The Indian Ocean (24 page)

So also a merchant in Qais, or Qeys, in the thirteenth century. He had 150 camel loads of wares and 40 slaves and servants. He said that he wished 'to carry Persian saffron to China where I understand that it has a high price, and then take the dishes from China to Greece, Greek brocade to India, Indian steel to Aleppo, glass of Aleppo to Yemen, and the striped material of Yemen to Persia.'
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We also know of a merchant around 1300 who was born in Aleppo, then moved to Baghdad, Hurmuz and India, then China, and entered and left China five times. He finished up in India, then returned to Aden, where he was fleeced by the ruler, and so went to Egypt.
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Goitein's heroic work on the Geniza documents provides more detailed and evocative data about Jewish merchants. One merchant travelled widely, both on his own account, and as an agent for others. This particular merchant hailed from Tripoli, but lived in Cairo. At the end of the eleventh century he planned a trip via the Red Sea to India, with his own goods and on account those of others. First he left Cairo and went to Tunisia to get coral to take to India. Then he came back to Cairo, went down the Red Sea, and finally reached Anhilvarah, north of modern Bombay, where he spent over a year doing business for himself, and his Tunisian, Egyptian, and Aden customers. Alas, he was shipwrecked on way back, so this was a very unsuccessful trip.
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In a major reconstruction, Goitein writes of Allan, the nephew of a major Jewish trader of the early twelfth century who had migrated from Al Mahdiyya, now in Tunisia, to Cairo. Allan, the nephew, went to Aden, but the markets were flat, so he sold some goods and decided to take others on to India. He finally got to a city in Malabar, 'but riots and bloodshed occurred, and whoever was in the town fled.'
He and his companions loaded their cargo of iron and textiles during the night and fled to Fakaner, also in Malabar, and from there to Quilon, or Kulam, in the extreme south. From there they set off for Aden, but the captain was already ill. After ten days they ran into difficulties off the northern Laccadives. Then 'the captain had a stroke and died. We threw his body overboard into the sea. So the boat remained without a commander... and we had no charts.' The terrified passengers insisted on returning to Kulam. There they were well treated and set off again for Aden. They got there early in the season, so he sold his iron and spices very well. However, he wanted to take pepper back to Cairo, and it was very dear in Aden, so he decided to go back to India to buy it. In this ship he took to India he chartered space to hold 150 bahars for the return voyage back to Aden.
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We have discussed extensively the extent to which the rulers of the port cities intervened to advantage themselves or their trade. We have already noticed some rulers or agents of larger political structures intervening from time to time, and we can conclude with a more general discussion of wider political factors which affected trade by sea. We will look particularly at the matter of the effects of the rise and decline of landed empires on sea trade. In this the influence of a recent trend in European history will be evident. This aims to bring the state back in to explain at least in part economic exchange and development: it is not just a matter of the unseen hand of the market.
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Historians have been particularly interested in the fact that on two occasions during our period great empires provided security and a market for luxuries in different parts of the Indian Ocean world. The huge trade between China and the Abbasid empire has been linked to the rise and florescence of the Abbasid state after 750, and a similar situation with the T'ang dynasty in China from 618–907. The Fatimids in Egypt, the Colas in South India, and the Song in China produced the same effect in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

There certainly seems to be some connection between flourishing trade and stable empires, albeit one hard to quantify. Such empires usually got most of their revenue from the land, not the sea, and prevailing norms were usually hostile, or at least indifferent, to sea trade and merchants, as we pointed out at the beginning of this chapter (see pages 62–3). Yet merchants did provide customs revenues, and perhaps more important brought curiosities and preciosities to the court. More generally, a strong, stable empire obviously has advantages for economic activity in general, including sea trade. Some states were actually quite interventionist. Srivijaya controlled the straits of Melaka for some time. In the early eleventh century the Cola state in south India responded to this with devastating raids. Thirteen ports in the Malay peninsula, Sumatra and the Nicobar Islands were attacked by Rajendra Cola.

