Caravan Cities

I

CARAVAN TRADE. AN HISTORICAL SURVEY

WHAT do I mean by the term ‘caravan cities’? Before answering this question I must recall certain well-known facts, and to begin with I must, at the risk of covering familiar ground, trace the configuration of Syria and Phoenicia, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Arabia (see map I). The huge quadrilateral of the Arabian peninsula is bounded on the south by the ocean and on the east and west by two of its inlets, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. With the exception of a small, fertile strip of land on the south-western coast known as ‘Arabia Felix’, and of several oases, Arabia is a land of unbroken desert. To the north the uplands and mountains of Palestine, Phoenicia, Syria, Asia Minor, and the Iranian plateau form the boundaries of this desert land, enclosing it in a semicircle. The snows and abundant rains that fall on the Lebanon, on the Taurus, and on the Iranian plateau supply water to a number of rivers large and small, such as the Jordan, Orontes, Euphrates, Khabur, and Tigris, and these in their turn form rich and fertile plains. The fertility caused by the rivers, together with frequent rains and cooling sea-breezes, transforms the coastal fringe of the Mediterranean, that is maritime Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria, into an almost continuous belt of natural gardens or rich cornfields. Behind the coastal fringe these rivers and rains have wrested from the desert a wide area of watered, or partly watered, country in the shape of a crescent and converted it into fertile grazing land for the nomadic population of the desert and potential arable land for the settled inhabitants. Moreover, the swift waters of the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Khabur, and their tributaries can be harnessed and used by the local population to irrigate and reclaim from the desert a considerable tract of land on either side of their high banks. Finally the Tigris and the Euphrates have together formed that fertile alluvial delta known as Lower Mesopotamia. If this delta were properly cared for, drained, and irrigated, it could be transformed from desert or marsh into the richest gardens, the most productive cornland, or the most admirable pasture.

Trade routes of the Near East

Such was the configuration of the Near East in antiquity and such it has remained in its general lines to the present day. An historical study of climatology undertaken mainly by my colleague at Yale, Professor Elsworth Huntington, has, it is true, revealed the fact that in ancient times the band of cultivation along the fringe of the desert varied in size. This so-called ‘crescent’ of fertile land changed according to the increase or decrease of moisture in the region, so that during the wet periods enormous sections of land became available for agriculture and for cattle-breeding, though they were arid, unproductive desert during the dry periods. During the wet periods the nomadic population of the desert not only increased in numbers but also tended to become settled. But then another period of dryness would ensue, famine would descend upon the flourishing communities of settled inhabitants, ravaging and devastating the work of man and man himself, and when its work of destruction was complete, it would be succeeded yet again by a period of moisture. Then the process of reconquering and civilizing the desert would begin anew.

In local and particular instances, historical climatology has undoubtedly often proved correct, and such changes as I have described are in general due to climatic conditions. But in the once prosperous land of Mesopotamia it is man rather than nature who is responsible for the utter desolation which now reigns. The same is true of the numerous ruined cities which stand on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates and of their tributaries, which were at one time so flourishing. In these lands man has lost the habit of continuous and productive labour which it took him centuries of training to acquire, and it is for this reason that we now see only a wilderness where once there flourished gardens, cornfields, and rich pastures. It was man, not nature, who created the canal, the dike, and the irrigation systems, without which no civilization can survive in the valleys which border the larger rivers of the Near East.

These are characteristics which hardly promise a great role in the history of the world for the area of which I am speaking. It is true that certain localities in this area were not only capable of producing sufficient for the inhabitants, but also of providing them with a surplus for export. For this purpose, however, it was not enough for the inhabitants to possess an organized system of agriculture and cattle-breeding; they needed as well a more or less organized system of trade. It is very difficult to determine whether production or barter is the first to make its appearance in a district which is able to export, for we know of no period in the history of mankind when barter was not practised. Barter is, in fact, as old as production, and the existence of a period of completely isolated domestic economy is only an imaginary creation of the brain of the theorizing economist.

