PART II

COMMERCIAL TRANSACTIONS AND CURRENCY SYSTEMS

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T H E N E T W O R K O F M O N E TA R Y E X C H A N G E IN THE INDIAN OCEAN TRADE, 12001700 Najaf Authors Haider

he Indian Ocean trade was an interplay of multiple networks of economic exchange conducted beyond localized zones to dispose of surplus product or address the requirements of a distant market. It spanned many regional economies, each with its distinct commercial infrastructure and competing with the others, yet remaining part of a larger network stretching across Asia, Africa, and Europe. From the thirteenth century, a configuration of three critical factors helped to connect, sustain, and expand the Indian Ocean network, viz. the creation of unified political regimes which had claims over large territorial areas and sizeable portions of agrarian and industrial surplus; a surge in the circulation of metallic and bill money to finance exchange; and the emergence of commercial groups equipped with business techniques and capable of handling long-distance commerce through their control of merchandise and money. It will be fair to suggest that the India trade occupied a prominent place in the oceanic network by contributing its own brand of textiles, indigo, and pepper to the repertoire and creating an expanding demand for metallic and non-metallic money. In order to comprehend the overall structure and trends of monetary exchange in the Indian Ocean trade between 1200 and 1700, India has been chosen in this chapter as the vantage point. This is partly due to my familiarity with the sources and partly because India appears to be one of the regions where the organization of the monetary economy shows clear signs of long-distance linkages. TERMS OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND THEORIES OF MONETARY FLOWS Economic historians have generally advanced an argument based on the simple laws of supply and demand to explain the basis of

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monetary exchange in the Indian Ocean trade. The argument touches the core of the longstanding discussion on why Asian societies attracted and absorbed enormous quantities of gold and silver from Europe since antiquity. Within Asia, the discussion centres on the role of India as the sink pit of precious metals amassed in Turkey and Iran. According to this argument, international monetary exchange was a function of arbitrage in which a particular currency or monetary metal moved towards the market where it commanded a higher value. The value of silver is judged in terms of gold, and inter-regional movements of bimetallic ratios are understood to be the indicators of monetary flows. A clear statement of this comes from a historian of the Ottoman Empire while addressing the issue of unidirectional flow of money from the west to the east:
If the silver taken out of the Ottoman Empire fetched 20 per cent in Persia, it brought in even larger profit in India in the 1580s. When the spiral of the de-facto devaluation, official debasement and inflation started in the Ottoman realm in the middle of that decade, silver was much cheaper in gold terms there than in India. The official rate stood at 13:1 in the former and 9:1 in the latter. The disappearance of gold coins from the Ottoman markets and the eastward flux of the precious metal could hardly be stopped in these circumstances. In the next three decades, the gradual decline in silver s gold value in India and its continued appreciation in the Middle East narrowed down the gap. Around 1618, when the cheapening trend of silver came to a halt in India after it hit 10.5:1, namely the level at which it then stood in the Ottoman Empire (in the asper zone), the pull of the east disappeared for a while. Can it be a coincidence that the Ottoman silver currency enjoyed some respite from its dizzying downfall at about the same time when the silver: gold exchange ratio came to an equal footing in the two economic zones. (Kafadar 1991: 383, translation mine)

The above argument appears to be tautological insofar as money is always dearer in the primary market than in the secondary. A piece of cloth purchased in Agra for one unit of silver would fetch two units in Hurmuz and three in Aleppo in the same season. Goods gain in value as they travel due to the addition of transaction costs and mercantile profits. This phenomenon is natural to any exchange economy, and to visualize it as an outcome of the cheapness of money or measure it against goldsilver ratios is unwarranted. An undervalued currency tends to migrate towards markets offering its full exchange value if it could escape the watchful eyes of the

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local authorities, but this has the effect of reinforcing an already existing trend in monetary flows. The arbitrage argument can also be misleading because the exchange ratio between gold and silver in various regions participating in long-distance trade may not be an accurate index of the general value of money. For instance, a sudden drop in the supply of gold or a spurt in its demand might raise its exchange value against silver without exercising any influence over prices and wages expressed in silver money. In the Mughal Empire, silver appreciated substantially against the principal monetary metal, copper, at a time when it was imported in large quantities whereas prices quoted in copper appear to have registered no significant change (Haider 1999: 340; Habib 1987a: 15960). A variation on the above theme is the position that monetary flows were reciprocal and were directed by speculative bimetallic arbitrage. In other words, merchants and speculators found profit in exchanging the overvalued metal, and trade in bullion continued until a position of equilibrium was reached. A classic illustration of this phenomenon has been the exchange of silver and gold in the Mediterranean trade in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. After the discovery of silver mines in the first half of the sixteenth century in Germany and Central Europe (Goslar, Freisach, and Kutna Hora), silver became cheaper in terms of gold compared to the Near East. The result was an outflow of silver from Europe against the reverse remittance of gold. Thus, the silver monetization of Mamluk Egypt and Syria (AD 11711382) and gold monetization of Italian city-states, exemplified by dirhams and ducats respectively, are explained at once with reference to variations in the bimetallic ratio and the pattern of monetary exchange in the Mediterranean trade (Watson 1967: 134). Similarly, the exchange of Chinese gold for Japanese silver is reckoned to be a major factor behind the MacaoNagasaki trade in the sixteenth century because bimetallic ratios in the two regions diverged from being 1:5.5 in China to 1:12 in Japan (Boxer 1959: 4267). Recently, the SinoJapanese experience has been used to advance a general theory of international monetary exchange:
Divergent bi-metallic ratios created tremendous prospects for profitable arbitrage trade. Economic theory predicts that gold should have flowed out of China, where it was undervalued, relative to the rest of the world,

