smaller—so he thought the Eurasian landmass extended farther
around the world than it actually did. This overestimate of the extent to which Asia extended to the east was one of the factors
that later emboldened Christopher Columbus to sail west to find it.
Ptolemy also believed that the Indian Ocean was landlocked, despite reports that it could be reached from the Atlantic by
going around the southern tip of Africa. (Herodotus, for example, told of Phoenicians who had circumnavigated Africa around
600 B.C., taking around three years to do so and finding the seasons strangely reversed as they headed south.) Arab geographers
realized that the idea of a landlocked Indian Ocean was wrong during the tenth century. One of them, al-Biruni, wrote of “a
gap in the mountains along the south coast [of Africa]. One has certain proofs of this communication although no one has been
able to confirm it by sight.” Al-Biruni’s informants were undoubtedly merchants.
Religious beliefs were another kind of information that spread naturally along trade routes, as missionaries followed routes
opened up by traders, and traders themselves took their beliefs to new lands. Mahayana Buddhism spread along trade routes
from India to China and Japan, and Hinayana Buddhism spread from Sri Lanka to Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. Tradition has
it that Thomas the Apostle took Christianity to India’s Malabar coast in the first century A.D., arriving on a spice-trader’s
ship in Cranganore (modern Kodun-gallur) in 52 A.D. But trade’s most striking religious symbiosis was with Islam. The initial
expansion of Islam from its birthplace on the Arabian peninsula was military in nature. Within a century of the death of the
prophet Muhammad in 632 A.D., his followers had conquered all of Persia, Mesopotamia, Palestine and Syria, Egypt, the rest
of the northern African coast, and most of Spain. But the spread of Islam after 750 A.D. was closely bound up with trade:
As Muslim traders traveled outward from the Arab peninsula they took their religion with them.
Arab trading quarters in foreign ports quickly converted to Islam. The African empires that traded with the Muslim world across
the Sahara (such as the kingdom of Ghana, and the Mali Empire that replaced it) converted between the tenth and twelfth centuries.
Islam also spread along trade routes into the cities of Africa’s east coast. And, of course, it was carried along the spice
routes of the Indian Ocean to the west coast of India and beyond. By the eighth century Arab traders were sailing all the
way to China to trade in Canton—a direct trade facilitated by political unification brought about by the rise of Islam in
the west and the emergence of China’s Tang dynasty in the east. But the voyage was a particularly hazardous one. Buzurg ibn
Shahriyar, a Persian writer, tells of a captain, Abharah, a legendary navigator who made the voyage to China seven times and
lived to tell the tale, but only just: He was shipwrecked on one of his voyages and escaped as the only survivor from his
ship.
This is the swashbuckling period depicted in the tales of Sinbad (or Sindbad) the Sailor, of great oceanic voyages, returning
home a rich man, spending the spoils, and then becoming restless for adventure and setting out again. Sinbad’s tales draw
upon the real experiences of Arab traders who plied the Indian Ocean. The direct trade with China ended in 878 A.D., however,
when rebels opposed to the Tang regime sacked Canton and killed thousands of foreigners; thereafter merchants from Arabia
only went as far as India or southeast Asia, where they traded with Chinese merchants. But Islam continued to spread along
the trade routes and eventually took root right around the Indian Ocean, reaching Sumatra in the thirteenth century and the
spice islands of the Moluccas in the fifteenth century.
Trade and Islam proved to be highly compatible. Being a
around the world than it actually did. This overestimate of the extent to which Asia extended to the east was one of the factors
that later emboldened Christopher Columbus to sail west to find it.
Ptolemy also believed that the Indian Ocean was landlocked, despite reports that it could be reached from the Atlantic by
going around the southern tip of Africa. (Herodotus, for example, told of Phoenicians who had circumnavigated Africa around
600 B.C., taking around three years to do so and finding the seasons strangely reversed as they headed south.) Arab geographers
realized that the idea of a landlocked Indian Ocean was wrong during the tenth century. One of them, al-Biruni, wrote of “a
gap in the mountains along the south coast [of Africa]. One has certain proofs of this communication although no one has been
able to confirm it by sight.” Al-Biruni’s informants were undoubtedly merchants.
Religious beliefs were another kind of information that spread naturally along trade routes, as missionaries followed routes
opened up by traders, and traders themselves took their beliefs to new lands. Mahayana Buddhism spread along trade routes
from India to China and Japan, and Hinayana Buddhism spread from Sri Lanka to Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. Tradition has
it that Thomas the Apostle took Christianity to India’s Malabar coast in the first century A.D., arriving on a spice-trader’s
ship in Cranganore (modern Kodun-gallur) in 52 A.D. But trade’s most striking religious symbiosis was with Islam. The initial
expansion of Islam from its birthplace on the Arabian peninsula was military in nature. Within a century of the death of the
prophet Muhammad in 632 A.D., his followers had conquered all of Persia, Mesopotamia, Palestine and Syria, Egypt, the rest
of the northern African coast, and most of Spain. But the spread of Islam after 750 A.D. was closely bound up with trade:
As Muslim traders traveled outward from the Arab peninsula they took their religion with them.
Arab trading quarters in foreign ports quickly converted to Islam. The African empires that traded with the Muslim world across
the Sahara (such as the kingdom of Ghana, and the Mali Empire that replaced it) converted between the tenth and twelfth centuries.
Islam also spread along trade routes into the cities of Africa’s east coast. And, of course, it was carried along the spice
routes of the Indian Ocean to the west coast of India and beyond. By the eighth century Arab traders were sailing all the
way to China to trade in Canton—a direct trade facilitated by political unification brought about by the rise of Islam in
the west and the emergence of China’s Tang dynasty in the east. But the voyage was a particularly hazardous one. Buzurg ibn
Shahriyar, a Persian writer, tells of a captain, Abharah, a legendary navigator who made the voyage to China seven times and
lived to tell the tale, but only just: He was shipwrecked on one of his voyages and escaped as the only survivor from his
ship.
This is the swashbuckling period depicted in the tales of Sinbad (or Sindbad) the Sailor, of great oceanic voyages, returning
home a rich man, spending the spoils, and then becoming restless for adventure and setting out again. Sinbad’s tales draw
upon the real experiences of Arab traders who plied the Indian Ocean. The direct trade with China ended in 878 A.D., however,
when rebels opposed to the Tang regime sacked Canton and killed thousands of foreigners; thereafter merchants from Arabia
only went as far as India or southeast Asia, where they traded with Chinese merchants. But Islam continued to spread along
the trade routes and eventually took root right around the Indian Ocean, reaching Sumatra in the thirteenth century and the
spice islands of the Moluccas in the fifteenth century.
Trade and Islam proved to be highly compatible. Being a
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