1. Introduction
The Levant trade is defined as the trading relations between Central and Western Europe and the Levant (from the Italian levante, “rising [sun],” i.e. the east) – the regions of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East (Mediterranean world). Ever since the first edition of Wilhelm Heyd’s Geschichte des Levantehandels (1858), there has been an abundant and uninterrupted tradition of research on the Levant trade [7].
From the Roman Imperial…