48 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
the fifteenth and sixteenth century in the great discoveries both of geography and natural science and in the final triumph of European arms and enterprise throughout the world.” [1] The above may strike as an exaggerated description of the enduring effects of the Crusades but there is no doubt that they imparted a liberal education to the Europeans and fostered trade by giving a permanent footing to merchants inlands where the dominions of the Christain rulers had been destroyed.
The Italian Republics were immensely rewarded for their help to the Crusaders. Besides many privileges each one acquired “spheres of influence” exclusive of the other anticipating the modern “Spheres of influence” in China. They all rivalled each other for the control of the marts behind the Levants. “The Moselm hinterland to the Crusading Syria possessed four chief markets—Aleppo, Damascus, Hems or Emesa, and Hawath, beyond which lay the still greater marts of Bagdad and the lesser Emporia of Mosul and Bassora or Basra converging the line of the Tigris, Aleppo was a head centre of the trade route from the Abbasside Caliph’s ‘metropolis’ to Antioch and Laodicea on the western side. This route ... Edrisi calls the great avenue of the trade of Irak, Persia and Khorasan, and the silk market of Allepi proved its connection with the still more distant countries of the Far East. Even at the close of the thirteenth century many Venetian traders were residents here for the sake of commerce in Seric goods, as well as in alum. The figments and the pepper found at Antioch by the Crusaders, on the capture of the city, also bore witness to an Indian commerce with the mediterranean by this path, and the elder Sanuto is probably right when he says (at the beginning of the 14th cen.) That in the old time most Oriental goods passed along this way to the Roman Sea.” [2] The rapid movement of troops by Saracens and the Christains did not materially affect the Red sea route to India and Alexandria continued to be the “market of two worlds.”
These Italian Republics secured the Oriental commodities and started commerce with “ultra-montane lands in the north of the
1 Brasely, Vol. II, p. 395.
2 Brasely Vol. II, p. 441.