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The Indian Merchant Diaspora in Early Modern Central Asia and Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Scott Levi
Scott Levi*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Extract

Long before European merchants working for the Dutch and the English East India Companies sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, there were caste-based Indian family firms operating heavily-capitalized commercial institutions throughout north India. The directors of these firms enlisted many thousands of agents and placed them in markets strategic to their engagement in a variety of commercial activities, including large-scale transregional trade, brokering, money changing, and the financing of complex systems of rural credit and industrial production. Rather than triggering the decline of such indigenous commercial institutions, it is during the very period of European expansion into the Indian Ocean that the Indian family firms began to geographically diversify their portfolios by sending their agents to distant markets in port cities, villages, and major and minor urban centers as far away as Moscow.

In a recent work, Stephen Dale has uncovered the existence of an early modern Indian merchant diaspora with communities dispersed throughout Central Asia, Iran, the Caucasus and much of Russia.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , Fall 1999 , pp. 483 - 512
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1999

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Footnotes

*

Research for this paper was jointly funded by the ACTR/ACCELS Research Scholar Program and a grant from the Joint Committee on South Asia of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies with funds provided by the Ford Foundation. An earlier version of this paper was presented February 3, 2000 for the Central Asia and the Caucasus Seminar Series, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

References

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2. For a more detailed discussion of some of the problems associated with accepting the notion of an unmitigated early modern Central Asian decline, see Levi, Scott, “India, Russia and the Eighteenth-Century Transformation of the Central Asian Caravan Trade,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 42, 4 (1999): 519–548CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. For a recent study of cultural transmissions between India and Central Asia during the Kushan period see Mehendale, Sanjyot, “Begram: along ancient Central Asian and Indian trade routes,” in Chuvin, Pierre, ed., Inde-Asie centrale (Cahiers d'Asie centrale, nos 1-2, Tashkent: IFEAC, 1996), 47–64Google Scholar.

4. Cited in Frye, Richard N., Bukhara: The Medieval Achievement (Costa Mesa: Mazda, 1997), 71–72Google Scholar. Frye suggests that this individual was involved in the spice trade.

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6. Ibid., 40. It is important to note that the term “Hinduwān” is used in historical literature as a geographic, not religious, identification. It is therefore more accurately translated “Indians” than “Hindus”.

7. Cf. Gonzalez de Clavijo, Ruy, Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo to the Court of Timour at Samarcand, A. D. 1403-6, translated by Markham, Clements R., Hakluyt Society Publications, 1st ser., no. 26 (London, 1859), 165Google Scholar; Manz, Beatrice, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 80, 90Google Scholar.

8. Gonzalez, Narrative of the Embassy, 122, 165Google Scholar. According to Gonzalez, “These ‘gates of iron’ [a mountain pass north of Tirmiz] produce a large revenue to the lord Timour Beg, for all merchants, who come from India pass this way.” Gonzalez also states that, “In this city of Samarcand there is much merchandize, which comes every year from Cathay, India, Tartary, and many other parts.”

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11. Cf. G. L. Dmitriev, “Iz istorii Indiiskikh kolonii v Srednei Azii (vtoraia polovina XIX - nachalo XX v.),” in Indiia: Strana i Narod, vol. 12, part 2 of Ol'derogge, D. A., ed., Strany i Narody Vostoka (Moscow: Nauka, 1972), 234Google Scholar; Muhammad Yusuf Munshi b. Khwajah Baqa, Taḏẖkira-i Muqīm Khānī, Oriental Studies Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Uzbekistan (henceforth abbreviated OSIASRU), Ms. No. 609/11 and Russian translation by A. A. Semenov under the title Mukimkhanskaia istoriia (Tashkent: Nauk, 1956), ff. 311b-314a (84–86)Google Scholar. Semenov refers to the “kvartal’ indiitsev” in his translation.

12. Jenkinson, Anthony, Early Voyages and Travels to Russia and Persia…, ed. Delmar Morgan, E. and Coote, C. H., Hakluyt Society Publications, 2 vols, 1st ser., no. 72 (London, 1886), vol. 1, 87 note 1Google Scholar.

