| Muhammad is said to have traveled outside Arabia as a merchant. His tribe, the Quraish, who led the Arab conquests, were among the foremost traders in the peninsula. Merchants continued to be held in high esteem, often marrying into the families of ulama, who they supported by endowing their educational institutions. Islamic rituals favor commercial activity. Mosques are often adjacent to markets, and though Friday is the day for congregational prayer, it was not treated as a sabbath until recent times. Markets opened before and after the noonday prayer. Since the whole male population was gathered in town, Fridays were good days for doing business. Similarly, the pilgrimages to Mecca (umra and hajj), where Muslims from distant parts of the world meet each other, have always been a facilitator of trade. Pilgrims would finance the long and arduous journey (which in premodern times could take half a lifetime) by trading goods or working as artisans. Merchants would join the pilgrim caravans to sell their goods in the Hejaz. |
By bringing vast areas of territory and coastlands under a single government, the Arab conquests created an enormous area of free trade, facilitating the expansion of trade far beyond the empire’s borders. The extent of this trade has been revealed by archaeology, with significant numbers of coins from Abbasid times discovered in Scandinavia, and Chinese silks and ceramics found in burial sites in western Asia. Muslim merchants were not subject to tariffs within the empire. Foreign merchants who entered the lands of Islam were subject to the same rates imposed on Muslim merchants in their homelands. The new elite of the caliphal courts, with their demand for luxury goods, boosted trade. Though the breakup of the empire led to economic decline in some areas, with rival dynasties augmenting their budgets by imposing extra taxes and tarthe frequency with which such measures were denounced as illegal, oppressive, and unjust indicates that the general temper remained favorable to mercantile activity, even under adverse political conditions.
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| Initially the Arab conquest had the effect of bringing two oceanic trade routes—through the Persian Gulf and Red Sea — within a single market based on common law, language, and currency. Under the Abbasids the most attractive route for goods from East and South Asia to the Mediterranean went up the Tigris to Baghdad, or up the Euphrates to an easy portage to Aleppo and from there to a Syrian port such as Antioch. The towns along these routes depended on the exchange of commodities for their existence. |
| The Mesopotamian cities absorbed luxury goods from India and China. These were sold in the markets alongside necessities such as food grains, fuel, timber, and cooking oils. Mesopotamia was also the terminus of the chief land route to China and India as well as north to the Volga basin and the well-watered lands of Eastern Europe, sources of fur, amber, metal goods, and hides. In the earliest period Muslim ships from ports such as Basra or Hormuz went all the way to China, returning after two or three years with cargoes such as silk, porcelain, jade, and other valuables. However, as the trade became more sophisticated merchants no longer traded directly with Guangzhou (Canton) and Hangzhou, but acquired goods from China at ports in Java, Sumatra, or the Malabar coast. |
| Muslim merchants from the Maghreb were active in the gold trade, which took them across the Sahara Desert to the Sahel cities of Timbuktu and Gao, and beyond, to the goldfields of western Africa. The chain of commercial centers established by Muslim traders on the east African coast, including Lamu, Malindi, and the island of Zanzibar, extended as far south as Sofala in modern Mozambique. Intrepid Muslim travelers penetrated the African interior in search of gold, slaves, ivory, rare woods, and precious stones centuries before Europeans followed in their paths. |
By the 1500s, the Ottoman Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, had become one of the Islamic world’s most important trading centers. The sultan’s court, together with his advisors, took careful account of annual trade.
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| When the decline of Abbasid power and the incursions of Turkish tribesmen made the trans-Syrian route less secure the alternative water route, via the Red Sea and the Nile, came into prominence. It was the moredifficult as the land route from the Gulf of Suez to the Nile was more arduous than the route across Syria, except for a brief period when the Mamluk sultans revived an ancient canal originally dug by the pharaohs. Red Sea ports such as Aden, Jidda, Aydhab, and Qulzum benefited from this trade, as did Cairo and Alexandria. Trade on the Indian Ocean was monopolized by Muslims until the arrival of the Portuguese, followed by the English and Dutch from the sixteenth century onward. |
| The land routes linking western Asia and the Mediterranean with eastern and southern Asia were just as important as the maritime routes. With many cities landlocked or distant from rivers and oceans, even bulky items had to be carried by animals. Careful planning was needed before the caravans set out on long journeys. Food had to be procured for animals and humans, and nomadic tribes had to be hired as guards. In remote areas networks of khans (overnight resting places) or khaniqas (Sufi lodges) provided food and hospitality. Some were built like fortresses for defense against Bedouin marauders. The vast distances over rough terrain, combined with the breakdown in territorial authority, made road construction impracticable. Even by late Roman times, wheeled traffic had all but disappeared. The results can be seen in many of the cities of western Asia and North Africa. Before modern times few of them had boulevards broad enough for carts or carriages. |
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