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in exchange for Japanese and Western silver, which was relatively overvalued in China compared with the rest of the world... How can we be confident that the arbitrage argument outlined above is superior to the traditional European trade-deficit hypothesis? The tradedeficit argument says that money would have to have been trans-shipped to Asia to cover the trade imbalance. Money here refers to all types of high value coins containing internationally recognized intrinsic content, such as gold and silver. However, we have already established that gold and silver did not travel jointly into the Asian marketplace as a balancing item called money. New World silver did indeed travel from Europe to Asia, but it crossed paths with gold coming in the opposite direction out of Asia and into the West. Abstract money did not balance a trade deficit in a passive way commonly portrayed in the literature; rather, it was a specific commoditysilverthat traveled to Asia, not gold. Gold was one of the products for which silver was exchanged. (Flynn and Giraldez 1995: 2067)

The argument of reciprocal monetary exchange loses much of its force if we consider that gold or silver never crossed the western Indian Ocean either towards Iran, Turkey, or Europe. As will be seen, barring a few minor occasions the flow was always in the reverse direction. Secondly, monetary metal and specie were treated in the Indian Ocean trade as money and not as goods. This is borne out by customs duties levied separately on incoming merchandise and money. In the Mughal Empire, the customs duties on imported coins and bullion were always kept lower than those on merchandise (Haider 1996: 326). Merchants too treated foreign currencies as money and used the artifice of bills of exchange to streamline their circulation. Money taken up at Baghdad was paid at Aleppo or the debts owed at Erzerum were settled at Bursa, Smyrna, and Leghorn (Tavernier 1679: 7678). Finally, the employment of a particular currency to purchase commodities from any region where prices were expressed in the same metal, which was the norm in the Indian Ocean trade, eliminated any possibility of speculative gain from bimetallic arbitrage. In fact, there was always a loss in converting foreign currencies into local legal tender. In 1617, an English factor at Agra sent the following message to the Company in which he complained about the loss incurred on the sale of the reales of eight on account of the high fineness of the Indian rupee and the commission charged by the money changers (sarraf s):

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I desire to make a matter known unto your worship which hitherto we never heard of as yet, and this is the loss which you sustain by exchange of your Spanish money; for the loss is so great that I wish it might be remedied if it be possible. I believe that the loss is about 15 in the hundred. And this cometh to pass by the villainy of the money-changers here, that are called in the Indian tongue Sharafs, men that are permitted by the king both to raise and abase the value of money according to their own pleasure; whereby it cometh to pass that your dollars yield you less here than in any other Mahometan country, either Turkie, Persia or Barbarie. (Letters Received: 193)

Yet, merchants carried all types of foreign currencies and bullion to India because they knew that goods could be readily bought with cash obtained from the mint or the money market. Around 1659, Francois Bernier sketched the route taken by world bullion in search of merchandise:
It should not escape notice that gold and silver, after circulating in every other quarter of the globe, come at length to be swallowed up, lost in some measure in Hindoustan. Of the quantity drawn from America, and dispersed among different European states, a part finds its way through various channels to Turkey, for the payment of commodities imported from that country; and a part passes into Persia, by way of Smyrna, for the silks laden at that port. Turkey can not dispense with the coffee, which she receives from Yemen, or Arabia Felix; and the productions of the Indies are equally necessary to Turkey, Yemen and Persia. Thus it happens that these countries are under the necessity of sending a portion of their gold and silver to Moka, on the Red Sea near Bab el Mandel; to Bassora, at the top of the Persian Gulf; and to Bander Abbasi or Gomeron, near Ormuz; which gold and silver is exported to Hindoustan by the vessels that arrive every year...at those three celebrated ports, laden with goods from that country. (Bernier 1934: 2023)

There are three factors that can possibly explain the pattern of monetary exchange in the Indian Ocean trade. The first was limited demand for foreign goods in countries like India and China, generally ascribed to the ability of these economies to meet internal needs from local and regional trade at a lower cost:
The simple habits of the people of India, a fertile soil and genial climate, make them independent of foreign nations for the necessaries and for most of the luxuries of life. The list of commodities from abroad, which could have at any time found a sale in India, is a very short one. (Daniell 1884: 51)

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The Chinese possess the best food in the world, rice; the best drink, tea, and the best clothing, of cotton, silk, furs. Provided with these articles and their innumerable indigenous complements, they have no need to buy for a penny outside themselves. (Robert Hart quoted in Kindleberger 1989: 59)

