Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 139-154

From Zanzibar to Zaytun:

Iranian Merchants across the Indian Ocean Basin

Richard Foltz
Concordia University, Montréal

Abstract
The role of Iranian merchants in the maritime trade of the Indian Ocean basin from antiq-
uity up to the 16th century is often underestimated. From scholarly histories to popular
culture the “Muslim sailor” is typically portrayed as being an Arab. In fact, from pre-
Islamic times the principal actors in Indian Ocean trade were predominantly Persian, as
attested by the archaeological data, local written records, and the names of places and
individuals.

Keywords
Indian Ocean Trade, Persian Merchants, Persian Gulf, Siraf, Zaytun, Zanzibar, Zoroastrians
in India, Iranians in China

The central role of Iranians in the commerce of the Central Asian Silk
Road is well known. Ever since the “opening” of the Silk Road by the Chi-
nese emissary Zhang Qian in 139 B.C. and well into the early modern era,
the overland trade networks of Eurasia were largely in the hands of Irani-
ans: mainly Sogdians during the pre-Islamic era, but also Parthians, Bac-
trians, and Persians. The Sogdian language—an east Iranian dialect for-
merly spoken in Samarkand, Bukhara, and surrounding regions—was the
lingua franca of the Silk Road in pre-Islamic times, being gradually re-
placed by Persian following the Muslim conquests of the early 8th cen-
tury. It would seem that the Venetian merchant Marco Polo, like his un-
cles whom he accompanied on their long journey to China during the
time of the Mongol Empire, learned Persian as part of the necessity of
doing business, contrary to Chinese of which he appears to have re-
mained ignorant.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 DOI: 10.1163/1573384X-20180203

140 R. Foltz/ Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 139-154

Much less attention is given to the importance of Iranian merchants in

the maritime commerce that connected the diverse cultures of the Indian
Ocean basin, despite the fact that their central role within these networks
dates back more than two millennia and lasted up to the beginnings of
the modern era. In fact, Iranian seafaring merchants were active from one
extreme of this region to the other, from the East African island of Zanzi-
bar—from the Persian zang-bār, or “Black Coast”—to the great south
China port city of Quanzhou, known in mediaeval times as Zaytun (mean-
ing “olive” in Arabic and Persian).
The traditional Western narrative on Indian Ocean history, which
takes the 1st-century A.D. anonymous Greek text Periplus of the Ery-
thraean Sea as its starting point, has long pretended that the maritime
route connecting the Near East with India was discovered by the Greek
mariner Hippalos during the 1st century B.C.. In fact, knowledge of the
monsoon patterns, which made this journey possible, had already been in
use for several thousand years prior to that, and trade between Mesopo-
tamia and India existed well before the Greeks ever learned of it (Possehl
2002). During this long period Omani Arabs, Mesopotamians, and Indians
left archaeological and sometimes written traces of their passage across
the Indian Ocean.
Contacts between Iran and India were established by the late second
millennium B.C. at the latest when both the Iranian Plateau and the Indus
Valley were coming under the political hegemony of warlike nomadic Ar-
yan tribes originating from Central Asia. These early connections were
predominantly via the overland routes crossing the mountainous regions
of modern-day Afghanistan. Maritime communications between Iran and
India developed more or less independently, with their own distinct his-
tory. The diverging Aryan groups gained control first of the terrestrial
trade networks, whereas the sea routes long remained the domain of Se-
mitic peoples living in the Persian Gulf region and the indigenous non-
Aryan peoples of the Indian subcontinent.
Once the Achaemenids of southwestern Iran succeeded in extending
the boundaries of their empire to the marches of the Indus Valley, Per-
sians increasingly began to explore the maritime option. Herodotus re-
counts that by the late 5th century B.C. the Persian emperor “Darius (I)
subdued the Indians and opened their sea to his ships” (Salles 1988: 79-81;
 R. Foltz / Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 139-154 141