The decline of empires usually produces much confusion, and this may be detrimental to trade, though on the other hand as an empire declines it will release hoarded wealth with which to defend itself, thereby increasing liquidity. Some notable episodes in the decline of these empires no doubt did impact on trade. In its
last few decades the T'ang dynasty was less stable, and Guangzhou was sacked and foreign merchants massacred in 878 by a rebel army. At this same time, in 868–83, the Zanj slaves in lower Mesopotamia rebelled, and this is considered to have contributed to Abbasid decline. Later, the
coup de grâce
for the Abbasids, that is the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, may have disrupted trade, though this claim is open to doubt. The other great example of politics intervening in the ocean in our period is the cessation of Zheng He's voyages in the 1430s as a result of a change in Ming policy. The precise reasons for this shift have been much debated, but certainly these expeditions were terminated by the court, and foreign trade greatly restricted. However, this coincides with the rise of Melaka, and it is a 'chicken-and-egg' matter as to whether the rise of Melaka meant the great expeditions were no longer needed, as compared with the rise of Melaka being to fill the gap left by the end of the voyages. In any case, the whole matter of this connection is difficult indeed to prove. Perhaps the point to keep in mind is that there were much more constant and important matters which affected merchants engaged in sea trade, namely did their imports meet local demand, and were prices high?

In the early 1340s Ibn Battuta was happily sailing along the west coast of India when his ship was attacked by pirates:

the infidels came out against us in twelve warships, fought fiercely against us and overcame us. They took everything I had preserved for emergencies; they took the pearls and rubies that the king of Ceylon had given me, they took my clothes and the supplies given me by pious people and saints. They left me no covering except my trousers. They took everything everybody had and set us down on the shore. I returned to Qaliqut and went into one of the mosques. One of the jurists sent me a robe, the qadi a turban and one of the merchants another robe.
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Apart from again reminding us of how he could gear in to Islamic networks at need, this passage introduces the matter of piracy in the Indian Ocean in our period. Interestingly, Marco Polo had more or less the same problem, and we may note that Polo only slightly predated Ibn Battuta, for he died in 1324, a year before the latter set out from Morocco on his first hajj.

Polo wrote that on the west coast of India

there go forth every year more than a hundred corsair vessels on cruise. These pirates take with them their wives and children, and stay out the whole summer. Their method is to join in fleets of 20 or 30 of these pirate vessels together, and then they form what they call a sea cordon, that is, they drop off till there is an interval of 5 or 6 miles between ship and ship, so that they cover something like an hundred miles of sea, and no merchant vessel can escape them. For when any one corsair sights a vessel a signal is made by fire or smoke, and then the whole of them make for this, and seize the merchants and plunder them.... But now the
merchants are aware of this, and go so well manned and armed, and with such great ships, that they don't fear the corsairs. Still mishaps do befall them at times.

With the King's connivance many corsairs launch from this part to plunder merchants. These corsairs have a covenant with the King that he shall get all the horses they capture, and all other plunder shall remain with them. The King does this because he has no horses of his own, whilst many are shipped from abroad towards India; for no ship ever goes thither without horses in addition to other cargo. The practice is naughty and unworthy of a king.
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What these two unfortunate travellers are describing is either piracy or corsair activity. Whichever it may be, it is crucial to distinguish this from actual naval activity from port cities or other political entities, for at this time there were virtually no navies in the Indian Ocean, the exceptions being perhaps Zheng He's voyages, and the activities in Sri Lanka, the islands, and the Malay world of the Colas. The real danger was from pirates and corsairs, the former to be seen as acting autonomously of any political entity, the latter connected, at least loosely, as Polo wrote, with a local ruler. Pirates were the most prevalent. Yet we need to keep in mind that some piracy is in the eye of the beholder; the so-called pirates could see themselves very differently, as we will discuss in detail in the next chapter.

