quality:corruption
Middle Ages

Through the Middle Ages, the source of cinnamon remained a mystery to the Western world. From reading Latin writers who quoted Herodotus, Europeans had learned that cinnamon came up the Red Sea to the trading ports of Egypt, but where it came from was less than clear. When the Sieur de Joinville accompanied his king, Louis IX of France to Egypt on the Seventh Crusade in 1248, he reported—and believed—what he had been told: that cinnamon was fished up in nets at the source of the Nile out at the edge of the world (i.e., Ethiopia). Marco Polo avoided precision on the topic.

The first mention that the spice grew in the area of India was in Maimonides 's Mishneh Torah, about 1180. The first mention that the spice grew specifically in Sri Lanka was in Zakariya al-Qazwini 's Athar al-bilad wa-akhbar al-'ibad ("Monument of Places and History of God's Bondsmen") about 1270. This was followed shortly thereafter by John of Montecorvino in a letter of about 1292.

Indonesian rafts transported cinnamon directly from the Moluccas to East Africa (see also Rhapta), where local traders then carried it north to Alexandria in Egypt. Venetian traders from Italy held a monopoly on the spice trade in Europe, distributing cinnamon from Alexandria. The disruption of this trade by the rise of other Mediterranean powers, such as the Mamluk sultans and the Ottoman Empire, was one of many factors that led Europeans to search more widely for other routes to Asia.