In Consequence Of The Supply Of Silks, Spices, And Other Oriental Luxuries
Which Constantinople Derived From The Fair At Jerusalem,
(Still allowed by
the Arabians to be annually held,) not being sufficient for the demand of
that dissipated capital, and
Their price in consequence having very much
increased, some merchants were tempted to travel across Asia, beyond the
northern boundary of the Arabian power, and to import, by means of
caravans, the goods of China and India.
Towards the beginning of the ninth century, as we have already remarked,
the commercial relations of the Arabians and the Christians of Europe
commenced, and Alexandria was no longer closed to the latter. The merchants
of Lyons, Marseilles, and other maritime towns in the south of France, in
consequence of the friendship and treaties subsisting between Charlemagne
and the Caliph Haroun Al Rasched, traded with their ships twice a year to
Alexandria; from this city they brought the produce of Arabia and India to
the Rhone, and by means of it, and a land carriage to the Moselle and the
Rhine, France and Germany were supplied with the luxuries of the east. The
friendship between the emperor and the caliph seems in other cases to have
been employed by the former to the advancement of the commercial
intercourse between Asia and Europe; for we are expressly informed, that a
Jewish merchant, a favourite of Charlemagne, made frequent voyages to
Palestine, and returned with pictures, - merchandize before unknown in the
west.
Hitherto we have viewed the Arabians chiefly as fostering and encouraging
commerce; but they also deserve our notice, for their attention to
geographical science and discoveries.
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