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14. Cf. Majmūᶜa-i-waṯẖā˒iq, OSIASRU, Ms. No. 1386, fols 182a-b, 187b, 189a-b; Mukminova, R. G., Sotsial'naia differentsiatsiia naseleniia gorodov Uzbekistana v XV-XVI vv. (Tashkent: Fan, 1985), 112–14Google Scholar. Mukminova is the first scholar to have utilized the documents in the Majmūᶜa-i-waṯẖā˒iq, a judicial record of a late-sixteenth-century Samarqandi qāḍi, to gain insight into the Indian community in Samarqand and their commercial activities. Some of these documents have been reproduced, with Russian translations, in Sotsial'naia differentsiatsiia, 54-61. For English translations, see Scott Levi, “The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia and its Trade, 1550-1900” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2000), appendix one, 301—4.

15. Moorcroft, W. and Trebeck, G., Travels in the Himalayan Provinces of Hindustan and the Panjab; in Ladak and Kashmir, in Peshawar, Kabul, Kunduz, and Bokhara; by Mr. William Moorcroft and Mr. George Trebeck, from 1819 to 1825, 2 vols, 1841, reprint (New Delhi: Sagar, 1971), vol. 2, 415Google Scholar. It is ironic that, although “Yangi Ariq” is Turkic for “New Canal”, in the nineteenth century, Moorcroft and Trebeck reported that the area “remains sterile through want of irrigation.”

16. Cf. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay and Bayly, C. A., “Portfolio Capitalists and the Political Economy of Early Modern India,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 25, 4 (1988): 401–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dale, Indian Merchants, 41-44; Alam, Muzaffar, “Trade, State Policy and Regional Change: Aspects of Mughal-Uzbek Commercial Relations, c. 1550-1750,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 37, 3 (1994): 202–10Google Scholar.

17. The “peddler thesis” was first advanced in J. C. Leur, van, Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian Social and Economic History (The Hague: W. van Hoeve, 1955)Google Scholar, 60, and then amplified by Niels Steensgaard in his work The Asian Trade Revolution of the Seventeenth Century: the East India Companies and the Decline of the Caravan Trade (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 22–59Google Scholar.

18. According to Zia al-Din Barani, already in the late-thirteenth century, Multanis were operating as large-scale merchant-moneylenders in the Delhi Sultanate. See al-Din Barani, Zia, Tārīkh-i-Fīrūz Shāhī, edited by Ahmad Khan, Saiyid, Lees, W. N. and Kabiruddin, (Calcutta, 1860-62), 120, 164, 310-12Google Scholar. See also Raychaudhuri, Tapan and Habib, Irfan, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. 1, ᶜ. 1200-ᶜ. 1750 (1982; reprint, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984), 85 and note 11Google Scholar; Dasti, Humaira, “Multan as a Centre of Trade and Commerce During the Mughal Period,” Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 38, vol. 3 (1990): 249Google Scholar; Jain, L. C., Indigenous Banking in India (London: Macmillan and Co., 1929), 10Google Scholar. A smaller number of Indian merchants in the diaspora were agents of Marwari firms. Regarding their wealth, N. K. Sinha mentions that the Marwari Jagatseth house, known to be the largest family firm of the eighteenth century, is estimated to have commanded as much as 140 million rupees at the peak of its commercial prosperity. Little, J. H., House of Jagatseth (Calcutta: Calcutta Historical Society, 1967), x, xvii (introductory essay)Google Scholar.

19. For an excellent treatment of the expansion of the Shikarpuri firms’ trade under the colonial global economy, see Markovits, Claude, The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750-1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. It should be noted that, already in the eleventh century, there was a significant number of converts to the Ismaᶜili sect of Shiᶜa Islam in Gujarat, the progenitors of the modern Ismaᶜili Bohra community. Wink suggests that this was likely to have been a result of the Fatimids’ efforts to spread Ismaᶜili Islam in India and the continued interaction of the Bohras with Ismaᶜili Yemenites. In 1175, however, Muhammad Ghuri successfully suppressed the spread of Ismaᶜilism in Multan. This explains why the Bohra communities in the Punjab and Multan—those most likely to be involved in Indo-Turanian commerce in the early modern and colonial eras—were predominantly, if not entirely, Hindu. Cf. Wink, André, Al-Hind: the Making of the Indo-Islamic World, vol. 1Google Scholar, Early Medieval India and the Expansion of Islam, Seventh to Eleventh Centuries, (reprint, Delhi, 1990), 217Google Scholar. For a more detailed discussion of the diverse ethnic composition of the Indian diaspora in early modern Central Asia, see the essay “Religious and Community Identity in the Diaspora” in Levi, “The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia,” 39-51.

