AN

HISTORICAL DISQUISITION

CONCERNING

ANCIENT INDIA.

SECT.

III.

SECTION III.

Intercourse with India, from the Conquest of Egypt by the Mahomedans, to the Discovery of the Passage by the Cape of Good Hope, and the Establishment of the Portuguese Dominion in the East.

ABOUT fourscore years after the death of

Justinian, an event happened, which occasioned a revolution still more considerable in the intercourse of Europe with the East. Mahomet, by publishing a new religion, seems to have animated his countrymen with a new spirit, and to have called forth latent passions and talents into exertion. The greatest part of the Arabians, satisfied from the earliest times with national independence and personal liberty, tended their camels, or reared their palm-trees within the

AN HISTORICAL DISQUISITION, &c.

a

III.

99

precincts of their own peninsula, and had little in- SEC T. tercourse with the rest of mankind, unless when they sallied out to plunder a caravan, or to rob a traveller. In some districts, however, they had begun to add the labours of agriculture, and the business of commerce, to the occupations of pastoral life. These different orders of men, when prompted by the enthusiastic ardour with which the exhortations and example of Mahomet inspired them, displayed, at once, all the zeal of missionaries, and the ambition of conquerors. They spread the doctrine of their prophet, and extended the dominion of his successors, from the shores of the Atlantic to the frontier of China, with a rapidity of success to which there is nothing similar in the history of mankind. Egypt A.C.1640. was one of their earliest conquests; and as they settled in that inviting country, and kept possession of it, the Greeks were excluded from all intercourse with Alexandria, to which they had long resorted as the chief mart of Indian goods. Nor was this the only effect which the progress of the Mahomedan arms had upon the commerce of Europe with India. Prior to their invasion of Egypt, the Arabians had subdued the great kingdom of Persia, and added to it the empire of their Caliphs. They found their new subjects engaged in prosecuting that extensive trade with India, and the country to the east of it, the commencement and progress of which in

a Sale's Koran. Prelim. Dis. p. 32, 33.

SEC T. Persia I have already mentioned; and they were

III.

so sensible of the great advantages derived from it, that they became desirous to partake of them. As the active powers of the human mind, when roused to vigorous exertions in one line, are most capable of operating with force in other directions; the Arabians, from impetuous warriors, soon became enterprising merchants. They continued to carry on the trade with India in its former channel from the Persian Gulf, but it was with that ardour which characterises all the early efforts of Mahomet's followers. In a short time they advanced far beyond the boundaries of ancient navigation, and brought many of the most precious commodities of the East directly from the countries which produced them. In order to engross all the profit arising from the sale of them, the Caliph Omar, a few years after the conquest of Persia, founded the city of Bassora, on the western banks of the great stream formed by the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris, with a view of securing the command of these two rivers, by which goods imported from India were conveyed into all parts of Asia. With such discernment was the situation chosen, that Bassora soon became a place of trade hardly inferior to Alexandria.

THIS general information with respect to the trade of the Arabians with India, which is all

b Herbel. Biblioth. Orient. artic. Basrah. Abul. Pharas. Hist. Dynast. p. 113.

III.

that can be derived from the historians of that S E C T. period, is confirmed and illustrated by the Relation of a Voyage from the Persian Gulf towards the east, written by an Arabian merchant in the year of the Christian æra eight hundred and fifty-one, about two centuries after Persia was subjected to the Caliphs, and explained by the Commentary of another Arabian, who had likewise visited the eastern parts of Asia. This curious Relation, which enables us to fill up a chasm in the history of mercantile communication with India, furnishes materials for describing more in detail the extent of the Arabian discoveries in the East, and the manner in which they made them.

THOUGH Some have imagined that the wonderful property of the magnet, by which it communicates such virtue to a needle or slender rod of iron, as to make it point towards the poles of the earth, was known in the East long before it was observed in Europe, it is manifest both from the Relation of the Mahomedan merchant, and from much concurring evidence, that not only the Arabians, but the Chinese, were destitute of this faithful guide, and that their mode of navigation was not more adventurous than that of the Greeks and Romans.d They steered servilely along the coast, seldom stretching out to sea so far as to lose sight of land, and d Relation, p. 2. 8, &c.

See NOTE XXXVII.

III.

SEC T. as they shaped their course in this timid manner, their mode of reckoning was defective, and liable to the same errors which I observed in that of the Greeks and Romans.

e

NOTWITHSTANDING these disadvantages, the progress of the Arabians towards the east extended far beyond the Gulf of Siam, the boundary of European navigation. They became acquainted with Sumatra, and the other islands of the great Indian Archipelago, and advanced as far as the city of Canton in China. Nor are these discoveries to be considered as the effect of the enterprising curiosity of individuals; they were owing to a regular commerce carried on from the Persian Gulf with China, and all the intermediate countries. Many Mahomedans, imitating the example of the Persians described by Cosmas Indicopleustes, settled in India and the countries beyond it. They were so numerous in the city of Canton, that the Emperor (as the Arabian authors relate) permitted them to have a Cadi or judge of their own sect, who decided controversies among his countrymen by their own laws, and presided in all the functions of religion. In other places proselytes were gained to the Mahomedan faith, and the Arabian language was understood and spoken in almost every

Renaudot. Inquiry into the Time when the Mahomedans first entered China, p. 143.

f Relation, 7. Remarks, p. 19. Inquiry, p. 171, &