The Muslim Merchants of Premodern China

Abstract

Merchants of an Imperial Trade One day in late September of 758, Persians and Arabs raided the frontier port city of Guangzhou (Canton). According to two sources, they plundered the city and burned its warehouses and storehouses before departing by sea. 1 Another source describes them as troops from the countries of Arabia (Dashi 大食) and Persia (Bosi 波斯) and recounts that they captured the city after the prefect, Wei Lijian 韋利見, abandoned the city and went into hiding. 2 Who were these men whothousands of miles from their homes in west Asiawere able to seize one of the major cities of the Tang, if only briefly? Speculative answers have included seeing them as a reflection of the newly established Abbasid Caliphate, as disgruntled troops sent by the Caliph to quell a rebellion in central Asia (who somehow made their way to the coast of China), or as followers of the Hainanese warlord Feng Ruofang 馮若芳, who specialized in capturing and enslaving Persian sailors, about whom we will have more to say. They might also have been traders enraged by grievances against local officials or some other trade issue (thus the burning of the warehouses). We will be returning to this question; here it is enough to note that this incident marks the first mention of Arabs in Tang documentary sourcesa signpost, as it were, for the early stages of the first great age of Asian maritime commerce. This age was a period quite distinct from those that followed. At its height, it involved a flourishing and lucrative trade in luxuries between the two great Asian empires of the day: the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258) in the west and the Tang Empire (618-907) in the east. It was also a period of significant change at both ends of the continent. The Abbasids continued the process of the Islamicization of much of southwestern and central Asia, which the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750) had initiated, but

Masts Like a Forest: Chinese Shipbuilding from the Zheng War to the Opium War (c. 1644-1839)

“…Before the eleventh century, long-distance trade in the South China Sea was dominated by ships from the Arab-Persian world, peninsular 132 D India, and Southeast Asian islands. Thereafter, native merchant shipping from southeastern China began to supersede foreign shipping to Chinese ports 43 . Circa 1100, ships with iron nails were sealed with limestone putty to make an improved seal.…”