By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-
Contacts between the lands which became to be known as Ethiopia and
India date back to the dawn of history. The two countries, though
geographically remote from one another, had largely complimentary
economies. Ethiopia was a source of gold, ivory and slaves, all three of
them in great demand in India. India by contrast produced cotton and
silk, pepper and other spices, all in great demand in Ethiopia, as well
as some manufactured articles consumed by the elite.
Trade Winds
Communications between the two countries, or regions, were
facilitated by the Trade Winds. These blew, in the summer months, from
north to south in the Red
Sea, and then, across the Indian Ocean, from
south-west to north-east. Winds, in the winter months, blew in the
opposite direction. Such winds were important throughout the age of
sailing boats, for they thrust vessels from the Ethiopian coast to that
of India in the summer, and brought them back in the winter.
Commerce between Ethiopia and India also owed much to the fact that
the seas between them formed part of a major international trade route,
which linked the Mediterranean – and Roman – world with that of the
East, including China.
Ancient Times
Indian contacts with the Red Sea coast of Africa are poorly
documented for very early times, but probably date back long before the
Christian era. In the first century AD the record, however, gains
clarity. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Graeco-Egyptian trade
manual, states that Indian trade with the Red Sea area was largely based
on Ariak, i.e. north-western India, as well as the Gulf of Cambay,
Barugaza, or modern Broach, and, to a lesser extent, Limurak, or country
of the Tamils.
Indian commerce, according to the Periplus, extended to many
localities situated to the west of the sub-continent. At the mouth of
the Red Sea the island of Sokotra, then known as Dioskouridou, was thus
frequented by some Indian traders. This island, most of whose
inhabitants spoke a tongue akin to Ethiopia’s classical language Ge‘ez,
traded, the Periplus states, with both Limurak and Barugaza, and was
permanently settled by a number of Indians.
Further west, on the Horn of African coast, the great port of Malao,
today’s Berbera, likewise apparently dealt in a large quantity of cloth,
almost certainly imported from India.
Adulis
Adule, or Adulis, the main port of the Aksumite empire, which was
situated further west again, within the confines of the Red Sea, also
traded extensively with India. The Periplus, discussing this ancient
Ethiopian commerce, explains that “from the inner parts of Ariak” were
imported:
Indian iron and steel.
The broader Indian cloth called monakh
Cloth called sagmatognai.
Belts
Garments called gaunakai
Mallow cloth
A little muslin
Coloured lac”
Arhaeological Evidence
The importance of such trade is confirmed by archaeological evidence.
Aksumite coins have been discovered, over the years, in several parts
of south-west India, while a hoard of Indian Kushana money was found in
the vicinity of the northern Ethiopian monastery of Dabra Damo.
The Coming of Christianity, and Changing Alphabets
On-going contacts across the Indian Ocean had an incidental, but
crucially important, consequence in the religious and cultural field.
Frumentius, a Christian youth from Syria bound for India, was
shipwrecked off the Ethiopian coast, around 330AD, and was subsequently
instrumental in converting the Aksumite realm to Christianity.
The period immediately following the coming of Christianity witnessed
interesting cultural developments, which took place at roughly the same
time on both sides of the Indian Ocean. The writing of the Ethiopian
language, Ge‘ez, and of the Indian, Brahmi and Kharoshi, evolved in an
almost identical manner, by the addition of small signs, or other
modifications, to the basic consonantal letters, to express vowel
sounds. The Ethiopian and Indian alphabets were thus both transformed
into syllabaries. How these changes took place, and whether they were
related to each other – as one may suspect, cannot, however, be
established.
Contacts across the Indian Ocean, which were clearly important
throughout this entire period, found expression, a century or so later,
in the visit to India of a Bishop of Adulis, by name Moses. He travelled
to the sub-continent in the company of a Coptic bishop from Egypt, to
examine Brahmin philosophy.
Kosmos Indikopleustes
Continued commerce between Ethiopia and India was later documented,
in the early sixth century, by an Egyptian trader-cum-monk, Kosmos
Indikopleustes. He records that the Horn of Africa, which he calls
Barbaria, produced frankincense, as well as “many other articles of
merchandise”, which were exported to India. He adds that Taprobane, i.e.
Ceylon, was visited by merchants from Adulis.
Further evidence of the significance of Aksumite trading with India
is embodied in a Greek text, written by another Egyptian writer of the
time. It states that the early sixth century Aksumite emperor Kaleb,
when carrying out an expedition to South Arabia, in retaliation for the
massacre of Christians at Nagran, made use of a number of vessels from
India, as well as from several other countries.
