SILKS, Turkey, are all raw. One advantage we have in the commerce of the Levant, in silks, wanting in those of Sicily, is, that the latter are confined to a particular season of the year; whereas the former are bought at all times. They are brought from Aleppo, Tripoli, Sayda, and from the isle of Cyprus, Candia, &c. But the principal place of commerce, especially for the silks of Persia, is Smyrna. The silks are brought hither in caravans, from the month of January to September. The caravans in January are laden with the finest silks; those of February and March bring indifferent ones; the rest, the coarsest. They all come from the several provinces of Persia, chiefly those of Ghilan and Shirvan, and the city of Schamachia, situate near the edge of the Caspian sea; from which three places, a Dutch author assures us, there have not come less than 30,000 bales of silk in a year. Ghilan produces the best and greatest quantities of silk; next to this comes Shirvan and Erivan, then Mazanderan, and lastly Astrabad; but the latter is much inferior, serving only for a manufacture mixed with cotton; that of Mazanderan and Astrabad is seldom or never exported.
Ardeuil, or Ardebil, another city of Persia, not far distant from these silk countries, is the place where silks are laid up, and whence the caravans set out for Smyrna, Aleppo, Scanderoon, and Constantinople; and it is this city, with Schamachia, that have always been esteemed the centre of the silk trade; which has been several times attempted to be removed from Smyrna and the Mediterranean, in favour of Archangel, and the White-sea, by carrying them across Muscovy, by the Volga and Dwina, two rivers that traverse the principal provinces of that vast empire.
This new course of the Persian silks into Europe was first proposed by Paolo Centurio, a Genoese, to the czar Basil, under the pontificate of Leo X. The French had the same design in 1628. The duke of Hollstein, in 1633, sent ambassadors to the court of Persia, purely with the same view: and, in 1668, the
czar Alexis Michael attempted the thing himself; but he was disappointed by the rebellion of the Cossacks, and the surprise of Astracan.
In 1688, the commerce of Persian silks had like to have been removed from Smyrna, by an earthquake, which almost overturned the whole city; and doubtless, the removal had been effected, but for the vigorous means used by the Turks to prevent it. Smyrna, however, still remains in her ancient possession; and the several nations of Europe continue every year to send their fleets to fetch away the silks; and matters are like to remain so, unless the conquests made by the late czar, along the Caspian sea, enable his successors, as it is certain he himself had such a thing in view, to put this trade into another channel.