Karttunen 1989: 65-68). Henceforth the Achaemenid province of Hindush

remitted its taxes in such products as gold dust (Herodotus 2013: 3.102 –
ed. 2013), iron, ivory, onyx and other precious stones (Vogelsang 1990:
106). The archives at Persepolis—the Persians’ springtime capital—indi-
cate frequent seaborne embassies to India (Salles 1988: 257).
Herodotus mentions the Anatolian admiral Scylax of Caryanda who
sailed up the Indus in the employ of Darius I (Herodotus: 4.44). At first the
Persians, lacking experience on the high seas, hired foreigners (especially
Phoenicians) to serve as their agents in the Indian Ocean sphere. The in-
creasing presence and eventual dominance of ethnic Persians is attested
by an influx of Persian loanwords related to maritime activity into Arabic
over the following centuries (Ferrand 1924: 193-257). Even if persisting leg-
ends accord an Arab identity to certain mythic figures associated with this
milieu, one may consider that the name of the best-known such
character, Sindbad the Sailor, is a Persian one and not Arabic. The same
holds true for the majority of real ship captains who enter the historical
record. Their conflation with Arabs emerges from the fact that from the
7th to the 10th centuries, when Indian Ocean trade was dominated by
Persian Muslims, literary works were written in Arabic, even if a large
proportion of them—such as the Thousand and One Nights, for exam-
ple—were derived from Persian originals. When one reads the term
“Arab” in such texts, the meaning is very often simply “Muslim”, which, in
many cases, refers to ethnic Persians.
The Persian role in maritime trade is attested not only by texts, how-
ever, but also by archaeology. Fragments of red ceramic typical of Gujarat
have been found all along the coasts of southern Iran dating as far back as
the 1st century B.C. (Kervran 1994: 338). Conversely, the earliest Persian
relic to have been found in southern China is a round silver box from the
tomb of the Nanyue ruler Wendi (r. 137-122 B.C.) at Canton (Salmon 2004:
24-25). Persian-made ceramics dating to a few centuries later have been
discovered in Somalia, Ethiopia, Zanzibar, the Comoros islands, and as far
east as Ceylon (Horton 1996: 449; Munro-Hay 1996: 412-413; Allibert/Vérin
1996: 466-67; Gollwitzer 1998: 47-48). Parthian and Sasanian coins have
also been found in all these regions (Bopearachi 1993). The ruins of a Sas-
anian-style fortress can still be seen at Ratto Kot near present-day Kara-
chi, presumably evidence of a Sasanian presence at the mouths of the In-
142 R. Foltz/ Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 139-154

dus. According to the Iranian Muslim historian Tabari, the Sindh coast
was given by the local ruler to the Sasanian emperor Bahram V during the
5th century as a present (Bosworth 1999: 102).
A century later Khosrow I declared war on Yemen, seemingly with the
aim of removing the Abyssinians from competing against the Persians for
control of the maritime networks. The Persians also made use of this
opening to procure slaves from the Horn of Africa. The Persian term Zang-
istān, meaning “Land of the Blacks”, was applied to the whole of the East
African coast, from Somalia to Mozambique. Apart from slaves, Persian
merchants operating there trafficked in gold and ivory, as well as products
such as ambergris and teak.
From the opposite side of the Basin, India provided jewellery that was
in high demand amongst the Sasanians (Simpson 2003: 63). Silk was also
sent regularly to Iran via Ceylon, as noted by the 6th-century Christian
monk Cosmas of Alexandria in his book Christian Topography; he added
that “The trip between these two countries is very long” (Wolska 1962:
2.45-46). Cinnamon, another product cultivated in Ceylon but associated
with China, was used for medicinal purposes in Iran; in the Galenic sys-
tem practiced there it was known as dār-i čīnī, or “Chinese wood” (NP dār-
čīn). The Ceylonese, for their part, acquired horses from Iran. Cosmas
states that Persian horses were so highly valued by the king of Ceylon that
he exempted Persian merchants from paying import duties.
In the absence of direct contact between Iran and China during this
period, Ceylon was the main point of contact between the Iranian and
Chinese merchants networks up to the Tang period. Beginning in the 7th
century, however, the Tang government welcomed foreign merchants on
Chinese soil, allowing for the establishment of Iranian mercantile com-
munities in major Silk Road cities, such as Chang’an and Luoyang, as well
as the seaport of Canton in the south and even Hanoi in Vietnam (Wang
Gungwu 1958: 78-79; Schafer 1963: 15).
The earliest dates by which Iranian traders began to establish expatri-
ate communities within the port cities around the Indian Ocean basin is
not known, but by the beginning of the Christian Era—that is to say in
Parthian times—their influence was apparent, especially in terms of the
spread of religions. Although most Iranians at that time followed native
rites, such as Zoroastrianism, there were Iranian Jews, Christians, and by
 R. Foltz / Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 139-154 143

