Thursday, 14 August 2025

Famagusta Waterfront

Rogue Sword, CHAPTER XVI. 

At the crossroads of three continents:

Smells
paint
tar
sandalwood
cinnamon
spikenard
pepper
ginger
baled silks
barreled wines
barreled dyes
sour smell of slaves drowning spices

Ships
galleys
cogs
dromonds
dhows
feluccas

Men
Iberians
Italians
Frenchmen
Germans
Flemings
Englishmen
Moors
Armenians
Syrians
Turks
Tartars
Indians
a Cypriote labourer
a Frankish baron
slaves

Another Andersonian list-description.
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7 comments:

  1. Sean M. Brooks15 August 2025 at 06:10

    Kaor, Paul!

    A bit surprised by the presence of Indians, but I can see some adventurous Indian merchants going that far west.

    Ad astra! Sean

    ReplyDelete
  2. S.M. Stirling15 August 2025 at 17:21

    There was always trade between India, Europe, and China. Usually the goods were 'handed on' several times, but occasionally (like Marco Polo) people made the whole trip themselves. A body that was buried on an Imperial estate in 1st-century Italy has turned out to be Chinese by the DNA.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sean M. Brooks15 August 2025 at 21:12

    Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

    I did think of that, how most goods were passed along, east or west, thru a chain of middlemen. Yes, there would be exceptions, easterners or westerners, going all the way in either direction. And, during the Yuan Dynasty, there was even a short lived Catholic Diocese of Peking.

    And I wonder if Roman writers ever mentioned that Chines whose remains were found.

    Ad astra! Sean

    ReplyDelete
  4. S.M. Stirling18 August 2025 at 15:33

    Sean: we'll never know. Survival of writing from that period is seriously random, due to the low numbers of any particular written document.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sean M. Brooks18 August 2025 at 17:34

    Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

    Too true, not when books had to be laboriously copied by hand. The Bible, because of the devoted zeal of Jewish/Christian scribes, was something of an exception.

    We even have the MEDITATIONS of Marcus Aurelius because of a SINGLE surviving Ms. from the ninth or tenth centuries.

    Ad astra! Sean

    ReplyDelete
  6. Jim Baerg18 August 2025 at 19:21

    Just having abundant paper cheaper than papyrus would make for more copies of any given book even without printing. Though printing makes a much larger difference on top of that.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Sean M. Brooks19 August 2025 at 07:53

    Kaor, Jim!

    I agree, except I don't think paper was known in Europe before about 1300. And mechanical printing was not invented/used before1450.

    Ad astra! Sean

    ReplyDelete