Chanced upon this book, which I've downloaded for $4 from Web Books Manager: India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza ''India Book'', by Friedman, M.A., Goitein, S.D.F. This seems to be an astonishingly well researched book, and is likely to throw considerable light on Hindu capitalism. (The book has over 900 pages!)

This is an excellent primary source to confirm aspects of Indian trade.

EXTRACTS

Until a few years ago, no letters or documents illustrating the medieval trade with India had been known to exist on either the Arabian or the eastern shores of the Indian Ocean. Yet the India trade was the backbone of the international economy in the Middle Ages in general and within the Islamic world in particular. More than anything else, it stimulated inter-territorial traffic, furthered the rise of a flourishing merchant class and created close and fruitful links between the countries of Islam and the Far East on the one hand and Europe on the other.

Fortunately, it has been possible to assemble during the last decades a collection of records, written mostly in the Arabic language, albeit nearly exclusively with Hebrew characters, which provide much of the desired information. These Judeo-Arabic documents are mostly of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. They had been originally preserved in the so-called Cairo Geniza and are presently dispersed throughout many libraries of Europe and the United States. A first report about the Geniza papers as related to the India trade was provided in Speculum, the Journal of the American Medieval Academy, in April 1954.  Meanwhile, many new finds have been made and the whole material was subjected to a systematic re-examination.

I should like to remark at the outset that the share of the Jewish merchants in the India trade seems to have been comparatively modest. The import of these papers for the study of that commerce lies in the simple reason that thus far they are the only ones that have survived.

The term India trade is taken here in the widest sense of the word, comprising commercial activities and travel stretching from the ports of the Red Sea in the West to the shores of Sumatra, Indonesia, in the East.

Goitein’s definition of the boundaries of the India trade approximates two geographical terms used in medieval Arabic, (al-) Hind and bahar al-Hind. Hind is used in reference to a wide expanse, the exact limits of which vary somewhat. As narrowly defined, it denotes the regions east of the Indus. In its wider usage, it designates the entire region from Makran (which straddles modern Iran and Pakistan), in the West, to the Indonesian Archipelago and mainland Southeast Asia, in the East. In reference to the larger area the terms bilãd al-Hind or diyãr al-Hind (‘the lands of Hind’) are often used.

In the Geniza documents we find the three terms, al-Hind, bilãd al-Hind and diyãr al-Hind, listed here in descending order of frequency. These seem to be used more or less interchangeably. I assume that they refer to the same areas intended by the same terms in Arabic sources. Most of the India traders, whose papers were preserved in the Geniza, were usually active along the western coast of India.

The pivotal role of Yemen, especially Aden, in the India trade is discussed repeatedly in this book.

Items of private correspondence of the India merchants have also found their way into the Geniza. Novices in those foreign parts would describe the terrors of the Indian Ocean, which was so different from the quiet waters of the Mediterranean, and the ships which were held together by ropes instead of nails, or complain about their loneliness and miserable home-sickness. The merchants would send home presents and goods for the use and maintenance of their families or more distant relatives. Presents were of the greatest possible variety, ranking from Oriental spices and costly textiles to Chinese porcelain or an Indian slave girl of six, whom the merchant’s wife back home would bring up to become her personal attendant.

The second largest group of Geniza papers referring to the India trade is composed of documents of legal character. Invariably, a merchant embarking on so long a journey did business not only for himself, but also for others, or acted at one and the same time as an agent for one or, usually, several investors. In such a case, a deed of commenda, or ‘partnership according to Muslim law,’ as it was called in Jewish legal parlance, would be drawn up. When the traveler came home, or even when he returned only from India to Aden, he would make a statement about his dealings in the interest of his partners and deposit it with the local rabbinical or Muslim court. The partners, on their part, would write out a release showing that the transaction had been concluded to their complete satisfaction.

Naturally, things did not always go smoothly. The resulting disputes would be aired before the rabbinical court, which had largely the character of a merchants’ court, since most of its members were experienced businessmen. Custom, reason and expedience, rather than any written law, formed the basis of their decisions.

Since shipwreck was a recurrent feature of seafaring on the Indian Ocean, statements about men perished and goods lost, or goods retrieved by divers, were made before the nearest court and forwarded to the parties concerned. The estates of merchants whom death overtook on their travels would be carefully listed, in order to preserve them for their heirs back home—to ensure, as far as they could be saved from the rapacity of the Sultans in whose territories the death occurred. Discord about communal leadership (which was not unrelated to business, the safety and efficiency of which depended largely upon the local representative of the merchants) is also reflected in legal documents. Even poems extolling the merits of these leaders are not without historical value.