the 3rd century, Manichaeans as well. In fact due to its geopolitical situa-
tion Iran was arguably the pivot for the spread of the so-called “world reli-
gions” (including Buddhism, and later Islam), and Iranian merchants and
missionaries were the primary propagators of these faiths across the Asian
continent whether by land or by sea.1
Zoroastrianism, which became the official religion of the Sasanian
state at the end of the 3rd century, tended to limit it proselytisation to
ethnic Iranians, and Jews, established in Iran since the Assyrian deporta-
tions of 722 B.C., do not appear to have engaged in missionary activity as
they extended their trade networks into China both via the Silk Road and
by the maritime Indian Ocean route. We may recall, however, that the
first Christians were Jews, and that, according to the Acts of the Apostles,
there were Iranian Jews—presumably businessmen—present to witness
the miracle of the Pentecost when, according to Christian tradition, the
Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles fifty days after Easter and spoke
to each in their own language, including Parthian and Median. It may be
assumed that the Eastern visitors then returned to Iran as the first Chris-
tians to preach the gospel there (Acts of the Apostles 2:9).
Even as it was marginalised and persecuted throughout the Roman
Empire as an unauthorised heretical sect of Judaism, Christianity took
root and thrived throughout the Iranian world thanks to the Parthians’
policy of religious tolerance. As a missionary religion, Christians relied on
existing trade networks as a means to spread their faith. They dedicated
to spreading the Gospel necessarily joined up with Silk Road caravans or
found places on merchant ships; in many cases they were merchants
themselves, and combined preaching with their trading activities.
According to a legend taken as fact by a large number of Asian Chris-
tians, it was the apostle Thomas who first brought Christianity to Iran and
India; some versions even have him meeting up along the way with the
“three Magi” (Zoroastrian priests) mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew.
Whatever the basis for this story, it is clear that the transmission of Chris-
tianity to Asia during the 1st century was carried out mainly by Iranian
converts (whether of Jewish or other origin), and that it was the Iranian

1
For the spread of religions via the overland routes, see Foltz 2010; for ,the same
phenomenon in the context of the Indian Ocean, see Risso 1995.
144 R. Foltz/ Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 139-154

church—later headquartered in the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon in Bab-

