After his conquest of Trebizond Mohammed II came into conflict with Venice in 1464 and took some of her Levantine territory. War followed for nine years, in the course of which a new route of Eastern trade was temporarily opened.[28] The Venetians formed an alliance, both military and commercial, with the Turkoman Uzun Hassan, and some regions of southern Asia Minor, which had not been recovered by the Ottoman Turks since the time of Timur, furnished an opening through which spices could pass for a short time to Satalia, the present Adalia. Mohammed, however, annexed the southern regions, inflicted a severe defeat upon Uzun Hassan, and forced the Venetians to a favourable peace. Soon after this he took the Genoese possession of Kaffa in the Crimea, subjugated the Tartars of that neighbourhood, and obtained complete control of the Black Sea. The trade to the East through that sea was already practically gone. Some Genoese remained in Kaffa, and the Venetians obtained sailing and trading rights which were continued formally for sixty years.[29] But for about three centuries the Black Sea was used by hardly any other ships than those of the sultan’s subjects. A considerable trade upon it supplied Constantinople with food and various raw materials, some of which were exported to the West.[30] The conquests of Mohammed II undoubtedly contributed in some degree to the obstruction of the northern routes, but their importance, both in time and extent, was secondary. What measure of reduction they accomplished in the Levant trade at the north served to increase the trade along the southern routes,[31] and we have seen that these conquests accomplished no discernible permanent elevation of prices in the West.[32]
In the war of Bayezid II with the sultan of Egypt, during the years 1485 to 1491, caused by the latter’s giving asylum to the former’s brother, Prince Jem, the Turkish troops were thoroughly defeated. The course of oriental trade through Syria and Egypt was not in the least molested by the Turks before the year 1516. Along the northern routes, whose outlets were in their hands, they made no effort to stop the flow of wares. In times of peace and order in Persia many caravans passed east and west, exchanging wares from the Aegean Sea even to the far interior of Asia. There continued also a regular movement north and south to Aleppo, and thence to Bagdad and Mecca and the East. If the Turks had hindered oriental trade, they had checked it but slightly. During their frequent wars commerce was more or less disturbed; but the wars usually ended in an increase of territory which furnished a wider commercial opportunity.