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international journal of research and analytical review, 2021

The Muslim community in Malabar is usually called the Mappila". It is well known that before the advent of Islam, the Arabs had trade relations with Malabar Coast. The Mappila community originated primarily as a result of the West Asian contact with Kerala which was fundamentally based on commerce. As per local tradition, Islam reached the Malabar coast, a prosperous trading community. The Malabar regions of Kerala include the district of Thrissur Palakkad, Malappuram, Kozhikode, Kannur, and Kasaragod. The continuous interactions have profoundly impacted their life, customs, and culture. This has resulted in the formation of a unique Indo-Islamic synthesis. In this paper I would like to analysis the expansion and growth of Islam through trade relations and its impact on the Malabar regions. The main objective of this study is to understand the socioeconomic , religious and educational influence of Arabs on Malabar culture, to analysis the features of folklore, art, and architecture, and to study the different Muslim communities in Malabar.

International Journal of History, 2021

The purpose of the study was an attempt to sketch out the early Arab trade with India-special reference to Kerala. Traversing far distances and waters of miles, the trade ships brought not only goods and commodities, but it has carried the ideas, knowledge, cultures and customs that later influenced the coastal places including Kerala. Thus, the study is intended to delve into the deep effects of coming of Islam to the region and along with this; it will try to depict the present socio-cultural state of the Muslim community in Kerala. With historical underpinnings of earlier maritime contacts, later peaceful spreading of Islam in the region, and the consequent socio-cultural changes, the study brings out sociocultural inner currents of present Muslims of Malabar.

INTERCULTURAL RELATIONS BETWEEN SOUTH AND SOUTHWEST ASIA. STUDIES IN COMMEMORATION OF E.C.L. DURING CASPERS (1934-1996) E. Olijdam & R.H. Spoor (eds) BAR International Series 1826 (2008)

IJMRA, 2019

Maritime trade has played a significant role in history of Kerala. Expansion of trading activities created space in the trading world of Kerala which attracted new migration of foreign communities. Nestorian Church of Persia under the protection of Caliphate expanded its influence and its diocese were found both in China and India around eleventh century. Christians of Kerala were affiliated to Nestorian Church. The western linkage of the Christians made them significant in maritime venture and the local rulers, responding to the changing economic paradigms of the sea, patronized the Christians while bestowing certain privileges. Christians of Kerala never faced any social degradation. They continued to enjoy various privileges granted to them by the local rulers until the Zamorin of Calicut, with the help of resources generated by Muslim Karimi merchants, deprived the Christians of Quilon of all privileges transferring the same to the Muslims of Calicut.

IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2014

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.

2013

This thesis examines the Early Roman ‘India trade’ in the Indian Ocean during the Late Pre-Islamic period through a holistic overview of excavated trading sites with an emphasis on ceramic studies. It attempts to look at the economic relations between the southeast Arabian seaboard and India, and enquires into the development and nature of the trade. This has been executed through the documentation of forms and detailed fabric analysis and quantification of Indian pottery assemblages from three sites in the UAE (Mleiha, Ed-Dur and Kush) and three sites from South Arabia and Oman (Khor Rori, Qana and Suhar). This research seeks to develop a more reliable definition of the types of wares based on an evaluation of morphology and fabric. The results are compared with select parallels of Indian pottery from a number of trading settlements particularly in western and southern India, combining both coastal and hinterland sites. The thesis also includes a technical sourcing investigation into the origin of the Indian wares occurring in the Arabian and Indian contexts using XRF analysis. Finally this thesis attempts a desk-based assessment of published data concerning ceramics from excavated sites from the Red Sea region, African ports and Arabia, particularly the sites with archaeological and historical evidence indicating trade with Peninsular India. The thesis thus constitutes a wider regional case study of Indian ceramic data as a reliable indicator of Indian Ocean trade in the Late Pre-Islamic period.

Indian Ocean studies were earlier developed on the notion that the Roman expansion into the Red Sea region (1st century BC) gave the necessary impetus to trade and commerce in the region. The ‘periphery’ regions including the Arabian Gulf progressively occupied a secondary role of an entrepôt in the main interaction sphere of Indo-Roman trade. The detailed study of Indian pottery and other archaeological data from sites in south and southeastern Arabia (Mleiha, Ed-Dur and Khor Rori) indicates that direct Indo-Arab relations began prior to Roman involvement in the trade and continued for centuries during and after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Moreover the present research has taken the initiative to provide a reliable classification of Indian pottery fabrics that is unavailable from the excavation reports of Early Historic sites in India. This evidence from Indian ceramics found in Arabia, together with other archaeological and historical data, allows to determine key source areas, identify actual imports from local imitations and reconstruct patterns of trade with India that summarises Indo-Gulf trade in the Indian Ocean during the Late Pre-Islamic period (3rd century BC - 6th century AD).