ylonia—that controlled and directed the Christian communities of Iran
and India over the coming centuries. Even today some churches of Cochin
in southwestern India have preserved ancient correspondence with the
Metropolitan of Ctesiphon, letters written in the Middle Persian language.
In the 3rd century, a new religion, Manichaeism, emerged in Mesopo-
tamia, founded by and Iranian prophet of Parthian origin, Mani son of
Patak. This new prophet undertook his first mission by travelling to India,
boarding a ship in the Sasanian port of Rev Ardeshir on the Persian Gulf
bound for Deib at the mouths of the Indus. Mani claimed in his writings
to have converted the local ruler there, but at the same time he adopted a
number of Indian elements into his own new religion. Among these, from
Buddhism he adopted a quadripartite organisation of the religious com-
munity (male and female monks and laity), along with Jainist principles,
such as non-violence and vegetarianism.
Manichaeism reached China more slowly, and not via the Indian
Ocean but by traveling along the Silk Road, a process, which was acceler-
ated after the seat of the Manichaean church relocated from Ctesiphon to
Samarkand during the early Islamic period. But here too we are dealing
with a universalising religion being spread through the networks of mer-
chants associated with a particular faith community, a symbiotic relation-
ship in which religious figures made use of commercial systems that al-
lowed them to travel and find patronage and support along the way.
Whether the travellers in question were traders or missionaries (or both),
they often received warm welcomes from locals—business-minded indi-
viduals, as well as governing elites—desirous of using them to build their
own international connections. This might include offers to build them
permanent establishments, such as lodges or monasteries, which would
then grow rich from the donations of passing merchants. In this way, one
can clearly see how the spread of religions was intimately tied to com-
mercial activity.
Thus, by the 5th century Iranian goods and ideas were coming to be
well-known in China, to the extent that even things originating from
other parts of the “Western world” were labelled as “Persian” by the Chi-
nese. In the Chinese imagination Iranians epitomised the notion of the
“Western barbarian” (hu) in a general sense, such that anything arriving
 R. Foltz / Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 139-154 145

from that direction was considered as having come from Persia, religions
included. Iranians who travelled to China during this period could as eas-
ily have been either Zoroastrian, Jewish, or Buddhist.When Christianity
made its first appearance in China in the 7th century, it was promptly la-
belled “the Persian religion—a misperception that endured for at least a
century thereafter—simply because the first Christian missionaries to
make the trip happened to be Iranians. Manichaeism entered China soon
after by the same trajectory, followed by Islam—the principal purveyors
in all cases being Iranians.
By the time the Arabs succeeded in taking control of the entire Sasa-
nian Empire during the 640s, there existed numerous Persian merchant
communities all across the Indian Ocean basin, from the East African
coast to the shores of India, Southeast Asia and southern China. Since
their networks were often family-based, the conversion to Islam of Per-
sians living in Iran typically led to that of their relatives living in the dias-
pora; the assertion of Arabo-Islamic norms in the Middle Eastern markets
encouraged this trend among the merchant classes. (Immediately on en-
tering a new city the victorious Arabs would appoint their own inspector
(muḥtasib) to oversee transactions in the bazaar to ensure that they were
compatible with Qur’anic principles; naturally this tended to favour the
interest of Muslim merchants over those of non-Muslims.)
During the course of a naval campaign directed at the Sindh region in
711, Muslim sailors (now including numerous Iranian converts) travelled
up the Indus as far as Multan in the Punjab, where they established a gar-
rison. The Muslim presence there remained limited for the next three
centuries, but political and economic links between the Indus Valley and
the Middle East remained henceforth under Muslim domination and fa-
cilitated the strengthening of existing Persian merchant networks all
along the coasts of the subcontinent. In this way the gradual Islamisation
of the Indian Ocean basin over the subcontinent was achieved largely
through the influence of Persian merchants, through economic rather
military conquest.
The Persian Gulf maintained its role as the western terminus of the
Indian Ocean maritime networks after the Arab conquest of Iran. The im-
portance of this trade increased dramatically under the Abbasids in the
8th and 9th centuries, based on the port city of Siraf (near modern Bu-
146 R. Foltz/ Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 139-154

