Excerpt from A Manual of Modern History: Containing the Rise and Progress of the Principal European Nations, Their Political History, and the Changes in Their Social Condition; With a History of the Colonies Founded by Europeans

After the restoration of a native dynasty in Persia under the Sassan ides, and the establishment of the eastern empire at Constantinople, a long series of wars ensued between the Persian sovereigns, who deem ed themselves legitimate inheritors of the power of Cyrus, and the Byzantine emperors, who wished themselves to he considered succes sors of Alexander the Great. The command of the sea of Oman gave the Persians a decided advantage over the Egyptian merchants, who were forced to import oriental commodities by the tedious and danger ous navigation of the Red sea. Until the introduction of steam naviga tion, the Red sea, or Yam Suph, t as it is called by the Orientals, was universally dreaded by voyagers. The strait at its entrance was sig nificantly named by the Arabs Bab-el - Mandeb, or, the gate of tears; and it was a common proverb with eastern sailors, Yam Soph is a double-locked sea; there are six months in the year that you can not get into it, and six more that you can not get out of it. But the Per sians were not satisfied with this natural superiority having it in their power to molest or cut off the caravans, which, in order to procure a supply for the Greek empire, travelled by land to China through the northern provinces of their kingdom, they laid such onerous transit du ties ou foreign merchants, that the Greeks were forced to abandon this branch of commerce, and purchase their silk from the Persians and Sogdians. These, with the usual rapacity of monopolists, raised the price of silk to such an exorbitant height, that the Greek manufacturers, whose looms depended on a supply of this raw material, were thrown out of employment and nearly ruined.

The Emperor Justinian, eager, not only to obtain a full and certain supply of a commodity which was become of indispensable use, but solicitous to deliver the commerce of his subjects from the exactions of his enemies, endeavored, by means of his ally the Christian monarch of Abyssinia, to wrest some portion of the silk trade from the Persians In this attempt he failed but when-he least expected it, he, by an un foreseen event, attained his great object of procuring his subjects an abundant supply of silk, independent both of ships and caravans.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.