the court of China. … But for the physical structure of the continent, which isolates India and China, while freezing Tibet and nomadizing Tartary, the spread of Arab conquest round or across the desert would have reached a point near enough to bring about a collision with China. As it was, a general impetus was given to foreign travel and foreign commerce; and … colonies of traders established themselves in the southern ports, as well as along the continental trade routes. … About the year 700 A. D. a market for strangers was opened at Canton, and an imperial commission appointed to levy duties. In 714 A. D. we hear of a petition of foreign merchants, arriving by way of the southern sea, which is forwarded from the coast in quite modern fashion for the emperor's consideration. It set forth all the precious things which the merchants could bring from the countries of the West, and represented them as only desirous of collecting medicinal drugs and simples. Unfortunately for the traders, they arrived at the beginning of a new reign, when a vigorous attempt had been made to put down the luxury of the court. … It was concluded to take no further notice of the petition. Foreign trade continued to exist on sufferance, but so far as the Chinese were concerned, it was limited by the attitude of the Government to a moderate exportation of staple commodities, paid for in foreign coin or precious metals. What China had to sell was much more important to the Western nations than anything she or her rulers could be prevailed upon to buy; and so long as the trade dealt with surplus manufactures, like silk, or natural products, like musk or rhubarb, and did not endanger the local food supply, it was not interfered with. In 794 A. D. complaints were made that trade was leaving Canton for Cochin China, but the traders' schemes for recovering or pursuing it were discouraged by the Government, which opined that there must have been intolerable extortions used to drive it away, or a want of natural inducements to bring it, and quoted the Shoo: 'Do not prize strange commodities too much, and persons will come from remote parts.' Arab geographers and travellers of the 9th century show what a development had been reached by foreign commerce under this modified freedom. The Jewish merchants described by Ibn Khordadbeh as speaking Persian, Latin, Greek, Arab, Spanish, Slavonic, and Lingua franca, and trading by sea and land to the remotest regions, had their representatives at Canton; and the four trade routes, enumerated by Sir Henry Yule, enabled all the great commercial communities to try their hand at the China trade. The first of these routes led from the Mediterranean over the Isthmus of Suez, and onwards by sea; another reached the Indian sea viâ Antioch, Bagdad and Bussora and the Persian Gulf; a third followed the coast of Africa by land from Tangiers to Egypt and thence by Damascus to Bagdad, while the fourth led south of the Caspian Sea and north of the central Asian desert to the gates of the Great Wall. The Chinese traders either met the Western merchants at Ceylon, or themselves came as far as the mouth of the Euphrates."

_E. J. Simcox, Primitive Civilizations, book 4, chapter 12, section 2 (volume 2)._

COMMERCE: Mediæval. The Arabs.

The earliest date to which any positive statement of intercourse between the Arabs and the Chinese "appears to refer is the first half of the 5th century of our era. At this time, according to Hamza of Ispahan and Masudi, the Euphrates was navigable as high as Hira, a city lying south-west of ancient Babylon, near Kufa, (now at a long distance from the actual channel of the river), and the ships of India and China were constantly to be seen moored before the houses of the town. Hira was then abounding in wealth, and the country round, now a howling wilderness, was full of that life and prosperity which water bestows in such a climate. A gradual recession took place in the position of the headquarters of Indian and Chinese trade. From Hira it descended to Obolla, the ancient Apologos, from Obolla it was transferred to the neighbouring city of Basra, built by the Khalif Omar on the first conquest of Irak (636), from Basra to Siraf on the northern shore of the gulf, and from Siraf successively to Kish and Hormuz. Chinese Annals of the Thang dynasty of the 7th and 8th centuries, describe the course followed by their junks in voyaging to the Euphrates from Kwangcheu (Canton). … The ships of China, according to some authorities, used to visit Aden as well as the mouths of Indus and Euphrates. I do not think that either Polo or any traveller of his age speaks of them as going further than Malabar, the ports of which appear to have become the entrepôts for commercial exchange between China and the west, nor does it appear what led to this change. Some time in the 15th century again they seem to have ceased to come to Malabar. … The Arabs at an early date of Islam, if not before, had established a factory at Canton, and their numbers at that port were so great by the middle of the 8th century that in 758 they were strong enough to attack and pillage the city, to which they set fire and then fled to their ships. Nor were they confined to this port. … In the 8th century also the Arabs began to know the Chinese not only as Sinæ, but as Seres, i. e. by the northern land route. … Besides … communication by land and sea with Arabia, and with the various states of India, … there existed from an old date other and obscurer streams of intercourse between China and Western Asia, of which we have but fragmentary notices, but which seem to indicate a somewhat fuller mutual knowledge and freer communication than most persons probably have been prepared to recognise. Thus, China appears to have been well known from an early period to the Armenians."

