people to rest when the city gates were shut and cemeteries. There were variations on this typology depending on the nature of the landscape, political traditions and historical events. Political unification and urban demand for foodstuffs and luxuries enlarged the circuit of exchange. Geography favoured the Muslim empire, which spread between the trading zones of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean.
For five centuries, Arab and Iranian traders monopolised the maritime trade between China, India and Europe. This trade passed through two major routes, namely, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. High-value goods suitable for long-distance trade, such as spices, textile, porcelain and gunpowder, were shipped from India and China to the Red Sea ports of Aden and Aydhab and the Gulf ports of Siraf and Basra. A boat sailing to Basra.
The crew are Indian and the passengers Arab. The transport of goods and passengers by water was cheaper, quicker and safer in pre- modern times. Illustration from the Maqamat written by Hariri (twelfth-century manuscript). The Maqamat (Assemblies) were a genre of popular Arabic literature in which a narrator tells stories of a trickster and his escapades.
From here, the merchandise was carried overland in camel caravans to the warehouses ( makhazin , origin of the word magazine which has a similar collection of articles) of Baghdad, Damascus and Aleppo for local consumption or onward transmission. The caravans passing through Mecca got bigger whenever the hajj coincided with the sailing seasons ( mawasim , origin of the word monsoon) in the Indian Ocean. At the Mediterranean end of these trade routes, exports to Europe from the port of Alexandria were handled by Jewish merchants, some of whom traded directly with India, as can be seen from their letters preserved in the Geniza collection. However, from the tenth century, the Red Sea route gained greater importance due to the rise of Cairo as a centre of commerce and power and growing demand for eastern goods from the trading cities of Italy.