An ancient shipwreck that was discovered 1,200 years after sinking off the coast of Israel is evidence that traders from the West still came to port even after the Islamic conquest of the Holy Land, researchers say.

It was loaded with cargo from all over the Mediterranean and dates back to around the time the largely Christian Byzantine Empire was losing its grip on the area and Islamic rule was extending its reach.

This shows that trade persisted with the rest of the Mediterranean despite the religious divide, said Deborah Cvikel, a nautical archaeologist at the University of Haifa and director of the dig that found the shipwreck.

The history books, they usually tell us that… commerce almost stopped. There was no international commerce in the Mediterranean. We had mainly smaller vessels sailing along the coast doing cabotage,’ she said.

But this no longer seems to be the case.

‘Here we have a large shipwreck, which we think the original ship was around 25 metres (82 feet) long, and…laden with cargo from all over the Mediterranean.’

Uncovered: An ancient shipwreck that was discovered 1,200 years after sinking off the coast of Israel is evidence that traders from the West still came to port even after the Islamic conquest of the Holy Land, researchers say

It was loaded with cargo from all over the Mediterranean and dates back to around the time the largely Christian Byzantine Empire was losing its grip on the area and Islamic rule was extending its reach

Artefacts on deck show the ship, which dates to the 7th or 8th century AD, had docked in Cyprus, Egypt, maybe Turkey and perhaps as far away as the North African coast.

The excavation is backed by the Israel Science Foundation, Honor Frost Foundation and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University.

The coast of Israel is abundant with ships that sank over the millennia. The wrecks are more accessible to study than elsewhere in the Mediterranean because the sea here is shallow and the sandy bottom preserves artefacts.

A storm might shift the sands and expose a relic, which is what happened with the new discovery at Maagan Michael. Two amateur divers spotted a piece of wood sticking out from the bottom and reported it to authorities.

Eight excavation seasons later, Cvikel’s team has mapped out much of the 65ft-long (20m), 16ft-wide (5m) wooden skeleton that remains.