As the eleventh century progressed, the Muslim forces surrounding the Eastern Roman Empire were gaining strength and squeezing the Byzantine Empire. The Seljuk Turks had taken the Holy Lands in Syria and Palestine from the Byzantines. They then invaded Byzantine Asia Minor and by 1081 had captured almost all that region. A huge slice of the old Eastern Roman Empire was now under Muslim rather than Christian control.
Fearing for the survival of the Byzantine Empire, Emperor Alexius Comnenus appealed to the West for help and in 1095 Pope Urban II agreed. He called for the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont to ‘liberate the Church. of God’. After a rallying speech from Urban II, an army came together numbering around 60,000 men in total and some 6000 knights.
This First Crusade was remarkably successful and over a period of seven years much of the Levant was conquered and four ‘Crusader States’ were established: Having a Christian foothold in the largely Muslim Middle East had an incredibly significant impact on Western trade. Despite the constant warfare that occurred during the long period of the Crusades, the Italian merchant cities maintained active trade with many ports in the Levant. The larger cities became active mercantile centres with traders in residence from Arabia, Iraq, Byzantium, North Africa
and Italy. Specialized markets arose where locals and foreigners could purchase a wide array of goods from silks and spices to basic foodstuffs, leather goods, cloth, furs and other manufactured goods. Much higher quantities of exotic goods began entering Europe than ever before including the spices (especially pepper and cinnamon), sugar, dates, lemons, cotton cloth and Persian carpets.
The Italian states of Venice, Genoa and Pisa grew very wealthy through their trade, and they gained a lot of additional support transporting Crusader armies and pilgrims to the Holy Land. To get to and from the centres of trade along the eastern Mediterranean, Christian, Jewish and Muslim traders moved remarkably freely across hostile lands. The great Muslim chronicler Ibn Jubayr who travelled in the Middle East during the twelfth century wrote: “One of the astonishing things that is talked of is that though the fires of discord burn between the two parties, Muslim and Christian, two armies of them may meet and dispose themselves in battle array, and yet Muslim and Christian travelers will come and go between them without interference. In this connection we saw at this time, that is the month of Jumada al-Ula [in the Islamic calendar], the departure of Saladin with all the Muslims troops to lay siege to the fortress of Kerak …. This Sultan invested it, and put it to sore straits, and long the siege lasted, but still the caravans passed successively from Egypt to Damascus, going through the lands of the Franks without impediment from them. In the same way the Muslims continuously journeyed from Damascus to Acre (through Frankish territory), and likewise not one of the Christian merchants was stopped or hindered (in Muslim territories) …. Agreement exists between them, and there is equal treatment in all cases. The soldiers engage themselves in their war, while the people are at peace and the world goes to him who conquers.”
Adapted from: Hancock (2021) Chapter 13. Spices, Scents and Silk: Catalysts of World Trade. CABI.
Figure. The Crusader States in 1135. Wikimedia Commons, Amitchell125
Catalysts of trade and exploration 