The Indian Ocean Read online

  Many Indian scholars insist that St Thomas did reach South India, where he established Christianity and later was martyred. Certainly there is evidence of Christians in south India from at least 300 CE. Jews may have arrived in India even before this time. There was continuing contact with the Persian church, which was Nestorian. This contact was maintained in harmony with the existing extensive sea trade from the Gulf to Malabar. There are indications that in this period, before Islam reached India, the various Christian communities, while not extensive, were prosperous and well-regarded.

  The greatest movement of people for other than economic purposes is the migration, if this be the right word, of Austronesian peoples both east and west, though the movement west to Madagascar is our main interest. Broadly speaking, we know that Austronesian people, originating in modern Indonesia, possibly Sumatra, arrived in then uninhabited Madagascar at least by the middle of the first millennium CE, or probably some centuries before this. This is confirmed by linguistic evidence, among other things. Proto Malagasy comes from Indonesia, possibly not from Sumatra but rather from Borneo, as its closest relative is the Barito languages of Borneo.51 The fact of a migration of Austronesian speakers to Madagascar is not in question. Apart from linguistic evidence, several food crops now found in Madagascar, which moved from there to the coast of East Africa, derive from Indonesia. These include banana, coconut and sugar cane. It is possible that the outrigger canoe also came from east to west across the Indian Ocean. As to bananas, there are two main kinds in Africa. The species found on the east coast is definitely Austronesian, that is it came with the migrants to Madagascar and on to the east coast, but so apparently is the plantain in West Africa.52 Another contribution seems to be the disease of elephantiasis, which it is claimed originated in southeast Asia, but is widespread in southwest India and East Africa.

  This movement west across the Indian Ocean was only a part of a remarkable migration of these Austronesian speakers. They left from an original homeland in south China or Taiwan perhaps six thousand years ago, and moved to southeast Asia. From there Austronesian speakers, in ocean-going canoes, sailed and settled all over Remote Oceania, from Hawaii to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Aotearoa (New Zealand) between 300 and 1200 CE. When we add in their movement to Madagascar, these intrepid sailors spread over a total of 225° of longitude.53 Manguin stresses that these migrations, including that to Africa, were not chance affairs, but rather were organised, and were done not in primitive outrigger dugouts but in planked boats.54 He sees all this as further evidence of an initiative from the peoples of southeast Asia, in contrast to the older wisdom that the area was merely a passive recipient of high culture from China and India.

  Three problems remain. First, the evidence of Austronesian contact and influence on continental East Africa is fragmentary and controversial, for even if there was a substantial Austronesian presence there at one time, this was submerged as Bantu people early in the Common Era spread south to the area and incorporated them. The evidence in Madagascar is much clearer, for the island was uninhabited when they arrived. African people arrived later to produce the complex mixture which is today's Malagasy society. Second, there is the matter of how they got to Madagascar. Some argue that they sailed direct from insular southeast Asia, taking advantage of the westward drift of the South Equatorial Current, and prevailing southeast trades in these latitudes. Others point to technological barriers to such long voyages, and claim rather that they proceeded westward piecemeal, going from port to port and island to island until they reached Madagascar. The latter scenario implicitly belittles their achievement, and has been discarded by those who stress southeast Asia autonomy. Third, was this a round trip? Did they go back and forth across the southern Indian Ocean? Many claim that they did, pointing to the xylophone as an example.55 Manguin claims that there was continuing reciprocal contact between the two areas up to the early centuries of Islamisation in Sumatra, that is up to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries.56 If this be so, it is then a matter of how this was done. The only possible route to take would be in the far south, taking advantage of the strong westerlies in latitudes 40 and 50° S, but we have no evidence of their doing this. The case for continuing contact is not proven, and indeed seems improbable.

  We can close this chapter with two final and somewhat negative cautions. We have spent and will spend considerable space on trade and economic connections, yet even today these are not really central in the total economies of the surrounding countries. At least in this earlier period the vast bulk of the populations in countries around the Indian Ocean were peasants, most of them more or less subsistence, or at least exchanging goods locally, and by land. Economic exchanges by sea, even coastal ones, were not very important, except possibly for coastal people, but even they were amphibious, drawing on both land and sea. The relative lack of importance of sea trade can and will be demonstrated more clearly as our data improves in later chapters, but it is clear also in this early period. For example, it seems that trade between the Indus Valley Civilisation and Mesopotamia is of more interest to modern scholars than it was important in the economies of either area. Trade within these two civilisations, and their surrounding land areas, was far more significant. If sea trade is of minor importance, then arguably it is religion and culture that is important when we look at exchanges by sea, most obviously the spread of Buddhist and Hindu ideas which we sketched earlier in this chapter. We will look at the Islamisation of the littoral in the next chapter.