The Near East was an ideal region for the development of barter. In its eastern part it is intersected from north to east by two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, and although they are not especially well suited to navigation and never became carriers of a lively traffic, their banks are so well supplied both with vegetation and water that they form a natural route for trade. To the west, in Egypt, the more placid and more easily navigable Nile, which flows northward from the south, has always been an almost perfect carrier of goods.

Lastly there is the Arabian desert which must not be regarded as a barren waste on the earth’s surface nor even as a boundary of civilization. Like the sea, the desert not only divides; it also joins, for it is a thoroughfare open to trade from every side. It has even created the means of transport for this trade, that ‘ship of the desert’, the camel. On the eastern side of the Arabian desert stretches the favoured plateau of Iran and to the south and east of it, beyond the Persian Gulf, lies the fabulous wealth of India. To the west the Red Sea separates Arabia from, yet at the same time connects it with, another legendary country, central Africa, with its precious and exotic products; while in the north the Isthmus of Suez links the Arabian desert to Egypt, and a number of excellent harbours on the shores of Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria bring it into close relationship with the Mediterranean lands, Greece, Italy, and Spain.

As soon as the earliest civilizations known to us were born in the deltas of the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Nile, and began to prosper and to develop, caravans from all parts began to journey towards Babylonia and Egypt. First came the nearest neighbours: the Arabs of the desert and the dwellers in the Iranian hills. Strings of camels followed in their tracks, shaggy two-humped beasts, the northern brethren of the elegant single-humped dromedaries of Arabia, bringing goods from the mountains of Iran. From the north, from northern Syria and Asia Minor, trains of donkeys, heavily laden, moved down the Euphrates and Tigris valleys. At the same time the first ships began to traverse the sea, putting out from Egypt, and from the shores of the Persian Gulf, from southern Arabia, and from the sea-coast of India.

These ships and caravans were laden with the goods which Babylonia and Egypt lacked, goods which were daily becoming more of a necessity and less of a luxury to civilized man. They carried stone and wood for the erection of temples, palaces, and cities, copper for the manufacture of arms and of agricultural and industrial implements; gold and silver, ivory, rare woods, precious stones, pearls, and incense for the delectation of gods and men; scents and cosmetics ever dear to the Oriental, or spices for use in cookery. In Syria and Cappadocia, on the Iranian plateau and in India, in southern and central Africa such wares abounded and in exchange for them civilized society sent her various new products: specimens of metalwork, especially weapons of the chase and war, elaborate coloured fabrics, glass beads, wine, dates, oil and fine bread were exported, the foodstuffs being especially acceptable to the half-starved Bedouin of the desert. Soon a similar intercourse arose between civilized countries, for it was impossible for them to avoid an exchange of their most recent products. Thus Babylonia would send her latest novelties to Egypt and Egypt hers to Babylonia; India would export her products to Babylonia and Babylonia hers to India.

Recent excavations in Babylonia and Egypt have penetrated to the very lowest levels of inhabited sites and they have brought to light objects from temples and palaces, houses and tombs, which date back to the earliest stages of civilization. Amongst them are some of the earliest written texts in existence. Both the objects and the texts tell us that even at this early date the oldest city-states of Sumer in Mesopotamia were linked to far distant lands by caravans: to Egypt in the west, to Asia Minor in the north, to Turkestan, Seistan, and India in the east and south-east. The discovery of similar seals in India at Harappa and Mohenjo Daro and in Babylonia at Ur, the presence of archaic gold objects of Sumerian type at Astrabad on the Caspian Sea, the similarity in type of the copper arms and utensils of Egypt, Babylonia, Syria, and Iran are further proof of this fact. A number of resemblances, not only in objects of daily use but also in the decorative motifs of Egypt and Babylonia, show the close connexion between these two lands. Even more conclusive evidence of early foreign trade is discoverable from the analysis of finds in the predynastic tombs of Ur and Kish. Beautiful objects of gold, silver, copper, and of different kinds of wood embellished with rare stones have been found here in amazing profusion, and the materials of none of them are indigenous. They were imported from a great distance, and the lion’s share in this import business fell to caravan trade.

