from PART III - THE MARITIME OECUMENE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2011
Introduction
Islam was to come to the polities and societies of South-East Asia by sea, along the girdle of trade which extended from the Middle East through the ports of southern Asia, to South-East Asia and onwards to the southern extensions of the Chinese world in the East China Sea. Islamic influences extended into South-East Asia from both ends of this trade route in different periods. In examining historical processes, periodisation is often a helpful tool, and it is thus proposed that we examine the extension of Islam to South-East Asia up until the ninth/fifteenth century in three major stages: (1) The period from the emergence of Islam until the Cōla invasions of South-East Asia in the fifth/eleventh century; (2) The end of the fifth/eleventh century until the seventh/thirteenth century; (3) The eighth/fourteenth and ninth/fifteenth centuries, following the establishment of the first Islamic South-East Asian polities in the seventh/thirteenth century. The reconstruction of the earlier periods is of course restricted by the dearth of sources, but newly available materials from Chinese texts and the archaeological record help to extend the existing histories of the religion in the South-East Asian region. The intimate interactions between this region and the ports of southern China demand that the latter also be considered in any study of the emergence of Islam in the area we today term South-East Asia.
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