The second was the production and sale of a variety of export goods by countries like India, Iran, and China, which found a regular market in the Levant and Europe. This obviously had to do with factor endowments and permissible transaction costs. The third and most important factor was that demand for gold and silver in a country as the most favoured means of settling trade balances was inextricably linked to the operations of its exchange economy and the process of monetization. We observe the existence of two separate, but sometimes overlapping, spheres of exchange in the Indian Ocean trade. In the first, the pattern and magnitude of monetary exchange were structurally tied to merchandise trade, so that any rise or fall in the inter-regional flow of money was determined: (a) the level of effective demand for goods and services on sale in the market; (b) the ability of the supply areas to reciprocate demand in the recipient market; and (c) the efficiency with which money was absorbed into the exchange network through money-changing, minting and the artifice of mercantile credit. In the second sphere, different types of currencies of the same metal were exchanged either to conform to the monetary standard of a region or due to seasonal demand for particular specie within the Indian Ocean network in what can be termed as cases of mono-metallic arbitrage. THE LEVANT AND THE INDIAN OCEAN An enduring feature of the Indian Ocean commerce in medieval times was its links with the Mediterranean through the Levant. The Levant had been channelling eastern commodities to Europe in exchange for gold and silver since the Roman times. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Red Sea route had become more active than its rival Persian Gulf in granting Mediterranean access to the Indian Ocean. Indian merchandise from Sind, Cambay, Calicut, and Bengal was shipped first to Aden and then to the East African port of Aydhab from where it was taken by caravans of camels and slaves to Qus and Fustat, the two prominent market and mint towns in Upper Egypt (Ibn Jubayr 1952: 5763). It was

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eventually sold by a group of Egyptian merchantsthe Karims to their counterparts from Venice, Genoa, Marseilles, and Barcelona at their factories (fanadiq ) located in Aydhab, Qus, Fustat, and Alexandria (Al-Khazraji 1906: 261; Fischel 1958: 1614; Ashtor 1983: 73). Big merchants (banias) of India entered into partnership arrangements with the leading Karims to handle the passage of goods between Aden and Alexandria (Labib 1969: 823). From the second half of the fourteenth century, following the decline of Aydhab (due to tribal disturbances in the Eastern Desert), and a further decline of the overland route via Iraq and Iran after the collapse of the Il-khanate, the AdenJeddahTur route became the main artery of Indian Ocean commerce with the Levant (Yajima 1989: 167; Mortel 1995: 7). Tax revenues generated at Jeddah from the Indian Ocean trade in the first quarter of the fifteenth century increased so substantially that the cash-strapped Mamluk government annexed the Amirate of Mecca (Mortel 1995: 910). Aden, however, continued to be the principal port of call and the amount of money collected in customs duties was many times higher than the revenue of Jeddah (Serjeant 1988: 65; Shihab 1997: 27). The annual pilgrimage caravan from Damascus also brought merchants to Aden to run a parallel land trade alongside the maritime routes of Tur and Aydhab (Mortel 1995: 611). MARITIME EXCHANGE AND MONETARY CIRCULATION: THE EVIDENCE OF THE BROACH HOARD Literary evidence of monetary exchange in the Indian Ocean trade before 1200 is scarce. This contrasts with the kind of material we have for later centuries, which documented prices and sales of goods at port cities. Most documents on which modern surveys are based are revenue registers of major entrepts, which do not cover currency exports because such transactions were often exempted from customs dues (Magalhaes-Godinho 1982: 459; Steensgaard 1972: 198). However, fiscal records do give us an impression that at each entrept, commodities were exchanged for money, and taxes were paid in cash and remitted seasonally or annually to the local exchequer. In the case of Aden, we have inventories of annual remittances of port revenues in gold and silver money to the Rasulid capital, Taiz, under heavy escort (Serjeant 1988: 65; Shihab 1997: 27. For Jeddah, see Mortel 1995: 1112). Silver coins of light

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mintage (probably fractions of dirhams ) issued by the rulers of the Rasulid dynasty have been found in a hoard deposited at Broach, a famous port city on the western coast of India. It is reasonable to assume that the money collected in port revenues was only a small portion of what was exchanged for commodities, and that India-bound ships carried a variety of currencies after sales of merchandise had been concluded or for the commencement of a fresh cycle of purchases. Letters and legal documents of the Geniza collection, studied by Goitein, reveal that the general movement of specie from the west (Europe, North Africa, and Egypt) to the east (India and the Orient) was a permanent feature of the India trade in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Goitein 1973: 20; 1967: 3412). A similar statement was made by an early fourteenth century historian of Iran, Shihabuddin Wassaf, who described under the merits of India (wasf i hind ) its exports of spices, perfumes, and indigo in exchange for gold and silver (zar o sim) and other merchandise and rarities. Wassaf added that gold and silver money acquired through trade was never exported out of the country (Wassaf AH 1269: 300). Although there was an outflow of both gold and silver from India to import horses and Levantine textiles, there can be little doubt that Indias overall trade balances were favourable enough to attract the attention of contemporary observers. Concrete numismatic evidence of monetary exchange in the Indian Ocean trade is provided by a big coin hoard found at Broach in 1882 (Codrington 18823: 33970). There are two striking features of the hoard. With a solitary exception, the dates of all the coins found in the Broach hoard fall between AD, 1260 and 1382 a period, which we know was the most flourishing in terms of the usage of metallic money in northern and western India. The second feature of the hoard is the predominance of gold (in terms of its value) in the total holding. Altogether, 448 gold coins have been reported as against 1200 in silver. Out of these, 367 gold coins (more than 70 per cent) belonged to the Bahri Mamluk sultans of Egypt (12601381), dinar s of various types and weight, minted at Cairo, Alexandria, and Damascus, the three major mints of Egypt and Syria. The hoard covers the entire span of the Mamluk Sultanate, though the reigns of the later sultans are overrepresented. Although the rate of survival of later coins is always higher in a hoard, the Broach specimens also indicate the pattern of monetary circulation in Egypt and Syria. In the fourteenth century, gold circulation was