With the advance of the centuries civilization spread over wider and still wider fields. Sargon and Naramsin, kings of Akkad in Babylonia in the third millennium B.C., were largely responsible for this by their creation of the first extensive empire known to mankind. They formed it by uniting western Asia into a single state—a policy which was followed later by Ur-Nammu of the third dynasty of Ur. This enabled them not only to strengthen the already existing lines of intercourse between various regions within the empire, but also to establish fresh connexions with their neighbours to the north, south, east, and west. The most important result of this policy was, however, the appearance of numerous trading towns in the valleys and fields of the ‘fertile crescent’ and the development of the maritime settlements of Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria into important centres of commerce. Cities appeared in Asia Minor also, and a trade was begun with the European coast of the Mediterranean Sea, where a demand upon similar commercial lines was nascent. The use of Indian, Arabian, and African goods steadily increased and commercial relations with Arabia and through Arabia with India and Africa on the one hand and with the Iranian plateau on the other gradually became more binding and led by degrees to a more efficient organization.

Business conventions came into being, trading sagacity was gradually acquired by those who had now become professional traders, and civil and commercial law gradually developed. These were first based upon customs, but at a later date written clauses came into being and we find them in Babylonia at the very dawn of civilization, not only recorded in writing but even codified. We know to-day that Hammurabi’s legal code of about the year 1900 B.C. was not the first attempt to systematize criminal and civil law. The third dynasty of Ur, which followed Sargon’s imperialistic aim, had already created a code of this type, probably intended for the use of the whole empire, whilst as early as in the year 3000 B.C. there existed thousands of contracts and agreements of the most varied kind, written in the most ancient legal language that we know—Sumerian. The legal essence of, and the formulas used in, these contracts and agreements, which are evident to all who study such documents, remained almost unchanged from the days of Sargon to the time when first Greek and, later, Roman law penetrated the Near East.

In the course of time the territories outside Sumer and Babylonia became accustomed to the rules of law and to intercourse based upon carefully defined rights, as is proved by the recently discovered fragments of an ancient Assyrian legal code, which probably dates back to the fifteenth century B.C. Another code of slightly later date belongs to the great Hittite power of Asia Minor, which grew into a cultured and well-organized state during the first centuries of the second millennium B.C.

Barter is the ancestor of commercial law, but law in return regulates barter, civilizing it and defining its wide limits. The discovery of hundreds of very early private documents of a legal character at Kul Tepe in Cappadocia, in the north-east of Asia Minor, the later Mazaka, offers an excellent illustration of this. The documents tell of the systematic exploitation of the silver and copper mines of Cappadocia and Cilicia by the combined efforts of the local population and of some immigrants from the south; these may have been enterprising colonists from a province of the Sumerian empire, the early Assyria. These colonists had arrived not later than the first half of the third millennium B.C. and soon became the business leaders of the district. Politically they were at the same time dependent on Assyria and also under the protection of the Sumero-Akkadian empire. The metals which were extracted from these mines of Asia Minor were sent both down the Euphrates to Mesopotamia and along the caravan route to the ports of Phoenicia, and more especially to Byblos. Thence they were conveyed to Egypt in the form of massive rings.

The Cappadocian documents have brought to light numerous facts of interest regarding the organization and development of caravan trade. We cannot here speak of them in detail though we may note that most of the documents formed the archives of important trading and banking houses. These firms equipped and financed the large caravans, generally composed of donkeys, which travelled south and south-west. The tablets tell us of the complicated business enterprises of the period and of the fully developed legal and civil procedure of the time, as well as of the regular and orderly work carried out by special legal bodies. As we read, it becomes evident that these documents must have had behind them hundreds of years of organized barter, and that the law which governed it must also have developed through hundreds of years. Babylonia laid the first foundations of this evolution, but as early as the third millennium B.C. we find Asia Minor introducing much which was new and original. The system in fact influenced the whole life of Asia Minor as much as it did that of Syria and of the countries connected with them.

