‘Indian Money’, Intra-Shīʿī Polemics, and the Bohra and Khoja Pilgrimage Infrastructure in Iraq's Shrine Cities, 1897–1932

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
MICHAEL O'SULLIVAN
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Western India ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Indian Ocean Trade

Abstract Using sources in Arabic, Gujarati, Ottoman, Persian and Urdu, this article examines the foundation of Bohra and Khoja pilgrimage institutions straddling western India and Iraq's Shīʿī shrine cities between 1897 and 1932. As manifestations of ‘locative piety’, these institutions were an outgrowth of the commercial capital Bohra and Khoja merchants had acquired in Indian Ocean trade over the previous half century, and the distinct caste and sectarian identities this wealth augmented. The Bohra and Khoja (both Twelver and Ismāʿīlī) mercantile and religious elites supplied their constituents with a well-ordered pilgrimage to Iraq, certainly by the standards of contemporary Hajj. To achieve this, community-run institutional nodes in Karachi, Bombay and the Shīʿī shrine cities were integrated into wider transport, administrative, and financial infrastructures connecting India and Iraq. Yet at a time when Najaf and Karbala's economic and religious fortunes were plagued by sectarianism, political upheavals and divisions among the mujtahids, the growing presence of western Indian Shīʿīs in the shrine cities was fiercely condemned by some Twelver Shīʿī clerics. One of their number, Muḥammad Karīm Khurāsānī, published a substantial polemic against the Bohras and Khojas in 1932, signalling how these pilgrimage infrastructures worked to exacerbate intra-Shīʿī disputes.

The Rice Trade in Eastern India 1650–1740

1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 531-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Arsaratnam
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Western India ◽  
Eastern India ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Food Grains ◽  
Indian Ocean Trade ◽  
Grain Trade ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Asian Mainland

The historical literature on Indian Ocean trade has now come to recognize the importance of food-grains as an ingredient of that trade. In the western part of the Ocean (the Arabian Sea), its eastern part (Bay of Bengal) and within the Southeast Asian mainland and islands, there is every evidence of a substantial movement of food-grains from surplus areas to deficit areas. Though the scale and frequency of this trade may not be relatively as important in the regional economy as Braudel has outlined for the Mediterranean (with the assistance, it must be admitted, of superior quantitative evidence), it was nevertheless one of the commodities that entered into the commercial processes of different regions of the Ocean. The evidence for the study of the grain trade is, as with all Asian trade in the early modern period, fragmentary and episodic. As intrinsic to the sector of trade embracing Asian merchant shippers and consumers, it shares the disadvantages of paucityof evidence of that whole sector. Again, as with Asian trade as a whole, the grain trade comes into view only when Europeans have entered into that trade and have left glimpses of it in their records.The Portuguese in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were heavily involved in it in western India and a recent study has marshalled evidence from Portuguese sources on the mechanics of that trade in a port on the Kanara coast.2 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the entry into the Indian Ocean of the large Chartered Companies, evidence on the grain trade is substantially increased ,enabling us to see it in sharper focus in the broad canvas of Asian trade

The Hidden Face of Surat: Reflections on a Cosmopolitan Indian Ocean Centre, 1540-1750

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 205-255
Author(s):  
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Red Sea ◽  
Persian Gulf ◽  
Western India ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Indian Ocean Trade ◽  
Commercial Exchange ◽  
The Persian Gulf

Abstract The great port of Surat in western India dominated accounts of Indian Ocean trade between the late sixteenth and mid eighteenth century. Consolidated first by an Ottoman notable, it became the Mughal Empire’s western window into the worlds of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. In this essay, I explore Surat’s other, less visible, aspect: namely as an intellectual centre, that brought together diverse and sometimes competing traditions. In turn, we shall see how this vibrant intellectual life was tied up both to certain structures of politics, and to commercial exchange at various scales.

scholarly journals Indian Ocean trade connections: characterization and commercial routes of torpedo jars

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Lischi ◽  
Eleonora Odelli ◽  
Jhashree L. Perumal ◽  
Jeannette J. Lucejko ◽  
Erika Ribechini ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Indian Ocean Trade

Maritime Archaeological Studies in India

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aniruddh S. Gaur ◽  
Kamlesh H. Vora
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Tamil Nadu ◽  
Maritime History ◽  
Indian Coast ◽  
Indian Ocean Trade ◽  
History Of ◽  
Detailed Work

India has played a major role in Indian Ocean trade and the development of shipbuilding technology. The study of the maritime history of India commenced in the first decade of the twentieth century and was largely based on literary data. Maritime archaeological investigations have been undertaken at various places along the Indian coast, such as in Dwarka, Pindara, the Gulf of Khambhat, the Maharashtra coast, the Tamil Nadu coast, etc. Despite a long coastline and a rich maritime history, there are no proper coastal records or records of shipwrecks that are preserved, except some literary references, which suggest a large number of shipwrecks dating between the early sixteenth century and the nineteenth century. This article discusses important shipwrecks on which detailed work is in progress.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document