Antioch

We reached Antioch after a long journey through Persia and Interior Syria. Antioch, like Merv, was down in its luck. Formerly one of the largest cities in Christianity, its population was tiny compared to its heights. It was now in ruins. I would estimate that only 70,000 people remained whereas it formerly had a population of over a million people. It had fallen out of Christian hands just a few years ago and had been filled with Muslims. The crusades had failed to save Antioch and there was few Christians left. We also felt very unwanted and were threatened a few times by some of the Muslim citizens. The only thing that kept them from slashing our necks was Ibn who convinced them that we were friendly. We wanted to quickly leave the city so we sold all of our silk for a small profit. The Muslims refused to pay top dollar for the goods and we didn't really want to disagree with them for fear of our lives. While in town we learned that Adrianople had been conquered by the Turks and Greece was rapidly being conquered by the Turks. We decided that we could not go home and instead we decided to go to somewhere similar to our home. We would have to abandon Greece and instead we would head to Italy. We decided we would settle in Venice, a cosmopolitan city that was also a common place for Greek refugees. We boarded a ship and headed off to get away from all the War.