Just an addendum to yesterday's post on Aqaba, a map showing the relationship of Aqaba and al Maqnah to the important areas of Arabia. You can see the trade routes - one crossing from Oman through the Nejd to al Maqnah by caravan, the other coming up the Red Sea from Yemen and the Hadramaut or Ethiopia or Egypt to al Maqnah or Aqaba by ship. The Emir of Aqaba can grow rich on this trade!
-clash
Glad you liked it, Benoist! The Arabian Peninsula in the 1500s was the proximate source of many valuable things - pearls from Bahrain and Qatar, frankincense and coffee from Yemen and Hadramaut, tea from India via the great port of Muscat, spices from all over, all funneling into Aquaba and al Maqnah, through the Red Sea and the camel caravans, and on up to Caesarea and Jaffa and Ascalon on the Mediterranean coast.
ReplyDeleteThe Silk route was farther north, through Mesopotamia to Damascus, and on into Acre. In Crusader times, the port of Acre alone generated more wealth annually than the whole of England.
-clash