11 f> MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION the Byzantines. Iğut each year the Holy Sepulchre attracted thousands of pilgrims. In order to transport these, a service of ships was organized, departing from the ports of Venice, Genoa, and Marseilles. Thus began the regular communication between Italy and the Levant. The objects of luxury and the products of the warm countries, spices from India, pepper, nutmegs, ginger, cinnamon, ivory, silks from China, carpets, sugar, cotton, paper, were found only in the markets of Con- stantinople, Bagdad, and Alexandria. These products, much sought after by the western peoples, who bought them at any price, promised large profits. The people of Venice, subjects of the Byzantine empire, had begun by carrying on commerce with Byzantium. In the twelfth century they preferred to get the merchan- dise of the Orient at its source; the great commercial cities of that epoch, Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, sent their ships to the ports of Palestine, which were the depots of caravans from Damascus and from Bagdad* In the thirteenth century, after the taking of Con- stantinople, the Venetian merchants had a quarter in the city and had counting-houses even on the Black Sea, where they carried on commerce with Tre- bizond. Pisa obtained permission from the Moslem princes of Egypt and Tripoli to trade with their sub- jects; Venice and Genoa concluded similar treaties, and from that time the ships of Venice and Genoa, laden with spices and stuffs, regularly visited Alexan- dria. The relations of the Occident and Orient, begun through a war among believers, ended in business relations among merchants. The German traders who