At the beginning of the fourteenth century five routes were most in use: the land road through Tana from the mouth of the Don north of the Caspian Sea to China; the way through Trebizond to Tabriz and central Asia; the two roads from Lajazzo (Ayas) at the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta, one by Tabriz, the other by Bagdad and the Persian Gulf to India and beyond; and finally the route by the Nile, Kosseir, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean to southern and eastern Asia.[3] The north road was practicable as far as China for the century between 1240 and 1340, while the Mongol Empire was strong.[4] During this time foreign merchants, missionaries, and travellers were protected, and encouraged to traverse the vast Mongol territories freely.[5] These were still pagan in 1291, though the western divisions turned Moslem soon after that date. The routes which entered at Trebizond and Lajazzo nourished the small Christian states of Trebizond and Lesser Armenia, which served as vestibules to the Mongol lands.[6] Between them lay Asia Minor, the land of the Turk, broken at the time into ten small emirates, hostile in the interior to Christian strangers, but dealing freely at its ports with Western traders, and beginning to develop a commercial and piratical shipping.[7] Palestine and Egypt were under the Mameluke sultans, who permitted no foreign Christian to cross their dominions,[8] but who, as well as their subjects, derived great profit from a large trade between West and East. Christian cities, especially Venice, Genoa, and Barcelona, traded regularly at Alexandria. The popes never forgave the Mamelukes for expelling Western Christians from the Holy Land,[9] and after repeated efforts they succeeded in the second quarter of the fourteenth century in reducing Christian commerce with Alexandria to small proportions. Hence the trade by the other routes increased, and the prices of comparatively bulky Eastern wares like pepper and ginger became higher in the West.[10] But the Mongol empire disintegrated rapidly, first into large states, then into a multitude of small ones which threatened anarchy. In consequence, from about the year 1340 the northern through route to China ceased to be practicable and the ways through Persia became difficult.[11] This was the first obstruction, or rather breaking up, of the trade-routes, and in it the Ottoman Turks, who then formed a small though vigorous principality, had no part. But since all the Levantine routes were now restricted in one way or another, the Venetians and Genoese appealed to the pope for assistance; and a system of licences to trade with Egypt was developed, which in time restored the commerce of the southern route to its old prosperity. Subject to temporary fluctuations, spices became comparatively cheap, and the average price changed little, except for a slight fall, before 1520.[12]