  Finally, we have implicitly been striving to find connections and unity across the ocean in this early period. Mark Horton, reviewing three new books on the maritime archaeology of the Indian Ocean, provides an important caveat to this attempt. While welcoming a new interest in maritime, as opposed to the traditional land-based, archaeology, he is dubious of the claims of widespread maritime connections before the beginning of the Common Era:

  The idea that the sea unites, not divides, cultures is one that archaeologists have borrowed from Fernand Braudel: it has proved useful in the Mediterranean, perhaps it could be equally applied to the Indian Ocean? It has been in the Islamic period, but we need more indications that the communities along the rim of the Indian Ocean maintained maritime connections over sustained periods of time, to extend this to the prehistoric period. Certainly the evidence is not there yet....57

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  Chapter 4

  Muslims in the Indian Ocean

  The rise of Islam in the Hijaz in the early seventh century affected the Indian Ocean in several important ways. Describing these changes will be the main concern of this chapter, which uses material from the period up to the end of the fifteenth century. In this period there was both continuity and change. It would certainly be incorrect to write of an Islamic period or ocean. Many others traded and travelled, and coastal routes remained relatively unchanged. However, over a few centuries most of the population of the coasts of the Indian Ocean became Muslims, so that a large share of both coastal and oceanic trade was handled by the adherents of this new religion. It was much more centralised than was either Hinduism or Buddhism. This was especially manifested in the requirement, one of the most basic tenets of the faith, that if at all possible Muslims should perform the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, at least once in a lifetime. A Muslim community developed around the shores of the Indian Ocean, linked by religion, whose commonality, while this must not be exaggerated, was created and reinforced by travelling scholars. Yet Islam's success was to a large extent a result of its tolerance of local traditions, so that scholars distinguish between prayers and other religious activities in the mosque, and those performed outside it. Rather than the coastal populations converting to Islam, they accepted it.

  What was the attitude of the new religion to sea matters and to merchants? As to the latter, the normative position was well set out by the great fourteenth century social scientist Ibn Khaldun. He claimed countrymen were morally superior to townsmen, with merchants lower
again: 'traders must buy and sell and seek profits. This necessitates flattery and evasiveness, litigation and disputation, all of which are characteristic of this profession. And these qualities lead to a decrease and weakening in virtue and manliness.'1 Some claim that normative Islam had a similarly negative attitude to sea travel. The Arabs as men of the desert used to be the prevalent western stereotype: they rode camels, not ships. Today we realise that Muslims had an early and very successful interest in sea trade. The first Arab sea migration was to Abyssinia, in the time of the prophet. On several occasions in the previous chapter we described Arabs engaging in extensive sea voyages. This continued when Arabs became Muslims.

  Authentic Islamic sources display a positive attitude to the sea. The Quran itself has several passages which speak approvingly of sea trade and maritime matters. As the Holy Book says, 'And of His signs is this: He sendeth herald winds to make you taste His mercy, and that the ships may sail at His command, and that ye may seek His favour, and that haply ye may be thankful.' And again: 'your Lord is He who driveth for you the ship upon the sea that ye may seek of His bounty' or 'Allah it is Who hath made the sea of service unto you that the ships may run thereon by His command, and that ye may seek of His bounty.'2 And again: 'It is He who subjected to you the sea, that you may eat of it fresh flesh, and being forth out of it ornaments for you to wear, and thou may best see the ships cleaving through it, and that you may seek of His bounty, and so haply you will be thankful.' Similarly, the Caliph Umar II was quoted as saying 'Dry land and sea belong alike to God; He hath subdued them to His servants to seek of his bounty for themselves in both of them.'3

  We have seen that the Indian Ocean was already a place of movement, circulation, contacts and travel over great distances. It could be that Islam fits well into this sort of environment. Later Malay literature powerfully links notions of the sea, God, man and the transitory nature of the world. The sea is a trope for Islam. 'O Seeker, this world is like a wave. God's condition is like the sea. Even though the wave is different from the sea, it is in reality nothing but the sea.'4

  We now have much more detail on the ships venturing out over our ocean. At the most humble level, even today one sees coastal fishers, some merely astride a log, rising and falling, vanishing and appearing, in the swell. Coastal craft, used by fisherfolk, and as lighters to take people and goods to larger ships standing off shore where no harbour or estuary was available, were described in the previous chapter. These accounts related mostly to the east coast of India, where the lack of good harbours necessitated lighters. Over much of the rest of the littoral there were estuaries or harbours, and it was here that the famous dhows were found. These larger ships however had many of the characteristics of the coastal craft we have previously described.

  The term 'dhow' is used by westerners for a variety of craft, large and small, which dominated most trade and navigation in the western Indian Ocean for centuries. There are many different types, depending on size and location, yet they did share enough common characteristics for us to use a generic term for them.5 The actual word is not Arabic. It probably comes from the Persian word dawh. They have attracted much attention from a truly international array of scholars.6 These 'traditional' dhows were found all over the western Indian Ocean, that is from east Africa around to south India, and at times much further east. This type of ship long-predates the arrival of Islam. It presumably has Gulf or Red Sea origins, but we know little about ships before Islam.

