Indian Antiquary Vol 52

SR No.: 032544
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1985
Total Pages: 568
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 24 MB

Page 433

JANUARY, 1923)
NOTES ON PIRACY IN EASTERN WATERS
I.--EARLY NOTICES OF PIRACY.
Arabians. 4. The earliest instances of piracy in the Eastern Seas of which any mention is to be found are connected with the inhabitants of Arabia. In the Koran (Sale's ed., cap. XVIII) it is written :-" The vessel belonged to certain poor men, who did their business in the sea : and I was minded to render it unserviceable, because there was a king behind them, who took every sound ship by force". This piratical personage is supposed to have been Jaland Ibn Karkar or Minwar Ibn Jaland al Azdi, who reigned in Oman in the time of Moses, i.e., about the middle of the sixteenth century B.O.
5. According to Herodotus (1.1) the Phoenicians came originally [c. 3000 B...) from the coasts of the Erythr wan Sea, i.e., that portion of the Indian Ocean which washes the shores of Arabia from Aden to the Persian Gulf, and Strabo (Bohn's ed., III, 187; XVI, fii, 4, 5) says that in his time certain islands in the Persian Gulf claimed Tyre and Sidon as their colonies. Wilkinson (Malta and Gogo., p. 4) asserts that the Phoenicians founded & colony in Malta in 1519 B.O. It was their piratical seizure of Io, daughter of Inachus, king of Argos, which, according to tradition, originated that hostility between Europe and Asia, which culminated in the Trojan War in the eleventh century B.O. The Phoenician pirates were certainly amongst the earliest of their profession in the Mediterranean; so, if Herodotus and Strabo are to be believed, Europe owes the introduction of piracy to the East. According to Justice (Dominion of the Sea, p. 55), the Phoenicians became prominent in the Mediterranean about 810 B.C.
6. The two most prominent tribes in the Annals of Oman are the Hinavi, to whom belong the tribes subject to the Imams of Muscat, and the Ghafiris, to whom belong the Joasmis of Ras-ul-Khymah. All of these, at different times, indulged in piracy (Bomb. Sel., XXIV, 1). The Hinavi Arabs are said to have established themselves near Muscat in the fourth century B.C. (Danvers' Persian Records, p. 5). Further, according to Strabo (XVI, i. 10) and Arrian, the Persians blocked the mouths of the Tigris to prevent the incursions of pirates from this part of the coast, and it was not until the time of Alexander that the obstructions were removed. (Vincent, Ancient Commerce, I, 505).
Sanganians. 7. In the year 325 B.O. Nearchus, the Admiral of Alexander the Great, conducted a fleet from the mouth of the Indus to the Persian Gulf. A short distance from the former he came upon an island called Bibacta, though th: adjacent country was named Sangada. The latter name at once suggests the Sangadian or Sanganian pirates, who in later times found their headquarters in Gujarat (Arrian, Indica, XXI). Again, in cap. XXXI, Arrian records the mysterious disappearance of an Egyptian ship belonging to this fleet at the island of Nosala, which lay about seven miles off the shore and was dedicated.to the Sun. This ieland Vincent (Voyage of Nearchus and Periplus, p. 48) indentifies with the modern Ashtola, which, according to Kempthorne, was, in historical timog, a rendezvous of the Joasmi pirates (McCrindle, Periplus, p. 188 n. 40). It might well happen that pirates took advantage of superstitious beliefs to conceal their operations.
8. In the third century B.O. Ptolemy Euergetes (246-221 B.C.), in order to free the Red Sea from pirates, established fortified posts on both the Arabian and African coasts from Suez to the Straits, as well as colonies of Greeks and Egyptians at various places, e.g. Mawah (Kerr, XVIII, 86). These pirates must have been either Arabs or inhabitants of the coasts of Sind, Kathiawar, Cambay and Gujarat, afterwards known to Europeans under the general name of Sanganians, but to themselves under different tribal names. Along