57 Dirasat Hardships from the Arabian Gulf to China: The Challenges that Faced Foreign Merchants Between the Seventh Dhul Qa'dah, 1441 - July 2020 and Thirteenth Centuries WAN Lei Hardships from the Arabian Gulf to China: The Challenges that Faced Foreign Merchants Between the Seventh and Thirteenth Centuries WAN Lei © King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, 2020 King Fahd National Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lei, WAN Hardships from the Arabian Gulf to China: The Challenges that Faced Foreign Merchants Between the Seventh and Thirteenth Centuries. / Lei. WAN. - Riyadh, 2020 52 p ; 23 x 16.5 cm ISBN: 978-603-8268-57-5 1- China - Foreign relations I-Title 327.51056 dc 1441/12059 L.D. no. 1441/12059 ISBN: 978-603-8268-57-5 Table of Contents Introduction 6 I. Dangers at Sea 10 II. Troubles from Warlords and Pirates 19 III. Imperial Monopolies, Duty-Levies and Prohibitions 27 IV. Corruption of Officialdom 33 V. Legal Discrimination 39 Conclusion 43 5 6 Dirasat No. 57 Dhul Qa'dah, 1441 - July 2020 Introduction During the Tang (618–907) and Northern Song (960–1127) dynasties, China had solid national strength and a society that was very open to the outside world. By the time of the Southern Song (1127–1279) dynasty, the national economic weight of the country moved to South China; at the same time, the Abbasid Caliphate in the Mideast had grown into a great power, too, whose eastern frontier reached the western regions of China, that is, today’s Xinjiang and its adjacent areas in Central Asia. As trade intermediaries, the Arab and Persian peoples played a significant role in the communication between the East and Europe. Many Muslim merchants came to China for business purposes; the coastal Chinese cities thus became international ports due to the busy commerce between China and various countries. Some of these merchants even settled in China. They are called the “Hui Hui forerunners” by historians and were integrated into the Hui Hui “main body”, that is, the mainstream of the Hui Hui migrants; the main body consisted of those who came from the Khwarazmian Empire (“the Hui Hui country” in the Mongol and Yuan dynasty documents) and other Central Asian peoples who were driven into China by the Mongol armies as a consequence of the three large-scale westward expeditions (1219–1260). “Dashi” 大食, or Arab, was the main commercial partner during the Tang and Song dynasties. In the twelfth century, Zhou Qufei wrote that “Dashi was a collective term for many countries”.(1) Dashi was the name of the Abbasid Caliphate together with many of the conquered countries, kingdoms, khanates, and protectorates under its rule. In 651 when the Arabs defeated the Sassanid Empire, a vast Arab Empire was established. Because its eastern frontier reached the western part of China, the two powers became neighbors. According to the medieval Chinese pronunciation, “Dashi” was pronounced closely to “Tazik”, originally referring to Tajik people who were the nearest neighbor to the western (1) Zhou Qufei, “Scroll 3, Hanghai waiyi (Maritime Routes and Alien Countries)” in Notes from the Land Beyond the Passes, 99. (All the translations in this article are done by this writer except where otherwise noted.) part of China, and who were under the control of the Arab Caliphate during the Tang dynasty; but the designation was changed to refer to Arabs afterwards. The Hui Hui forerunners took several routes to China. One route was through the traditional overland Silk Road originating from West Asia, going eastward via the vast the Central Asian Steppe, onwards to present-day Xinjiang, and finally to the main cities of China’s heartland such as Chang’an, Luoyang, and Kaifeng. A second route was along the maritime Silk Road, beginning at the Gulf and then traveling by ship eastward to the Melaka Straits via the Indian Ocean, then across the South China Sea before finally arriving at Chinese coastal cities such as Annan (in the present-day northern part of Vietnam), Guangzhou, Quanzhou, Hangzhou, Yangzhou, and so on. Additionally, according to the research of Bai Shouyi, there were two routes that combined the maritime and the overland routes together. The first was to sail from Dashi to Annan, and then journey overland to Yunnan; the second was to sail from Dashi to Tianzhu (India), then travel by land to Yunnan. However, Bai believed that only a limited number of merchants used these combined routes.(2) I argue that those who adopted the combined routes would continue their journeys to Guangzhou and other coastal cities, too. Some of the merchants would not stop along the coastal cities, but rather would continue their journey to the interior of China; they typically travelled along the Great Beijing-Hangzhou Canal to the inner cities of Chang’an, Luoyang and Kaifeng.