_H. Yule, Cathay and the Way thither, preliminary essay (volume 1), pages lxxvii-lxxxii._

{3705}

After the Arabs began their career as a conquering people, under Mahomet and his successors, and took possession of the great ancient fields of Asiatic and African commerce, with its highways and its capital seats, from Ispahan to Palmyra, Damascus, Baalbec, Tyre, Alexandria, and the old Carthaginian ports, they quickly caught the large ideas of trade that were then opened up to them. They improved the early caravan routes and established new ones in many directions. They dug wells, made cisterns and built caravansaries, or public places of shelter for travelers and traders, along the important desert roads. The pilgrimages which their religion encouraged had a lively traffic connected with them, and by spreading one language and one set of customs and laws over the wide region which they ruled, they helped commerce as the Romans had done. From Bagdad, the new capital city which they built on the Tigris, nearly opposite the deserted ruins of Babylon, on the other side of the Chaldean plain, they carried on direct trade with India, through Afghanistan; with China by three routes through Bokhara, or Tartary; with Siberia and with Russia, to the very center of it, through the agency of the Turkish and Tartar races. This city of Bagdad became a marvel of magnificence under the early Arabian caliphs. Other cities of Asia that acquired importance in manufactures or trade, or both, during the period of Arabian power, were Ispahan, in Persia, the woolens and linens from which were equally noted for their fineness; Damascus, in Syria, which produces cutlery of steel, and especially sword blades, that have never been surpassed, and which gave the name of "damasks" to certain raised patterns in linen that are well known by that term to this day; Herat, in Afghanistan, which was famous for its carpet looms and for its cultivation of saffron and assafœtida; Balkh and Khotan, in Bokhara, the former of which, on the banks of the Oxus, was a populous seat of trade between China, India and the West. From its great antiquity, Balkh was called "the mother of cities." In their native country, the Arabs, during this brilliant period of their history, increased the ancient trade which they had carried on by sea, with India, on one hand, and with the eastern coasts of Africa, on the other. They extended the latter far south of the limits of ancient Ethiopia, and even to the island of Madagascar. There are few settlements now existing on the east African coast, below the straits of Babel-Mandeb, which were not of Arabian origin. The pilgrimages to Mecca, their holy city, where the remains of Mahomet were interred, made that a great market and both industry and commerce were enlivened throughout the Arabian peninsula. As masters of Egypt, the Arabians reorganized with fresh vigor the ancient caravan traffic with central Africa and with the countries on the Upper Nile. Alexandria, it is true, lost much of its former importance. This was owing, in part, to the bitter hostility that existed between the Mahometans and the European Christians, which broke up, for a long period, nearly all open commerce between the two. But Alexandria was also hurt by the rise of new Arabian cities, in Egypt and on the Barbary coast, which drew away some of the trade that had centered almost wholly at Alexandria before. Cairo, the modern capital of Egypt, stood first among these and became a wealthy seat of many manufactures and of much commercial exchange. The interior caravan traffic of Egypt centered principally at Syene, while Temnis and Damietta were busy productive towns. Within the old Carthaginian dominions, west of Egypt, on the Mediterranean, the Arab conquerors revived a traffic quite as extensive, perhaps, as the greatest that ancient Carthage had controlled. Not far from the site of that ancient emporium, and twelve miles from the modern city of