In addition to letters and legal documents, the Geniza has preserved a variety of smaller items related to the India trade. Memos accompanying shipments specify the goods sent, their quantity and often their price and sometimes instructions on how to dispose of them. We have some accounts of a brass factory in India, specifying the materials used and the wages paid. Unfortunately, documents of this type are comparatively rare, presumably because there existed no religious scruples about their destruction, since they did not contain the name of God.

The Geniza records contain particularly rich information about the goods exchanged between the countries of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, their prices in the different cities in which they were traded, their modes of transport, customs duties and other expenses connected with them, and details about their relative importance. A provisional list comprises seventy-seven commodities going West and one hundred and three exported to the East.

EXPORTS FROM INDIA

Those coming from or through India and other countries of the Indian Ocean may be classified as follows:

A. Spices, aromatics, dyeing and varnishing plants and medical herbs      36 items

B. Iron and steel (a chief commodity)     6 varieties

C. Brass and bronze vessels         12 items

D. Indian silk and other textiles made mainly of cotton   8 items (only!)

E. Pearls, beads, cowrie shells and ambergris      4 items

F. Shoes and other leatherwork                2 items

G. Chinese porcelain, Yemenite stone pots and African ivory       3 items

H. Tropical fruits, such as coconuts           5 items

I. Timber              1 item Total        77 items

Different types of iron and steel loom large in the Geniza records, but only as raw materials. Indian swords, so famous in Arabic literature, are never mentioned. Whether the Middle East Muslims preferred to manufacture their own weapons, or whether the Jews, for one reason or another, refrained from trading in this commodity, needs further elucidation.

The details about the fabrication of copper vessels are very remarkable and certainly deserve the attention of the specialists. Southwestern India was famous both for its copper mines and its bronze and brass industry. The Geniza shows us: (a) that large quantities of copper, lead and other raw materials of that industry were imported to India from the countries of the West; and (b) that old or broken vessels and implements of all descriptions were sent from Aden to India and worked there into new utensils according to order, i.e., according to specifications provided. This seems to indicate (a) that the demands of the bronze and brass industry of southwest India were far larger than the local copper ores were able to satisfy; and (b) that the Indian industry was so highly regarded that the Adenese merchants took the trouble and the risk to order vessels from India rather than from Yemenite coppersmiths, although these too must have had a long tradition behind them.

As for textiles, Indian muslin {Indian red silk}, called ldnis {lãnas} in some letters and ldlis {lãlas} in others, as well as muslin clothing are frequently mentioned, but mostly as presents sent by the India traders to their wives, to business friends or to religious dignitaries. On the other hand, Indian cotton fabrics were traded in considerable quantities, but still were only of secondary importance. Since textiles took up much cargo space, only precious textiles were, as a rule, considered worthwhile to ship; but the Jewish traders represented in the Geniza catered mostly to middle class customers.

IMPORTS TO INDIA

As eastbound, i.e., sent from the ports of the Red Sea or from Aden, the following categories of goods have been noted in the Geniza papers:

A. Textiles and clothing 36 items

B. Vessels and ornaments of silver, brass, glass and other materials         23 items

C. Household goods, such as carpets, mats, tables, frying pans, etc.         7 items

D. Chemicals, medicaments, soap, paper, books               19 items

E. Metals and other raw materials for the copper industry 7 items

F. Coral (a staple article of great importance)      1 item

G. Foodstuffs, (cheese, sugar, raisins and olive oil) and linseed oil for lamps, etc.               10 items

Total      103 items

This list, which, after an exhaustive study of the Geniza material, will be certainly enlarged by many items, is impressive, but misleading. If one compares it with the list of westbound goods given above, one may jump to the conclusion that India and the Orient mostly sent agricultural produce and raw materials, while the Middle East exported mostly industrial products and consumer goods. Thus one might be led to assume that the situation bore a certain similarity to the relations of Europe with her spheres of colonial expansion in modern times.

This, however, was not the case. The industrial and consumer goods sent to India were of the greatest variety, but their value, as a rule, amounted to comparatively small sums. They were used by the Middle Eastern merchants and their families, not by the local population. Only in exceptional cases, as in that of Joseph Lebdi’s India trip, most of the Oriental goods were purchased at the prices obtained for Middle Eastern products. Mostly, gold and silver, in particular Egyptian gold pieces, the dollars of that period, accompanied orders for Indian goods. Raw materials for the Indian bronze industry, however, were sent as an equivalent.

