Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Egypt was now the single strongest power between Morocco and the Persian Gulf; Cairo alone was populated by perhaps 600,000 people, making it fourteen times larger than contemporary London. It stood at the intersection of the spice route that ran from the Red Sea to the Nile and then to the west of Africa, and al-Nasir’s efficient administration meant that the Egyptian sultanate collected a percentage of the trade passing through. The Muslim traveler Ibn Battuta, journeying from his home in Tangiers to Mecca to perform the hajj, came to Cairo in 1325 at the midpoint of al-Nasir’s reign. 'Boundless in the profusion of its people, peerless in beauty and splendor,” he marveled, “she is the crossroads of travellers, the sojourn of the weak and the powerful. . . ." [Bauer: Renaissance World, Kindle Edition, Location 7480]