In early times the Near East became a center of industrial and mercantile activity as well as of agricultural production. The peasant cultivators supplied the manufacturing and trading cities with food; the skilled craftsmen made products for markets near and far. Commerce developed at first along the river highways and then on the caravan and sea routes to more distant lands. The cities of the Near East became the foci of trade routes reaching far into Europe, Asia and Africa. North and south, east and west, merchandise was carried along the rivers, across the deserts and steppes, and over the seas. Through central Asia ran the great caravan routes to China. By way of the Aegean, the Straits (the Dardanelles, the Marmora Sea, and the Bosporus), and the Black Sea men found easy water passage to the rivers of Eastern Europe, which gave access to the great Eurasian plain stretching from the Urals to the Vosges Mountains. The Red Sea and the Persian Gulf furnished high ways to East Africa and to India. The Mediterranean made trade possible with North Africa and southwestern Europe. Active local caravan routes which traversed Anatolia, Syria, Palestine and Arabia provided connecting links in theirs intercontinental transportation system. For many centuries the near east, as a nexus of trade routes, enjoyed a most favorable geographical position for economic prosperity. Connected with these geographic features, which contributed so greatly to the welfare and cultural progress of the Near East, were certain disadvantages. The caravan and sea routes became avenues of invasion accessible to the Indo-European nomads from the north and to the Turkish and Mongolian nomads from the east. The caravan routes crossed arid and semiarid lands suitable only for wandering tribes, who were ever a threat to the trade routes and the agrarian and urban population. The great wealth of the Near Eastern cities was constant temptation to invasion by “barbarian” nomads, as well as by predatory civilized states.
Gregory D. Lorson 