Bursa and the Commerce of the Levant

It is not an exaggeration to say that European historians of the Levant trade viewed it essentially from Venice or Genoa. They drew their evidence mainly from documents preserved in the archives of these cities. This evidence was bound to be often misleading, for the Venetians and Genoese showed little interest in internal developments in the Levant and viewed the measures taken by the Ottoman rulers only in terms of their effect upon the Levant trade. Thus it is not astonishing to find even in such a great scholar as W. Heyd the general judgements of decline and destruction of the Levant trade as a result of the Ottoman expansion 1). Just as the assertions of decline for a whole period and region in European economy in later middle-ages have been subjected to revision and often modified 2) under the light of the recent investigations, which have indicated that there were actually shifts of activities from one section to another rather than a general decline, so our own inquiries in the native sources concerning the commerce of the Levant are tending now to alter some of the widely held views since W. Heyd wrote his authoritative work. There are indeed local sources for the history of the Levant trade. The Turkish archives contain some important collections concerning the conditions of the Levant trade for the last decades of the 15th