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expanding in the region following Al-Nasir Muhammads policy of issuing large number of gold dinars to equip his army against the Mongols, and an increase in Egyptian imports from Sudan (bilad al takrur). During his famous pilgrimage to Hijaz ( AD 1324), the ruler of Mali, Mansa Musa, spent a handsome amount of personal gold (12.2 metric tons by one estimate) and on his return, intensified gold exports through trade and debt payments (Rabbie 1972: 185 6; Walz 1983: 30910; Bovill 1995: 878). The greater availability of gold evidently increased its use in payment for imported goods and this probably accounts for a high percentage of Egyptian gold coins in the Broach hoard. The next set of gold coins reported is Italian: 33 Venetian ducats (133968) and 5 Genoese quartarolo (quarter genevino). Venice and, to a lesser extent, Genoa, were major participants in the Levant trade and buyers of Indian Ocean merchandise. Venetian imports, earlier financed mainly with silver grossi, were increasingly paid for in ducats from the second half of the fourteenth century (Lane 1987: 4319). Ducats (ifluri) were used by the Karims of Egypt to buy merchandise arriving in the Red Sea, and this may have been the principal route of their supply to the Indian Ocean (Mortel 1995: 1112). It is quite possible that a few gold coins (dinars of 1 and 2 misqal) of the Mongols and the Muzaffarids of Kirman reported in the Broach hoard from the mints of Tabriz, Shiraz, and Baghdad came through the Persian Gulf route. We have the testimony of the Il-Khanid historian, Rashiduddin Fazlullah, that gold was exported to India from Mongol Iran (Habib 1987b: 25). Whichever route the ducat might have taken, its circulation in the Indian Ocean trade continued until the early sixteenth century. The reputation it gained as the dollar of the Middle Ages inspired several imitations of weight (52 grains) and standard, such as the Mamluk ashrafi (AD 1425), Yemeni dinar, Ottoman sultani (AD 1478), and huns (pagodas) of the Vijayanagara empire and the kingdoms of Bijapur and Golconda. The circulation of these coins, bearing more or less the same value, not only streamlined the exchange medium used in maritime trade from Alexandria to Aden, but also integrated the entire gold-based region of the Deccan and south India into a single monetary zone within the networks of regional and international exchange (Haider 1998: 2489). An overwhelming portion of the silver coins found in the Broach hoard came from Yemen, the Mamluk kingdom, Iran, and Armenia

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(Digby 1980: 132, 138). There could be two possible sources of these coins as well as the routes they took to the Indian Ocean. Silver originating in the mines of Europe and Eastern AnatoliaGreater Armenia reached the Mamluk kingdom as well as northern Iran, notably Tabriz, taking a longer route via the Mediterranean (Lajazzo, on the Gulf of Alexandratta in Syrian waters) and the Black Sea (Trebizond) (Martinez 1984: 145; Manandian 1965: 195). The rise of Tabriz as a political and commercial centre of eminence after the fall of Baghdad is attested to by the prolific mint output of this city (Blair 1982: 214, 218). Marco Polo, who was travelling through Iran on his return journey to Europe, described the city as an important centre of trade with India in the late thirteenth century (Manandian 1965: 1967). The other source of silver was the Panjshir mines of Central Asia. Ashtor, contesting Watsons argument of the European origins of Mamluk dirhams, attributed the revival of silver coinage in Syria and Iraq in the thirteenth century to the westward movement of Central Asian silver as a result of the military spending of the Mongols (Ashtor 1971: 319). Either way, the immense increase in the circulation of silver under the Il-Khans can be gauged from a change in the bimetallic ratio, from 1:6 in the first half of the thirteenth century to 1:12 under Ghazan Khan at the turn of the fourteenth century (Ashtor 1976: 2556). A key feature of Ghazan Khans financial restructuring was his partnership with the Bohra merchants of Qais who handled the trade in bullion and merchandise in the Indian Ocean (Martinez 1984: 173). The dangers of working with a single coin hoard are manifest. However, in general terms, the hoard evidence corroborates the impression one gathers from textual material. It indicates western Indias stronger connections with the Red Sea as well as the fact that following monetary changes in southern Europe and the Levant, trade in the western Indian Ocean came to be increasingly financed with gold in the fourteenth century. Finally, for all its limitations, it is consistent with the pattern of monetary exchange and currency circulation in western and northern India as well. It is well known that there was practically no domestic extraction of gold and silver, and very limited production of copper, in India. The region had to rely heavily on imports of foreign currencies, bullion, and raw copper to formulate its monetary system and replenish its supply of the circulating medium. The establishment of the Delhi Sultanate in the thirteenth century, and its extension

