Indian Antiquary Vol 52

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 436

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(JANUARY, 1923
replied by hoisting a red flag and opening fire. Our guns made a breach in the wall and the fort was finally reduced by a flanking and frontal assault. The infantry battalion forming the garrison fought bravely and most of them were killed "
Arabians. 19. It is said that there are records of Arab settlements on the Indian Coast in the time of the historian Agatharchides (c. 200 B.C.), but the Arab settlers seem to have been for long engaged only in commerce (Edwardes, Rise of Bombay, p. 48). About 571 A.D. the Hinavi Arabs of Muscat took Ormuz from the Persians and made it a base for piracy (Danvers' Persian Records, p. 5), but it was not until the whole Arab world had been stirred up by the wars which followed the rise of Muhaminadanism that the lust of fighting seized upon the Arab mind and the Arab sailor turned into the Arab pirate. In the seventh century the island of Bahrein was seized by the piratical tribe of Abd-ul-Kais (Bomb. Gaz., XIII, 433). Muhammad died in the year 632 and in 636 took place the first Muslim Arab attack upon the Indian Coast. The same year the Arab Governor of Bahrein fitted out two fleets against the ports of Cambay (Edwardes, pp. 46, 49). There can be little doubt that the new religion spread to the Arab settlers and that their influence caused a change of religion among the lower classes of the Coast Hindus (Bom. Gaz., XIII, ii, 404 n).
20. During the seventh and eighth centuries the Arabs settled freely in Gujarat, Cambay and Malabar. This not only greatly increased the commerce on the coast but supplied an incentive to piracy, whilst it brought a large influx of strangers who took willingly to that occupation (Danvers, I, 26). At the same time the Arabs conquered Persia and founded Basra on the Persian Gulf (Kerr, XVIII, 276). It was not however the Arubs proper but the Jats, already settled in large numbers on the shores of the Persian Gulf, who for the next one hundred and fifty years, were the moving spirits of the Muhammadan ses-raids on the Gujarat and Konkan Coasts (Bomb. Gaz., I, I, 493 n.).
21. About this time Muhammadan traders appear to have reached the coast of China, for it is said that in Canton there is the tomb of one of their saints named Omrah, who died 629 A.D. (Chin. Repos., XX, 79). On the other hand, Chinese traders visited Diu in the seventh and eighth centuries (Mukherji, 169) and in the ninth century Chinese vessels reached the Persian Gulf (Renaudot, in Kerr, VIII, 276).
22. In 759 A.D. Arab and Persian vessels plundered Canton and carried off the booty by sea (Bretschneider, pp. 10-11; Bomb. Gaz., XIII, 433).
23. Before this the attacks on Arab trade and the Arabian coast had forced the Arabs to reprisal (see para. 18 above). In 730 an Arab fleet attacked Broach (Mukherji, p. 185). Between 750 and 770 the Arab Lord of Mansura (capital of Sind) sent an expedition against Valabha (Valeh) and in 758 the Khalif Mansur sent Amru bin Jamal with a fleet to the coast of Baroda. A second expedition in 776 took the town of Broach (Bomb. Gaz., I, 94-5). During the reign of the Kalif Al Mamun (813-33), Muhammad Fazl sailed with 60 ships against the Meds and took Mali in North Kathia war with & great slaughter of the defenders (Bomb. Gaz., IX, 527).
24. The Moplahs, of whom there are now about a million in Malabar, are said to be descendants of Arab immigrante, who landed in the tenth century, whilst the great trading community, the Borahs, are said to be mainly descendants of Hindus converted by Arab teachers in the eleventh century (Imperial Gaz. of India, I, 138).
25. Al Idrisi (A.D. 1100) says that Cambaya in Gujarat is a pretty and well-known naval station, second among the towns of Gujarat. “It has a fine fortress built by Govern. ment to prevent the inroads of the pirates of Kish (i.e., Mekran)." (Bomb. Gaz., I, 1, p. 515).