28 A Short History of the Middle East
agricultural progress was of special benefit to the landowning
class, but wider circles of the population must also have profited •
from it. Sea-borne trade through the Persian Gulf, already of great
antiquity owing to the eminence of Mesopotamia as one of the
earliest centres of urban civilization and commerce, underwent a
great revival, with Basra assuming great importance as the port of
Baghdad. By about 850 Muslim ships had reached China to trade
for silk, and there was a considerable Muslim colony at Canton;
some Muslim traders pushed further north, and probably reached
Japan and Korea. Trade with East Africa was less important, but
was carried as far south as Madagascar. There was even some re-
vival of trade between the Levant ports and those of Christian
Europe, especially Venice and the ports of southern Italy, with
Jews playing an important part as middle-men, since they enjoyed
a comparative toleration from both sides which neither Christian
nor Muslim was yet prepared to extend to each other. More im-
portant than the Mediterranean trade at this period, however, was
that with the Swedish masters of Russia and the Baltic, evidence
for which is furnished by the enormous numbers of Muslim coins
found in that region; they were struck in the mints of Tashkent and
Samarqand and extend over a period from A.D. 700 to 1500. Mus-
lim indirect influence even reached the British Isles: a gold coin
struck by King OfFa of Mercia in the eighth century closely imi-
tates an Arabic dinar, even to the Arabic inscription; and a gilt-
bronze cross found in an Irish bog bears the inscription Vismillah
(in the name of God) in Arabic characters.1
This material prosperity has become legendary through the
popularity of the Arabian Nights, with their stories of Baghdad
under the Abbasid caliph Harun ar-Rashid (786-809), the con-
temporary of Charlemagne with whom he was on friendly rela-
^tions. Of the immense cultural superiority of the Muslim East to
^Western Europe at this time there can be absolutely no question.
With its material wealth there went also an increasing interest in
matters of the intellect. The rising Muslim civilization felt the
growing need of certain branches of practical knowledge which
could be supplied by the higher civilizations on which it had im-
pinged: medicine; mathematics for land-survey, architecture, and
navigation; geography for the promotion of commerce; and
1J. H. Kramers, in The Legacy of Islam, 94 ff. Christopher Dawson, op. cit,