21. According to Ibbetson, the Khojas, who resided primarily in Multan, were identified as “any Hindu trader converted to Mahomedanism” and therefore the only Muslim Khatris. He also explains that the name of the “Paracha” community was derived from the word pārcha, Persian for “cloth”, the principal commodity in which they traded. Ibbetson, Denzil, Panjab Castes…, (1883; reprint, Lahore: Government Printing, Punjab, 1916), 245, 248, 252–54Google Scholar. In addition to Hindus and Muslims, the diaspora also included Marwaris, many, if not most, of whom appear to have been adherents to the Jain religion. The later presence in the diaspora of adherents to another Indian religion, Sikhism, is not surprising considering that a significant percentage of the Sikh community has roots in the Khatri caste and, like the Khatris, the Sikh tradition places a great emphasis on commerce.

22. Even in Astrakhan, the Indian dvor (the Russian version of a caravansary) appears to have been exclusively occupied by Hindus and Jains. Those Indian Muslims that came to Astrakhan lived alongside other Muslim merchants, generally in the Bukharan dvor. See Antonova, K. A. and Gol'dberg, N. M., eds., Russko-Indiiskie otnosheniia v XVIII v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1965), doc. 44, 1726, 69–71Google Scholar, where one Ismail Khalil(ev) Multani is identified as living in Astrakhan's Bukharan dvor. Of the fifty-two Indians mentioned in the census of 1747 as living in Astrakhan's Indian dvor, not one can be identified by name as a Muslim. Ibid., doc. 132, 1747, pp. 265-269.

23. Ivanov, Khoziaistvo dzhuibarskikh sheikhov, doc. 49, 122-23, refers to a store owned by Mawlana ᶜUmar Multani son of Mawlana ᶜAbd al-Wahhab Multani. Docs 28 and 265, 109-10, 247-48, refer to the home of Baba Multani son of ᶜAli which was located next to the homes of non-Indians.

24. Cf. Mukminova, Sotsial'naia differentsiatsiia, 61–68Google Scholar; Gopal, “Indians in Central Asia, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Presidential Address, Medieval India Section of the Indian History Congress, New Delhi, February 1992 (Patna: Patna University, 1992), 11–13Google Scholar; Dale, Indian Merchants, 63–64, 75-76Google Scholar.

25. Majmūᶜa-i-waṯẖa˒iq, fols 182b, 187b, 189a-b. Based on his patronym, the clothprinter identified as Lahori Chitgar son of Lalu was most likely a Hindu. “Gujar” was the name of a predominantly pastoral Panjabi tribe subject to a policy of sedentarization by emperor Akbar in the late-sixteenth century. See Singh, Chetan, Region and Empire: Panjab in the Seventeenth Century (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991), 112, 132 and note 175, 259, 265, 291 and note 55Google Scholar. Babur came across members of this tribe, which he identifies as “Gujūr,” while passing through southeastern Afghanistan, Babur-nama, 250 and note 6.

26. Majmūᶜa-i-waṯẖā˒ iq, fols 2a-b, 192a. The social distinction between non-Muslim Indians on one hand, and Muslims on the other, should not be interpreted to suggest that these communities did not interrelate. Darya Khan, for example, is known to have employed such non-Muslim Indian artisans as “Lahori Chitgar son of Lalu.” See also the case of the Muslim Indian Hamid who had partnerships with two Hindus, Ardas and Banda Minkab, in Astrakhan and Moscow. Antonova, K. A., Gol'dberg, N. M. and Lavrentsova, T. D., eds., Russko-Indiiskie otnosheniia v XVII v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1958), doc. 141, 1675, 241-48Google Scholar.

27. Valle, Pietro Della, I Viaggi Di Pietro Della Valle: Lettere Dalla Persia, Il Nuovo Ramusio, vol. 6, edited by Gaeta, F. and Lockhart, L. (Rome: Instituto Poligrafico Dello Stato, 1972), 39Google Scholar; Kemp, P. M., tr., Russian Travellers to India and Persia [1624-1798]: Kotov, Yefremov, Danibegov (Delhi: Jiwan Prakashan, 1959), 36Google Scholar; Olearius, Adam, The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors Sent by Frederick Duke of Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy, and the King of Persia…, translated by Davies, John (London, 1667), 299Google Scholar.

