Indian Ocean maritime trade network

Assembled from 27 blocks · 2 evidence · 29 related

1. Story
2. The monsoon-driven sea network linking the East African coast, the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, the Gujarat and Malabar coasts, Sri Lanka, the Bay of Bengal and the Malay archipelago. Sailing was seasonally constrained by the monsoon, which forced merchants to overwinter in foreign ports for months — a structural fact that turned trading posts into resident communities, and resident communities into channels for intermarriage, patronage and religious transmission. Hinduism and Buddhism moved east along it before the seventh century; Islam moved along it from roughly the eighth century, reaching the Swahili coast, Gujarat, Malabar, Sumatra and Java. The identity of the earliest Muslim merchants in Southeast Asia is disputed: local tradition emphasises Hadhrami origins, while material evidence from Aceh and Sumatra points to Gujarat and Malabar.
3. Knowledge
4. Indian Ocean maritime trade network
5. Aksum
6. Kilwa Kisiwani
7. Connections
8. Islam
9. Silk Road religious corridor
10. Aksum
11. Kilwa Kisiwani
12. Hinduism
13. Zoroastrianism
14. Aksum adopts Christianity under King Ezana
15. Zoroastrian migrants reach Gujarat — the Parsi settlement
16. Construction of Borobudur under Shailendra patronage
17. Construction phases of the Great Mosque at Kilwa Kisiwani
18. The ruling house of Malacca adopts Islam
19. Measured global religious composition, 2010-2020
20. Indian Ocean maritime trade network
21. Christianity
22. Aksum adopts Christianity under King Ezana
23. Indian Ocean maritime trade network
24. Construction phases of the Great Mosque at Kilwa Kisiwani
25. Evidence
26. Muslim merchant communities established resident populations in Indian Ocean port-states from the seventh century onward, and these commercial networks — rather than conquest — were the principal channel by which Islam reached the Swahili coast, the Indian west coast and the Malay archipelago. V55 verification basis: the chapter's title, volume placement and authorship were corroborated; the chapter text is paywalled and unreachable from this session, so the argument above rests on the standard reading of it rather than on the page.
27. From the 13th to the 16th century Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara were central to Indian Ocean trade and coastal Swahili culture and prominent in the Islamisation of East Africa; Kilwa minted its own currency from the 11th to 14th centuries, and its Great Mosque is the oldest standing mosque on the East African coast.