AEMI

NONJA PETERS
and myrrh trees were seen as a source of wealth
by its rulers. The demands for scents and incense
by the empires of antiquity, such as Egypt, Rome
and Babylon, made Arabia one of the oldest trade
centres of the world.
8 The Persian Royal Road ran from Susa, in north
Persia (modern day Iran) to the Mediterranean Sea
in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) and featured
postal stations along the route with fresh horses
for envoys to quickly deliver messages throughout
the empire. The Persians maintained the Royal
Road carefully and, in time, expanded it through
smaller side roads. These paths eventually crossed
down into the Indian sub-continent, across Mesopotamia,
and over into Egypt; The Incense trade
route or the Incense Road of Antiquity (see also
the spice trade) comprised a network of major
ancient land and sea trading routes linking the
Mediterranean world with Eastern and Southern
sources of incense, spices and other luxury goods,
stretching from Mediterranean ports across the
Levant and Egypt through Northeastern Africa
and Arabia to India and beyond. The incense land
trade from South Arabia to the Mediterranean
flourished between roughly the 7th century BCE
to the 2nd century CE. The Incense Route served
as a channel for trading of goods such as Arabian
frankincense and myrrh; Indian spices, precious
stones, pearls, ebony, silk and fine textiles;[2] and
the Horn of African rare woods, feathers, animal
skins and gold.
9 Abbreviated as CE, is an alternative naming of the
calendar era, Anno Domini.
10 http://www.nhcgroup.com/spice-history/
11 http://www.ancient.eu/Silk_Road/
12 Sogdiana, at different times, included territories
around Samarkand, Bukhara, Khujand, Panjikent
and Shahrisabz in modern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Peoples of the ancient civilization of an Iranian
peoples.
13 Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor
in the development of the civilizations of China,
the Indian subcontinent, Persia, Europe and Arabia.
It opened long-distance, political and economic
interactions between the civilizations.[5]
Though silk was certainly the major trade item
from China, many other goods were traded, and
various technologies, religions and philosophies,
as well as the bubonic plague (the “Black Death”),
also traveled along the Silk Routes. In addition to
economic trade, the Silk Road served as ways of
carrying out cultural trade between the networking
civilizations.
14 Edward Gibbon in The History of the Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire. During the Reformation
and Counter-Reformation of the 16th century,
129
historians saw the Crusades through the prism of
their own religious beliefs. Protestants saw them
as a manifestation of the evils of the Papacy, while
Catholics viewed the movement as a force for good.
During the Enlightenment, historians tended to
view both the Crusades and the entire Middle
Ages as the efforts of barbarian cultures driven by
fanaticism. By the 19th century, with the dawning
of Romanticism, this harsh view of the crusades
and its time period was mitigated somewhat, with
later 19th-century crusade scholarship focusing
on increasing specialization of study and more detailed
works on subjects. Enlightenment scholars
in the 18th century and modern historians in the
West have expressed moral outrage at the conduct
of the crusaders. In the 1950s, Sir Steven Runciman
wrote that “High ideals were besmirched by
cruelty and greed ... the Holy War was nothing
more than a long act of intolerance in the name
of God”. In the 20th century, three important
works covering the entire history of the crusades
have been published, those of Rene Grousset, Steven
Runciman, and the multi-author work edited
by K. M. Stetton. A pluralist view of the crusades
has developed in the 20th century inclusive of all
papal-led efforts, whether in the Middle East or in
Europe. Historian Thomas Madden has made the
contrary argument that “[t]he crusade, first and
foremost, was a war against Muslims for the defense
of the Christian faith.... They began as a result
of a Muslim conquest of Christian territories.”
Madden says the goal of Pope Urban was that “[t]
he Christians of the East must be free from the
brutal and humiliating conditions of Muslim
rule.”
15 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/
topic/144695/Crusades
16 Riley-Smith, J., The Crusades, Christianity,
and Islam (Bampton Lectures in America),
Columbia University Press, 2008. http://cup.
columbia.edu/book/the-crusades-christianity-and-islam/9780231146241
17 Equivalent in fact to putting a man on the moon.
18 https://books.google.com.au/books?id=4DU-
UrDAiqcIC&pg=PA14&lpg=PA14&dq=Colonial+powers+in+the+Indian+Ocean&source=bl&ots=e0G0lMa9g&sig=eEQQ7OEdg-
3MIbbGLiniJQrOFcgI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qx-
EwVartF4W7mAXqyIHoAw&ved=0CDAQ6A-
EwAw#v=onepage&q=Colonial%20powers%20
in%20the%20Indian%20Ocean&f=false
19 Religions – The rise of capitalism in the East – pre
Max Weber
20 h ttp://www.encyclopedia.com/
doc/1G2-2830906009.html
21 It included a struggle about ownership of the