28. Rudner, David, Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India: the Nattukottai Chettiar (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 109CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29. According to Rudner, in a situation in which a Nakarattar should refuse to accept the resolution of the community panchayat (community elders), the panchayat was empowered to forbid other Nakarattar families from intermarrying with his until he had yielded to their decision. Ibid., 128. Although supporting evidence is lacking, the directors of the commercial communities of the present study are highly likely to have been vested with similar authority.

30. Masson, Charles, Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan, the Punjab, & Kalât…, 4 vols (London: Richard Bentley, 1844), vol. 1, 353Google Scholar.

31. Chardin notes that the most skilled Iranian accountaints were those that had been trained by Indian merchants, see Chardin, Jean, Voyages du Chevalier Chardin, en Perse, et Autres Lieux de l'Orient, 10 vols (Paris: Le Normant, 1811), vol. 4, 296–99Google Scholar. In the Punjab region of India alone there are reported to have been 15,000 numerical codes in operation in the early-twentieth century. Jain, Indigenous Banking, 36–39, 90-92Google Scholar.

32. John Chardin, The Coronation of this Present King of Persia, Solyman the Third, 1671, appended to The Travels of Sir John Chardin into Persia and the East-Indes… (London: Moses Pitt, 1686), 100–1Google Scholar. The Multanis’ wealth was to be confiscated as it was brought to the attention of Shah Sulayman (initially enthroned as Shah Safi II, r. 1666-1694) that two Multanis had been spying in Isfahan for the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707). According to Chardin, these Multanis had learned that the Safavid military was at that time weak and disorganized, and they intended to report this to Aurangzeb by placing a letter for him in the care of a group of wandering dervishes who were traveling by caravan to India via Qandahar.

33. Tavernier, The Six Voyages…, 159–60Google Scholar, cited in Keyvani, Mehdi, Artisans and Guild Life in the Later Safavid Period: Contributions to the Social-Economic History of Persia, Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, no. 65 (Berlin: Klaus Schwartz, 1982), 230 and note 78Google Scholar.

34. Raphaël Mans, du, Estat de la Perse en 1660 (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1890), 180–81Google Scholar. He refers to them as bazzāz , Persian for cloth merchant.

35. Jenkinson, Early Voyages and Travels, vol. 1, 87–88 and notes 2, 3Google Scholar.

36. Central State Historical Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan (CSHARU), Fond 1-1, opis’ 11, delo 39, listy 53-54ob. I am grateful to Robert Crews for bringing this Delo to my attention.

37. The author's use of the word plemia, which translates as “tribe”, appears to be synonymous to the current understanding of the word “caste” in reference to the Indian social system.

38. Banking Enquiry Committee for the Centrally Administered Areas, 1929-30, 4 vols (Calcutta: Government of India, 1930), vol. 1, 349–51Google Scholar; vol. 2, 206-8.

39. de Thevenot, Jean, The Travels of Monsieur de Thevenot into the Levant, translated by L'Estrange, R., 3 parts (London, 1687), pt. 2, 111CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40. Cited in Keyvani, Artisans and Guild Life, 230Google Scholar.

41. Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste, Travels in India, 2d ed., 2 vols, 1676, reprint, edited by Crooke, William and translated by Ball, V. (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1995), vol. 1, 74Google Scholar.

42. Olearius, The Voyages and Travels, 299Google Scholar.

43. Chardin, Jean, Sir John Chardin's Travels in Persia (London: The Argonaut Press, 1927), 280–81Google Scholar. It is interesting that, on the eve of a potential conflict between the Dutch and the English in Bandar ᶜAbbas in February 1678, the entire Indian merchant community temporarily fled to Bandar Kangun, about 160 kilometers to the west. Fryer, John, A New Account of East India and Persia, Being Nine Years’ Travels, 1672-1681, 3 vols, edited with notes by Crooke, William, Hakluyt Society Publications, 2d ser., no. 72 (London, 1912), vol. 2, 325–26 and note 2Google Scholar.

44. du Mans, Estat de la Perse en 1660, 180-81. Even in the early-fourteenth century, the Indian author Zia al-Din Barani associates the Multanis with large-scale trade in textiles, Barani, Tārīkh-i-Fīrūz Shāhī, 310-11.

