Commerce in Byzantine Empire (VI-VII. centuries)

Commerce is an economic activity which was entered into the lives of people from very ancient times. Byzantine state has been one of the states that contribute to the development of this activity. Byzantine has acquired an important place in the commercial life of the Middle Ages owing to its geographical location and policy. Byzantine has taken on an important role especially transferring in the east to west products. Byzantine transferred many valuable product of period to Istanbul and West whereby Syria, Egypt, Anatolia. These products include the most in-demand products came from silk, grain, spices, slaves, precious stones and metals. Major centers of Byzantine?s trade include especially Constantine, Alexandria, Antioch, Trabzon, Sinop, Crete, Cyprus. These centers are also centers of Byzantine customs and Byzantine has income important customs from these commercial activities. Looking at the commercial life of the Byzantine Empire changed from time to time, we see that the pricing policy of Byzantine. Product prices, excluding some specific periods does not seem too much of a ripple. Drought, delaying and passing through a hard winter, decaying products due to too much rain, hail, locusts plague, and earthquakes, fires and epidemics deterioration of the balance of supply and demand in the market is known to cause a rise in prices. Apart from this, especially with the loss of population from epidemics of the labor force has led to cutbacks in production and also a rise in prices. Byzantine had put the basic food supply crisis situations that have already made on the market and had stopped exports a large proportion of these products. Thus, it had been tried to get rid of the crisis less damage. Key Words: Commerce, Byzantine, Custom, Product, Silk, Economy.