In the last decades of the sixteenth and the beginning of seventeenth century -that is, at the time Don Quixote was written and published-, an important change began in Spanish-muslim commercial relations. Removal of products, based on raids and plunders, thanks to north-African kings vassalage and subjection of tribes living on the coast, turned into mercantile interchanges completely normalized with those countries, impossible to be dominate. The importance and vitality of this trade is testified by the arrival of ships from Muslim countries, wheat imports from these and, last of all, American silver shipped to the quoted destinations.
