4 - The Sea

Summary

Chapter 4 examines the Indian Ocean networks in which Muslim merchants participated. It traces three sets of network relationships: economic, religious, and political. It first follows on the trails of the pepper trade to map out the commercial connections of Muslim merchants. It was this trade that instituted and sustained most other exchanges that made up the world of Monsoon Islam. The second set of network relationships is religious in nature. The circulation of scholars and their texts lent coherence to the world of Monsoon Islam. Tracing these individuals and their ideas across the ocean challenges and contradicts a diffusionist vision of Islam centered on a supposed Arabian heartland. The final part demonstrates how political networks intersected with both trade and faith. It reveals the astonishingly persistent modus by which Islamic states drew autonomous Muslim trading communities into ties of affinity and allegiance, and vice versa. Together, these three different sets of networks show the different ties that produced and perpetuated the world of Monsoon Islam, and how each of them was ultimately defined by the opportunities and the imperatives of Indian Ocean trade.