Whenever possible, the merchants preferred sending goods instead of gold. It was customary to pay for the products of the Orient in cash. Thus, the question raised by R. S. Lopez, how the Middle East made good its apparently unfavorable balance of gold in its trade with India, is still valid. The material alluded to in the preceding lines seems to indicate that there is no clear-cut answer to this question.

Turning from the goods to those who handled them, one is struck by the predominance of merchants from North Africa in the India trade. This could be concluded already from the details given above concerning the persons whose papers form the main stock of the Geniza records are discussed in this article. However, the same holds true concerning the hundreds of other persons mentioned in them. The coastal towns of the Red Sea, Arabia and India were flooded with people coming not only from the larger cities of the Muslim West, such as Barqa and Tripoli, Libya, Qayrawan and al-Mahdiyya, Tunisia, Tlemcen, Algiers, Fez and Tangier, Morocco, Malaga and the isle of Majorca, Spain, but also from small and out of the way places, such as (Jabal) Nafusa, Libya, Urbus, Tunisia, and Der`a, Morocco. In a number of cases, our documents prove that such persons, or even their fathers, had previously immigrated to Egypt. In others, however, we definitely see merchants from Tunisia, Morocco, Spain and Sicily undertaking the long voyage to India and, in some instances, even more than once.

In a stimulating essay entitled, “The Fatimids and the Route to India,” Professor Bernard Lewis undertook to show that the Fatimid caliphs of Egypt endeavored to take the India trade out of the hands of their Iraqi rivals, the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad.

As to the organization of the India trade, no merchant guilds can be discerned in its Middle Eastern branch. The merchants appearing in the Geniza records normally concluded partnerships and traveled in company, but no rigid organization or coercion whatsoever can be discovered in this respect. It is astonishing how many small fry participated in this overseas trade. In order to spread the risk, a Cairene businessman would join many partnerships each with comparatively small sums or with limited amounts of goods, and persons possessing little capital would venture on the long and dangerous journey relying mainly on the capital or merchandise confided to them. An important merchant would be accompanied by a slave who served him as a business agent and also as a menial, or he would send a slave out to India instead of going himself.

Yet this great trade did not entirely lack organized leadership. It was provided by the representative of the merchants, in Arabic wakfl al-tujjdr, in Hebrew peqfd ha-soharcm. No substantial difference can be discovered with regard to this important office vis-à-vis the Mediterranean and the India trades.

Over twenty places on the west coast of India are mentioned in the Geniza records. Each ship or convoy had its own port of destination and was labeled accordingly ‘the one bound for Broach’ or Tana, or Kalam, etc. Merchants and goods traveling in a ship heading for a port different from their own destination had to change to another ship. An additional reason for this seemingly strange system was perhaps the endeavor to avoid the excessive customs duties levied in each port.

The names of the Indian shipowners, merchants and craftsmen mentioned in the Geniza records will require the attention of the experts. It seems that quite a number of them are not proper names, but designations for officers or members of caste guilds. Thus PTN SWMY, whose large ship foundered, after having been driven by winds to Berbera on the African coast (while the escorting smaller craft arrived safely in Aden), certainly was no other than the pattana svami, the head of a large merchants guild, who also served as a kind of mayor. Reference is made repeatedly to an Indian shipowner PDYAR, which word is in some letters preceded by the article, characterizing it as a title or as a term of office. The PDYAR possessed several ships, one of which was commanded by a Muslim, and he was addressed in writing by the above-mentioned Madman. One wonders in which language the two corresponded, presumably, in Arabic. It is, however, not excluded that the Jewish representative of the merchants in Aden kept an Indian clerk for his correspondence with the authorities, shipowners and business friends in the ports of India .

Business was conducted to a large extent along denominational lines, simply because this was the practical thing to do. Members of one religion traveled together in order to be able to fulfill their religious duties, such as prayers and observance of the Sabbath, holidays and dietary laws. Partnerships were concluded and dissolved and many other civil cases were brought before the courts of the various denominations. These courts also dealt with matters of inheritance, so important for families whose fathers and sons were exposed to the hazards of overseas travel.

Yet the same Geniza letters reveal an astonishing degree of interdenominational cooperation, matched by almost complete absence of animosity against other communities. Partnerships and other close business relationships between Jews and Muslims, or Hindus, or Christians were commonplace and the members of other religious communities are referred to with the same honorable and amicable epithets as the writers’ own brethren. The great dangers shared in common, the feeling that every one’s lot was in the hand of the same God, certainly contributed much to that spirit of all-embracing brotherhood, which pervades the India papers of the Cairo Geniza.

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