shehr), which had been founded by the Parthians during the early Chris-
tian Era. Siraf was the main point of departure for Persian merchants
headed for the East. The sailors credited with the authorship of two im-
portant 9th and 10th-century travelogues, Sulayman “the Merchant” and
Buzurg son of Shahryar, was natives of this city.
Around the same time, chronicles from the East African islands of
Lamu and Paté state that the Abbasid caliph Haroun al-Rashid sent Per-
sian envoys to the region with the aim of colonising it. If such an expedi-
tion did indeed take place it left no material traces (Allibert 1988: 112), yet
it is a fact that during this period the roofs of many palaces and mosques
in the Abbasid capital of Baghdad were constructed of wood imported
from East Africa. Moreover, stylistic features of certain contemporary
structures on the island of Manda in the Lamu archipelago attest to the
presence of a merchant colony from Siraf (Buzurg ibn Shahriyar 1981:
xxii). Their activities extended as far south as Sofala, near modern-day
Beira on the central Mozambique coast; they seem to have known the ex-
istence of Madagascar—and possibly even the Mascarene islands of Réu-
nion and Mauritius, which were as yet uninhabited by humans—but
without doing any business in these places (Allibert 1988: 118).
One of the effects of the Arab conquest of Iran was the flight into exile
of a number of Zoroastrians who refused to convert to Islam. Most of
these religious refugees headed for India, perhaps reuniting with relatives
already established there. These migrants came to be known as Parsis, lit-
erally, “Persians”. India’s modern Parsi community traces its origin to a
group who sailed from Iran to Sanjan in Gujarat, possibly during the 8th
century, a legendary version of whose experiences are recounted in a
much later text, the 16th century Qissa-yi Sanjān (Williams 2009). Many
details of the legend cannot be confirmed, and may represent later back-
projections. These include the claim that the “original” Parsis left for India
due to astrological predictions and were received there by a local chief,
Jadi Rana, who agreed to protect them on the conditions that they learn
the local language (Gujarati), that they lay aside their arms, that they
dress in the local style, and that they abstain from performing their cere-
monies during the daytime. Parsis also insist that they avoided miscege-
nation with the local population, an assertion that has been clearly dis-
proven by modern DNA testing. Contrary to the Parsis’ contentions re-
 R. Foltz / Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 139-154 147

garding their community’s history in India, their ancestors most likely ar-
rived from Iran not on one occasion but rather in waves over the course of
centuries, the role of the Arab conquests being merely to accelerate a pro-
cess that had already been underway for some time.
Indeed, far from being in any way harmed by the rise of Arab power in
Iran, the Iranian expatriate mercantile networks of the Indian Ocean ba-
sin were nourished by it in a way that allowed them to intensify their ac-
tivities and to extend them even further afield. For example, whereas Ira-
nian merchants (mainly Sogdians) active along the overland networks of
the Silk Road had established their own communities in Chinese inland
cities such as Luoyang and Chang’an for several centuries already, begin-
ning with the Islamic period Persian traders began to construct their own
neighbourhoods in the port cities of southern China, enabling Iranian
commerce for the first time to bypass the middlemen of Ceylon.
Partly as a result of this more direct contact Chinese ceramics came to
enjoy high demand from consumers in Iran. The 9th-century account of
Sulayman the Merchant makes special note of the fine translucidity of
their drinking cups (Sauvaget 1948: 16). Remnants of such ceramic prod-
ucts have been found in abundance in Siraf, as well as at Susa in Khuze-
stan, at Shiraz, at Rayy near present-day Tehran, and at Nishapur in Khu-
rasan (Chen 1991). Conversely, the blue cobalt colouring that was intro-
duced into the tricolour technique known in China as sancai came from
Iran (Carswell 1991).
The Chinese considered Iran to be the most “civilised” of all the “bar-
barian” countries. An example can be found in Sulayman the Merchant’s
text entitled Akhbār aṣ-Ṣīn wa’l-Hind (Accounts of China and India),
where he relates the following story: An Arab traveller from Basra ob-
tained an audience with the Chinese emperor, who asked him how the
Arabs had managed to conquer the Sasanian Empire of the Persians two
centuries earlier. “It was by the help of God”, the Arab replied, “and also
because the Persians were idolaters, worshipping the stars, the sun and
the moon instead of worshipping the True God”. To this the Emperor an-
swered that “The Arabs conquered the most illustrious realm of the entire
world, the most cultured, the most opulent, the most rich in refined spir-
its, whose fame was most widespread” (Sauvaget 1948: 52-53).
148 R. Foltz/ Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 139-154