45. Elphinstone, Mountstuart, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, and its Dependencies, in Persia, Tartary, and India…, 3d ed., 2 vols (London: Richard Bentley, 1839), vol. 1, 413–14Google Scholar. It is interesting that Elphinstone notes that, in the early nineteenth century, Indians were still active in northern Persia, although their numbers were limited as they were rather ill-treated by the administration at that time. Conversely, their presence in Bukhara and the rest of Central Asia was encouraged.

46. Cited in Russell, R. V., Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, 4 vols. (1916; reprint, Oosterhout, N. B., The Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1969), vol. 3,458–59Google Scholar.

47. Jain, Indigenous Banking in India, 44–45Google Scholar.

48. Especially useful in this effort has been the anonymous newspaper article “Indusy i ikh’ promysel’ v’ Turkestanskom’ Krae” (“Hindus and their Trade in the Turkestan Region”), Novoe Vremiia, 1879, no. 1367, included in the collection Turkestanskii Sbornik', available at the Alisher Navoi State Library of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, vol. 247, 164-67.

49. Jain, Indigenous Banking in India, 67–68Google Scholar.

50. “Indusy i ikh’ promysel',” 164-65; Jain, Indigenous Banking in India, 68Google Scholar. This system was known in India as lawani (“supply”). Similarly, under the agrarian system of batai, a zamīndār loaned seed and/or money to a cultivator in return for a portion of the harvest, usually one-half.

51. For other discussions of Darya Khan Multani's activities in Samarqand, cf. Mukminova, Sotsial'naia differentsiatsiia, 53-68; Dale, Indian Merchants, 75-77; Gopal, “Indians in Central Asia,” 11-13; Alam, “Trade, State Policy and Regional Change,” 203-6 and note 3. It is important to note, however, that Alam's criticism of Mukminova's translations is misplaced; Mukminova's Russian translations are accurate. The misunderstanding lies in Alam's reference to Gopal's incomplete English summaries of Mukminova's Russian translations.

52. Mukminova, Sotsial'naia differentsiatsiia, 62-68; Dale, Indian Merchants, 75-77.

53. Majmūᶜa-i-waṯẖā˒iq, f. 182a. According to Islamic law, by pronouncing the word ṭalāq three times a man may disolve his marriage. It can only be restored after the woman has been married to, and divorced by, another man.

54. Jain, Indigenous Banking in India, 93-94.

55. al-Din Aini, Sadr, Yāddāshthā, 4 vols. (Stalinabad: Daulat-i Tajikistan, 1959), vol. 3, 73–74Google Scholar. Aini's observations are limited to the urban population of Bukhara, not the agricultural producers.

56. Likoshin, N., “Pis'ma iz Tuzemnogo Tashkenta,” Turkestanskie Vedomosti 9 (1894): 41Google Scholar.

57. “Indusy i ikh’ promysel',” 165-66.

58. Vámbéry, Arminius, Travels in Central Asia (London: John Murray, 1864), 372Google Scholar.

59. Jain, Indigenous Banking in India, 108-9.

60. “Indusy i ikh’ promysel',” 165.

61. Maktūbāt munsha˒āt manshūrāt, a collection of seventeenth-century letters of the Ashtarkhanid rulers, compiled in the eighteenth century by Mirakshah Munshi, Mulla Zahid Munshi and Muhammad Tahir Wahid, OSIASRU, Ms. No. 289, ff. 185b-186a. It is curious that the original document lists both Kish and Shahrisabz, two names for the same city.

62. Mir Muhammad Amin Bukhari, ᶜUbaydallāh-nāma, OSIASRU, Ms. No. 1532, ff. 203a-203b. See also the Russian translation, although there are several relatively minor discrepancies between it and the Persian text. Ubaidulla-name, translated by Semenov, A. A. (Tashkent: Nauka, 1957), 225–26Google Scholar.

63. Harlan, Josiah, Central Asia: Personal Narrative of General Josiah Harlan, 1823-1841, edited by Ross, Frank E. (London: Luzac & Co., 1939), 65Google Scholar.

64. Vámbéry, Travels in Central Asia, 372Google Scholar.

65. Ibid.

66. For one example, see Aini, Yāddāshthā, vol. 4, 376–80Google Scholar. In this case the individual, a merchant from Peshawar, became known as a physician particularly effective at extracting Guinea worms, endemic to Bukhara. This proved to be a profitable venture for him and, in order to concentrate on his medical career and maintain the faith of his clients, he gave up his commercial activities in Bukhara. Aini mentions, however, that at the end of the worm season he left town to oversee commercial ventures elsewhere.

