Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
78. The Rise of England, Part 4 of 6
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
Muslim political influence dominated the Indian Ocean. The islands of Indonesia had accepted Islam. In India, Sufi shaykhs had penetrated into the Deccan, while in northern India, the interaction of Islam and Hinduism had produced a rich amalgam.
East Africa was dotted with city-states, ruled by African Muslims. So pervasive was the Islamic influence, that Arabic became the language of trade and commerce. Even the Ming emperors of China, in pursuit of their commercial interests, saw it fit to appoint Muslims as sea captains. Admiral Zheng Yi (commonly known as Admiral Ho), who led multiple voyages in the Indian Ocean (1402-1415), was a Chinese Muslim.
Freedom of the seas was guaranteed by consensus. Africans, Arabs, Persians, Indians, Sinhalese, Malays and Chinese were all active in this trade. Even though Muslim influence was dominant, Hindu merchants from Malabar or Buddhist priests from Canton traveled in peace and competed for trade and influence on equal terms. Thriving commerce produced a rich culture, giving birth to new languages such as Swahili in East Africa and transforming old ones such as Malay.
The peace of this commerce was shattered by the European invasions. What had been an ocean of trade and commerce for a thousand years became an ocean of piracy and destruction. Vasco de Gama sailed to the coast of Malabar (1496) guided by an Indian mariner, Ahmed Ibn Majid, whom he had met in Mombasa. In the 15th century, the Muslims knew far more about the Indian Ocean than did the Europeans. As early as the year 1000, the Afghan historian Al Bairuni knew the shape of the tip of Africa. By contrast, European knowledge of the Indian Ocean was poor. They imagined that India extended all the way east of the Nile River to the Malaccas (Malaysia). They used the term “Greater India” to denote the Deccan. Northern India was called “Lesser India”. The territories in East Africa were called “Middle India”. Somewhere in Middle India, they imagined, there was a Christian King by the name of Prester John who was waiting for the Europeans to join hands with them in a holy war against the Muslims. The Portuguese and Spanish were not just out to find a new trade route to the Indian Ocean. Their aim, as explicitly stated in a letter from the Portuguese King Manuel to Sultan Qansuh al Ghouri of Egypt in 1507, was to invade Arabia from the territories of Prester John and destroy Mecca.
The Portuguese devastated the principal ports of the Indian Ocean (1504-1520). They succeeded in destroying the peaceful trade there, changing a lifestyle that had existed for centuries. For twenty-five years, there was no answer to the Portuguese atrocities. Only after the Ottomans organized a credible naval defense did the Portuguese meet their match. In 1517, the Ottomans captured Egypt, moved the Caliphate to Istanbul and took on the burden of defending Muslim interests worldwide. Starting with the year 1530, the Ottoman navy challenged the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. One by one, the important trading centers of East Africa were won back. By the year 1540, Indian pepper flowed both on Muslim and Portuguese ships. Towards the end of the century, events in North Africa and Western Europe had a direct impact on the power balance in the Indian Ocean. After the Portuguese defeat at al Qasr al Kabir (1578), and the destruction of the Spanish Armada by the English (1588), Spanish and Portuguese power waned, while the English and the Dutch entered the fray.
Armed with superior guns mounted on larger and more efficient ships, the Dutch quickly overran Portuguese outposts in the Indian Ocean. In 1616, the Dutch East India Company obtained trading rights in Japan. In 1619, it founded a colony near Jakarta (Indonesia). In 1615, the Dutch wrested the Straits of Malacca from the Portuguese. The island of Mauritius was reinforced and a settlement was established at the southern tip of Africa (1640). Trading colonies were established at Isfahan (Persia), Surinam (South America) and New Amsterdam (later renamed New York, North America). They drove the Portuguese from Brazil and cornered its slave trade, but the Portuguese recaptured the colony after they won their independence from Spain (1648). The Dutch were almost as ruthless as the Portuguese, especially in their dealings with the Indonesians and the Malays, but their focus was primarily trade. As long as they obtained their spices, they did not force their Christian views on the local, predominantly Muslim populations.
A Dutch monopoly of the Indian Ocean trade was no more acceptable to England and France than was a Spanish-Portuguese monopoly. Judging correctly that India held the key to trade in the Indian Ocean, King James I of England sent an ambassador, Thomas Roe, to the imperial court of Jehangir. That was in keeping with the English desire to establish trade relations with the principal seats of power in Asia. For instance, in 1581, Queen Elizabeth I had sent Harborne as her ambassador to the Ottoman court of Murad III who conferred trade privileges on the English because the Ottomans needed English tin for their bronze cannons.
Roe arrived in Surat in 1615 and proceeded to Agra to present his credentials to the Great Moghul. Each applicant to the imperial court was required to present gifts befitting his rank. According to his own admission, Roe’s gifts were meager and consisted of frayed mirrors, moldy leather cases and faded velvet, some paintings and an old English coach. The Emperor politely accepted the gifts, showing a good deal of interest in the paintings, a field in which the Great Moghul was a connoisseur. As for the coach, the Great Moghul had it immediately repaired and reupholstered with gold brocade. There is no evidence to support the position taken by some English writers that Roe befriended Jehangir and the two together indulged in bouts of drunkenness and opium consumption.
The Emperor considered “the Franks” hardly worth mentioning in his great memoirs. (The word Firangi in Hindustani derives from the word Frank, and was used derogatively to refer to Europeans during the colonial era). The closest the English Ambassador got to the Emperor was at one of the royal send-off ceremonies for a military campaign, and even that was at several armslength. Emperor Shah Jehan was more explicit in his derision of the Ferangis: “The Franks would be a great people were it not for three things. First, they are heathens. Second, they eat pigs. Third, they do not wash after they use the bathroom”. Such smugness was characteristic of Asian rulers in the 17th and 18th centuries, and it prevented them from accurately assessing the capabilities of these “Firangis” from across the world. In the long run, it proved to be their undoing.
The goods that the English brought to Surat-wool, mercury, red lead, vermillion, and drinking glasses-hardly caused a stir in the merchant community of Surat which was accustomed to getting paid in gold and silver. Nonetheless, Roe’s observations are among the first by a European about life at the court of the Great Moghul. Roe records how Jehangir was weighed in gold and diamonds at one of his birthdays, and the gold was distributed to the poor. He notes that the royal military camp embraced a circumference of more than thirty miles, and was larger than any European city at that time. Roe stayed in India until 1619 and obtained from the Emperor a royal Farman (decree), giving the English trading privileges at Surat. The Farman of Jehangir was a turning point in history. It was the first instance of an Indian Emperor formally granting trading rights to a European company. It opened India to European influence.
.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
Back to Pakistanlink Homepage
