Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-wbk2r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-15T21:11:44.665Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Indian relations with East Africa before the arrival of the Portuguese1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

The Indian Ocean has for at least two thousand years served as a highway for the exchange of goods and ideas, and the cultural links between the lands bordering it are perhaps closer than over any other region of comparable size. The length of voyages undertaken since early times has been very great, as is forcefully demonstrated by the Indonesian colonization of Madagascar in the first centuries A.D. Commerce has been facilitated by the monsoon which in the western part of the ocean blows for roughly half the year from the northeast and for half in the opposite direction. The eastern and western shores of the western part of the basin share much the same climate and are suited to similar ways of life.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright The Royal Asiatic Society 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 Strabo, , Geography, II, 5, 12.Google Scholar

3 Pliny, , Natural history, VI, xxvi, 1012.Google Scholar

4 Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, ed. Schoff, , sections 424.Google Scholar

5 Periplus, p. 57.Google Scholar

6 Periplus, section 6.Google Scholar

7 Periplus, section 14.Google Scholar

8 Forbes, R. J., Studies in ancient technology, V, 103.Google Scholar

9 Periplus, section 7.Google Scholar It is maintained by Miller, J. I. (The spice trade of the Roman Empire, Oxford, 1969) that cinnamon, not being native to Africa, was brought from Indonesia direct to Madagascar and Rhapta, and thence to the Somalia of the present day.Google Scholar

10 Al-Mas'd, , Les prairies d'or, tr. Pellat, Charles Tom, II, 323 (III, 8).Google Scholar

11 Kobishchanov, Yu. M., The problem of sea voyages of ancient Africans in the Indian Ocean, Journal of African History, VI, 1965, 13741,CrossRefGoogle Scholar reviews the evidence for this trade. See further Mordini, A., Gli aurei Kushana del convento di Dabra Dmo, Atti del convengo intemazionale di studi etiopici, Rome, Accademia dei Lincei, 1960, 24854;Google Scholaridem, Gold Kushana coins in the convent of Dabra Damo, Journal of the Numismatic Society of India, XXIX, pt. 2, 1967, 1925;Google ScholarGbi, R., Der ksanische Goldmnzschatz von Debra Damo (thiopien) 1940, Central Asian Journal, XIV, 1970, 24152.Google Scholar

12 The question of the Daybuls is examined in Chittick, N., The Shiiazi colonization of East Africa, Journal of African History, VI, 1965, 290.Google Scholar

13 Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P., The mediaeval history of the coat of Tanganyika, London, 1962, 141.Google Scholar

14 III, 9, op. cit, 3234.Google Scholar

15 Nuzhat al-mushtq, First Clime, eighth section. He also writes (First Clime, seventh section) of the production of iron at Mombasa and at Mulanda (Malindi; or perhaps Manda, on the coast of what is now Kenya). The identification with Java is proposed by Ahmad, S. Maqbul, India and the neighbouring territories, Leiden, 1960.Google Scholar Cerulli et al. in their new redaction of al-ldrs, Opus geographicaum, Naples, 1970, prefer the reading Ranaj (p. 67).Google Scholar

16 Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition, s.v. Habsh (by Burton-Page, J.).Google Scholar

17 Cf. Hirth, F. and Rockhill, W. W., Chao Ju-Kua, 126.Google Scholar

18 Theal, C. McC., Records of south-eastern Africa: collected in various libraries and archive departments in Europe, VI, 135.Google Scholar

19 op. cit., 83 (de Goes).Google Scholar

21 Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P., The East African coast, Oxford, 1962, 52.Google Scholar

22 op. cit., 251 (de Barros, ).Google Scholar

23 The Book of Duarte Barbosa, ed. Dames, , Hakluyt Society, 1918, 5.Google Scholar

24 The references are summarized by Schofield, J. F. in Summers, R., Inyanga, Cambridge, 1958, 1834.Google Scholar

25 Theal, , VI, 266.Google Scholar

26 The passage is quoted in Di Meglio, R. R. Arab trade with Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula from the eighth to the sixteenth century, in Richards, D. S. (ed.), Islam and the trade of Asia, Oxford, 1970.Google Scholar

27 Arkell, , Cambay and the bead trade, Antiquity, X, 1936, 299305.Google Scholar

28 Dikshit, M. G., Etched beads in India, Poona, 1949.Google Scholar

29 Davison, Claire C. and Clark, J. DesmondTrade wind beads, an interim report on chemical studies, Azania, IX, 1974, 7586.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 W. G. N. van der Sleen devoted much work to this problem (see notably A handbook of beads, Liege, 1967Google Scholar) which is valuable as regards the European trade; the matter concerned with earlier beads is unfortunately lacking in precision and documentation. Works important in connection with beads in the interior include the chapter on Zimbabwe beads in Summers, R. and Robinson, K. R., Zimbabwe excavations, 1958,Google Scholar and the chapter by Schofield in Summers, R., Inyanga, cited above.Google Scholar For the East African coast see Kirkman, J. S., The Arab city of Gedi, 1954; the statement therein (p. 134)Google Scholar that most of the glass beads came from the Near East seems, however, to be unsupported by evidence. On Kilwa, see Chittick, H. N., Kilwa, an Islamic trading city on the East African coast, 2 vols., Nairobi, 1974.Google Scholar

31 Chittick, H. N., Kisimani Mafia, Dar es Salaam, 1961, 12.Google Scholar

32 Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P., Coins from Mogadishu, c. 1300 to c. 1700, Numismatic Chronicle, 1963, 200.Google Scholar

33 idem, East African coin finds and their significance, Journal of African History, I, 1960, 35.Google Scholar

34 Chittick, , Kilwa, 330, types 39 and 41.Google Scholar

35 ibid., type 40.

36 This is the earliest port site yet examined on the East African coast, having been at its most prosperous in the 9th and 10th centuries (see Chittick, H. N., Discoveries in the Lamu archipelago, Azania, II, 1967Google Scholar, and the forthcoming article in Azania, XIV, 1979).Google Scholar

37 Rogers, M., China and Islam the archaeological evidence in the Mashriq in Islam and the trade of Asia, Oxford, 1970.Google Scholar

38 Garlake, P. S., The early Islamic architecture of the East African coast, 1966, 115.Google Scholar

40 Mennell, F. P. and Summers, R., The ancient workings of Southern Rhodesia (National Museums of Southern Rhodesia, Occasional Papers, Volume II, 1955, No. 20).Google Scholar

41 Summers, R., Zimbabwe, a Rhodesian mystery, Cape Town, 1963.Google Scholar

42 The travels of Ibn Battta, tr. Gibb, H. A. R., Hakluyt Society, 1962.Google Scholar

43 Burton-Page, J., The problem of the introduction of Adansonia digitata into India, in Ucko, P. J. and Dimbleby, G. W. (ed.), The domestication and exploitation of plants and animals, London, 1964.Google Scholar