AL-HIND THE MAKING OF THE INDO-ISLAMIC WORLD VOLUME III This page intentionally left blank AL-HIND THE MAKING OF THE INDO-ISLAMIC WORLD BY ANDRÉ WINK Professor of History University of Wisconsin, Madison VOLUME III INDO-ISLAMIC SOCIETY 14th-15th CENTURIES BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2004 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wink, André. Al-Hind, the making of the Indo-Islamic world / by André Wink. — p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: v. 3. Indo-Islamic Society, 14th-15th Centuries ISBN 9004095098 (set). — ISBN 9004135618 (v.3) 1. India—History—1000-1765. 2. Indian Ocean Region—History. 3. Muslims—India—Civilization. I. Title. DS452.W56. 1997 954.02—dc20 91-22179 CIP ISBN 90 04 13561 8 ISBN (set) 90 04 09509 8 © Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS CONTENTS Maps ............................................................................................ VII Abbreviations .............................................................................. IX Preface ........................................................................................ XI Introduction ................................................................................ 1 Chapter I. From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean: medieval history in geographic perspective .......................... 5 Chapter II. Medieval cities ........................................................ 64 Chapter III. Frontier and settled society .................................. 79 Chapter IV. Post-nomadic empires .......................................... 119 Chapter V. Islam, trade and the coastal societies of the Indian Ocean .......................................................................... 170 Conclusion .................................................................................. 244 Bibliography ................................................................................ 245 Index ............................................................................................ 259 This page intentionally left blank MAPS Map 1. East Africa .................................................................... 18 Map 2. South Asia .................................................................... 24 Map 3. Southeast Asia .............................................................. 36 Map 4. Arabia and Persian Gulf .............................................. 188 This page intentionally left blank ABBREVIATIONS Duarte Barbosa M. Longworth Dames (ed.), The Book of Duarte Barbosa: An account of the countries bordering on the Indian Ocean and their inhabitants, written by Duarte Barbosa and completed about the year 1518 A.D., 2 Volumes (New Delhi, 1989). FFS A. Rashid (ed.), Futu˙àt-i-Fìroz Shàhì (Aligarh, 1949). FS A. M. Husain (ed.), Futù˙ as-Salà†ìn of 'Ißàmì (Agra, 1938). IM A. Rashid (ed.), Inshà"-i-Màhrù (Lahore, 1965). KF M. W. Mirza (ed.), ‡azà"ìn al-Futù˙ of Óazrat Amìr Khusrau Dihlawì (Calcutta, 1953). Pires, Suma Oriental The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires: An Account of the East, from the Red Sea to Japan, written in Malacca and India in 1512–1515, 2 Volumes (New Delhi, 1990). TA B. De (transl.), The ˇabaqàt-i-Akbarì: A History of India from the Early Musulman Invasions to the 38th Year of the Reign of Akbar by Khwajah Nizàmuddìn Ahmad (New Delhi, 1990; or 1939). TF Ta"rì¶-i-Firishta (Lucknow, 1864). Two volumes in one; second volume indicated II. TFS S. Ahmad Khan (ed.), Ta"rì¶-i-Fìroz Shàhì of ¸ìà" ad-Dìn Baranì (Calcutta, 1862). TFSA Ta"rì¶-i-Fìroz Shàhì of Shams-i-Siràj 'Afìf (Calcutta, 1888). TKJ S. M. Imam ad-Dìn (ed.), The Tàrì¶-i-Khàn Jahànì wa Makhzan-i-Afghànì of Khwajah Ni'mat Allah, 2 Volumes (Dacca, 1960–2). TMS M. Hidayat Hosaini (ed.), Ta"rì¶-i-Mubàrakshàhì of Ya˙ya bin A˙mad bin 'Abdullàh as-Sirhindì (Cal- cutta, 1931). X TS M. Hidayat Hosaini (ed.), Tàrì¶-i-Shàhì (also known as Tàrì¶- i-Salà†ìn-i-Afàghìna) of A˙mad Yàdgàr (Calcutta, 1939). ZN M. Abbàsì (ed.), ¸afarnàma of Sharaf ad-Dìn 'Alì Yazdì, Volume II (Teheran, 1336/1957). PREFACE The research on which this book is based was done largely during the academic year 1997–98, which I spent as a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) in Wassenaar. I am immensely grateful to the staff at NIAS for the efforts they made to facilitate my research, and to the Rector, Henk L. Wesseling, for encourag- ing me to apply and making this such an intellectually rewarding year. I would also like to thank the NIAS and