Day 26

Sind has been a neglected area in South Asian Studies, because it is a 'frontier' area, a transition zone between 'India proper' and the vast region which was often called Khorrassan, in which were included southern Afghanistan, Baluchistan and southeastern Iran. Persian cultural in ̄uences were strong, and Sind was only episodically included in the great pan-Indian empires. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, under the Sindhi Kalhora and Baluchi Talpur dynasties, it evolved into an original kind of polity, a sort of tribal confederation, which was however capable of overseeing the maintenance and development of one of the largest systems of canal irrigation in Asia centred on the Lower Indus. This Sindhian state was the victim of a particularly vicious propaganda campaign in the wake of the British annexation, in 1843, aimed at presenting it as the epitome of backwardness and tyranny, which, to all appearances, it was not. The fate of the Hindus of Sind was one of the themes most harped upon by Napier and his minions in their attempts at blackening the picture so as to justify the inexcusable 'piece of rascality' of which Napier himself cynically boasted. The question of the role of the Hindus, and in particular, of their dominance over commercial life, both in pre-colonial and in colonial times, is therefore of great importance to the emergence of a balanced picture of the history of Sind.
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Sind, as the coastal region of the subcontinent closest to the Persian Gulf, has always been actively involved in maritime trade with that region of Asia. It has also played an important role as a commercial gateway between Central Asia and northern India. Thus both sea and land routes contributed to its commercial importance. Without going back to the period of the Harappan culture, when trade links are known to have existed between Mohenjo-Daro and Mesopotamia, one could mention that the conquest of Sind by the Umayyads in the early eighth century AD was the culmination of contacts which were partly commercial. A crucial objective of the conquering Arab armies was the port, or rather the ports, of Debal (Daybul), on one of the branches of the Indus delta, which was the main outlet of Sind. This port came into prominence in the fifth century AD, when it was in the possession of the Sassanids, and was visited for the first time by an Arab fleet in 632. Its fall to the army of Muhammad bin Qasim in 711 was a decisive episode in the Arab conquest. At that time, Sind was, in the words of a recent author, the hinge of the Indian Ocean trade as well as the overland passway'. After the conquest, Sind became part of the Muslim world, and commercial links intensified with the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, through Debal, which remained an important port till at least the twelfth century. At a later stage, the twin ports of Debal were replaced by a couple of new ports, of which Thatta was the riverine emporium and Lahori Bandar the sea port. The latter was visited by Ibn Battuta in the 1330s. 8 Nothing much is known about the groups which were active in maritime trade in medieval Sind. Arab merchants played an important role, as well as unidentified 'Sindi' merchants. In particular, it is not known whether Hindu banias were involved in that trade prior to the fifteenth century.

The first mention of banias of Sind occurred in Arab and Portuguese documents concerning Masqat at the end of the fifteenth century. Thatta is mentioned as 'Masqat's most important Indian trading partner', and its Hindu merchants, the Bhatias, appear to have been the main participants in the trade between Sind and Arabia. They used Portuguese ships and many had warehouses and trading establishments at Masqat.

~~ The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750-1947, Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama -by- Claude Markovits