MUSALMANS. 1300-1500.

Early in the fourteenth century the Turk rulers of Delhi forced their way into Thana from two sides. From the north Alp Khan (1300-1318), [The conqueror of Gujarat (1298) was Ulugh Khan or Great Khan (1 not and Dowson,. III. 43); the governor of Gujarat (1300-1318) was Alp Khan (Ditto, 208).] who established the power of Ald-ud-din Khilji (1297-1317) in Gujarat, came south as far as Sanjan, then a place of wealth and trade, and, after a sturdy and at first successful resistance, defeated the chief of Sanjan and his warlike subjects the Parsis. [A' translation of the poetical Parsi account is given in Jour. Bom. Br. Roy. As. Soc. I.167-191. The Parsis generally refer their defeat to a general of Mahmud Begada's (1459-1513) about 150 years later. But the completeness of Alp Khan's conquest of Gujarat the fact that Mahmud Begada had no distinguished general of the name of Alp Khan, and that Abu-l fida (1300-1320) mentions Sanjan as the last town in Gujarat (Elliot and Dowson, I.403), seem to show that the conqueror of the Parsis was Ala-ud-din's general Alp Khan.] The conquest of Sanjan probably took place between 1312 and 1318. Up to 1309 the south of Gujarat, of which Navsari was the centre, had been under the Yadav king Ramchandra of Devgiri, and after his death it remained under his son Shankar, till he refused to pay tribute and was killed in 1312. [In 1306, when the Daulatabad king agreed to pay tribute, Ala-ud-din Khilji gave him the title of Rai Rayan and added Navsari to his possessions. Briggs' Ferishta, I. 369.] In 1318, when Harpaldev, Shankar's son-in-law, refused to acknowledge Musalman supremacy, a Gujarat force seems to have taken Navsari, as mention is soon after made (1320) of the appointment to Navsari of Malik-ul-Tujar, the chief of the merchants. [Forbes' Ras Mala, 224.] After the fall of Devgiri (1318) the Emperor Mubarik I. (1317-1321), in the short season of vigour with which he opened his reign, ordered his outposts to be extended to the sea, and occupied Mahim near Bombay and Salsette. [Murphy in Bom. Geog. Soc. Trans. I. 129. Ferishta (Briggs, I. 389) notices that in 1318 Mubarik ordered a chain of posts to be established from Devgiri to Dvara-Samudra. The power of the Musalmans on the Thana coast is shown by the issue in 1325, at Daman, of gold mohars and dinars to mark the accession of Sultan Mahmud Tughlik. Bird's Mirat-i-Ahmadi, 169.] The strong Musalman element in the coast towns probably made this an easy conquest, as no reference to it has been traced in the chief Musalman histories. [Malik Kafur, in his expedition to the Malabar coast in 1310, found Musalmans who had been subjects of Hindus. They were half Hindus and not strict in their religion, but, as they could repeat the kalima, they were spared. Amir Khuaru in Elliot and Dowson, III, 90.]