In another episode of the same work, Sulayman shows the importance

placed by the Chinese emperor on his own international reputation. A
Persian merchant from Khorasan was cheated by the Chinese minister of
finance; the victim journeyed to the capital to present his complaint to
the Emperor, who promptly had him imprisoned while an inquiry was
launched. When imperial agents assigned to the task found in favour of
the merchant, the Emperor seized the wealth of his minister and fired
him with the following words: “This Khorasani has been to the lands of
the Arabs, the Indians, and finally to my city where he sought to do busi-
ness. You would have had him return across all of these countries and tell
everyone along the way ‘I was cheated in China, where they stole every-
thing from me’” (Sauvaget 1948: 71-72).
While Arab and Indian merchants were involved in Indian Ocean
trade, by the T’ang period Persians were its primary instruments. Ac-
cording to the account of a Chinese Buddhist monk who happened to be
on the island of Hainan in 748, the local ruler, Feng Ruofang, had a habit
of seizing Persian ships passing through the South China Sea, to the order
of two or three per year. This can only have been a fraction of the total
number of Persian ships active in the area. On the south China coast, the
city of Canton had a large permanent Persian expatriate population. Fur-
ther to the northwest, after the foundation of the port city of Quanzhou in
711, Persian merchants quickly took up residence there as well. They
would come to call the city Zaytun, the name by which Middle Easterners
and Europeans would know it for centuries to come.
Persian merchants living in China under the Tang enjoyed independ-
ence in managing the internal affairs of their community, but their rela-
tions with the Chinese government were not always peaceful. In 758 the
Persians of Canton, together with the city’s Arab population, staged major
riots in which they set fire to homes and pillages warehouses (Chen 1991).
Despite this, the Chinese government did not take away the foreigners’
rights to self-management. A century after these events Sulayman the
Merchant states that “The Emperor of China appointed a Muslim to settle
conflicts among Muslims who have entered the country” (ibid.). But when
the rebel Huang Chao invaded Canton in 878, no less than 120,000 foreign
merchants—most of whom were Muslim, Zoroastrian, Christian or Jewish
Persians—were massacred (Sauvaget 1948: 76). As Sulayman explains,
 R. Foltz / Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 139-154 149

“The number of practitioners of these four religions who perished is ex-

actly known, because the Chinese are very precise in their accounting”
(ibid.: 42).
The Persian merchant community of Canton survived this disaster, but
from the 10th century onwards Zaytun surpassed that city as the most im-
portant south Chinese seaport. The first mosque to be built there dates to
the year 1009, and the city had a Muslim cemetery by the 12th century at
the latest. Iranians lived in their own quarter, as in other Chinese cities.
Marco Polo claims to have visited Zaytun in 1291, even if some scholars
doubt that he actually made it as far as China during the course of his
journeys (Wood 1996).2 His vocabulary in connection with the Chinese
world is everywhere derived from Persian rather than Chinese versions,
be it the names of cities, rivers, or even ethnic groups, such as the zar-
dandān, the “Gold-Toothed Ones” (a direct translation of the Chinese
term Chin-ch’ih). Whether the Venetian traveller actually set foot in China
or merely heard about it from second hand sources, it was his knowledge
of Persian that enabled him to access his information. One may note in
passing that Polo expresses delight at the discovery of a “Christian” com-
munity living in Zaytun—whereas recent archaeological work in the re-
gion suggests rather that these may have been Sinicised Manichaeans
(Lieu 2012).
In the Persian imagination—and by extension that of the Muslim
world in general—India and China constituted a collectivity, “aṣ-Ṣīn wa’l-
Hind”, exotic lands filled with all manner of marvels and dangers. From
the 9th century onwards travelogues, such as the one attributed to Sulay-
man the Merchant, or the slightly later The Book of the Wonders of India
ascribed to another Persian sailor, Buzurg son of Shahryar, described an
often terrifying world of violent storms, savage gangs of merciless bandits,
witches and sorcerers, and fantastic beasts, all of which served as back-
drop for the brave and heroic exploits of their presumed authors. It would
seem that this literary genre, referred to as “ajā‘ib va gharā‘ib” (Wonders
and Marvels) in the realm of Persian literature, served as the model for a
similar genre known as Mirabilia Indiae, which emerged in mediaeval Eu-
rope several centuries later, and is, perhaps, the ultimate source for the