The decay of the empires of Akkad and of Ur led to a period of political anarchy, the result of which was the autonomy of minor powers. This, in turn, was followed by a new union under the leadership of the west-Semitic dynasty of Babylonia, the dynasty of the renowned Hammurabi. During this period the political and economic life of the ancient world became increasingly complicated, though Babylonia still remained the ruling force.

One of the greatest achievements of the Sumero-Babylonian culture in the realm of trade took place at this time, that is to say the later part of the third millennium B.C. This was the introduction of a metal unit of exchange which was partly created by, and partly responsible for, an amazing development in the standard of individual life and an ever-growing complexity in the life of civilized humanity. This metal unit was the direct predecessor of coined currency, which made its first appearance two thousand years later, in the seventh century B.C., in Asia Minor and in Greece. The early unit was based upon the silver ‘mina’, with its subdivisions into ‘shekels’. This innovation was partly the work of private merchants (the earliest banker-tradesmen in history), partly that of the state.

Thus all the events of the time led to a more extensive development and to a more complex organization of caravan trade. The Bedouins of the desert and the highlanders of the Upper Euphrates or the Tigris, the inhabitants of the Iranian plateau and of Asia Minor, all of whom used to be shepherds or highwaymen, now became merchants and business men. The caravan became a definite body, it assumed the character of a complicated and carefully regulated world of its own, and it still remains the same to-day, for railways and motor-cars have not yet put an end to its strangely independent existence.

While the Babylonian kingdom was still powerful and alive, while it still ruled firmly at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates, and while its greatest rival, Egypt, far in the west, became ever more strong politically and created an amazingly high civilization, Indian and Arabian goods found an excellent market both in Mesopotamia and the countries which depended on it, and in Egypt.

Indian goods were sometimes dispatched to Babylonia by sea from the Indian ports, straight to the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates. More usually they arrived at one of the Arabian harbours, often at Gerrha on the western shore of the Persian Gulf, and thence were conducted by nomad Arabs on the backs of camels and donkeys to Babylonia. The goods produced by ‘Arabia Felix’, and purchased by the south-western Arabs beyond the Bab-el-Mandeb in Africa, either travelled across the desert to the same Gerrha and thence to Babylonia or were brought in ships along the shore either to Gerrha or directly to the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates.

Another set of important desert-routes led to Egypt. The south-western Arabs would send their own goods, the goods of India, and those of Africa, northwards along the eastern shore of the Red Sea and then across the Sinai peninsula to Egypt. Or the Gerrhaeans would dispatch the same goods and probably some of the goods of Babylonia first to the rich oasis of Tema in the heart of the Arabian desert and from this oasis to one of the stations of the shore-route along the Red Sea to Egypt.

In these early days the land-routes were much more used than the sea. The sea was as yet neither favoured nor trusted and was used only when absolutely necessary. Transport by camels across the desert was reckoned a far safer and more trustworthy method of conveyance than that by ship, and it was mostly by means of caravans that the products of India, of Arabia, and even those of central Africa were dispatched from Arabia to Babylonia, to Syria, to Egypt, or even much farther to north and to west.

It is not surprising that this regular and profitable trade with Babylonia, Egypt, and their dependencies (all civilized powers) led, as it had done formerly in Cappadocia, to the creation of organized states and of an individual, highly developed civilization in Arabia. As yet, our knowledge of the culture of eastern and southern Arabia is scanty. We are but vaguely familiar with the Gerrhaeans in the east, with the inhabitants of Hadramaut, of Catabania, or with those of the kingdoms of the Sabaeans and Minaeans on the south and south-western coast-lands. The last ruled that fertile tract of land which, even in antiquity, bore the name of ‘Arabia Felix’. Recently the travels of a number of European scholars in this fabulous land have revealed thousands of inscriptions and have made us familiar with the amazing constructions erected by these peoples, which comprise cities, fortifications, and temples. But here, as in most cases where no systematic excavations have been undertaken, we are still faced by a number of difficult problems, the chief of which is that of chronology. We may, however, conclude with safety that in southern Arabia the beginnings of order and civilization, of