That the Turk rulers of Delhi did conquer the coast and establish a garrison at Thana, is shown by the accounts of the French friars Jordanus and Odericus, who were in Thana between 1321 and 1324. [Jordanas seems to have been in Thana and Sopara between 1321 and 1324, and Odaric about 1322. The dates are discussed in Yules Cathay, I. 68. The details in the text are taken from Yule's Jordanus and the travels of Oderic, and the letters of Jordanus in Yule's Cathay, I. 57-70 and 225-230. Some account of the great Christian movement of which these Thana missions formed a part is given in Appendix B.] The friars state that the Saracens, or Muhammadans, held the whole country, having lately usurped the dominion. They had destroyed an infinite number of idol temples and likewise many churches, of which they made mosques for Muhammad, taking their endowments and property. [Jordanus Mirabilis, 23.] Under the Emperor of Delhi, Thana was governed by a military officer or malik, and by a religious officer or kazi. [Malik was a favourite title among a Khiljis who had adopted Afghan ways. Many local governors bore the titile of Malik (Brigg's Ferishta, I. 292, 391.) The Emperor of Delhi appears as Dal Dili. Oderics meanings is explained by Yule Cathay, I 38, in whose opinion both Jordanus and Oderic are careful and correct writers.] Stirred by the kazi the military governor murdered four Christian friars, and for this cruelty was recalled by the Emperor and put to death. The two travellers have recorded many interesting details of Thana. The heat was horrible, so great that to stand bareheaded in the sun for a single mass (half an hour), was certain death. Gold, iron, and electrum were found in the country, other metals were imported. The country was full of trees, the jack, the mango, the cocoa palm, the fan or brab palm and the forest palm, the banian tree with its twenty or thirty trunks, a stupendous carob tree perhaps the baobab Adansonia digitata, and a tree, apparently the teak, so hard that the sharpest arrow could not pierce it. There was plenty of victual, rice, much wheat, sesamum, butter, green ginger in abundance, and quantities of sugarcane. There were numerous black lions, leopards, lynxes, rhinoceroses, and crocodiles, monkeys and baboons, bats (the fruit-eating bat or flying-fox) as big as kites, and rats (the bandicoot) as big as dogs. There were no horses, camels, or elephants, and only a few small worthless, asses. All the carrying, riding, and ploughing was done by oxen, fine animals with horns a good half pace in length, and a hump on the back like a camel. The oxen were honoured as fathers and worshipped by some, perhaps by most. The people were pagans, Hindus and Parsis, who worshipped fire, serpents, and trees, especially the basil plant. There were also Saracens or Musalmans, most jealous of their faith; scattered Nestorian Christians, kindly but ignorant and schismatic; and Dumbris, a class of drudges and load-carriers who had no object of worship and ate carrion and carcasses. [Yule (Mirablis, 21) makes Jordanus Dumbris be Doms. One divisions or clan of the Nasik Mhars is called Dombs; and Steels (Deccan Castes, 117) mentions Dumbiris as tumblers and rope-dancers chiefly found in Karnatak.] The men and women were black, clothed in nothing but a strip of cotton tied round the loins and the end flung over the naked back. Their food was rice gruel batter and oil, and their drink milk and very intoxicating palm wine. The fighting was child's play. When they went to the ware they went naked with a round target, a frail and paltry affair, and holding a kind of spit in their hands. They were clean in their feeding, true in speech, and eminent in justice, maintaining carefully the privileges of every class as they had come down from old times. The pagans were ready to hear a preacher and open to conversion; the Saracens were full of hate for Christian teachers, killing four and imprisoning and ill-treating a fifth. Among the pagans, when a woman was married, she was set on a horse and the husband got on the crupper and held a knife pointed at her throat. They had nothing on, except a high cap on their head like a mitre, wrought with white flowers, and all the maidens of the place went singing in a row in front of them till they reached the house, and there the bride and bridegroom were left alone, and when they got up in the morning they went naked as before. The noble and rich dead were burnt, and their wives burnt with them with as much joy as if they were going to be wedded. Most of the dead were carried with great pomp to the fields and cast forth to the beasts and birds, the great heat of the sun consuming them in a few days. [In the Population Chapter (p. 251) this exposition of the dead has been taken as a proof of Persian or Parsi influence. It is however worthy of note that in Java a sect of Hindus are said (1818) to expose their dead to the air as an offering to the sun. As. Res. XIII. 137.] There was trade with Broach, the Malabar coast, the Persian gulf, and Ethiopia. The coast was infested with pirates.

