South & Southeast Asia in the Post-Classical Era, 600 Ce
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SOUTH & SOUTHEAST ASIA IN THE POST-CLASSICAL ERA, 600 CE – 1450 CE SOUTH ASIA: ISLAMIC & HINDU KINGDOMS Political centralization was not common in South Asian history. After the Gupta empire that had dominated South Asia collapsed in 550 CE, ending the so-called Golden Age or Classical Era of Indian history, disunity returned to most of the region for most of the next 1000 years. Northern and southern India developed separate political structures, while local rulers in all parts of the subcontinent created strong power bases for themselves. The power of local rulers made it difficult for centralized rule to exist, but easy for wars to occur. Not until the rise of the Mughal Empire later in the sixteenth century would a single empire, and peace, dominate the area. Political Structures in Southern India Southern India was more stable than northern India. Two centralized governments did manage to succeed in overcoming political regionalism and fragmentation for periods after the fall of the Gupta. The first, the Chola Kingdom, reigned over southern India for more than 400 years (850 CE – 1267 CE). During the eleventh century, the kingdom extended its rule to Ceylon, the large island just south of India that is today known as Sri Lanka. Its geographic location allowed its navy access to the waterways of the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. At the height of the Indian Ocean trade, the Chola kingdom’s ships were traveling as far east as the South China Sea, a distance of more than 3000 miles. The kingdom’s power began to wane when natives of Ceylon, who were ethnically Sinhalese, drove out the Chola invaders. This dealt a fatal blow to Chola rule, reducing it to a small-scale, regional kingdom. The second kingdom was in the northern region of southern India, known as Vijayanagar, a name that in English means “the victorious city.” Vijayanagar, had its roots when the Delhi Sultanate based in Delhi (which is discussed below) sent two brothers, Harihara and Bukka, to extend its rule to southern India. These brothers had been born as Hindus and converted to Islam for the sake of upward social mobility. When they left the region controlled by the Delhi Sultanate, they took this opportunity to return to the religion of their birth and to establish their own kingdom. Vijayanagar existed from the mid-1300s until the mid-1500s, when a group of Muslim kingdoms overthrew it. Political Structures in Northern India Northern India experienced a great deal more upheaval than did Southern India. While the Himalayas protected India from invasions from the north and east, numerous mountain passes in the northwest allowed four separate invasions by Muslim armies. Each of these attacks created instability and disruption in a region that had been mostly Hindu and Buddhist. Over time, the Islamic presence in the region grew. One of the first invasions came in 711 CE. Soldiers from the Umayyad caliphate descended upon Sind, a region in northwestern India in present-day Pakistan that included the Indus river valley. The Umayyad caliphate incorporated Sind as a province of their empire. However, Sind’s geographic location, on the eastern fringes of the dar al-Islam, kept it isolated from the seat of empire in Damascus. Its regional princes were also adept at wielding their local power when necessary, thus limiting the Muslim conquerors’ influence. Hindu authority was reasserted over much of Sind. At mid-century, along with most of the rest of the dar al-Islam, Sind passed into the hands of the Abbasid caliphs, at least nominally. A second invasion came three centuries later, and it had greater impact. Between 1001 CE and 1027 CE, Figure 1. A 14th century CE painting depicts the Turkic conqueror Mahmud of Ghazni as he dons a robe Mahmud of Ghazni led the bestowed on him as a gift by the Abbasid caliph. Although Mahmud pursued independent policies, he always Ghaznavid Turks of recognized the caliph as his overlord. Afghanistan in search of booty. Mahmud conquered the Punjab region, controlling much of what is present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan. During the eleventh century, Mahmud’s armed forces plundered northern India’s Hindu temples and Buddhist shrines for their riches and erected mosques on Hindu and Buddhist holy sites. In 1025 CE, Mahmud infamously destroyed the great Somnath Hindu Temple of Gujarat, killing more than fifty thousand people who tried to defend it – actions that did little to endear Islam to the Indian people. Unsurprisingly, Mahmud’s efforts to convert Indians on a large scale did not succeed. However, his campaigns hastened the decline of Buddhism in the land of its birth. Mahmud’s invasions opened this area of India to further invasions and migrations by Turkic Muslim groups. During the late twelfth century, Mahmud’s successors mounted a more systematic campaign