The trade route, or the Incense Road, consisted of a network of major ancient trading routes linking the Mediterranean world with Eastern sources of incense (and spices), stretching from Mediterranean ports across the Levant and Egypt through Arabia and India.
By the time of King Solomon, about 967 BC, the current of trade was in full flow and he profited hugely from the taxes he imposed on the incense passing into and through his domains.
It was at its peak from the third century BC until the second century AD, thus spanning nearly one and a half millennia of existence. This in itself gives a clue as to its importance to generations of cultures and civilizations.
In the ancient period, south Arabia and the Horn of Africa were the major suppliers of incense, while in modern times the commercial center for the trade in gums has been Aden and Oman. Early ritual texts from Egypt show that traders brought incense to the upper Nile region.
The most spectacular evidence of this trade comes from frescos on the walls of the temple at Thebes dated to around 1500 BCE, commemorating the journey of a fleet that the Queen of Egypt had sent to the “Land of Punt”.
They show five ships, piled high with treasure, and on one of them 31 small incense trees in tubs can be clearly distinguished.
It was during the first millennium BC and into the Roman period that a prosperous civilization built largely on the vast income from this trade rose in south Arabia.
The peninsula Arabs had a monopoly on the production and trade of two of the most valued commodities of the time: Frankincense and myrrh.
These aromatic resins grew only in eastern Yemen and southern Oman and in some parts of Somalia. Every temple and wealthy home in the Mediterranean and Near East burned the resins on altars, and purchasers were prepared to pay its weight in gold. As a result the South Arabians grew tremendously wealthy.
Babylonian and Assyrian records detail the existence of the incense trade, but it was not until the Arab Nabatean tribe took an interest and began to dominate the trade that the Europeans began to take notice. It was the Nabateans who monopolized not only the Incense Road but the Silk Road. Deprivation of these luxury items from the powerful governing classes finally brought unwanted attention that eventually led to the downfall of the Nabateans.
At its peak, some 3,000 tons of incense per year moved along the trail. The journey, estimated by the Roman historian Pliny the Elder to take 62 days from end to end, was not a gentle stroll in the desert. Far from it, as it took in harsh and arid environments and provided sandstorms, brigands and tax collectors.
As well as incense and spices, merchants brought gold, ivory, pearls, precious stones, feathers, ebony and textiles from Africa, India, and the Far East to Roman markets.
The route meandered along the western edge of Arabia’s central desert about 150 kms inland from the Red Sea coast. The overland trade routes originally began in Hadhramout, the easternmost kingdom of South Arabia, and ended at Gaza, a southern Palestinian port on the Mediterranean Sea.
Stopping points, some towns, some cities and many just a simple oasis or even dry open spaces in the desert, lined the route at an average distance of 40 kms apart.
The vicissitudes of travel — especially in the form of thieves — put pressure on the exact route and, in an attempt to avoid raids, caravans would vary their exact path to preserve as much of their goods as possible.
As kingdoms and towns grew wise to the idea of taxation for ‘safe passage’ the merchants would switch routes. The decline of many conurbations was caused by excessive taxation on the passing trade.
The decline of the towns after 24 BC resonated with the development of more reliable sea transport.
Until then, the Nabateans had moved large caravans of spices from the Far East, Frankincense and myrrh from south Yemen and other rare items to the Mediterranean ports of Gaza and Alexandria.
Although subject to natural disasters, the sea route reduced the regular attentions of tax collectors and bandits and gradually replaced the land route as the Nabateans took to the water.
From Petra, which stood halfway between the opening to the Gulf of Akaba and the Dead Sea at a point where the Incense Route from Arabia to Damascus was crossed by the overland route from India to Egypt, the Nabateans effectively controlled the overland incense route.
In order to release the route from the Nabatean control, military expeditions were undertaken, without success, by the magnificently named Antigonus Cyclops, emperor of Syria and Palestine. However, Nabatean control over trade increased and spread in many directions.
The replacement of Greece by the Roman Empire as the administrator of the Mediterranean basin led to the resumption of direct trade with the East and the elimination of the taxes exacted previously by the middlemen of the south.
The Greeks had tried with some success to sidestep the attentions of the Nabateans and sought to open a direct route. Such was the importance of the products carried along the trade route to the Greek and later Roman civilizations.
According to one historian, Mylo Kearny (The Indian Ocean in World History. 2003), “the south Arabs in protest took to pirate attacks over the Roman ships in the Gulf of Aden. In response, the Romans destroyed Aden and favored the Western Abyssinian coast of the Red Sea.”
The monopoly of the middlemen weakened with the development of monsoon trade, forcing the Parthian and Arabian middlemen to adjust their prices so as to compete on the Roman market with the goods now being bought in by a direct sea route to India. Indian ships sailed to Egypt as the maritime routes of southern Asia were not under the control of a single power.
The third century AD was a significant time in the history of the incense trade in Arabia. During the political and economic crisis of that century the nature of the trade changed dramatically. Prior to that time the incense route from south Arabia seems to have continued to function. Much of this trade however seems to have been brought to a standstill by the poor economic conditions of the third century.
“Our history now plunges from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust,” mused Dio Cassius, on the period following the death of the last “Good Emperor,” Marcus Aurelius (180 AD).
In 293 AD the Tetrarchy (government power administered by four people) was instituted by the Roman emperor Diocletian and marked the end of the crisis of the third century and recovery of the Roman Empire. The Tetrarchy lasted until 313 AD, when internecine conflict eliminated most of the claimants to power, leaving Constantine in the West and Licinius in the East.
When the economic situation improved again under the Tetrarchy many things had changed. The two main routes in use seem to have been the Wadi Sirhan, now carrying trade that formerly would have passed through Palmyra, and Aila, receiving goods from India and Arabia, which before had gone to the Egyptian Red Sea ports.
The trade continued, at a lower level as sea routes and trade from Western Europe opened up and merchants becoming more adventurous loosened the stranglehold of the Arab traders. A side effect of the decline of the incense trade saw Yemen take to the export of coffee via the Red Sea port of Al-Mocha.
Following the Roman-Persian Wars Khosrow I of the Persian Sassanian Dynasty, noted Kaveh Farrokh, captured the areas controlled by the Roman Byzantine Empire.
The Arabs, remarked historian Josef W Meri, led by Amr ibn Al-Aas, crossed into Egypt in late 639 or early 640 AD. This advance, he said, marked the beginning of the Islamic conquest of Egypt and the fall of ports such as Alexandria, used to secure trade with India by the Greco Roman world since the Ptolemaic dynasty.
Finally, the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in the 15th century, marking the beginning of Turkish control over the most direct trade routes between Europe and Asia.
So ended the fabulous story of the incense route. Its historical importance in the development of culture both East and West is incalculable. The trade supported civilizations, started wars, created huge wealth and sustained nations.
In some sort of recognition of the huge historical importance of the incense route, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee meeting on Nov. 27, 2000 in Cairns, Australia attached World Heritage Site status to The Frankincense trail in Oman.
The official citation reads: “The Frankincense trees of Wadi Dawkah and the remains of the caravan oasis of Shisr/Wubar and the affiliated ports of Khor Rori and Al-Balid vividly illustrate the trade in Frankincense that flourished in this region for many centuries, as one of the most important trading activities of the ancient and medieval world.”
It is recognition in some small way for a historical period so hugely important in the development of both Eastern and Western civilization.