Under the strong rule of Muhammad Tughlik (1325-1350) the Musalmans probably maintained their supremacy in the north Konkan, [Briggs' Ferishta, I. 413;Ras Mala, 225. According to one of the local Konkan stories, about 1350, a Nawab of Vadnagar, that is Gujarat, defeated the Hindu chief of Mahim.] but their interest in this part of their dominions was small. The route taken by the traveller Ibn Batuta (1343) shows that, at this time, the trade between Daulatabad and the coast did not pass to the Thana ports, but went round by Nandurbar and Songad to Cambay. [Lee's Ibn Batuta, 162-164; Yule's Cathay, II. 415. Ibn Batuta (1343) mentions one Amir Husain flying to an infidel prince named Burabrab, perhaps Bohrjirai, who dwell in the lofty mountains between Daulatabad and Konkan-Thana, Elliot and Dowson, III. 619.] At this time two important Hindu chiefs held territory on the direct route between Daulatabad and the coast, Mandev chief of Baglan, [Briggs' Ferishta, I. 437: compare II. 321-323.] and the chief of Jawhar, who, in 1341, was recognised by the Delhi court as the lord of twenty-two forts and of a country yielding a yearly revenue of £90,000 (Rs. 9,00,000).[Bom. Gov. Sel. (New Series), XXVI. 14; Aitchison's Treaties, IV. 321. The Mackenzie Manuscripts (Wilson's Mackenzie Manuscripts, I. cvi) mention a ferryman (Koli?) chieftain, named Jayaba (apparently a southern or un-Sanskrit chief), who defeated and deposed the nephew of Gauri Raja and became master of the Konkan from Junnar to Ankola in Kanara: Jayaba extended his power above the Sahyadris, but was checked by the Musalmans. Seven princes descended from Jayaba ruled the Konkan. This family of chiefs has not been identified. Their head-quarters were probably either in central or south Konkan, not in Thana.] Some parts of the Thana coast may in name have remained subordinate to Gujarat. But the connection with the Deccan seems to have been very small. In 1350, when the new or Moghal nobles were summoned into Daulatabad, none came from the Konkan.[Briggs' Ferishta, I. 437.] Shortly after, when the Bahmanis established themselves as independent rulers and moved the capital of the Deccan from Daulatabad south to Kulbarga, their connection with the north Konkan grew still fainter. Though they held Navsari. to the north and Chaul to the south, they seem to have had little concern with the lands now under Thana.[In 1357 Hasan the founder of the Bahmani dynasty is (Briggs' Ferishta, II. 295) mentioned as visiting Navsari. About the same time, when the Bahmanis distributed their territory into four provinces, the north-west province is described (Briggs' Ferishta, II. 295) as the tract comprehending Chaul on the sea-coast and going between Junnar, Daulatabad, Bir, and Paithan.] In 1380, when orphan schools were founded in their leading towns, no mention is made of any of the Thana ports. [The towns named are Kulburga, Bidar, Kandhar, Elichpur, Daulatabad, Chaul, and Dabul. Briggs' Ferishta, II. 350.] Musalman supremacy can have been little more than a name. It appears from a stone dated A.D. 1464, that the Hindu chief of Bhiwndi had power to make land-grants. [To illustrate the relations between the local Hindu chiefs and their Musalman overlords may be compared the mention of the rai of Mahim in 1429 (see text, p. 441); Varthema's statement in 1500 that the king of Chaul, then part of Mahmud Begada's dominions, was a pagan (Badger's Edition, 114); the position of the apparently Hindu chief of Thana, in 1528, when his territory in Bombay was invaded by the Portuguese (see below, p. 450); and the grant of Tegnapatam to the English in 1691, under the seal of a local Hindu chief and by a kaul from the Subha of the Karnatak (Bruce's Annals, III. 120).]

In the fifteenth century the interest of the Musalmans in the North Konkan revived. The establishment of a separate dynasty of Gujarat kings, at the close of the fourteenth century, added much to the vigour and strength of the Musalmans on the northern frontier. Mosaffar (1390-1412), the founder of the Gujarat dynasty, and his grandson and successor Ahmad I, (1413-1441), brought most of the Gujarat chiefs to subjection and ranked high among the rulers of Rajputana and of Western India. In 1429, apparently as a regular outpost and not as a new possession, they had a garrison under a captain, Kutb Khan, at Mahim near Bombay, and another garrison overruling Thana. Apparently at both places, certainly at Mahim, there was a friendly, probably a tributary, Hindu chief or rai. The whole coast from Navsari to Bombay, though apparently under Hindu chiefs who were independent enough to make grants of land, was sufficiently under Musalman control to enable their army to pass unopposed from Gujarat to Mahim. [A Devnagari land-grant stone has been found at Sanjan dated A.D. 1432 (S. 1354), and another at Koprad, about ten-miles north of Bassein, dated A.D. 1464 (S. 1386), The Koprad stone has the special interest of giving a Musalman date (H. 864) and several Musalman names. Details are given under Places of Interest, Koprad and Sanjan.] About the same time Sultan Ahmad Bahmani (1422-1435). king of the Deccan, made vigorous efforts to bring the Konkan under his control. In 1429 the Bahmani minister Malik-ul-Tujar led a strong force into the Konkan, and secured a rich booty, including several elephants and camel-loads of gold and silver. Malik-ul-Tujar seems to have spread his master's power to the shore of the mainland, and, in 1429, on the death of the Gujarat commandant Kutb Khan, he seized on Mahim and Salsette. Hearing of this insult, the strong and warlike Ahmad Shah of Gujarat gathered a fleet of seventeen sail from Diu, Gogha, and Cambay, and sent it to Mahim along with a land army under his youngest son Zafar Khan and his general Malik Iftikar Khan. The joint force attacked Thana by land and sea, and compelled the Deccan general to retire to Mahim. Here he was joined by a force under Ala-ud-din, the son of the Deccan monarch, and strengthened his position by throwing up a wattled stockade along the shore of the creek. After waiting some days the Gujarat troops took heart, assaulted the stookade, and, after a severe struggle, drove the Deccanis to Bombay, where they were again routed and withdrew to the mainland. Reinforced from the Deccan, they came back and attacked Thana, but were once more defeated and compelled to retire.[Briggs' Ferishta, II. 412-414; IV. 28-30; Watson's Gujarat, 96; Ras Mala, 269.] Among the plunder the Gujarat troops secured some beautiful gold and silver embroidery.[This was probably the fine embroidered muslin for which Burbanpur was famous.] A year or two later (1432) Ahmad of Gujarat arranged a marriage between his son and the daughter of the chief of Mahim. [Watson's Gujrat, 36.] An attempt of the Deccan king to take the place of Gujarat as overlord of Baglan proved as complete a failure as his attack on Thana and Bombay. [Watson's Gujarat. 36.]