2
For a refutation of Wood’s thesis, see de Rachewiltz 1997: 34-92.
150 R. Foltz/ Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 139-154

modern “Orientalism” so vigorously decried by the Palestinian-American

literary critic Edward Said (Foltz 2008).
If the gradual Islamisation of the Indian Ocean basin can be attributed
to the existence of mercantile networks, it is above all the Sufi missionar-
ies, making use of these networks, who took the initiative to win the re-
gion’s peoples over to Islam. In the Maldives, for example, where the en-
tire population today is Muslim, local tradition relates that Islam was in-
troduced during the mid-12th century by a Persian Sufi from Tabriz, Yusuf
Shams al-din. There is a shrine to his memory at the Maldivian capital of
Malé, which serves as an important pilgrimage site for the country’s Mus-
lims.
The renowned Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, attempting to reach
China from India in 1343, spent a nine-month layover in the Maldives
where he was pressed into serving as a judge. At this time the islands had
not yet been sufficiently islamicised for the orthodox-minded Moroccan’s
tastes, and in the end he escaped in order to continue his efforts to get to
China. Finally in 1345 he arrived in Zaytun, where the Muslim community
received him with great ceremony. It is worth noting for our purposes that
among the notable personalities he mentions among the Zaytun Muslims,
almost all were native Iranians: the religious head, the chief justice, the
master of the locally prominent Kazeruni Sufi order (an Iranian brother-
hood, as the name indicates), and the head of the local merchants, Sharaf
al-din Tabrizi (Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 1969: 252-253).
The exact Persian population of Zaytun during this period is not
known, but they were numerous enough to assemble an army of several
thousand fighters, which joined in a revolt against the Yuan government
at Fuzhou, which lasted from 1357 to 1366. When at last the revolt was put
down most of the rebels were executed, causing a break in relations with
Iran. This rupture remained in place until 1403, when the Chinese em-
peror Ming Zhu Di put an admiral of Iranian origin, Zheng He, in charge
of his western fleet. Zheng He went on to become a legendary figure in
China, making numerous voyages to Iran and as far as East Africa over the
following decades. Among his crew were members of the Guo family, also
of Iranian descent, who were known for their skill as navigators (Salmon
2004: 52, note 106).
 R. Foltz / Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 139-154 151

