_ 136 _ products. As we have already seen, the only Important Ocean trade was that in horses shipped to Chaul, Dabhol, Goa, Bhatkal and Honwar(A). Further south there was another region of international trade constituted by the Malabar ports; these had always been prosperous thanks to the areas which produced pepper and ginger. Recent alterations in physical geography had been responsible for changes by which some places benefitted whilst others lost. The great floods of the Periyar river (1341) brought about the decline of Cranganor to the benefit of Cochin; also, the old port of Eli had become silted up and abandoned in favour of Cannanore a few decades before the advent of the Portuguese. These changes had led to Calicut gaining primacy at the expense of the old city of Kollam(B). There were three factors in the rise of Calicut: one was the safety of its waters, where pirates never ventured, another was the strictness of the prevailing Institutions to protect foreign traders against fraud, and finally the official protection given to Muslims by the Hindu ruler. Muslim traders from all over the Old World, from Tlemcen to Canton, were attracted to the markets of Calicut with (A) In the Portuguese these two places generally figure as ‘Baticala’ and ‘Onor’ respectively. (B) This is the ‘Coulão’ of the Portuguese and ‘Quilon’ of the English sources.
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