to conquer northern India and place it under Islamic rule. By the early thirteenth century, they had conquered most of the Hindu kingdoms in northern India and established, under the Turkic general Qutb-ud-din- Aibak, an Islamic state known as Sultanate of Delhi (or Delhi Sultanate). The sultans established their capital at Delhi, a strategic site controlling access from the Punjab to the Ganges valley, and they ruled northern India, at least in name, for more than three centuries, from 1206 CE to 1526 CE. During the fourteenth century the sultans of Delhi commanded an army of three hundred thousand, and their state ranked among the most prominent in the Islamic world. They built mosques, shrines, and fortresses throughout their realm. They were generous patrons of the arts and literature. Yet for the most part, the authority of the sultans did not extend far beyond Delhi. They often conducted raids in the Deccan region of southern India, but they never overcame Hindu resistance there. They had no permanent bureaucracy or administrative apparatus. Even in northern India, they imposed a thin veneer of Islamic political and military authority on a land populated mostly by Hindus, and they depended on the goodwill of Hindu kings to carry out their policies and advance their interests in local regions. Indeed, they did not even enjoy comfortable control over their own court: Of the thirty-five sultans of Delhi, nineteen perished at the hands of assassins. Nevertheless, the sultans prominently sponsored Islam and played a large role especially in the establishment of Islam in the Bengal region. The presence of Islam in northern India dominated the political history of the era. These “foreign” rulers may have created resentment among native Indians. For example, the Delhi Sultanate imposed jizya on all non-Muslim subjects of the empire. For some Indians, the tax was an incentive to convert to Islam. But despite the strong Islamic presence in the region, local kingdoms continued to play a major role in India’s decentralized political landscape. MERCHANTS & ISLAM IN THE INDIAN OCEAN TRADE SYSTEM While conquerors brought Islam to northern India, Muslim merchants took their faith to coastal regions in both northern and southern India. Arab and Persian mariners had visited Indian ports for centuries before Muhammad, and their Muslim descendants dominated trade and transportation networks between India and western lands from the seventh through the fifteenth century. Muslim merchants formed small communities in all the major cities of coastal India, where they played a prominent role in Indian business and commercial life. They frequently married local women, and in many cases they also found places for themselves in Indian society. Thus Islam entered India’s port cities in a more gradual but no less effective way than was the case in Sind. Well before the year 1000 CE, for example, the Gujarat region housed a large Muslim population. Muslim merchants congregated there because of the port city of Cambay, the most important trading center in India throughout the millennium from 500 CE to 1500 CE. Calicut, especially, became a bustling port city for merchants in search of spices from southern India. Foreign merchants from Arabia and China met in Calicut to exchange goods from the West and the East, respectively. Local rulers welcomed the presence of Muslim and Chinese merchants, as it brought the city wealth and prominence in the Indian Ocean Basin. Specialized Products As the Indian Ocean trade grew, so did the demand for specialized products. Every region involved in the trade had something special to offer their trading partners. • India became known for the high quality of its fabrics, particularly cotton textiles. In addition, merchants traveled to India in search of meticulously woven carpets as well as high-carbon steel (used for knives and swords), tanned leather, and artisan-crafted stonework. Merchants also sought pepper from India’s southern coastal cities. • Modern-day Malaysia and Indonesia, in southeast Asia, became known as the Spice Islands because of the fragrant nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom they exported. • The city-states of Kilwa, Mombasa, Mogadishu, and Zanzibar on the east coast of Sub-Saharan Africa (the Swahili Coast), exported slaves, ivory, and gold. • China exported silks, and Chinese porcelain became coveted worldwide, which is why people in the West still refer to their fancier dishes as “fine china.” • From southwest Asia (the Middle East) came carpets, horses, figs, and dates Monsoon System & Sailing Technology Knowledge of monsoon winds was essential for trading in the Indian Ocean. In the winter months, winds originated from the northeast, while in the spring and summer, they blew from the southwest. Thus, merchants had to time their voyages carefully, often remaining in port cities for months at a time, depending on when favorable winds would come their way.