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to Gujarat in 1299 and to Sind and southern India a few years later, brought about a perceptible change in the production and circulation of currency money. The Delhi sultanate promulgated a standardized multi-metallic currency system of gold and silver tankas , billon jital or damma (base metal mixed with silver), and copper paika. The widespread circulation of gold, silver, and billon currencies indicates large-scale transactions, which fuelled the expansion of the Sultanates exchange network. It was possible for the state to realize revenue in cash, for peasants to pay taxes by selling their produce in the market, and for merchants, manufacturers and bankers to make money out of cash and credit transactions. Surviving specimens of the coinage of the Delhi Sultans in museum collections and hoards suggest that silver and billon were the major currencies of exchange from the thirteenth century, but gold mintage increased substantially in the first three quarters of the fourteenth century (Moosvi 1991: 20910; Haider 2004). The Broach hoard, which has 46 gold coins of the Delhi sultans and none in silver, attests to the latter phenomenon and points to the source and direction of the supply of gold money. Thus far, historians have placed emphasis on the internal dynamics of the Indian economy to evaluate changes in the form and level of monetary circulation. The Broach hoard suggests that changes in the circulating medium could be caused by external variations in international trade and the pattern of bullion flows from Europe to the Islamic East and the Indian subcontinent. THE MONETARY CRISIS OF THE LONG FOURTEENTH CENTURY The period subsequent to the interment of the Broach hoard coincides with the fall in the volume of silver money in the Delhi Sultanate, and gold followed suit very quickly. Successive attempts were made by the monetary authorities to reduce the weight of the silver tanka as well as to replace it with a billon coin. The debasement of silver coinage was reflected in the unsuccessful attempt by Muhammad Tughlaq (AD 132551) to establish a fiduciary currency. Billon and copper coins dominated north Indian markets from the last quarter of the fourteenth century, and a point was reached under the Lodi sultans (AD 14511526) when precious metal coinage disappeared from their kingdom. Although the relatively richer sultanate of Gujarat (established AD 1403) extended and operated

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the classical tri-metallic currency system of Delhi, here too the weight of the silver tanka was permanently reduced by half into a coin which was later to gain immense reputation under the designation mahmudi (Haider 2003: 13452). There is a lively debate on what caused the transition from precious to base metal coinage but the point of immediate relevance to us is the relationship between the monetary system of land-based regimes and the Indian Ocean exchange network. It seems that an important factor behind this change was a severe crisis of silver in the regions aligned on the Indian Ocean Mediterranean axis. Monetary historians of medieval Europe largely agree on a scarcity of silver in the late Middle Ages, prolonged and intense enough to be designated a bullion famine (Day 1987: 4 7). After the decline in silver production at the principal European mine at Kutna-Hora, there was no other major source of silver until the 1460s. The decline in mine and mint production, coupled with the irretrievable loss of silver in wear and tear and coin production, fear of instability and debasement leading to increased hoarding and a contraction in the supply of credit resulted in an acute shortage of silver coinage in Europe (Spufford 1988: 33962). Soon, the crisis impinged upon monetary circulation in particular and economic exchange in general, as reflected in deflation, industrial depression, and a rise in interest rates. Although the drain of bullion to the East continued, the inability of Europe to reinforce its pre-existing stock of money in order to service trade deficits may have led to a contraction in the total volume of money supply to the east in general and of silver in particular. In a letter written to the Doge in 1473, the Mamluk sultan complained that the silver brought to the port of Alexandria in Venetian galleys was so heavily alloyed with copper that it yielded only 40 per cent of fine metal (Wansbrough 1961: 206, 21112). The Mamluk Sultanate too, it should be remembered, suffered from a crisis of silver and a fall in the volume of trade and exchange (Lopez et al. 1978: 124). The precise impact of these crises on the volume and composition of the Indian Ocean trade is difficult to determine, but it can be argued that while precious metals retained their presence in maritime exchange, the proportion of gold increased substantially at the expense of silver. The fifteenth century was also a period in which there is evidence of a sizeable flow of copper coins ( fils) from Egypt

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and its employment in the Indian Ocean trade (Bacharach 1976: 43). It is likely that much of this copper came from Europe at least till the first half of the sixteenth century (Aubin 1971: 44, 60). Thus, it would seem that the crisis affected silver currency areas much more than those based on gold or copper. South India maintained its gold standard in the fifteenth century and the region continued to maintain an export surplus by sending spices to the Levant (Inalcik 1994: 317; Inalcik 1963: 141; Subrahmanyam 1994: 186218). THE RIVER OF GOLD In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the overall pattern of monetary exchange in the Indian Ocean trade remained much the same, although it became slightly more complex with the vigorous participation of the Southeast Asian regions, China, and Japan, and the direct involvement of European merchant groups in both circuits. The first half of the sixteenth century reinforced the trend already set in motion in the previous century. The river of gold, which flowed through the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, carried to the Indian Ocean markets a multitude of coins, such as the ashrafi of Egypt and Hurmuz, Ottoman sultani, Yemeni dinar, and Venetian ducat. Magalhaes-Godinho has documented the number of ships and their cargoes leaving the port of Aden in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. In all ten ships seized by the Portuguese, the cargo consisted almost entirely of gold coins. At the same time, African gold from Monomotapa was directly shipped to Gujarat and Malabar from the Indian Ocean port of Sofala. To this was added a new stream when Ashanti gold from Mina (Gulf of Guinea) and American gold from Spain were struck into cruzados at Casa da India and shipped from Lisbon to buy pepper at Cochin (MagalhaesGodinho 1969: 2934, 31819) Unlike the inland regions of northern India, gold circulation on the coasts of western Deccan and Malabar was made possible by the organization of regional currency systems in a way to accommodate not only imported gold coins but also to facilitate internal trade and exchange. It was out of this gold, acquired from trade and tribute from the Deccan that the Gujarat sultanate maintained the circulation of muzaffarshahi, the heaviest gold coin (185 grains) ever issued by a medieval Indian ruler with the exception of Jahangir (Haider 1998: 248).

