468 elizabeth ann pollard
and time of water transport was mitigated by several factors, including the seasonality
of water travel (especially relevant when dealing with the monsoon-dependent travel
in the Arabian Sea), the high cost of ship maintenance, and the fact that most exchange
required a combination of land and water transport (Sidebotham, 2011: 212–216).
These examples from the first and second centuries ce hint at the various concerns
that governed the economic connectivity of the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean
in the longue durée: in particular the financial issues such as taxation by imperial pow-
ers, the need for some kind of banking to front the capital needed for these proto-
international business ventures, and the range of people involved along the way,
operating as what Philip Curtin has called “trade diasporas” of merchants who lived
in foreign societies to facilitate trade between their host-land and their former
homeland (Curtin, 1984: 1–14).
Another high-point of connectivity between the Indian Ocean and the
Mediterranean came during the Abbasid period (750–1258 ce), when a Muslim
empire centered at Baghdad facilitated exchange between the two regions. Coupled
with Abbasid control in southwest Asia and parts of the Mediterranean was Tang
centralization in East Asia (618–907 ce), which allowed for a system of long-distance
exchange stretching across Afro–Eurasia (Curtin, 1984: 105). Strikingly, many of the
issues that concerned traders during the Roman period also preoccupied merchants
from this later period. S.D. Goitein’s “India Book,” published posthumously with
the help of M.A. Friedman, offers significant insight into this exchange, in particular
into the lives of several families of Jewish merchants who facilitated it. Goitein and
Friedman’s work includes texts and translations of Jewish merchants’ documents
dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries ce and preserved in the Cairo Geniza.
These hundreds of Judeo-Arabic documents preserve the familial records and cor-
respondence of merchants who were part of a trading network that stretched from
the Mediterranean (Sicily and North Africa), through Cairo, to the Red Sea, and on
to India. Their documents include accounts, orders for goods, price lists for customs
duties and descriptions of commodities, including the spices and plants desired from
India and the goods that it was profitable to ship eastward to Indian markets.
According to the records of these Jewish merchants, goods desired from Indian
Ocean exchange included: herbs and spices (in greatest numbers), iron and steel,
brass and bronze vessels, Indian textiles, semi-precious stones, shoes, tableware,
tropical fruits and timber (Goitein and Friedman, 2008: 15–16). Goods shipped to
the east included: clothing and textiles, vessels of silver, brass, and glass, household
goods, soap, paper, books, metals needed for copper industry, coral, and foodstuffs.
While the variety on this list would seem to suggest a wider range of manufactured
goods that made their way from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean than was seen
in Roman times, Goitein and Friedman are careful to clarify that a vast proportion
of the value of the shipments west to east was actually gold, silver, and other metals
(needed for Indian bronze manufacturing), while the manufactured goods (carpets,
books, and so on) comprise a very small proportion of the whole and were likely
meant for the Jewish merchants’ families (Goitein and Friedman, 2008: 18–20).
Only hinted at in the incomplete Roman-period documents, the documents col-
lected by Goitein reveal continued concern for the costs associated with shipping,
including ship maintenance, fuel, and crew, not to mention piracy, all discussed in
detail in Goitein and Friedman’s exploration of the nākhudās (shipowners and