By admin on July 19, As Lisbon became the prime market for luxury goods to satisfy the tastes of the elite classes all across Europe. The prosperity of Lisbon was threatened when the Ottoman Empire invaded and conquered the Arab territories of North Africa, Egypt and the Middle East in the 15th century.
The Turks were initially hostile to the interests of Lisbon and its allies in Venice and Genoa; consequently the trade in spices, gold, ivory and other goods suffered heavily. The merchants of Lisbon, many of them descendants of Jews or Muslims with links to North Africa, reacted by seeking to negotiate directly with the sources of these goods, without using Muslim mediators.
They learned that the gold, slaves and ivory brought to Morocco in the great caravans travelled through the Sahara desert from the Sudan which at that time included all the savannas south of the desert, the current Sahel. The new strategy of the merchants of Lisbon β Christian and Jewish Portuguese, Italian and Portuguese-Italian β was to send ships to the sources of these valuable products.
Prince Henry, based in the city of Tomar, was the major proponent of this initiative,. The ready access to large amounts of capital and knowledge of the Orient that the Templars and the Jews had were key to achieving the objectives of the Lisbon merchants.
Although Prince Henry was the driving force of this project, it was not actually of his own design, but rather had been conceived by the merchants of Lisbon. Those who supported the monarchy financially by the payment of taxes and customs tariffs, making it virtually independent of the resources of the territorial nobles, bent it to their own mercantilist purposes.
