The Ottoman and Persian Empires 63

Ottoman pashas had long ceased to exercise any real authority, and
the unhappy country was torn by the struggles for supremacy of
the Mamluk beys. Their tyranny and oppression of the weak went
uncontrolled. 'In no province did Muslim fervour burn so bright
against the infidel; nowhere was the power of the Sultan more re-
laxed; and the Franks who dwelt there wrere subjected to a regime
of extortion and ill-treatment at the hands of the beys, which in its
insolence and regularity far exceeded that experienced elsewhere
in the Levant. . . . The natives seem to have had an innate antipathy
to all Europeans, and lost no opportunity of molesting or reviling
them with ferocity and fanaticism.'1 The situation was temporarily
improved by All Bey, who tried to reform the financial system and
the administration of justice and suppress the brigandage of the
Bedouin. In 1770 he declared his complete independence of the
Sultan, and allied himself with adh-Dhahir, the governor of
Galilee, who had expelled the Turkish officials from his province,
revived the derelict port of Akka for the export of cotton and silk,
and was in the habit of distributing free seed to the fellahin and re-
mitting their taxes in bad years. Before the two rebels could
achieve much in their respective provinces, however, they met
their deaths in 1773 at the hands of jealous rivals.

In antiquity the Mediterranean had been the main focus of
European civilization and commerce; and though the importance
of that sea as a channel of cultural contacts had been diminished
when the Muslims overran and conquered its southern shores, the
Crusades had done much to restore its former commerce. Even
after the expulsion of the Franks from the Levant, the Mediter-
ranean trading-cities, especially Venice and Genoa, had continued
to enjoy a lively commerce with the Muslim East. In the mean-
time, however, the small Atlantic kingdom of Portugal had suc-
ceeded in the fourteenth century in freeing itself from the Muslims,
and under the inspiration of Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-
1460) her seamen began to explore the Atlantic coast of Africa
southwards. Henry's general motive was evidently to carry on the
Crusades by an attempt to outflank the Dar ul-Islam both strategic-
ally and commercially; to divert the trade in the gold and other
1 Wood, op, cit., 124, 234,