There was intense competition between the Italian cities, and none of them were ever overburdened by moral compunction. During the thirteenth century Genoese traders in the Black Sea port of Caffa struck a deal to run slaves captured in the Caucasus by the Mongols to the Mamluk rulers of Egypt, shipping them to the Nile delta via the Black Sea and Mediterranean, whereupon the captives would be impressed into the Mamluk army. Effectively this meant that the Christian Genoese were directly responsible for supplying workers to a power that was doing its best to crush the western crusader states
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