67. Maktūbāt munsha˒āt manshūrāt, ff. 185b-186a.

68. Lal, Mohan, Travels in the Panjab, Afghanistan, Turkistan, to Balkh, Bokhara and Herat…, 1846, reprint (Patiala: Punjab Language Department, 1971), 137Google Scholar.

69. Aini, Yāddāshthā, vol. 3, 77Google Scholar. Dmitriev's research has disclosed nine caravansaries used by Hindu merchants in nineteenth-century Bukhara: Alimjan, Abdullajan, Ibrahimjan, Serai-i Kalan, Serai-i Poi Astan, Amir, Tamaku, Karshi, and Fil'khana, G. L. Dmitriev, “Iz Istorii Sredneaziasko-indiiskikh otnoshenii vtoroi poloviny XIX - nachala XX v. (Indiiskie vykhodtsy v Srednei Azii)”(Ph.D. diss., Tashkent, 1965), 88. Whereas some of these were restrictively Hindu, it is likely that several housed tenants of mixed religious and ethnic backgrounds. Nineteenth-century sources also mention Indians living in caravansaries in Samarqand, Tashkent, Andijan, Khoqand, Khojent, Kitab, Kulab, Khatirchi, Chimkent and Uratepe.

70. Vámbéry, Travels in Central Asia, 372Google Scholar; Dmitriev,“Iz istorii Indiiskikh kolonii,” 235 note 2. Dmitriev hypothesizes that the majority of the Indian Muslims in Central Asia lived in the Bukharan amirate, while in the Turkestan Krai the diaspora population was almost entirely Hindu and Sikh.

71. Cf. Dmitriev,“Iz istorii Indiiskikh kolonii,” 235; Kaushik, Devendra, India and Central Asia in Modern Times (New Delhi: Satvahan, 1985), 28Google Scholar. Aini also notes Hindu caravansaries in “Ghijduvan, Qarshi, Babkent and in other places in the state of Bukhara”, Yāddāshthā, vol. 3, 78Google Scholar.

72. Dmitriev, “Iz istorii Indiiskikh kolonii,” 236Google Scholar. See also Kaushik, India and Central Asia, 27-31. Kaushik also notes Indians living in Kulab, Khatirchi, Chimkent and Uratebe. Ibid., 37. Late-nineteenth-century sources further document a considerable number of Indians living in Kashghar, Yarkand, and in cities and villages along the trade routes connecting Sinkiang and Kashmir. Cf. Macartney, Lady Catherine, An English Lady in Chinese Turkestan, 1931, reprint (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1985), 30, 59–60Google Scholar; Hedin, Sven, Through Asia, 2 vols (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1899), I, 251Google Scholar. See also the essay “Other areas of Shikarpuri activity: Iran, Afghanistan and Sinkiang” in Markovitz, The Global World, 94-98.

73. Burnes notes this for the nineteenth century in his assessment of Central Asian trade: “Hindoos and Armenians pass through Khiva, but neither they nor foreign merchants, though Mahommedans, feel at ease while in the country. The bales are opened, the caravans delayed, and much property has been at times extorted; where the chief sets the example of plunder, the people will not be honest.” Burnes, Alexander, Travels to Bukhara…, 3 vols (London: John Murray, 1834), vol. 2, 387Google Scholar.

74. These cities included Bukhara and Ziauddin in the Bukharan amirate and Samarqand and Tashkent in the Turkestan Krai. Kaushik, India and Central Asia, 28-30. According to Lansdell's account, in the 1880s there were about thirty Hindus in Khoqand, all engaged in moneylending. Lansdell, Henry, Russian Central Asia: Including Kuldja, Bokhara, Khiva and Merv, 2 vols (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1885), vol. 2, 100 and noteGoogle Scholar. It is important to note that, although the number of Hindus in Andijan was not likely to have been much greater than that of Khoqand, they are documented as having been extremely wealthy. According to the account of Lieutenant-Colonel Bailey, a contingency of Shikarpuris in Andijan inquired of him if he would assist them in transferring to India their wealth, totaling some two million rubles, as they were fearful that it would be confiscated by the Bolsheviks. Bailey, F. M., Mission to Tashkent (London: Jonathan Cape, 1946), 30Google Scholar.

