Chapter 2 examines the economic life of the South Asian hajj, which, drawing on contemporary conceptualizations, it describes as a “bazaar” economy. The chapter suggests that this seaborne economy, whose lynchpin was the seasonal market of the hajj, was an important arena for speculative ventures from the Subcontinent, particularly from the western seaboard of India. At the same time, the chapter underlines how major developments in Indian Ocean bazaar trade during the eighteenth century – the growth of the cash nexus, the deepening of credit networks, and the proliferation of new patterns of consumption and production – invigorated an array of South Asian gift-giving practices during hajj. By examining both merchant inventories and gift registers, the chapter argues that, far from being located outside the realms of commodity exchange, the gift was intricately interwoven into the hajj bazaar economy. From religiously inspired altruism to politically motivated exchange, hajj gifts thus also played a role in invigorating the prestige of emergent royal and other social groups in India as the Mughal empire decentralized. Like the previous chapter, Chapter 2 also explores matters over the long durée. It accordingly shows how colonial expansion ultimately recast the meanings of both the gift and the “bazaar.”

On the east coast of Tanzania, south of Dar es Salaam, lies the tiny island of Kilwa Kisiwani. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries the port city of Kilwa was the centre of trade for the entire Swahili coast, integrated in a trading network that stretched as far as Arabia, India and even China. The inhabitants of this beautiful city were ethnically mixed – including Persians, Arabs and Bantu-speaking Africans – and, over time, they developed a distinctive East African culture and language – Swahili, which literally means ‘coast dwellers’. This cultural influence stretched all along the East African coast, from Inhambane and Sofala in the south (modern-day Mozambique) to Mombasa and Malindi (Kenya) and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north.

The trade network along the East African coast had ancient roots. Some Chinese records suggest trade connections between Africans and Chinese as far back as the Han dynasty in China (206 BCE–220 CE). But much of our evidence come from archaeologists who have excavated and analysed glass beads in East Africa