2022/03/18 by Murray, Alan
#FOS: Arts (arts #Middle Ages #history of arts #music) #performing arts
paper · doi:10.57686/256204/6
The old adage has it that ‘the Nile is Egypt, and Egypt is the Nile’, a statement which was never truer than in the medieval period. Almost all cultivation — and consequently, settlement — in Egypt was located within a mile either side of the river’s main channel, or in the Delta into which it split north of Cairo. The fertility of these cultivated areas depended on the level of the Nile’s annual flooding, which determined whether the country’s population would have plenty, sufficiency or famine. The river was not only fundamental to Egypt’s internal economy, but it was also the key vehicle in its international trade. Spices, textiles and other high-value goods were shipped across the Indian Ocean to ports on the Red Sea, carried by camel caravan across to the desert to the Nile, and then transported to Alexandria and other cities on the Mediterranean coast where they were traded to Italian merchants for sale to Europe.