An ancient shipwreck found off the shore of Israel and loaded with cargo from all over the Mediterranean shows that traders from the West still came to port even after the Islamic conquest of the Holy Land
The shipwreck, dated to the 7th or 8th century AD, is evidence that trade persisted with the rest of the Mediterranean despite the religious divide, said Deborah Cvikel, a nautical archaeologist at the University of Haifa and director of the dig.
"The history books, they usually tell us that ... commerce almost stopped. There was no international commerce in the Mediterranean. We had mainly smaller vessels sailing along the coast doing cabotage," she said.
But this no longer seems to be the case.
Source/Media: Reuters