The Levant Company was an English chartered company formed in 1592. Elizabeth I of England approved its initial charter on 11 September 1592 when the Venice Company (1583) and the Turkey Company (1581) merged, because their charters had expired, as she was eager to maintain trade and political alliances with the Ottoman Empire. Its initial charter was good for seven years and was granted to Edward Osborne, Richard Staper, Thomas Smith and William Garrard with the purpose of regulating English trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Levant. The company remained in continuous existence until being superseded in 1825. A member of the company was known as a Turkey Merchant. History The origins of the Levant Company lay in the Italian trade with Constantinople, and the wars against the Turks in Hungary, although a parallel was routed to Morocco and the Barbary Coast on a similar trade winds as early as 1413. The collapse of the Venetian empire, high tariffs, and the ousting of the Genoese from Scio (Chios) had left a vacuum that was filled by a few intrepid adventurers in their own cog vessels with endeavour to reopen trade with the East on their own accounts. Following a decline in trade with the Levant over a number of decades, several London merchants petitioned Queen Elizabeth I in 1580 for a charter to guarantee exclusivity when trading in that region. In 1580 a treaty was signed between England and the Ottoman Empire, giving English merchants trading rights similar to those enjoyed by French merchants. In 1582 William Harborne, an English merchant who had carried out most of the treaty negotiations in Constantinople to French protestations, made himself permanent envoy. But by 1586 Harborne was appointed 'Her Majesty's ambassador' to the Ottoman Empire, with all his expenses (including gifts given to the Sultan and his court) to be paid by the Levant Company. When the charters of both the Venice Company and the Turkey Company expired, both companies were merged into the Levant Company in 1592 after Queen Elizabeth I approved its charter as part of her diplomacy with the Ottoman Empire. The Company had no colonial aspirations, but rather established "factories" (trading centers) in already-established commercial centers, such as the Levant Factory in Aleppo, as well as Constantinople, Alexandria and Smyrna. Throughout the Company's history, Aleppo served as headquarters for the whole company in the Middle East. By 1588,