75. Dmitriev,“Iz istorii Indiiskikh kolonii,” 234. See also Kaushik, India and Central Asia, 26 notes 2–4Google Scholar.

76. Jenkinson, Early Voyages and Travels, vol. 1, 149Google Scholar. In 1555, Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524-76) moved the Safavid capital from Tabriz to Qazvin as it was less vulnerable to Ottoman aggression. Qazvin remained the Safavid capital until Shah ᶜ Abbas I transferred it to Isfahan shortly before his expedition to Khurasan to fight the Uzbeks in 1598. Cf. Morgan, David, Medieval Persia 1040-1749 (1988; reprint London: Longman, 1997), 137Google Scholar; Savory, Roger, Iran under the Safavids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 63, 83-84Google Scholar.

77. Jenkinson, Early Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, appendix 9, 428–29Google Scholar.

78. Cartwright, John, “Observations of Master John Cartwright in his Voyage from Aleppo to Hispaan, and backe againe…,” in Purchas, Samuel, ed., Hakluytus Posthumus, or, Purchas, His Pilgrimes, 20 vols (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1905), vol. 8, 509Google Scholar.

79. Cf. Antonova et al, eds., Russko-Indiiskie otnosheniia v XVII v., doc. 17, 1641, 44-45 where one “Lekunas” is identified as an Indian from Kashan visiting Astrakhan; Moreen, Vera Basch, Iranian Jewry During the Afghan Invasion (Stuttgart: Frans Steiner, 1990), 35Google Scholar, where in 1723 there were seven or eight Multani merchant families functioning in Kashan; Forster, George, A Journey from Bengal to England, 2 vols. (1808; reprint Delhi, 1970), vol. 2,187Google Scholar.

80. Valle, Delia, I Viaggi Di Pietro Delia Valle, 39Google Scholar. According to this account, “Gli habitatori di Persia son di Più sorti. Prima, gli avventitii, forestieri di più nationi, che vengono a trafficare; ma più di tutti, Indiani, et in particolare una gente che chiamano Baniani, di professione mercanti, e per lo più del paese di Guzaràt, che già haveva Re proprio, ma hora è del Gran Moghòl. Parte di costoro son mahomettani, com'è anche hoggidì il Re Lahòr, o Moghòl, che è signore della maggior parte dell'India; e parte son gentili, adorando diversi idoli, di che, perché io professo di scriver cose non intese, ma solo certamente vedute, non posso n é voglio ancora dar relatione, non essendone infin adesso perfettamente informato.” It is an interesting aberration that Della Valle reports that these Indians originated from Gujarat, not Multan.

81. Olearius, The Voyages and Travels, 299Google Scholar.

82. Antonova et al, eds., Russko-Indiiskie otnosheniia v XVII v., doc. 33, 1647, 85, “… mnogie indeitsy v shakhovykh gorodekh zhivut bezvyxodno, est de ikh 10,000 indeitsov zhivut bez vyezdu.” “… many Indians in the Shah's cities live without a way out, of them there are, they say, 10,000 Indians who live [there] without leaving.”

83. Thevenot, The Travels of Monsieur de Thevenot, vol. 2, 111Google Scholar; Kaempfer, Engelbert, Am Hofe des persischen Grosskönigs 1684-1685, edited by Hinz, Walter (Tübingen, Basel: Horst Erdmann Verlag, 1977), 204Google Scholar.

84. Chardin, The Coronation of this Present King of Persia, 100Google Scholar.

85. Savory, Iran under the Safavids, 196-97. During his travels throughout Iran in the late-seventeenth century, Struys notes caravans coming from Bandar ᶜAbbas loaded with Indian goods destined for the western coast of the Caspian Sea. See Struys, John, The Voyages and Travels of John Struys Through Italy, Greece, Muscovy, Tartary, Media, Persia, East-India, Japan, and other Countries in Europe, Africa and Asia…, translated by Morrison, John (London: Abel Sovalle, 1684), 329, 342Google Scholar.

86. See, for example, Antonova et al, eds, Russko-Indiiskie otnosheniia v XVII v., doc. 57, 1654, 123-130.

87. Struys, The Voyages and Travels, 275Google Scholar.

88. Ibid., 232, 250, 256, 275, 296. Cf. the discussion of Daghestan in Kinneir, John, A Geographical Memoir of the Persian Empire, 1813, reprint (New York: Arno Press, 1973), 353–56Google Scholar. Kinneir does not, however, mention Indians in his early-nineteenth-century description of the capital city, Derbent.

