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Armenian, Iranian and Turkish Merchants in India 1550-1800

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Armenian, Iranian and Turkish Merchants in India 1550-1800 ARMENIAN, IRANIAN AND TURKISH MERCHANTS IN INDIA 1550-1800 THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE AWARD Of THE DEGREE OF IBottov of ^lifloKopft? IN History BY ftUQUtA KAZIM HUSSAiN UNDER THE SUPERVISION OP PROF. SHIREBN MOOSVI CENTRE OF ADVANCED STUDY DEPARTMENT OP HISTORY ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY ALIGARH immAi 2005 T6361 ABSTRACT fHBSlS The first chapter deals with the overland and overseas routes and the commodities carried on these routes. Both the overland and overseas routes were quite vibrant during the period of our study, and the commerce inviting enough to attack capital and enterprise from West Asian Mercantile groups. The commodities that entered this trade were mainly high-value low-bulk goods, but low-value goods were also involved. Textiles were the most dominant item of export from India. The balance of trade being in India's favour, bullion streamed into the country, and there might well have been a real import of merchant-capital into the country. At Surat all three of the groups under discussion operated, but at Masulipatnam on Bengal, the Turkish presence was not very visible. Apart from pedlars there were rich merchants who stood at par with the other merchant groups of their times, for example Khwaja Minas, Mohammad Taqi, Mohammad and Ahmad Chalebi at Surat, Mir Jumla and Kamaluddin in Coramandel and ShaistaKhan and Khwaja Wazed in Bengal. The Armenians, the group on which our information is so considerable, are described in the second chapter of the thesis. Their worldwide commercial network has been analysed in detail. Though Armenia was no longer a political unit after 1375, Armenians by their well-recognised skill in commerce, were able to cars'c out an enviable niche in the trading world of the late Middle Ages. The enterprising qualities of the Armenians, coupled with other characteristic features such as perseverance, thrift, solidarity and hard work, made them merchants par excellence. In the seventeenth century, Armenian trade was at its zenith. Its vast commercial network was spread not only over the Levant but over Europe, hidia and the Far East. The headquarters of this woridwide group were not in Armenia, but at New Julfa at Isfahan in Iran. Armenian settlements were to be found in all important trading and production centers, and on the transit points on all important routes. A substantial Armenian community was present in all ports of consequence. We can ' have an idea of the extent of their commercial operations from contemporary Armenian trade manuals or accounts books, like that of Lucas Vanandeci and Hovhannes Joughayetsi. There were a number of rich merchants in New Julfa who conducted their trade through factors. At times these merchants or masters had 80-100 factors working for them. These factors carried out trade in distant parts of the worid on the principal given to them by their masters, in return for a quarter of the profit earned. The ability of the Armenians to work successfully with small capital and low margins, by securing a large turn-over through better exploitation of markets was in sharp contrast to the rather sluggish and routine-bound activities of the European Companies. This thesis particulariy highlights this factor which has often been ignored in. works like those of stensgaard. Persian merchants are dealt with in the third chapter. They operated as individuals as they did not possess a community trading network like the Armenians. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth century the Persians easily mingled with the nobility intermarried, and got assimilated in high families in Safavid Iran. Their advantage lay in the fact that, on the one hand, they had deep roots in the Safavid administration and on the other they held important position in the Mughal administration. In part, their capital originated out of bureaucratic incomes, which was an aspect not present at all among the Armenians. Their success was therefore naturally bound up to prosperity of the Mughal and the Safavid empires. The Turkish merchants belonged to the extensive territories of the Ottoman Empire. They could belong to Egypt, Syria or Iraq or Kurd Areas as well as Turkey and so could be speakers of Arabic, Persian, Kurdish or Turkish. Thus they were not linguistically or ethnically homogenous. In India they were not particularly connected with the Mughal administration, unlike the Persians. At the turn of the seventeenth century we find a number of Turkish merchants operating in India especially Gujarat. From the eariy seventeenth century we have references to Turkish merchants but they remain generally nameless figure until by the end of the century we come across names of several important individuals. Mohammad Chalebi and Ahmad Chalebi were leaders of these merchants in the latter half of seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Persian