From Istanbul with Love

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Santos Alves
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Red Sea ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Mediterranean

The political and diplomatic contacts established over the course of the 1560s are one of the most important chronological and symbolic landmarks of relations between the Sultanate of Aceh and the Ottoman Empire. Recently discovered documents from several European archives have revealed new protagonists, facts, and political, diplomatic and economic articulations encompassing the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, with important ramifications for Southeast Asia. This chapter focuses, above all, on the activities of the espionage and counter-espionage networks, based in Istanbul, but scattered across various Mediterranean ports. These networks were headed by eminent figures from the Jewish and Portuguese New Christian financial and commercial circles, who were close to Süleyman I as well as his successor Selim II. The intelligence produced by these networks during the 1560s is mainly focused on the spice routes from Southeast Asia (particularly Aceh) through the Maldives to the Red Sea.

The Archaeological Record of Indian Ocean Engagements in the Red Sea

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eivind Heldaas Seland
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Red Sea ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Western Indian Ocean ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter reviews the evidence, nature, and development of maritime contacts in the Red Sea and from the Red Sea into the western Indian Ocean from the Neolithic until the start of the Islamic period, c. 4000 BCE–700 CE. In addition to summarizing and highlighting recent archaeological research and ongoing scholarly debates, emphasis is placed on identifying and explaining periods of intensified as well as reduced interaction, and on the relationship between internal Red Sea dynamics and contacts with the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean worlds in light of climate, natural environment, hinterland interest, and a changing geopolitical situation.

scholarly journals EMPIRE AND THE HAJJ: PILGRIMS, PLAGUES, AND PAN-ISLAM UNDER BRITISH SURVEILLANCE, 1865–1908

2008 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 290a-290a
Author(s):  
Michael Christopher Low
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Red Sea ◽  
Rapid Growth ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Ocean Basin ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Epidemic Diseases

During the late 19th century, British supremacy in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean basin increasingly brought the hajj under the surveillance and regulation of non-Muslim powers. With the development of steamship travel and the opening of the Suez Canal came rapid growth in the number of oceangoing pilgrims. Colonial authorities eventually identified the steamship-era hajj as both a conduit for the spread of epidemic diseases, such as cholera and plague, and a critical outlet for the growth of Pan-Islamic networks being forged among Indian dissidents, pilgrims, and the Ottoman Empire. As a result, the British and Ottoman empires engaged in a contestation of sacred space in which the stakes ranged from suzerainty over the Hijaz and the administration of the hajj to even larger questions of hegemony in the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and even dār al-Islām as a whole

The Red Sea

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Blue
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Mediterranean Sea ◽  
Red Sea ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Maritime Trade ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Maritime Traffic ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Insight Into

The Red Sea has been always an important highway for maritime trade and shipping. The prevailing winds greatly influence the way that ancient seafarers navigate these waters, contributing to the traditional view that the Red Sea served as a barrier to maritime communications. Despite this, frequent maritime traffic, and remarkably few shipwrecks have been discovered in this region. This article addresses limited shipwreck evidence and draws on a range of diverse evidence, in order to provide some insight into the maritime archaeological record of the Red Sea. It summarizes the available maritime archaeological records regarding the Red Sea. However, there is much more to be discovered and learned about this region as it has stimulated maritime contact, communication and trade along the waterway, and opening channels to the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

scholarly journals From Anatolia to Aceh

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-117
Author(s):  
Philipp Bruckmayr
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Migrant Communities ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Funded Research Project ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Scholars of Islam in Southeast Asia and the history of the Malay-Indonesianworld have long been aware of periods of intense contacts between the OttomanEmpire and the region. Most widely known in this context are the politicalexchanges between the Sultanate of Aceh and the Ottoman Empire ofthe sixteenth century in the face of Portuguese maritime domination in SoutheastAsia. Regional calls for Ottoman aid against the expanding Europeanpowers by Muslim rulers were voiced in the nineteenth century. Despite thislapse in documented political contacts, however, connections between the tworegions were also sustained and developed further throughout the interveningcenturies on a variety of levels, most prominently in the economic, religious,and intellectual spheres.Despite the pioneering work of scholars such as Anthony Reid since the1960s, these connections, including inter alia the holy cities and Yemen’sHadhramaut region, both important centers of Islamic learning for SoutheastAsian Muslims and the source of strong migrant communities settling in theMalay-Indonesian world, have received scant scholarly attention. It is againstthis background that the British Academy-funded research project “Islam,Trade, and Politics across the Indian Ocean” and the volume at hand, whichrepresents one of its major fruits, brings together new innovative research onall of the various aspects of this particular relationship. Hereby it must benoted that its scope extends at times well beyond the Ottoman era also intothe Republican era, and that, importantly, much of the documentary evidencerelied upon derives from newly discovered archival sources.The volume is divided into three thematic parts, preceded by two introductorychapters by the editors and Anthony Reid, respectively, which set thestage for the remainder of the book by reviewing the relationship’s general ...

