In spite of their vital interest in the development of the Levant, and the power that their wealth gave them in a generation when fighting strength could be purchased so easily, Venice made no effort to oppose the progress of Ottoman conquest. On the contrary, in 1368, long before an invasion of Albania was imminent, the Senate negotiated with the Osmanlis for the reddition of Scutari. This project was again taken up in 1384, in a tentative way, during negotiations to fix the customs-duties of Venetian merchant-vessels.[389] Following the example of Ragusa and Genoa, Venice concluded, in 1388, a commercial treaty with Murad.[390] The traffic of the Italian republics with the Moslems had been denounced by Gregory X in 1272, by Boniface VIII in 1299, by Urban V in 1366, and by Gregory XI in 1372.[391] In vain the popes exhorted; in vain they threatened interdict and excommunication; in vain they held up to execration the abominable slave traffic. Trade interests alone decided the policies of the maritime cities. Their citizens never hesitated to cut each other’s throats for the opportunity of selling goods. To them the crusades were a purely commercial proposition. More than once the archives of Venice reveal the approval of the Senate upon the action of merchants who warned Moslem princes of the crusaders’ intentions. Guillaume d’Adam declared with reason that the Saracens maintained their supremacy in the Holy Land and Egypt through the support of the traders, who furnished them with Christian slaves to keep up their armies.[392] Genoa passed laws in 1315 and in 1340 against the slave traffic of the Black Sea,[393] but these laws were never enforced.[394] Venice and Genoa turned a deaf ear to papal remonstrances and to papal appeals for aid in crusades against the Osmanlis. For the sake of preserving their commerce, they flattered Murad, and aided him, indirectly at least, to subjugate the Christians of the Levant. Their children of the third and fourth generation paid to the descendants of Murad the penalty of their greed. They lost their commerce in trying to save it. XIV It was not until 1387 that Murad believed himself strong enough to measure arms with Karamania. His son-in-law, Alaeddin, whose name is reminiscent of the earlier glory of Konia, was emir of the most powerful state in Anatolia. The Ottoman historians have represented Alaeddin’s resistance of the encroachment of the Osmanlis, and his defiance of Murad, as rebellion, and have been blindly followed in this by most of the European historians. Such a conception of the conflict between the Osmanlis and the Karamanlis is far from the truth. There is no record of when and how Karamania had become subject to Murad. In fact, up to 1387, Murad had not yet extended his sovereignty over all of Tekke and Hamid, the states which bordered Karamania on the west.