Tunis, they built the now forgotten city of Kirwan, which was one of the largest and most magnificent of its time. It was a point from which numerous caravan routes led southward into the heart of the African continent, even beyond the great desert, as well as eastward to Egypt and westward to the Atlantic coasts and Spain. Many flourishing towns surrounded this African metropolis and were the centers of many different activities, such as the cultivation of grain, the making of salt, the rearing of silk-worms and the production of silk. In Mauritania, which embraced the modern empire of Morocco and part of Algiers, the Arabs introduced the same spirit of enterprise. In their hands, the barren country—which has since become almost a desert again—was made fertile, through wide regions, by extensive irrigation, and produced wheat, olives, grapes, dates and other fruits in great abundance, besides feeding flocks and herds of sheep, goats, horses, asses and camels in rich pastures. The people became skilful in several manufactures, including weaving and dyeing, the making of silk and gold thread, the mining and smelting of copper and iron, the preparation of soap and the tanning of leather. From the Atlantic coast of their Mauritanian dominion, the Arabs pushed their traffic far down the western shores of the continent, while they opened caravan routes to the interior quite as widely, perhaps, as they did from Kirwan and from Egypt. The chief city that they founded in Mauritania was Fez, which still bears witness to its former glory in a lingering university, or collection of Mahometan schools; in the remains of many mosques, and in a vast number of caravansaries. The native inhabitants whom the Arabs found in Mauritania derived from their country the name of Moors. They embraced the Mahometan religion and joined their Saracen conquerors in invading Spain, A. D. 712. This led, in Europe, to the applying of the name "Moors" to the whole of the mixed races which took possession of southern Spain, and finally gave that name to all the Mahometans on the western Mediterranean coasts. But the Moors and the Arabs were distinct races of people. The conquest of southern Spain gave the Arabs the finest field in which their energy and genius were shown. They made the most of its mineral treasures, its delightful climate and its fertile soil. On the remains of Roman civilization, which Vandals and Visigoths had not wholly destroyed, they built up, with wonderful quickness, a new culture—of industry, of manners and of taste, of art, of literature, of government and of social life—that was splendidly in contrast with the rude state of Europe at large. The trade of the Spanish Moors was considerably extended among the Christians of Europe, notwithstanding the religious enmities that opposed it. {3706} The products of their skilful workmanship were so eagerly desired, and they controlled so many of the coveted luxuries found in Africa and the East that their Christian neighbors could not be restrained, by war nor by the commands of the church nor by the hatred which both stirred up, from dealings with them. With other parts of the Mahometan dominion, and with the countries in commercial connection with it, the trade of Moorish Spain was active and large. In exchange for the varied products which they received, they gave the fine fabrics of their looms; exquisite work of their goldsmiths and silversmiths; famous leather; iron, quicksilver and silver from the old Spanish mines, which they worked with new knowledge and skill; sugar, the production of which they had learned and introduced from India; olive oil, raw silk, dye-stuffs, sulphur and many commodities of less worth. The career of the Arabs, in the large region of the world which they conquered, was brilliant but not lasting. The energy which carried them for a time far ahead of their slower neighbors in Europe showed signs of decay before two centuries of their career had been run.

