The Sea Abandoned Again

The victory of the Portuguese, the masters of the oceans, over the Muslim seamen, determined the history of the Red Sea during the next three centuries. It was reduced again to a marginalized, sad sea. The Europeans outflanked it. The Ottomans found comfort with some coffee from Yemen. The citizens of the Arabian and of the African shores, further distanced themselves from the sea, entrenched in their mountainous or desert citadels. Only in the beginning of the nineteenth century the Red Sea began returning back to global history.