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POLITICAL UNIFICATION OF TRADE ROUTES AND AMERICAN SILVER By the middle of the sixteenth century, two important developments took place in the Persian Gulf sector, which had implications for the Indian Ocean trade. The first was the formulation of a common policy by the two rival powersthe Ottoman state and the Portuguese Estado da India to provide freedom and protection to merchant ships and caravans for fiscal benefits. On the Ottoman side, the political unification of trade routes leading to the Indian Ocean, after the conquest of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, turned Aleppo into the biggest Levantine entrept and revived the biannual caravan traffic to Basra. We have the testimony of a Portuguese observer of the 1540s that the Ottoman authorities instructed caravans (qafilas) of spice merchants starting from Basra to take the Baghdad route to Aleppo (rather than the shorter Damascus road) not only because they were concerned about the safety of the merchants but also because they wanted to tax the passing merchandise. Basra was a busy place on the eve of the departure of Aleppo-bound caravans consisting of 56 thousand Indian, Arab, Iranian, Armenian, and Turkish merchants carrying goods arriving from Hurmuz, headed by a karvanbashi and accompanied by a big posse of Ottoman soldiers and their commanders. At Aleppo, a settlement of Indian merchants was established, while the Venetians shifted their factories from Damascus to Aleppo in the middle of the sixteenth century to be closer to the principal route to obtain Indian merchandise as well as to get ready access to the silk mart of Tabriz (Haider 2002a: 191). On the southern terminus of the LevantinePersian Gulf route, these developments were complemented by a shift in the Portuguese policy, from monopolizing the Indian Ocean trade to leaving it free and taxing it. This was reflected in the incorporation of the Hurmuz customs into the revenues of the Portuguese state ( AD 1543) and imposition of additional taxes for protection against piracy in the Persian Gulf as well as on the passage of goods to Ottoman Basra. The policy of opening up the sea and making it safe contributed to the development of Hurmuz as the biggest emporium of eastern products, and its trade followed a steady upward trend in the sixteenth century from an index figure of 100 in the second quarter to 156 at the turn of the seventeenth century (Haider 1996: 3002). The second major factor of change was the transmission of American silver to Spain. Between 1531 and 1600, Spain imported

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7439 metric tons of silver from the New World at an annual average of 106 metric tons (Hamilton 1934: 42). Over 64 per cent of this quantity was imported in the last two decades of the century at an average of 240.5 metric tons per annum. Gold too was imported but its quantity in this period was very small (1.92 metric tons per annum). From the middle of the sixteenth century, Genoese bankers were responsible for the distribution of Spanish-American silver to the trade circuits of the Indian Ocean. In a triangular transaction involving gold, silver, and bills of exchange, Genoese bankers obtained regular supplies of American silver against debt contracts and bills of exchange drawn upon Antwerp to pay for the maintenance of Spanish troops stationed in the Low Countries. Genoese silver was sold to Venetian and Portuguese merchants against another set of bills, also payable in gold at Antwerp, on the credit of the two commercial groups which sold eastern commodities in northern Europe and ran a favourable balance of trade. The two sets of commercial papers changed hands at the fairs of Besanzone (eastern France), generating two separate streams of silver to the Levant and the Cape (Braudel 1975: 5004; 1985a: 912, 3934; 1985b: 1668). The Levantine stream itself split into two to take the traditional routes to the Indian Ocean. Contemporary estimates of the magnitude of this flow have placed the amount transiting through Hurmuz at 2 million cruzados or 42 metric tons of fine silver towards the close of the sixteenth century (Steensgaard 1972: 198; Magalhaes-Godinho 1969: 66, 772). No direct estimates are available for the Red Sea but the flow here in all likelihood was higher than in the Persian Gulf. My own rough calculations put it at 75 metric tons of silver equivalent. The amount of silver which came to the Indian Ocean from Lisbon in the last quarter of the sixteenth century was certainly much less than from the Levant but was still quite substantial at about 40 metric tons. The three sets of figures suggest that the Indian Ocean received over 67 per cent (167 metric tons) of silver leaving Seville at the turn of the seventeenth century (Haider 1996: 30816). The extraordinary influx of Spanish-American silver established new patterns of monetary exchange in the Indian Ocean trade. The bullion consignments of the Carreira voyages consisted predominantly of reales of eight minted in Spain and Mexico. The Spanish and Mexican dollars weighed a touch over 27 grams of which 93 to 95 per cent was fine silver (Magalhaes-Godinho 1969:

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275, 3313, 5223). Portuguese purchases of textiles and indigo from Sind, Gujarat, and Bengal, spices from Malabar and Malacca, and silk, porcelain, and gold from China were paid for largely in reales of eight and four. Demand for reales in the two zones of the Indian Ocean, especially in Malacca, was so high that it undermined the expansion of Luso-Indian coinage and forced Goa to regulate, rather unsuccessfully, the business of money-changing and silver trading (Magalhaes-Godinho 1969: 515, 5223). Silver coming from the Levant took a circuitous route. If reales were not carried on a long haul to Aden, Mokha, or Hurmuz, they were invariably re-minted into Ottoman and Safavid coins, such as ghurush, abbasi, shahi, and, above all, the lari, put into the local exchange network and drawn towards India. Of all these coins, it was the lari, a unique coin of high fineness (4.8 grams/98 per cent) crafted as a double twist of silver purl in the mints of Laristan and Basra, which gained immense popularity. Aided by the flow of reales and the mint policy of the Lar administration, it became the commercial currency of the Indian Ocean exchange tied to the Persian Gulf. In an interesting passage, van Linschoten, the Dutch clerk of the archbishop of Goa (AD 15838), provides a first-person account of monetary exchange centred round reales and laris. In September, freshly arrived reales from Lisbon were bought by the local money-changers with laris to provide Portuguese buyers with the coin current in the Malabar spice trade. The reales were kept in reserve until the season for the departure of Malaccaand Chinabound voyages in April, when they were sold for laris, available to the reale-buying merchants after the sale of Chinese wares on western and Malabar coasts. Huge profits were earned by the money-changers through the simple artifice of exchanging one set of coins against another in high seasons (van Linschoten 1885: 1867). It would be fair to suggest that the regional and international exchange of merchandise and money in the two zones of the Indian Ocean were dominated by silver coins, of which reales and laris were the most prominent, followed by the Gujarat mahmudi and the Mughal rupee. SILVER MONETIZATION OF THE MUGHAL ECONOMY Coastal kingdoms and markets were more familiar with foreign currencies and more tolerant of their circulation as legal tenders. Both laris and reales circulated in the Tarkhan kingdom of Sind,

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on the Kathiawar peninsula, coastal Gujarat and Konkan, and Malabar. This was not the case in the hinterland and certainly not in the inland regions of the Mughal Empire where all silver coins were re-struck into rupees. In the accounts we have of foreign coins brought to the imperial mint for re-coinage, the reale of eight is specifically listed, as narjil i firangi, along with the lari (Abul Fazl 1872: 19). Descriptions of the functioning of imperial mints in these accounts point to the existence of long-distance networks of commercial exchange and sources of supply of the raw material from which the Mughal state fashioned its monetary system. It is important to remember that by the end of the sixteenth century, the Mughal state had completely displaced the billon and copper currency regime of north India and put in its place a new trimetallic system of uniform standard. Although three types of Mughal currencies circulated freely at different levels, it was the rupee which emerged as the principal medium of exchange in tax payments, state expenditures, wage payments, commercial transactions, and banking operations (Haider 1996: 3426). Even at the level of petty transactions, a fractional piece of the rupee, the ana, made inroads into the domain of copper coinage. This pushed the copper paisa and its fractions, adhela and damri, further down the hierarchy of market exchange to compete with non-metallic currencies such as the bitter almond (badam) imported from Iran and cowrie shells (kauri) brought from Maldives. One critical factor in the formulation of the new monetary system was the ability of the Mughal monetary authorities and markets to galvanize the flow of imported silver towards exchange circuits. With an annual supply of 124 metric tons in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the Mughal Empire became the biggest recipient of foreign silver outside Spain, followed by China with an intake of 43 to 46 metric tons per annum (Haider 1996: 323; Von Glahn 1996: 13340). Unlike Spain, however, the Mughal Empire retained much of its silver stock and used it to commercialize its economy and expand the imperial monetary system, through demonetization of non-Mughal currencies and their re-coinage into silver rupees. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SLUMP In the opening decades of the seventeenth century, the precipitate rush of currencies to the Indian Ocean seems to have faded following political unrest in Ottoman Arabia and European rivalry over the

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control of Hurmuz and the maritime trade. As a result, the currents of trade turned away from Hurmuz to the caravan route between India and Iran via Qandahar. The annual traffic on this route, eclipsed earlier by the less cumbersome but more expensive overseas passage to Hurmuz, grew four times from the previous level (Moosvi 1987: 382). Efforts to control Hurmuz caused its decline and paved the way for the rise of Bandar Abbas, a more manageable port for the Safavids due to its convenient connections with the hinterland. The rise of Bandar Abbas synchronized with the revival of the Indian Ocean trade on a greater magnitude. One important sign of this revival, or perhaps a contributory factor, was an enormous increase in Gujarati shipping to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, propped up by extensive respondentia arrangements (a combination of marine insurance and money loans) made by ship-owning merchants and bankers to finance Indian exports. Gujarat textiles found a much bigger market in Yemen after the diversion of South-east Asian spices to the Cape route and the availability of extra cash in the region from coffee trade (Haider 1996: 308, 313). Although the Dutch in Japan tapped new sources of silver, gold, and copper in the seventeenth century, the flow of American treasure to Europe and the Indian Ocean continued unabated (Morineau 1985: 578). The dependence of the Asian monetary systems on this source was so crucial that following a slump in Spanish imports in the 1670s, there was a monetary crisis in Iran and the Mughal Empire leading to the debasement of Safavid and Mughal silver coins. The Mughal monetary authorities had to reduce seigniorage as well in order to attract hoarded silver and stretch the circulating stock (Haider 1996: 3078, 3525). MERCANTILE CREDIT AND MONETARY EXCHANGE Merchandise and money laid the material foundation of the Indian Ocean network of exchange, whereas merchants and men of affairs fashioned its human environment. The Indian Ocean trade became active and organized due to the presence of diverse merchant groups on both sea and land. The banias were the most prominent in this business both in India and abroad. There were large groups of banias in Isfahan and Bandar Abbas as well as Yemen and East Africa. The banias living in Isfahan were described as moneychangers, bullion merchants, and bankers (banquiers) by foreign

