Priestman, 2015: Indian Ocean Exchange Networks during the Early Centuries of Islam: Economic Staple or Irrelevance? (original) (raw)
Sea-Trade and Muslim Merchants: A Study of South India
It is erroneous to think that Islam expanded in India only through sword or spirituality. Indian sea trade remained an important constituent of this expansion. Rulers of south India were beset with great challenges around eleventh century when the Hindu scriptures abhorred sea trade and the Christian and Jew communities were unable to control the huge volume of Indian sea trade. As a result, Muslims from western Asia were invited and encouraged to settle down in the coastal areas. These merchants married with local women and new class of Indian Muslims namely Mapillas and Lubbais emerged. These Indian Muslims were even differentiated from the foreigners (pardesis) in contemporary records. It is therefore wrong to study these Indian Muslims as Diasporas or foreigners. The expansion of Islam in Africa, Asia and Europe helped these communities to link their trading networks to distant areas, expanding the revenue basis of south Indian rulers. Indian Muslims in south India denotes important constituent of foreign (sea) trade policy until European introduced state sponsored piratical activities to control the Indian sea trade after 1498 AD.
The Indian trade between the Gulf and the Red Sea
Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean
This essay evaluates the relative importance of the maritime trade between the Roman Empire and India along two routes that were in use: one started and ended on the Egyptian shore of the Red Sea, the other at the head of the Gulf. Both continued on land along caravan tracks to the Nile valley or through the Syrian desert to Palmyra. The latter land route, longer and presumably more cost-consuming, was used only during the 1st to 3rd centuries AD. The land link with the Far East, the so-called Silk Road, does not seem to have been regularly used. A document from Palmyra allows to estimate the value of the trade along the Syrian route as much smaller than that of the Red Sea traffic. It could have been mainly of local, Syrian importance, and lasted only as long as political circumstances allowed.
Africa and the Indian Ocean Past in High Definition, Aarhus, Denmark, 7th December 2018
Certain key assumptions surrounding the discussion of Indian Ocean maritime exchange have been so widely and frequently repeated that they have entered the realm of common knowledge. Yet it is also clear that the terms of reference applied often appear rather narrow. A basic assumption has been made that maritime exchange occurred frequently, in large volumes and over long distances, and that it constituted a substantial source of revenue that state structures benefited from on a significant scale. A clear narrative has also been established around perceived stages in the growth and intensification of long-distance exchange in which textual and archaeological finds such as the 9th century Belitung wreck and the accounts of seafaring adventure in sources such as the Akhbar al-sin wa’l-hind neatly coalesce. The point of departure here is not so much to say that the prevailing reconstruction needs to reconsidered, but simply to emphasise that it needs to be tested from an evidential perspective. One of the important means of doing so is via quantitative analysis of long-terms changes in patterns of ceramic exchange. The examination of this unedited record of economic behaviour from coastal settlements in East Africa and the Persian Gulf is starting to reveal important information not only concerning differences in the intensity of ceramic exchange between site, but also in the operation of intersecting networks functioning on a local, regional and trans-regional scale. Via this analysis we can begin to unpick some of the underlying organisational characteristics of Indian Ocean exchange.
Oman and Islamic Maritime Networks 632-1507
Oman A Maritime History, 2017
This chapter discusses Oman’s role in the rise of maritime activity during the Early through Middle Islamic periods (630-1507 CE), as it became integrated into a larger series of emerging maritime networks in the Indian Ocean and West Pacific. In particular, it emphasizes the shifting a series of relationships with East Africa, South Asia, Iraq and the Iranian mainland, highlighting the increasing cultural diversity of the Islamic Indian Ocean littoral societies reflected in Oman. Trade prospered as direct trade with China and India flourished, and Oman became increasingly integrated into both East African, Southwest Asian and Indian economies. It also examines the diverse political landscape as Islamic maritime societies became a dominant force in the Indian Ocean, and polities shifted from Caliphal tributary states and Imamates to merchant city states.
Asia in the Horn. The Indian Ocean trade in Somaliland
Archaeological Research in Asia, 2021
The Indian Ocean trade in the Horn of Africa during the Middle Ages has received much less attention than in other regions of the Islamic world, such as the Gulf and East Africa. The Horn is still too often represented as a void in maps showing routes and distributions of trade goods. In this article we present the results of archaeological surveys conducted between 2016 and 2020 in places of trade around Berbera, one of the main Red Sea ports in Somaliland. We will be focusing on the period comprised between the eleventh century, when the first traces of long distance connections are documented, and the late sixteenth century, when commerce collapsed. We will review the archaeological evidence with particular attention to ceramic imports, which reveal the intense participation of Somaliland (and the Horn at large) in the Indian Ocean system. This participation went through different cycles in which the nature of commercial relations, the volume of imported goods and their provenance varied. However, trade with Asia was always predominant, amounting, in the case of ceramics, to 90% of all imported items. Our surveys also suggest that Somaliland was not so much a destination as a transit market zone that conveyed products to the interior of the Horn of Africa.
This article aims at shedding light on the late medieval trading system in the western part of the Indian Ocean between the Gulf and the east coast of Africa, in order to offer new evidence on the so-called "Shirazi question". I will dispute the alleged early tenth/eleventh century date of the (possibly fictitious) "Shirazi migration" to East Africa by examining the background of the socioeconomic and political changes which took place between the tenth and the fifteenth century. The trade network in which Hormuz-including Qalhat-played an important part is well documented by a homogenous pottery assemblage, which combines finds from the Makran/Baluchistan coast, the Gulf, Hormuz-Qalhat, Tiwi and farther south with many places on and off the coast of East Africa. This is important for our suggestion that the Shirazi-legend should be placed in the Hormuz-Qalhat period between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. A quantity analysis of the recorded sites between the Lamu region in the north and the Kilwa region in the south testifies to a constant rise of settlement activity or settlement expansion between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, reaching a peak in the fourteenth century (43 out of 116 examined places) and the fifteenth century (53 out of 116 examined places). Taking these facts together, we shall turn again to the grey area between legend and historical fact.