The stench of the country is extreme, as is also its filth, from the stink of the fish and the blood of camels which are slaughtered in its streets."
About A.D. 1500 the Turks conquered Al-Yaman, and the lawless Janissaries, "who lived upon the very bowels of commerce,[1]" drove the peaceable Arab merchants to the opposite shore. The trade of India, flying from the same enemy, took refuge in Adel, amongst its partners.[2]
The Turks of Arabia, though they were blind to the cause, were sensible to the great influx of wealth into the opposite kingdoms. They took possession, therefore, of Zayla, which they made a den of thieves, established there what they called a custom-house,[3] and, by means of that post and galleys cruising in the narrow straits of Bab al-Mandab, they laid the Indian trade to Adel under heavy contributions that might indemnify them for the great desertion their violence and injustice had occasioned in Arabia.
This step threatened the very existence both of Adel and Abyssinia; and considering the vigorous government of the one, and the weak politics and prejudices of the other, it is more than probable that the Turks would
- ↑ Bruce, book 3.
- ↑ Hence the origin of the trade between Africa and Cutch, which continues uninterrupted to the present time. Adel, Arabia and India, as Bruce remarks, were three partners in one trade, who mutually exported their produce to Europe, Asia, and Africa, at that time the whole known world.
- ↑ The Turks, under a show of protecting commerce, established these posts in their different ports. But they soon made it appear that the end proposed was only to ascertain who were the subjects from whom they could levy the most enormous extortions. Jeddah, Zabid, and Mocha, the places of consequence nearest to Abyssinia on the Arabian coast, Suakin, a seaport town on the very barriers of Abyssinia, in the immediate way of their caravan to Cairo on the African side, were each under the command of a Turkish Pasha, and garrisoned by Turkish troops sent thither from Constantinople by the Emperors Salim and Sulayman.