  Marco Polo, writing about Hurmuz, left a detailed, accurate, and rather negative account:

  Their ships are wretched affairs, and many of them get lost; for they have no iron fastenings, and are only stitched together with twine made from the husk of the Indian nut [coconut]. They beat this husk until it becomes like horse-hair, and from that they spin twine, and with this stitch the planks of the ship together. It keeps well, and is not corroded by the sea-water, but it will not stand well in a storm. The ships are not pitched, but are rubbed with fish oil. They have one mast, one sail, and one rudder, and have no deck, but only a cover spread over the cargo when loaded. This cover consists of hides, and on the top of these hides they put the horses which they take to India for sale. They have no iron to make nails of, and for this reason they use only wooden trenails in their shipbuilding, and then stitch the planks with twine as I have told you. Hence 'tis a perilous business to go a voyage in one of those ships, and many of them are lost, for in that Sea of India the storms are often terrible.7

  A Muslim pilgrim in the Red Sea in the late twelfth century left a rather similar account. Ibn Jubayr wrote:

  The jilab that ply on this Pharaonic sea [that is, the Red Sea from Aydhab to Jiddah] are sewn together, no nails at all being used on them. They are sewn with cord made from... the fibre of the coconut and which the makers thrash until it takes the form of thread, which then they twist into a cord with which they sew the ships. These they then caulk with shavings of the wood of palm-trees. When they have finished making a jilabah in this fashion, they smear it with grease, or castor oil, or the oil of the shark, which is best. This shark is a huge fish which swallows drowning men. Their purpose in greasing the boat is to soften and supple it against the many reefs that are met with in that sea, and because of which nailed ships do not sail through it. The wood for these parts is brought from India and the Yemen, as is the coconut fibre. A singular feature of these jilab is that their sails are woven from the leaves of the muql tree [a kind of gum-tree], and their parts are conformably weak and unsound in structure. Glory to God who contrives them in this fashion and who entrusts men to them. There is no God but He.'8

  What then are the main characteristics of these craft? As these contemporaries pointed out, teak from Malabar in southwest India was used almost universally, for this was highly resistant to decay, and provided it was treated properly, along the lines suggested by Ibn Jubayr, it would not split, crack or shrink in salt water. This wood was used to make a hull using the carvel method: that is, the wooden planks of the hull were laid edge to edge, not overlapping as in western ships. They were held together by coir fibre stitching which passed through holes in the planks. There was no iron or bolts, and no ribbing or framework. However, wooden dowels were used, at least on the bigger boats, for strength. The hull was made watertight by inserting resin or other materials between the planks. This has to be differentiated from the European practice of caulking, which was done after the ship was assembled. They had no keels, but instead used either sandbags, or heavy parts of the cargo, as ballast in the bottom of the hold. These dhows had stern post rudders, with ropes attached, not a tiller. One pulled on ropes to steer the vessel. Most had only one mast, and a sail made of matting, though late in our period cloth was also beginning to be used.9

  The hulls were double ended rather than having square, transom, sterns. On the largest dhows there may have been a raised poop deck, with cabins underneath, but most often the holds were open and there was no deck. As Correia observed in Cannanor around 1500:

  in lieu of decks, the hold was built up with huts and compartments for merchandise, covered with plaited palm-leaf thatch, acting as a roof; the water would flow down to their sides, then along the hull and gather at the bottom of the hold where it could be bailed out, thus not wetting the merchandise which was kept well packed into these compartments. On top of these thatched roofs, they would dispose strong cane lattice-work, on which one could walk without damaging the huts below.... People have their lodgings on top, for nobody stays below, where the merchandise is found.

  Remarkably heavy cargo, camels, horses, even elephants, could be carried.10

  Figure 1 A Terry Dinghee. Etching. © National Maritime Museum, London

  Figure 2 Indian Sailing Boats. New mount. Produced by Thomas Daniell (artist). © National Maritime Museum, London

  The lack of metal in the construction excited much comment, most of it negative, from European observers, such as Marco Polo who we quoted above. The fabuli
st Sir John Mandeville claimed they did not use nails as there were magnetic islands which would draw to them any ship which contained metal.11 At first glance the lack of metal condemns dhows as primitive craft indeed, yet their method of construction was well suited to conditions in the Indian Ocean. As Ibn Battuta wrote, 'The Indian and Yemenite ships are sewn together with them, for that sea is full of reefs, and if a ship is nailed with iron nails it breaks up on striking the rocks, whereas if it is sewn together with cords, it is given a certain resilience and does not fall to pieces.' In Cambay he wrote of the Gulf that 'it is navigable for ships and its waters ebb and flow. I myself saw the ships lying on the mud at ebb-tide and floating on the water at high tide.'12 Their flexibility, thanks to the coir, meant that they were well adapted to the sandy shores of large parts of the Indian Ocean littoral. They could be driven ashore by storms, or deliberately to unload cargo or undergo repairs or careening, and even in the breakers off the Coromandel coast their flexibility enabled them to 'give' and survive, where a more rigidly built ship would have shattered.