Indian Ocean maritime trade network

node · earth · Indian Ocean rim: East Africa, Arabia, South Asia, Southeast Asia

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.