30 THE CLOSING OF THE OLD TRADE PATHS Islands, Ceylon, and apparently as far as the Malay Peninsula. A series of Arabian geographers and travellers bring down the narrative to the fourteenth century. Egypt had passed to the Saracens in 640 A. D. But under its Fatimite caliphs and later Mamluk sultans, the Indo- Egyptian trade continued to flourish, and probably gained rather than lost by the temporary interruption THE CITY OF BAGHDAD. From an old engraving. of the Syrian land route during the Crusades. Ibn Batuta (1304-1377), who traveUed for twenty-four years in Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean, declared Cairo to be the greatest city in the world " out of China," and mentions Alexandria as one of the five chief ports which he had seen. Two other of them were on the Bombay coast, and all the five (namely, Alexandria in Egypt, Soldaia or Sudak in the Crimea, Koulam or Quilon and Calicut in India, and Zaitun