Bridging Disconnected Seas

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-58
Author(s):  
Federico De Romanis
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Red Sea ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Commercial Enterprise ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Over Time

This chapter is a review of how the challenges to the interchange between the Mediterranean and Red Seas were met during Antiquity. Over the centuries, the need to overcome the logistical problems posed by navigating the Red Sea, crossing the desert, and sailing the Nile in order to link the Mediterranean and Red Seas resulted in a series of different strategies for each stage of the journey. The fact that each combination could be deemed more suitable to a particular kind of business explains why, over time, one was chosen over another or why several were practised simultaneously. When the texts of the Muziris papyrus were written, Roman trade in the Indian Ocean was evolving from its Early Imperial forms to those of Late Antiquity. As in all transitional periods, there was a mix of old and new, of past and future. The past forms are attested by the Muziris papyrus itself, which still envisages a commercial enterprise involving a direct sea route to Muziris and a connection to the Mediterranean that comprises a limited Red Sea sailing, a desert crossing to Coptos, and a voyage down the Nile to Alexandria. The future forms were heralded by the opening of Trajan’s Canal.

The Ottoman Administration of the Spice Trade in the Sixteenth-century Red Sea and Persian Gulf

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giancarlo Casale
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Red Sea ◽  
Persian Gulf ◽  
Innovative Strategies ◽  
Formidable Challenge ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Spice Trade ◽  
Over Time

AbstractFollowing the Ottoman conquest of Egypt and the Levant in 1516-17, administrators of the empire began to experiment with several innovative strategies to increase the total volume of the spice trade between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, and to maximize the state's share of its revenues. These became progressively more sophisticated over time, until by the end of the 1560s a comprehensive infrastructure was in place, including a rationalized empire-wide tax regime for regulating private trade, a network of "imperial factors" who bought spices for the sultan in overseas emporiums, and an annual convoy of spice galleys that shipped cargoes of state-owned pepper from the Yemen to the markets of Egypt and Istanbul. All of this, combined with natural advantages of geography and the goodwill of Muslim traders in the Indian Ocean, enabled the Ottomans to mount a formidable challenge to the "pepper monopoly" of the Portuguese Estado da India. À la suite de la conquête ottomane de l'Égypte et du Levant en 1516-17, les administrateurs de l'empire commencèrent à mettre en application diverses stratégies novatrices dans le but d'augmenter le volume total du commerce des épices entre l'océan Indien et la Méditerranée et de maximiser la part de l'État dans ses revenus. Ces stratégies se perfectionnèrent avec le temps et vers la fin des années 1560 une infrastructure complète était en place, incluant un régime fiscal repensé à l'échelle de l'empire afin de réglementer le commerce privé, un réseau de "facteurs impériaux" achetant des épices pour le compte du sultan dans les comptoirs d'outremer et un convoi annuel de galères transportant du Yémen aux marchés de l'Égypte et d'Istanbul des cargaisons de poivre appartenant à l'État. Grâce à tous ces éléments, de même qu'à leurs avantages géographiques naturels et à la disposition favorable des marchands musulmans dans l'océan Indien, les Ottomans purent présenter un défi de taille au "monopole sur le poivre" de l'Estado da India portugais.

From Quanzhou to the Sulu Zone and Beyond: Questions Related to the Early Fourteenth Century

1998 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roderich Ptak
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
East Coast ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
China Coast

Ships sailing from Fujian to Southeast Asia could choose between two different sea routes. The first route followed the China coast to central Guangdong; it then led to Hainan, the Champa coast and Pulau Condore, an island near the southern tip of Vietnam. From there it continued in three directions: to Siam, to northwestern Borneo and to the Malayan east coast. Going south to the Malayan east coast was the most direct way to Trengganu, Pahang, Pulau Tioman, Johore and modern Singapore whence it was possible to sail into the Indian Ocean or to cross over to Sumatra, Bangka Island and Java.

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