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The commodities sent to western markets by the Red Sea route were mostly natural products either of Arabia itself, or of India, Ceylon, or south-eastern Asia-spices, aromatics, drugs, dyes, and precious stones-·"-but there were some manufactures such as textiles and, later, porcelain. Spices were much used in medieval European cookery both as preservatives and to flavour the great quantity of salt meat then eaten in winter in northern countries, where a large number of animals were killed in autumn, owing to the lack of winter feeding-stuffs before turnips were introduced. Spices were thus a very important item of trade, and almost the whole available supply reached Europe through the Levant. Pepper, ginger, canel, cinnamon, cardamoms, cloves, mace, nutmegs, and cassia were sent from Calicut, the great emporium in southern India, either up the Persian Gulf to Basra and thence to Aleppo and Beirut, or else to Aden, or later to Jidda, there to be transhipped to gelbas, the small boats which carried them to Tor, whence they were taken by Damascus to Beirut or by Cairo to Alexandria. From Beirut and Alexandria they were distributed to European and north African ports mostly by the merchant galleys built specially by the Venetian State to carry light, valuable cargoes. By the close of the fifteenth century the cargo of spices brought by these galleys from the Levant is estimated at 3,500,000 lb. annually, of which 2,500,000 lb. came from Alexandria, nearly half being pepper.l

Shoals and uncertain winds, however, made navigation difficult in the Red Sea. The gelbas sailed inshore and slowly, anchoring every night, and many were wrecked, so the Basra route was often used for the rarer spices, such as nutmegs and cloves, which deteriorated on a long voyage. Some spices were also imported for home consumption by the Arabs, who use ginger and cloves to flavour coffee. Com~ mercially by far the most important and usually the cheapest of the spices was pepper; next came ginger, much used in Europe to make spiced wine. Among other items in this trade were aloes-those of

Socotra being famous-alum, ambergris, sandal wood, Brazil wood, camphor, cotton, lac, mastic, myrobalans, rhubarb, sugar, sapphires, emeralds, and pearls. There was a big demand for aromatics, often used as disinfectants. The extensive silk trade mostly followed more northern routes. The chief Arabian products concerned were frankincense, myrrh, precious stones, balm, and aloes. A little canel and ginger grew in south Arabia. The use of coffee, introduced from Abyssinia, was established in Arabia by IS00 in spite of theological opposition; I it was not yet exported to Europe.