In southern India the Deccani Bahmanid sultanate worked to develop

the commercial networks linking its port cities of Chaul, Dabhol, and Goa
to the Persian Gulf. This encouraged the installation of Persian mer-
chants, administrators, soldiers, and artists in the Bahmanid territories. At
the beginning of the 16th century these Iranian immigrants were esti-
mated by the Portuguese traveller Tomé Pires to number some ten thou-
sand individuals (Aubin 1973: 175) The power and influence of the Bahma-
nid prime minister, Mahmud Gawan—an Iranian originally from Gilan on
the south Caspian coast—was such that it provoked the jealousy of the
local Deccani elites, who resented seeing all the best government posts
going to Iranians and the local languages displaced by Persian. This
situation endured well into the following century, as attested by a Dutch
agent working at Machilipatnam on the Coromandel coast who com-
plained that all the important positions of the realm were held by
“arrogant Persians” (Subrahmanyam 1982: 345). It was largely from Machi-
lipatnam that Persian merchants were able to extend their activities as far
as Burma and Thailand, where the capital of the time, Ayutthaya, was also
known by its Persian name, Šahr-e nāv, meaning “city of boats”.
Further east, the rise of Malacca during the 15th century gave a boost
to the Islamisation of the Malay archipelago, a process in which Iranians
played a central role as attested by the appearance of Persian loanwords
in the Malay language. The term for harbourmaster was šāh-bandar, and
among other Persian vocabulary entering Malay one finds such items as
gandum, “wheat”, and angūr, “grape”. While merchants, by their extensive
connections throughout the Muslim world, made Islam attractive to local
rulers and members of the elite, the principal purveyors of Islam among
the general population were Sufis, one of whose techniques was to spread
Islamic notions through reworked versions of popular literature.
The Portuguese conquest of Hormoz island at the entrance to the Per-
sian Gulf in 1507 dealt a heavy blow to the maritime activities of the Per-
sians. Their role in Indian Ocean trade began to diminish as a result, giv-
ing way first to the Portuguese and later the English, French, and Dutch.
While the reports of Portuguese sailors throughout the 16th century noted
the continued presence of Iranian ships in the Bay of Bengal, the Persian
expatriate communities of southern and Southeast Asia became increas-
ingly cut off from direct contact with Iran.
152 R. Foltz/ Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 139-154

Deprived of ongoing connections with their ancestral homeland, the

Persians of India, China, and elsewhere around the Indian Ocean basin
come to be gradually assimilated within the local populations where they
lived. When one considers that these expatriates were mostly men and
that they typically took local wives, it is hardly surprising to see their Ira-
nian culture diluted with each successive generation until it eventually
disappears entirely, leaving only a memory.
This is not to say that the mere memory of Persian origins was without
significance. In China as in India certain families, especially among the
religious classes, continued to recall their ancestry as a mark of prestige.
In Africa as well, a number of coastal peoples have preserved origin sto-
ries tracing their descent back to Iran, specifically to Shiraz. Among the
best known of these legends one may cite that of a Shirazi Persian who,
inspired by a dream, sailed for Africa in the company of his six sons, each
in his own ship; this family is credited with founding the East African port
cities of Mandkha, Shaugu, Yanbu, Mombasa, Pemba, Kilwa, and Hanzuan
(Freeman-Grenville 1962: 45ff.).
Echoes of this story can be seen in chronicles from Mombasa, Vumba,
and the Comoros Islands—still today one speaks of an “Afro-Shirazi”
identity along the Swahili coasts. It may be doubted that the actual num-
ber of Persian colonists in this region was ever very large, but their influ-
ence is clear nevertheless. African chieftains seem to have adopted certain
aspects of Persian court ceremony as far back as the 10th century. It is also
interesting to note that in the 11th century, the chronicles of the Song
dynasty in China mention the visit of an African delegation on behalf of a
king calling himself by the Persian title Amīr-e amīrān (Shen Yue 2006:
490, f 20 verso).
The island of Zanzibar, apart from bearing a Persian name, has pre-
served numerous traces of its historical links with Iran. One of its oldest
mosques, dating to the 10th century, was built in the town of Shanga fol-
lowing the architectural style of Siraf. Mihrab inscriptions found in other
mediaeval mosques at Kizimkazi and Toumbatou show the same influ-
ence (Whitehouse 1978: 56). Much later, in the 19th century the King of
Zanzibar, Said bin Sultan, married two Iranian women; in an effort to
please them—and perhaps ease their homesickness—he brought a group
of masons from Iran to build them a palace in the Qajar style, the remains
 R. Foltz / Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 139-154 153

of which one can still see today at Kidichi. Zanzibaris still celebrate the
Iranian New Year, Nōrūz, in March, calling it by the Swahili name Siku ya
Mwaka (Gray 1962: 20), a fitting testimony to the long legacy of Persian
merchants across the Indian Ocean basin.

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