Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

SUCH PIRATICAL CONDUCT by kings was however rare. Usually the relationship between kings and traders was mutually supportive, and mutually beneficial. This was reflected in the fact that the most flourishing markets in kingdoms were generally in royal capitals. ‘By the palace of the king there are four bazaars, situated opposite one another …,’ reports Razzak about Vijayanagar. ‘At the head of each bazaar there is a lofty arcade and magnificent gallery … The bazaars are very broad and long … The tradesmen of each separate guild or craft have their shops close to one another. Jewellers sell their rubies and pearls and diamonds and emeralds openly in the bazaar.’ The largest market in medieval India was, as was to be expected, in Delhi, which Battuta considered the largest market in the world. Apart from these permanent markets, large temporary trade fairs were usually organised in towns and major villages during temple festivals.

A major item of trans-regional trade in medieval India was salt, the main source of which was the Sambhar Salt Lake in Rajasthan. Several metals of commercial value were also mined in India. Of these, the most important item was iron, which was quarried in several places in the extensive region stretching from the southern Gangetic Valley to almost the very tip of India. Indian iron had a good overseas market in medieval times, as it was considered ideal for making swords. Copper was another notable metal mined in India, mainly in Rajasthan. But gold and silver were scarce in India, and only very small quantities of them were mined there. Diamonds were mined in the Deccan. And pearl fishery was a major industry on the southern Tamil Nadu coast.

In medieval times there was also some inter-regional and international trade in a few items manufactured in India, particularly in cloth. A variety of fabrics were woven in India at this time — in cotton, silk, and wool — and some of the special regional textile products were of very high quality and were marketed across India, and also exported. Gold and silver embroidery was a speciality of Gujarat; shawls and carpets of Kashmir.

MEDIEVAL INDIA HAD, for that age, fairly good transportation and communication facilities, with its main roads running east-west across the breadth of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, and north-south from the Gangetic Valley to deep into peninsular India. These roads had halting stations at regular intervals, where there were caravanserais and shops, as well as porters, horses, horse-carriages, bullock-carts and palanquins for hire. There was also an efficient long distance postal system in India at this time, with runners and horsemen posted at regular intervals along the main roads to carry mail. This facility was primarily for government use, but presumably it, or a similar service, was also available to traders.

These services however linked only the major political and commercial centres of India, and did not cover the interior regions of the subcontinent, where roads were rare, and communication facilities poor or nonexistent. Because of this, carts were seldom used to transport goods in India, except for short haul. The common mode of transport of goods in medieval India was to carry them on bullocks, which travelled in huge caravans, often consisting of thousands of bulls — Battuta mentions a caravan of 3000 bulls carrying 30,000 maunds of grain; other reporters mention caravans of 10,000 and even 20,000 bulls.

In Kerala most of the bulk goods were transported in boats on the backwaters or rivers; alternately men carried the goods on their heads. Animals were seldom used for transporting goods in Kerala—‘There are no beasts of burden in this land,’ states Barbosa. In North India, the Ganga-Yamuna river system was extensively used for transporting goods by boat, which was relatively cheaper and safer than road transport, and boats and guards were available for hire by traders at jetties along these rivers. There was also some amount of coastal shipping in India at this time.

Apart from the poor network of roads in the interior regions of India, there were several other hazards for the transport of goods in India in medieval times. Travel routes in several regions of India passed through dense forests inhabited by brigands, so traders usually travelled in groups and under the protection of hired guards. Wars and rebellions, which were perennial in medieval India, also disrupted trade. Venetian trader Caesar Frederic, for instance, was once held up in Vijayanagar for seven whole months, for the roads in the region were at this time, following the defeat of Vijayanagar in the battle of Talikota, infested by bandits.

Another major impediment to the free flow of trade in medieval India was the confusing diversity of currencies, weights and measures in use in different parts of the country. These often varied from region to region, and from kingdom to kingdom, sometimes even in the different parts of the same kingdom, or from king to king. Coins of the same name, as well as weights and measures of the same name, often had different values in different places and in different times. Vijayanagar had several mints, one at each provincial capital, which would have made it very difficult to maintain uniform standard in its coins. Adding to the confusion of all this was the free circulation of foreign coins in India, particularly the coins of Portugal, Italy, and the Middle Eastern kingdoms. Comments Caesar Frederick, a mid-sixteenth century Italian trade prospector in India: ‘The money we take this day would not serve the next.’

All this impeded the smooth transaction of business in the subcontinent. What prevented Indian trade from collapsing altogether in this monetary chaos was the presence of money changers in all major markets, who would, for a commission, give local coins in exchange for the coins of different Indian kingdoms and of foreign lands. Besides, the barter system was still extensively used in India for small transactions, with grain as the medium of exchange. According to Battuta, the common people in Bengal and Maldives used cowrie as money.

AN IMPORTANT ELEMENT in the Indian economy of the early medieval period was the participation of Indians in the brisk maritime trade in the Indian Ocean, particularly in the trade with South-east Asia and China. ‘The curiosities of Chin (China) and Machin (Canton) and the beautiful products of Hind and Sind, laden on large ships … sailing like mountains … are always arriving there (at Mabar: Coromandel Coast) … which is so situated as to be the key of Hind,’ writes Wassaf.

The major players in the Indian Ocean trade at this time were Indians, Arabs, Chinese and South-East Asians. Of these, Arabs were the most active and successful traders, and their dominant presence in the Arabian Sea eventually obliged Indian traders to gradually retreat from there, though they still maintained a residual presence in a few Middle Eastern trade centres, like Aden. Indians thereafter largely confined themselves to trade with South-east Asia and China; Indian traders, particularly Chettis of the Tamil country, had at this time a notable presence in places like Malacca.

Arab traders had been active in the Indian Ocean long before the founding of Islam, but now, energised by their new faith, they surged ahead, and went on to dominate the sea trade in the entire region. This was the result of peaceful though fierce competition; virtually no military action was involved in it. And, as Arab trade in the region expanded, Arab settlements in India’s coastal towns increased in number and size, and they generally enjoyed great prosperity. Arab traders in Cambay in Gujarat were very affluent, and lived in grand mansions, Battuta noted. And he found numerous mosques along the coast of Kerala, which indicated the presence of a large number of Arabs and local Muslims there, and their general prosperity.