COMMERCE: MEDIÆVAL. Byzantine Trade.

"The commerce of Europe centred at Constantinople in the 8th and 9th centuries more completely than it has ever since done in any one city. The principles of the government, which reprobated monopoly, and the moderation of its duties, which repudiated privileges, were favourable to the extension of trade. While Charlemagne ruined the internal trade of his dominions by fixing a maximum of prices, and destroyed foreign commerce under the persuasion that, by discouraging luxury, he could enable his subjects to accumulate treasures which he might afterwards extort or filch into his own treasury, Theophilus prohibited the persons about his court from engaging in mercantile speculations, lest by so doing they should injure the regular channels of commercial intercourse, by diminishing the profits of the individual dealer. … During this period the western nations of Europe drew their supplies of Indian commodities from Constantinople, and the Byzantine empire supplied them with all the gold coin in circulation for several centuries. The Greek navy, both mercantile and warlike, was the most numerous then in existence. Against the merchant-ships of the Greeks, the piratical enterprises of the Egyptian, African, and Spanish Arabs were principally directed. Unfortunately we possess no authentic details of the commercial state of the Byzantine empire, nor of the Greek population during the Iconoclast period, yet we may safely transfer to this time the records that exist proving the extent of Greek commerce under the Basilian dynasty. Indeed, we must remember that, as the ignorance and poverty of western Europe was much greater in the 11th and 12th centuries than in the 8th and 9th, we may conclude that Byzantine commerce was also greater during the earlier period. The influence of the trade of the Arabians with the East Indies on the supply of the markets of western Europe has been overrated, and that of the Greeks generally lost sight of. … The Byzantine markets drew their supplies of Indian and Chinese productions from Central Asia, the trade passing north of the caliph's dominions through the territory of the Khazars to the Black Sea. This route was long frequented by the Christians, to avoid the countries in the possession of the Mohammedans, and was the highway of European commerce for several centuries. Though it appears at present a far more difficult and expensive route than that by the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, it was really safer, more rapid, and more economical, in the 8th, 9th, and 10th centuries. This requires no proof to those who are acquainted with caravan life in the East, and who reflect on the imperfections of ancient navigation, and the dangers and delays to which sailing vessels of any burden are exposed in the Red Sea. When the Venetians and Genoese began to surpass the Greeks in commercial enterprise, they endeavoured to occupy this route; and we have some account of the line it followed, and the manner in which it was carried on, after the East had been thrown into confusion by the conquests of the Crusaders and Tartars, in the travels of Marco Polo. For several centuries the numerous cities of the Byzantine empire supplied the majority of the European consumers with Indian wares, and it was in them alone that the necessary security of property existed to preserve large stores of merchandise. Constantinople was as much superior to every city in the civilised world, in wealth and commerce, as London now is to the other European capitals. And it must also be borne in mind, that the countries of central Asia were not then in the rude and barbarous condition into which they have now sunk, since nomade nations have subdued them. On many parts of the road traversed by the caravans, the merchants found a numerous and wealthy population ready to traffic in many articles sought after both in the East and West; and the single commodity of furs supplied the traders with the means of adding greatly to their profits. Several circumstances contributed to turn the great highway of trade from the dominions of the caliphs to Constantinople. The Mohammedan law, which prohibited all loans at interest, and the arbitrary nature of the administration of justice, rendered all property, and particularly commercial property, insecure. Again, the commercial route of the Eastern trade, by the way of Egypt and the Red Sea, was suddenly rendered both difficult and expensive, about the year 767, by the Caliph Al Mansur, who closed the canal connecting the Nile with the Red Sea. The harvests of Egypt, which had previously filled the coast of Arabia with plenty, could no longer be transported in quantity to the ports of the Red Sea; living became expensive; the population of Arabia declined; and the carrying trade was ruined by the additional expenditure required. The caliph certainly by this measure impoverished and depopulated the rebellious cities of Medina and Mecca to such a degree as to render their military and political power less dangerous to the central authority at Bagdat, but at the same time he ruined the commerce of Egypt with India and the eastern coast of Southern Africa. Since that period, this most important line of communication has never been restored, and the coarser articles of food, of which Egypt can produce inexhaustible stores, are deprived of their natural market in the arid regions of Arabia. {3707} The hostile relations between the caliphs of Bagdat and Spain likewise induced a considerable portion of the Mohammedan population on the shores of the Mediterranean to maintain close commercial relations with Constantinople. A remarkable proof of the great wealth of society at this period is to be found in the immense amount of specie in circulation. … The poverty of Europe at a later period, when the isolation caused by the feudal system had annihilated commerce and prevented the circulation of the precious metals, cannot be used as an argument against the probability of this wealth having existed at the earlier period of which we are treating."

_G. Finlay, History of the Byzantine Empire, 716-1057, book 1, chapter 4, section 1._

COMMERCE: MEDIÆVAL. Venice and Genoa.

In the slow revival of commerce which took place in Christian Europe, during the later half of the middle ages, no one city or people can be said to have taken a lead from the beginning. At various points, north and south, on the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, on the Baltic, on the Rhine and other rivers which flow into the North Sea, and on the Danube, the Dnieper and the Don, centers of trade were growing up in a gradual way, out of which it would be hard to name one that ranked much above the rest for many generations. But the 11th century brought a great commercial leader to the front. This was Venice. The circumstances of the founding of Venice, in the 5th century, and the history of the rise of the singular republic, are given elsewhere.

See VENICE (page 8602).