Ibn Battuta had more than one skirmish with these predators, who were quite prepared to attack even very large ships. He set off from the Gulf of Cambay on an official mission from Muhammad bin Tughluq to the emperor of China. The mission had several ships, and one of them must have been a good size, as it carried seventy horses. Battuta's own ship had fifty rowers and fifty Abyssinian men at arms: 'These latter are the guarantors of safety on this sea; let there be but one of them on a ship and it will be avoided by the Indian pirates and idolators.'
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Chinese accounts of the straits of Melaka, then and now a haven for pirates, complained that the locals 'are very daring pirates. If they meet upon a foreign ship, they get into small boats, a hundred in number, and approach the enemy for several days. With a fair wind he may be lucky and escape. Otherwise he will be intercepted by them, and his goods will be plundered. Travellers who float around on the sea should guard against these robbers.'
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Some pirates seem to have set up almost state-like structures. Ibn Majid south of Calicut found that the pirates there, operating out of the Kerala backwaters, were 'ruled by their own rulers and number about 1000 men and are a people of both land and sea with small boats'.
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So also in the Gulf near Hurmuz in the twelfth century. The island of Kish was more or less a pirate state, or so the hostile accounts available say. These men raided up and down the Indian west coast, and across to East Africa. In 1135 they became very daring. They wrote to the ruler of Aden demanding a part of the city as protection against being raided. This was refused, so the pirate Amir sent fifteen ships, which entered Aden harbour and waited. They
had no intention of landing: rather they wanted to capture merchant ships on their way back to India. Finally, two ships belonging to Abul Qasim Ramisht of Siraf, in the Gulf, appeared, but helped by troops from Aden they were able to beat off the pirates.
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Natural events were much more perilous for sea travellers than were pirates. People used various rites and ceremonies to try to avoid the perils of the sea. The sea was generally seen as more hostile, chancy, and uncontrollable than was land. There were the dangers of the deep, uncertain winds and tides, fickle fish, and frail craft on the ocean. Various rites and ceremonies were used to counter these dangers.

It would be easy to disparage these as blind superstition, yet Palmer has put forward an argument to show their utility. Magic, religion, ritual used in perilous times at sea have two positive results. They relieve anxiety amongst those in danger, and more generally they promote cooperation and solidarity amongst those on board, and this in turn can increase the chance of saving a ship which is in danger.
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It is in this context that we need to evaluate the following examples of rites and ceremonies from our period.

Let us start, as usual, with Ibn Battuta. In 1347 he was sailing south from China and they were lost at sea.

At first light on the forty-third day a mountain became visible in the sea about twenty miles away. The wind was carrying us directly towards it. The sailors were amazed and said 'We are not near land and there is no knowledge of a mountain in the sea. If the wind drives us on to it we shall perish.' Everyone resorted to self-abasement, to devotion, and to renewed repentance, supplicating God in prayer. We sought Him through his Prophet, on whom be the Blessing and Peace of God. The merchants swore to give plentiful alms, which I recorded in my own writing. [He wanted to be able to remind them of their vows once the danger had passed!] The wind became somewhat calmer and at sunrise we saw that the mountain had risen into the air and there was light between it and the sea. We were amazed at this, and I saw the sailors weeping and saying good-bye to each other. I said: 'What is the matter?' They said: 'What we took for a mountain is the rukhkh. If it sees us we shall perish.' We were then less than ten miles from it. Then God Most High gave us the blessing of a favourable wind, which took us directly away from it. We did not see it or know its true shape.
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What Battuta and his shipmates did was call on more or less normative Islamic ideas to avoid danger at sea. We have several other examples of this. A Chinese account of around 1200 wrote that in Malabar 'there is holy water which can still the wind and waves. The foreign traders fill opaque glass bottles with it, and when they suddenly get in a rough sea they still it by sprinkling this water on it.'
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The water was the celebrated Zamzam water, from a well in Mecca and believed to have a wide range of magical properties. Muslims also had a variety of prayers specific to
perils at sea. One of the best known was the Hizb al-bahr, the Litany of the Sea, which dates from 656 AH.
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There was also a specific saint, Khwaja Khizr, associated with fertility, and so water, fish and the sea. He is to be found in many Sufi legends, and was frequently the object of prayers in order that he would guide mariners through dangerous waters.
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Some Muslims took a more resigned approach to danger at sea, as Ibn Battuta found near Oman in 1329. A violent storm blew up.