The continuation of the movement of the Arabs toward the west carried the cultivation of sugar over the entire northern coast of Africa and thence into Spain in the year of the conquest of Granada by the Moors (715 A. D.). It made its way to Sicily in 703; it was found growing at Assuan, on the Nile, in 766, and the Crusaders discovered important sugar plantations in Tripoli, Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Antioch and other places in the Levant. Commercial relations between these points and the principal Italian cities were established during the Crusades, and a considerable trade in sugar followed. Sugar-cane cultivation seems to have appealed to the Crusaders as a profitable venture—so much so that they actively interested themselves in it, making Tyre an important center of the traffic. King Baldwin and various orders of knighthood established large cane plantations in Antioch, Syria and Cyprus and did much to advance sugar production in those countries. The Crusaders who had acquired a taste for sugar when in the Far east naturally wished to continue its use after their return home; thus, a trade sprung up between northern Europe and Venice, Genoa and Pisa. After the fall of Acre in 1291, the Crusaders lost their foothold in Asia Minor; but Tyre, Beirut, Antioch and the valley of the Jordan continued to produce good crops of sugar, while Damascus and Tripoli became refining centers. Cyprus, still under Venetian rule, extended its trade in sugar, and sent considerable quantities annually to the mother city. All this time the production in Egypt went steadily forward. This prosperity was rudely interrupted by the aggression of the Turks. Constantinople was captured in 1453 and Trebizond fell in 1461. The other commercial towns of Asia Minor and all of Genoa’s Black Sea colonies followed in quick succession. Trade between Europe and Asia Minor decreased as a matter of course and the manufacture of sugar languished under Turkish rule. In 1517 Cairo was taken by the Turks, and Egypt became a province of the Ottoman empire, with disastrous results to the sugar industry there. In 1522 Rhodes, and in 1571 Cyprus, passed under the sway of the Turk; but by that time sugar cultivation in these islands had fallen off greatly, while in Sicily it had completely died out. Other causes militated to bring about the decline of the sugar trade in these countries. The Portuguese took sugar cane to Madeira in 1419. In 1432 they captured and colonized the Azores; and between 1456 and 1462 they acquired the Cape Verde islands. São Thomé, Principe and Annobon were annexed in 1496; and in that same year the Spaniards colonized the Canaries. Sugar cane grew luxuriantly in the mild, moist climate of these islands, and the cost of production by slave labor was so low that neither Cyprus nor Sicily could compete; consequently, the once large and prosperous sugar trade of the Mediterranean became a thing of the past.