Travel and Travellers of the Middle Ages by Arthur Newton

Author:Arthur Newton [Newton, Arthur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe, Medieval, Civilization
ISBN: 9781136203855
Google: Lff9AQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-11-05T16:00:20+00:00

CHAPTER VII

THE OPENING OF THE LAND ROUTES TO CATHAY

By EILEEN POWER, M.A D.Lit.

THE century lying between 1245 and 1345 is of unique importance in the history of medieval travel, because for a brief period it brought into contact the East and the West, the two centres of the civilized world; for during the Middle Ages it is true enough to say that the world had two centres, each of which thought that it was the only one, the great civilizations of India and China, proud and immemorially old, and the budding civilization of Christendom, then in all the vigour of its lusty youth.

In a sense, of course, they had always been in contact. Once before they had met and mingled, when Alexander took his Hellenism westward and left an ineffaceable mark upon the faces of the Buddhas of Northern India. Once again they had, as it were, looked at each other without meeting, when Chinese traders met the agents of Rome at the craggy city of Tashkurgan, called ‘the Stone Tower ‘, and unrolled their bales of silk on the banks of the Yarkand River.1 And although all this had become a fairy tale to the men of the Middle Ages, they were still in contact with the East in the sense that they seasoned their dishes with spices from Ceylon and Java, set diamonds from Golconda in their rings, and carpets from Persia on their thrones, went splendidly clad in silks from China and played their interminable games of chess with ebony chessmen from Siam. But for all that a black and heavy curtain shut the East and the West from each other’s sight.

For although the thriving merchants of Venice and Genoa and Pisa grew rich upon the Eastern trade, they knew it only at its termini, the ports of the Levant. From China and India merchandise could take two roads to the West. One was a land route across Central Asia, ending upon the shores of the Black Sea, or passing southward to Baghdad. But though the Greeks of Constantinople and Trebizond did an active trade in Eastern merchandise coming by this route, and though Italians were already beginning to frequent the Black Sea ports, it was impossible for them to go further along the trade routes, for all across Central Asia lay the Turks, blocking the road to the East. The other road was a sea road, separated from the Mediterranean by two land-vestibules, the vestibule of Persia and Syria, and the vestibule of Egypt. In Palestine and Syria the Christians still held a remnant of the Crusading States, with a valuable row of ports, and by treaty with the sultans at their backdoor they were allowed to journey a few miles inland to the busy cities of Aleppo and Damascus. But beyond this, to the great mart of Baghdad, the centre for the whole district, and along the trade routes to the Persian Gulf, they might not go. Here again the Turks stood in their path.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.