89. Antonova et al, eds, Russko-Indiiskie otnosheniia v XVII v., docs 96-97, 1672, 174; docs 149-62, 1676, 258-66; docs 164-65, 1676, 266-67; doc. 171, 1677, 275-76; doc. 196-97, 1680, 294; doc. 227, 1687, 339-40; docs 230-31, 1687, 341-42; doc. 237, 1688, 344.

90. Forster, A Journey from Bengal, vol. 2, 256Google Scholar.

91. Curzon, George, Persia and the Persian Question, 2 vols, 1892, reprint (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1966), vol. 1, 384–85Google Scholar.

92. Forster, A Journey from Bengal, vol. 2, 256–57Google Scholar. In 1645 the English moved their factory from Bandar ᶜAbbas to Basra. Shortly thereafter the city's improved commercial potential and role as a Persian Gulf port attracted an Indian merchant community. Savory, Iran under the Safavids, 119Google Scholar.

93. It should be remembered that Chardin reported that the population of Bandar ᶜAbbas was two-thirds Indian. Herbert, Thomas, Some Years Travels into Divers Parts of Africa, and Asia the Great… (London, 1677), 112, 161, 190–91Google Scholar; Chardin, Sir John Chardin's Travels in Persia, 280-81.

94. Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste, Travels en Perse et description de ce royaume (Paris, 1930), 338Google Scholar. The existence of an Indian community in Shiraz at the end of the eighteenth century is noted in Francklin, William, Observations Made on a Tour from Bengal to Persia, in the Years 1786-7 (London: T. Cadell, 1790), 59–61Google Scholar. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, George Curzon noted the presence of Shikarpuris in Bandar Linga as well as in Bandar ᶜAbbas, where they augmented their commercial activities by farming the customs duties. Curzon, Persia, vol. 2, 407Google Scholar.

95. Fryer, John, A New Account of East India and Persia, Being Nine Years’ Travels, 1672-1681, 3 vols, edited with notes by Crooke, William, Hakluyt Society Publications, 2d ser., no. 72 (London, 1912), vol. 2, 216Google Scholar.

96. di Sarkis Gilanentz, Petros, The chronicle of Petros di Sarkis Gilanentz concerning the Afghan invasion of Persia in 1722, the siege of Isfahan and the repercussions in northern Persia, Russia and Turkey, translated from Armenian by Minasian, Caro (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1959), 36Google Scholar.

97. Ibid. See also the account of the Afghan occupation of Isfahan presented in Hanway, Jonas, An Historical Account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea, 4 vols (London: T. Osborne, 1753), vol. 3, 159–65Google Scholar. According to Hanway, the Indian merchants of Isfahan were “taxed at the rate of 27,000 tomans.”

98. It should be noted that, at least during the period of Ghilzai Afghan domination, the ḏẖimmī status of Iranian Jews and Christian Armenians did not save them from severe fines and hardship. Cf. Gilanentz, The chronicle of Petros di Sarkis Gilanentz, 35-36; Moreen, Iranian Jewry During the Afghan Invasion, passim.

99. Keppel, George, Personal Narrative of a Journey from India to England… in the Year 1824 (London: Henry Colburn, 1827), 294.Google Scholar Apparently this continued even after 1747 as, in the Indian trader Kansiram's appeal to the Astrakhan administration to grant permission to the Indians to increase their trading privileges in Russia, he describes the brutality suffered by the Indian merchants in Iran in the anarchy following the death of Nadir Shah. Antonova and Gol'dberg, eds, Russko-Indiiskie otnosheniia v XVIII v., doc. 134, 1750, 272-73.

100. Waring's exclamation that “this wonderful and extraordinary race of people are spread nearly over the face of the globe” is supported by the recent work of Claude Markovitz which demonstrates that, in the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century colonial global economy, the “Hyderabadi” (Hyderabad-Sindh) merchant network extended as far as Panama to the west and Japan to the east. Waring, Edward Scott, A Tour to Sheeraz… (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1807), 3–4Google Scholar; Markovitz, The Global World, 112-13.

101. Forster, A Journey from Bengal, vol. 2, 186Google Scholar.

102. Ibid., vol. 2, 186-87.