For European merchants, the crusader world offered a tantalizing business opportunity, thanks to its numerous coastal cities, which served as trading entrepôts connecting sea traffic from the eastern Mediterranean with the Silk Road caravan routes overland to central Asia and China. These were buzzing trade hubs: in the thirteenth century the city of Acre was said to produce more annual revenue than the kingdom of England. As a result, every major city conquered by the crusaders quickly became home to a colony or colonies of expatriate merchants trading in goods including fruits, honey and
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