Shared Culture
Such ancient contacts across the Indian Ocean seem to have found
material expression in certain elements of a shared culture. These
include the cultivation, on either side of the ocean, of both cotton and
sugar; the presence in the two regions of zebu, or humped, cattle; the
existence of “African” lions in the Gujarat area of north-west India;
the erection of fairly similar megalithic stones, in for example
Ethiopian Gurageland and the Indian Naga hills; the use, by weavers, of
almost identical looms in both countries; similar dress (the Ethiopian
shamma and the Indian sari); and highly spiced food (Ethiopian barbar
and Indian curry).
Medieval Times
Trade between the Ethiopian region and India in the medieval period
is relatively well documented. The Portuguese traveller, Tome Pires,
writing of Cambay in the early sixteenth century, tells of the arrival
there of “Abyssinians”, as well as Arabs, and describes the area’s trade
with the main Gulf of Aden ports of Africa: Zayla and Berbera. His
Bolognese contemporary, Ludovico di Varthema, likewise reports that
Calicut was visited by merchants from Ethiopia, besides others from
Arabia, Persia, Syria and Turkey.
Aden
Much of this trade centred at this time on the notable Arab
commercial city of Aden. Varthema described it as “the great
rendez-vous” for “all ships” coming from “India Major and Minor,”
Ethiopia and Persia. The Venetian merchant Andrea Corsali likewise
called Aden “the principal port of Arabia and Ethiopia”,while Barbosa
reported that “many ships” arrived there from both Zayla and Berbera.
Aden’s importance was also recognised by Brother Thomas, an Ethiopian
visitor to Venice, who spoke of it as “the emporium of India” and “the
gateway for all the spice and cloth and other things” brought by land to
the then temporary Ethiopian capital, Barara. (Don’t, dear reader, ask
where this was!)
Some Indian trade with Africa seem also to have passed by way of the
Maldive islands, These were described by the fourteenth century Arab
writer Dimashki as a stopping place for ships going to “Abyssinia”,
besides Hormuz, Yaman, Mogadishu, and Zanj.
Massawa, Zayla, and Berbera
The three principal ports handling Ethiopian and Horn of African
imports from India were then, as for centuries to come, Massawa, on the
Red Sea, and Zayla and Berbera, as we have seen, on the Gulf of Aden
coast.
Massawa, by this time already the main port of the Ethiopian
highlands, was a place of sizable Indian trade, an was mentioned by the
Portuguese, who report seeing “two Gujarat ships” there in 1520.
Articles from India imported through the port were on sale, according to
the Portuguese traveller Francisco Alvares, at the great market of
Manadeley, in southern Tegray, where he saw “merchants of all nations”,
among them “Moors [i.e. Muslims] of India”.
Zayla, according to Varthema, was likewise a place of “immense
traffic”, especially in gold and ivory, which were exported to India, as
well as to Persia, Arabia and Egypt. Indian goods imported through the
port were taken, by camel caravan, to the “great mercantile city” of
Gendebelu, where the Ethiopian monk Brother Antonio states that
commodities were “brought from the whole of India”.
Berbera was visited, according to the Portuguese, Duarte Barbosa, by
“many ships”, which carried “much merchandise” from Aden and Cambay, and
returned with large quantities of African gold and ivory. Indian
articles imported at the port were transported inland by camel, Corsali
notes, to Ethiopia, which he termed “the country of churches”. The
importance of this trade route was confirmed by Brother Thomas, who
states that merchandise taken from Berbera to Shawa came from “Aden,
Persia, Combaia [i.e. Cambay], and India”.
Some imports from India sometimes also reached the Ethiopian
highlands by way of the Indian Ocean coast. Brother Thomas claims that
“much merchandise” was brought there on ships of Cambay, and were later
carried by caravan to Barara.
Penetrating the Ethiopian Interior
Indian imports, through one port or another, penetrated far into the
Ethiopian interior. The chronicle of Emperor Zar’a Ya‘qob (1434-1468)
tells of that monarch presenting silken vestments to the great monastery
of Dabra Libanos, while Tome Pires observed that “the most prized
things” in Abyssinia included coarse cloth from Cambay, as well as
silks, also from India.
Emperor Galawdwos (1540-1559) later declared that the people of
Damot, in the far south-west of the country, gave gold “in exchange for
inferior and coarse Indian cloth”. Textiles then, as in Aksumite times,
in fact constituted Ethiopia’s principal on-going import from India.
Indian silks throughout Ethiopia were highly regarded by all who
could afford them, Emperor Lebn Dengel (1508-1540) for example was
described, by Alvares, as “dressed in a rich mantle of (gold) brocade,
and silk shirts of wide sleeves”. His consort, Queen Sabla Wangel,
according to the Portuguese warrior Miguel de Castanhoso, was “all
covered to the ground with silk, with a large flowing cloak… she was
clothed in a very thin white Indian cloth”.The Abun, or head of the
church, was likewise often dressed, Alvares says, in “a white cotton
robe of fine thin stuff”, called casha, in India, “whence it came”.
Source: http://www.linkethiopia.org
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