2020

Edward A. Alpers and Chhaya Goswami edited, Transregional Trade and Traders: Situating Gujarat in the Indian Ocean From Early Times to 1900, Oxford University Press, 2019., 2019

This chapter will discuss the cultural milieu of seafaring activity in Gujarat between the fourth century BCE and the fourth century CE, the objective being to draw attention to an under-researched theme, namely the cultural factors that impacted trans-oceanic contacts. It will highlight the autonomy of trading activity, vis-à-vis political organization in this period. Rulers certainly tapped the revenues from trade, but neither controlled nor initiated trade. Trade involved a complex range of transactions, with gifts to those in authority, and prestige commodities required by powerful groups and residents of cities at one end of the scale, while barter and monetary exchanges were the norm at the local and regional level. This approach differs from the traditional understanding of maritime trade, as studied by historians of the Marxist school who view sea trade as trade between Empires, such as with the Roman Empire and essentially restricted to trade in luxury items. This is an issue that has been discussed at length elsewhere and this chapter draws on arguments already established.

Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 2007

Abstract The diverse merchant groups that participated in maritime trade emanating from the various exchange centers of Kerala during this period acted within the framework of certain socio-economic conditions that ensured a remarkable degree of continuity as far as their ...

Journal of Early Modern History, 2020

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.

Published in the Proceedings of South Indian History Congress, 36th Session ,Pondicherry, 2016 pp. 743-49.

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.

BAnD XiV sonderdruck aus © 2015 Deutsches Archäologisches institut Der Autor/die Autorin hat das recht, für den eigenen wissenschaftlichen gebrauch unveränderte Kopien dieser PDF-Datei zu erstellen bzw. das unveränderte PDF-File digital an Dritte weiterzuleiten. Außerdem ist der Autor/die Autorin berechtigt, nach Ablauf von 24 monaten und nachdem die PDF-Datei durch das Deutsche Archäologische institut der Öffentlichkeit kostenfrei zugänglich gemacht wurde, die unveränderte PDF-Datei an einen ort seiner/ihrer Wahl im internet bereitzustellen.

Journal of Global History

With the rise of post-colonialism during the latter part of the twentieth century, more focus has been given to non-western perspectives (the so-called nativist turn). In the case of Indian Ocean trade during the early first millennium CE, the view that ‘Roman’ merchants and sailors were the near-exclusive movers of goods, who were also (indirectly) responsible for commercial developments within South Asia, has largely fallen into abeyance. Rightly, the agency of those in South Asia has been acknowledged. The present article goes beyond this basic premise and considers how we can assess evidence demonstrating the role played by sailors and merchants from South Asia. In particular, it is suggested these merchants and sailors played an important role in connecting the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal regions.

Muziris, which had attracted traders from the Mediterranean world for a very long span of time as the biggest supplier of spices, has now become one of the major historical sites that the archaeologists and historians of South Asia have been trying to geographically locate and identify. With the archaeological excavations at Pattanam, which brought to limelight particularly the material culture related to intense Roman commerce, there were frequent attempts to identify it with Muziris. However there are some historians, including M.G.S. Narayanan, who think that though the material objects from Pattanam are indicative of its strong trade relations with Rome, they are not sufficient enough to prove categorically that Pattanam was the actual site of Muziris. The recent scholarship on Muziris and the scholarly debates around it make maritime historians look at Muziris in the age of 'early global trade' by highlighting larger connections and locating its position in the trajectories of commodity movements within the Indian Ocean and outside, besides its physiological position in Kerala's geography. This paper tries to look into the nuanced and changing character that Muziris acquired over the years by its participation in the larger network of commodity movements.

The Portuguese attempts for monopoly trade in the Indian Ocean received a major set back because of the parallel circulatory processes between India and the Mediterranean in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in differing quantities and degrees. This parallel trade circuit was made possible, on the one hand, because of the flow of considerable cargo through the Aden-Cairo-Alexandria route fed initially by the al-Karimis as well as the Jews and later by the Marakkars of Malabar and the banians of Gujarat. On the other hand there were the circulatory processes oriented towards the ports of Persian Gulf region through which commodities were made to flow to the eastern Mediterranean. These were channels not only for 'clandestine' commodity movements alone, but also for legitimately procuring bullions needed for the fast expanding Shia kingdoms of Deccan and the gunpowder empire of the Mughals in north India. The Indian trade with the eastern Mediterranean had two different operational lines, viz., the Red Sea ports and the doors of Persian Gulf. Till 1540s the ports of Red Sea formed the main channel through which Indian goods entered eastern Mediterranean. However with the occupation of Basra in 1538 by the Ottomans and the consequent introduction of Pax Turcana in the entire land-space between Persian Gulf and eastern Mediterranean, there got ushered in security and safety needed for the movement of high value-intense commodities like bullions, precious stones , textiles etc, which made the route through Persian Gulf take precedence over the land route through Red Sea in the later period. 2 The central purpose of this chapter is to examine the exigencies by which the parallel circulatory processes of commodities between Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean were allowed to evolve and made to become supplementary layers for the changing structures of the Portuguese economy in the Indian Ocean. It also examines the multiple channels