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observers. They lent money on interest against security, accepted interest bearing deposits from the notables of the town, issued and discounted bills of exchange, and changed money. Their business allowed them tremendous access to capital, both local and international (Haider 2002a: 2024). An important device used by the merchants and bankers to raise and transfer money was the international bill of exchange. Merchants trading at Surat, Bandar Abbas, or Mokha changed money and remitted funds through bills of exchange drawn upon the agents and correspondents of the banias. Conversely, the banias discounted bills of exchange issued by merchants to raise money. By issuing and discounting bills of exchange in different places, the banias accumulated sufficient cash deposits in one of them to advance loans or invest in commodity trade (Haider 2002a: 2024; 2002b: 6571). In many cities of the Mughal Empire, merchants had the facility of borrowing money by drawing bills of exchange (hundis) payable at Surat on condition of the safe arrival of their goods. The rates of such hundis were higher than ordinary credit bills because they included insurance premium. The maritime version of this practice was known as avak in India and respondentia in Europe. At Surat, respondentia loans advanced to maritime merchants to ship their goods to the various port cities of the Indian Ocean have been described by Tavernier:
On arrival for embarkation at Surat, you find there plenty of money. For it is the principal trade of the nobles of India to place their money on vessels in speculations for Hurmuz, Basra and Mokha, and even for Bantam, Achin and Philippines. For Mokha and Basra the exchange ranges from 22 to 24 percent; and for Hurmuz from 16 to 20; and for the other places which I have named the exchange varies in proportion to the distance. But if the goods happened to be lost by tempest, or to fall into the hands of the Malabaris, who are the pirates of the Indian seas, money is lost to those who have risked lending it. (Tavernier 1925: 31)

Respondentia was essentially a combination of credit and risksharing. In the Indian Ocean trade, it also became an artifice of remittance and exchange of money. Merchants of Surat trading with the Red Sea in textiles and coffee made comprehensive respondentia arrangements to reduce risks and earn profit. The merchants themselves who were trading at both ends gave out such loans at Mokha. While the currency used at Mokha and other

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Red Sea ports was the dollar, payments at Surat were made in rupees after the safe arrival of the goods (mainly coffee) at prefixed exchange rates (Factory Records, Surat: 137a-b). The function of mercantile credit was to make existing money circulate more efficiently and take its place when it was not physically present. To that extent, the volume of metallic money defined the scope and size of credit. In the Indian Ocean trade, the continuous flow and absorption of precious metals, particularly silver, provided the monetary basis upon which the credit structure rested. With the growth in monetary exchange aiding specialization in commodity trade and multilateral payment, credit also grew in proportion. Interest rates signified this reciprocal relationship. In the second half of the seventeenth century, when the circulation of money in India reached a point where it exceeded the demand for commercial capital, interest rates fell. The lowering of the cost of credit helped investment and further broadened the parameters of monetized exchange and business operations. CONCLUSION Scattered but sufficient evidence exists to suggest that the Indian Ocean trade between 1200 and 1700 was financed predominantly with metallic money. Silver currency was the dominant medium of exchange and gold was used either as a supplement or a substitute. Among the various types of currencies exchanged, some were strong and had a wider area of circulation. Coastal and inland regions with deep linkages to maritime trade allowed foreign currencies to circulate when they acquired a reputation as standard media of commercial exchange. In areas where independent monetary regimes operated, gold and silver bullion and copper were transformed into legal tender to be used for purchases and payments. Four phases of monetary exchange can be discerned during the five centuries of our study. The first began in the twelfth and lasted till the middle of the fourteenth century. Silver emanating from the mines of Europe, Armenia, and Central Asia monetized the markets of all the major trading regions in the Indian Ocean and oiled the wheels of exchange. There was a shift to gold as the medium of exchange in the second phase from the fourteenth to the first half of the sixteenth century. The rise of gold, drawn from Africa and America, was probably due the diminished supply of silver to the Indian Ocean circuit. In the third phase, the arrival of American

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silver from Spain, and to a limited extent from the Philippines, changed the currency composition of the Indian Ocean trade as well as raised the volume of commodity exchange. The Ottoman and Safavid Empires used it to run their local and long-distance networks of exchange but there was a net outflow of silver from these regions as well. The Levant and Iran were the two most important suppliers of currency money to the Indian Ocean before and after the age of Vasco da Gama. During the last phase in the second half of the seventeenth century, the crisis of silver once again triggered a larger flow of gold from Japan as well as Europe. Due to its large agrarian and industrial base, efficient monetary institutions and highly skilled mercantile groups, India remained the ultimate resting place of all foreign bullion and currencies entering its borders. The only exception was a limited, though steady, outflow of coined silver to Central Asia and Iran in exchange for horses, and a minor flow in the last quarter of the seventeenth century when the Dutch exported newly minted rupees out of the Mughal Empire to Southeast Asia. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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