sources like Miral-i Ahinadi and Mirat-ul Haqaiq have provided important information about the Chalebis and their operations and rivalries at Surat. These merchant groups were able quite freely to trade it Indian ports and inland marts. Trade in India was largely open and free. There was no obstruction to foreign merchants on either ethnic or religious grounds. One must remember too that the West Asian merchants operated with low overhead costs and were often satisfied with lower profit margins than the over-staffed European Companies. In any 'Free Trade' situation the European Companies could hardly compete with them; and this was particularly the reason why force had to become the major economic weapon of the Companies. The fortunes of commerce shifted in the eighteenth century, not because of any organizational weaknesses of these Asian merchants and their Indian counterparts, but because of the use of force by the European Companies. Mainly for political reasons, the great days of the West Asian merchants in Indian seas were practically over by the time the nineteenth century began. CONTENTS PREFACE I ROUTES AND COMMODITIES (i) Overland Trade (ii) Overseas Trade in West Asia (lii) Overseas Trade in South Asia (iv) Major Commodities II ARMENIAN MERCHANTS (i) Origins (ii) Armenians and the Enghsh East India Company (iii) Commercial Practices (iv) Communication and Commerce (v) Mirza Zulqamain (vi) Khwaja Minas (vii) Khwaja Sarhad III PERSIAN MERCHANTS IV TURKISH MERCHANTS V CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY PREFACE I received constant encouragement and attention from my supervisor Professor Shireen Moosvi in completing my thesis. My indebtedness to her is beyond expression. I am greatly indebted to Professor Irfan Habib for allowing me to encroach upon his precious time and trouble him with my frequent queries to seek his vast knowledge on the subject. A special thanks, however, belongs to Imtiaz Hasnain, Ishrat Alam, Faiz Habib, Jaya Menon, Nonica Dutta and Ali Nadeem Rezavi, for showing interest in my work. I wish my late senior colleague and dear friend I.G. Khan could have been around to see the completion of the work. I acknowledge my gratitude to Messers Mumtaz AJam, Saleem Ahmad, Habib Manzar and Younis Iqbal Bhat for their promptness in rendering sundry kinds of help. I received help from the entire library staff of Centre of Advanced Study, Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh and Maulana Azad Library, A.M.U. I take this opportunity to thank Messers Shujauddin, Farhat Iqbal, and Sajid Islam for typing my thesis. Last but not the least I am greatly beholden to my immediate family, mother, sister, husband and children Zohair and Farwah for bearing my neglect with great aplomb. (Ruquia Kazim Hussain) I CHAPTER -I OVERLAND TRADE TO WEST ASIA Overland trade between India and Iran was fairly brisk throughout the seventeenth centuiy (apart from bnei' interruptions at the times of the Indo- Persian wars over Qandahar around 1622, 1638 and 1649). The trade seems to have remained largely unaffected even after the opening of free traffic on the Gulf sea-route after the Ponuguese v/ere driven away from Hormuz in 1622. There were always merchants who preferred the overland route "for although it is ver}' easy to take a ship at Gombroon, there are always merchants who take the land route, and it is by this route come the finest textiles made in India." It is partly explained by the fact that once trade has settled in a particular direction, it is difficult to dislocate it, or at least it takes a ver}' long time to be rerouted, unless odds against it are exceptionally high. Moreover, till mid-I630's, the European Company's mutual conflict and their efforts to reduce the share of the Asian merchants, seem to have worked in favour of overland routes. If the influx of bullion can be taken as the index of the magnitude of trade, it appears that tlie bullion received by the north-western mints displayed a steady increase till 1635, whereas the Gujarat mint outputs showed a dramatic fall. An idea of the volume of trade on the overland route can be gauged from the number of caniels passing through it. Various travellers down the seventeenth centuiy have given different estimates about the size of caravans arriving at or departing from Qandahar, The number of camels range from eight thousand to thirty thousand camels per year. The number in individual caravans varied from one thousand camels to four thousand camels. According to Robert Coiyat in 1610 six to eight thousand camels left Qandahar, ' Steel arrives at a figLire of twelve to fourteen thousand for 1615. In the same year, Thomas CoPy'at travelled from Persia to India in a caravan which consisted of 2000 camels, 1500 horses, 1000 mules, 800 asses and 6000 people." Two years later in 1617 Sir Thomas Roe gives us a figure of 2000 camels annually plying on the route,'' It should be kept in mind that a camel carried approximately goods of four hundred pounds to five hundred pounds.
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