Istwa Nou

Between the seventh and the fourteenth centuries the Muslim ruled lands sat across the middle of the landmass joining Africa, Asia and Europe, and the routes through them carried more than goods. Silk, gold and gunpowder moved along those connections. So did the writings of Aristotle, which reached Latin Europe through Arabic. So did religions, and so did plague. Africa sat inside this system. It supplied the gold behind Mediterranean currency and held the southern end of the Indian Ocean routes. When European ships worked out how to sail round Africa in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they took over a network that was already running, by finding a sea route past the African and Asian merchants who had held the middle of it for centuries. From 1492 the Americas and the Pacific were added, which made the network global for the first time and slid the centre of gravity of world commerce from the Middle East to the Atlantic coast of Europe. The compass, the caravel and the cannon were themselves borrowed.