Wim Stokhof, of the International Institute for Asian Studies, for funding a small inter- national conference on Nomads in the Sedentary World in July 1998 at Leiden, which, for me at least, clarified some of the issues dealt with in this book. The book was completed during the Fall semester of 2002, at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, where I was generously supported by the Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro Membership. I would like to thank the faculty of the School of Historical Studies not only for approving my application but also for providing quite stimulating company during many lunches and occasional dinners. I particularly benefited from numerous conversations with Patricia Crone. Between Institutes, I received considerable research support from the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin, including a sab- batical in the Fall of 2001. I presented outlines and chapters of the book during seminars in Madison, as well as in lectures at a great many universities in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Over the years this allowed me to considerably sharpen some of the arguments, while forcing me to abandon others. For this I must thank all the audiences that attended these seminars and lectures. In addition I would like to acknowledge a debt to Leonard Hochberg for stimulating my interest in geography; to Jan Heesterman for his sensitive commentary on some of the ideas I develop here; to Silvia Montiglio for some of the classical references and generous criticism; and to Anatoly Khazanov for numerous discussions on nomadism. Finally, my thanks are due to Lynne Miles-Morillo for her editorial work. Madison, WI May 2003 INTRODUCTION This volume begins with a broad outline of some of the main geo- graphical features of the Indian Ocean area and attempts to show in what essential ways these differed from the Mediterranean and Europe. Thus, Chapter I focuses attention on the role of rivers, river plains, and deltas. It proposes that the presence of a large number of major river systems is the most important characteristic of the geography of the entire region. Alluvial river plains and deltas pro- vided the agricultural settings for the major Indian Ocean civiliza- tions from early times. Reaching deeply inland, rivers locked land and sea into a highly differentiated but coherent political economy of exchange. Following the Indian Ocean coastline, the chapter analy- ses the inland connections and functional roles of major riverine and coastal subregions from the Zambezi in East Africa and the Swahili coast to Ethiopia and Eritrea, the great plains of the Tigris and Euphrates, the Panjab, the Ganges-Yamuna Doab, the Bengal delta, the Indian peninsula, and the Irrawaddy, Chao Phraya, Tonle Sap, Mekong, and, finally, Indonesia. Chapter I concludes that a second important feature of rivers in the Indian Ocean area is to be found not in the hydraulic demands they made on the state but in their hydrological instability. Environmental change associated with river instability, soil erosion in alluvial plains, earthquakes, and delta for- mation, was pervasive. The Indian Ocean was, for this reason, an area of environmentally disrupted human settlement, of lost rivers, lost civilizations, and lost cities. No hydraulic effort on the part of the state could ever change this basic geographic factor. Environmental change was largely beyond the control of man. Against this backdrop, the second chapter proposes that medieval Indian Ocean cities were characteristically fragile, lacking in conti- nuity, and relatively undifferentiated from an overwhelmingly agrar- ian context. ‘Labile rurbanism’ is another fact of historical geography that set the Indian Ocean apart from the Mediterranean and Europe. The instability of Indian cities, while primarily due to geophysical and hydrological factors, was enhanced by demographic volatility associated with the monsoon climate and the generally very high mobility of the Indo-Islamic ruling elites. Hence, it is argued here, 2 the Indian city as such was not a privileged source of social change nor the site of a precocious economic rationality. Instead, as Chapter III proposes, some of the major sources of change were to be found not in medieval cities but on the frontier of the settled society of the river plains: in the deserts and steppes of the arid zone stretching from North Africa to Central Asia and into the Indian subcontinent, as well as in the maritime world of the Indian Ocean itself.