(3) (2) Bai Shouyi, Reserved Manuscripts of Chinese Islamic History, 6. (3) As Song huiyao records, on the twenty-eighth day of the fifth month of the third year under the Yuanfu reign (1100), the throne issued the following decree, stating that “the foreign merchants and the local-born foreign people who will go to other prefectures or to Capital East for business purposes should apply for the certificate from the Maritime Trade Superintendency; the Superintendency should investigate the truth before giving a certificate so that the merchant could be protected along the journey. Relevant administrations should check them carefully in case any prohibited goods or criminals are with them.… [because before this decree,] the Guangzhou Superintendency had submitted a report, saying that ‘the foreign merchants came to Guangzhou with their goods and would pay their taxes before their market trading; they have the right to return to their native land or to live here. Now, some foreign merchants from Dashi and other countries asked for going to other prefectures and the regions of the Capital East, but we do not have relevant regulations for them to go to other prefectures with business purposes.’ That was why the throne gave such a decree”. (See Song huiyao, Zhiguan [Officers] 44, Shibosi [Superintendency], Paras. 8–9, 4207). 7 8 Dirasat No. 57 Dhul Qa'dah, 1441 - July 2020 As recorded by classical Chinese books, when a merchant ship docked at a Chinese port, such as Guangzhou, the whole city turned out to the harbor and the streets immediately became noisy. Li Zhao, a writer of the Tang dynasty, wrote that the overseas ships from the South Sea were from foreign countries and “every year, they arrive in Guangzhou and Anyi.(4) The ships from the Lion-Country [Ceylon] are the biggest in size; their decks are several zhang in height, and [every deck is] crammed with goods. When they come [to a harbor], they should report to the local dao [provincial] administration, and all the city becomes noisy”.(5)Many large-scale merchants could earn a huge sum of money with the goods loaded by a single ship. Some of the merchants were received by important local officials, some were granted audience at the imperial court, and some were awarded titles of nobility and became officials in China. But there were other merchants who, amid these journeys or in doing business in the Chinese market, lost their wealth and became impoverished. Yue Ke, who was the grandson of the well-known general and poet, Yue Fei, recounted some of his personal experiences in Guangzhou when he was a young boy in one of his books, the Ying shi (The History Written on the Table Before Bed).(6) He had met an Arab merchant with the name of Abu who had migrated from Champa to Guangzhou. His residence was amazingly gorgeous, and was a generous spender according to Yue Ke’s description: My family was invited [by a merchant Pu, or Abu 蒲姓] and I was there too. I saw him spending his money as if he were spreading dirt, and he tipped all the servants with nobody left. Whatever the (4) Anyi Refers to the capital city of Annan, what is today’s Hanoi in North Vietnam. At the time, it was under Chinese administration. (5) See Li Zhao, Lower scroll in Supplement on Tang history (Completed in 820s). Wang Dang (d. 1100s) in his Tang yu lin (Sketches on the Tang Dynasty) (Scroll 8, buyi [Supplement], 728) has a similar record. Perhaps Wang cited the source from Li Zhao. (6) Yue Ke, “Scroll 11: Panyu hailiao (The Overseas Barbarians in Panyu)” in Ying shi (History Written on the Table Before Bed), 125–127. pearls and fragrant shells [that he wore], he just carelessly sat on them. A subordinate [of the prefect] said, “This is his habit”. Three days later, he prepared wines and lambs for a banquet [in honor of the local officials], saying that this is to show respect to the [Chinese] customs. His house was full of ambergris and musky fragrances. The dishes of the feast have exotic flavors, which are completely unknown to me. They are of various kinds and share no similarity at all.(7) However, when Yue Ke returned to the North, one day upon meeting some of his familiars from the South, he learnt of this news about Abu: [Talking about my experience in Guangzhou], they told me that the Pu family was not as rich as they had been in the past, with the pond [and the rest facilities in his house] all dismantled. Quanzhou also has [a wealthy] overseas barbarian, called Shi-luo-wei 屍羅圍, whose property was second to that of the Pu family, but recently, he met a similar fate and declined.