After this, several expeditions, Dilavar Khan's in 1436, Malik-ul-Tujar's in 1453, and Mahmud Gawan's in 1469, were sent from the Deccan to conquer the Konkan. [Briggs' Ferishta, II. 424, 436, and 483.] They seem to have been almost entirely confined to central and southern Konkan, the present districts of Kolaba and Ratnagiri. Much of the country was overrun and many chiefs were forced to pay tribute, but almost the only permanent posts were at Chaul and Dabhol. [Briggs' Ferishta, II. 463.] The inland parts continued to be held by Hindu rulers, of whom the rais of Mahuli in Thana, Ratri or Raygad in Kolaba, and Vishalgad in Ratnagiri were perhaps the chief. [Name's Konkan, 26.] About 1465 Mahmud Begada increased Gujarat power in north Thana, marching between the Konkan and Gujarat, taking the extraordinary hill-fort of Bavur, perhaps Bavara for Bagvada, and from that advancing to Dura (?) and Parnala, apparently Parnera, defeating the infidels, and forcing the chief to give up his forts. The chief threw himself on Mahmud's mercy, and on paying tribute his land was restored. [Briggs' Ferishta, IV. 61. Bagvada is a well-known hill-fort about fifteen miles south of Bahar; Parnara also a fort of importance about ten miles north of Bagvada. Dura is not identified; Briggs suggests Dharampur.]

About 1480 the Bahmahis divided their territory into eight provinces. By establishing Junnar as the head of one of the provinces the Deccan was brought into closer relations with the north Konkan. [Briggs' Ferishta, II. 502; Grant Duffs Marathas, 29.] A few years later (1485), in the decay of Bahmani rule, one Bahadur Khan Gelani, the son of the governor of Goa, seized Dabhol and other places in the south Konkan, and proclaimed himself king of Dariabar, or the sea coast.[Briggs' Ferishta, III. 10.] In 1484 he harassed the Gujarat harbours, [Briggs' Ferishta, IV. 71.] and, in 1490, sent his slave, Yakut an Abyssinian, with twenty ships to lay Mahim or Bombay waste. [Briggs' Ferishta, II. 539.] Yakut seized many ships belonging to Gujarat, and the fleet sent by Mahmud Begada to drive him out of Mahim was destroyed by a tempest. [Bas Mala, 290.] Mahmud Begada then wrote to Mahmud Bahmani, explaining that Gujarat troops could not reach Bahadur Khan without passing through Deccan lands, and urging him to punish Bahadur. The leading Bahmani nobles, Adil Khan and Ahmad Nizam Shah, who were both planning to establish themselves as independent rulers, were jealous of Bahadur's attempt to bring the coast into his hands. They gladly joined Mahmud Bahmani, and, in 1493, Bahadur was attacked near Kolhapur, defeated, and slain. Mahim and the Gujarat ships were restored to Mahmud Begada. [Briggs' Ferishta, II. 543.]

During this time (1485-1493) Ahmad Nizam, the son of the Bahmani prime minister, was placed by his father in charge of the province of Daulatabad. He made Junnar his head-quarters and took many Poona and Thana forts, among them Manranjan or Rajmachi and Mahuli. [Briggs' Ferishta. III. 190-191.] In 1490 he increased his power in the Konkan by taking Danda-Rajpuri, [Briggs' Ferishta, III. 198-199.] and, about the same time, on hearing of his father's assassination at the Bidar court, he declared himself independent of the Bahmani kings.[Briggs' Ferishta, III. 191-192.] Meanwhile Mahmud Begada was strengthening his hold on the Konkan, and, about 1495, divided his dominions into five parts, of one of which Thana was the head.[Briggs'Ferishta, IV. 62.] Some years later (1508) Mahmud Begada still further increased his power. He effected his designs against Bassein and Bombay, established a garrison at Nagothna, and sent an army to Chaul. [Bird's Mirat-i-Ahmadi, 214.] At this time, when Gujarat power was at its highest, according to the Mirat-i-Ahmadi, Daman, Bassein and Bombay were included within Gujarat limits.[Bird's Mirat-i-Ahmadi, 110, 111. Bird gives Danda-Rajpuri in Janjira, but purhaps Danda near Kelva-Mahim was meant.] And among the ports which yielded revenue to the Gujarat kings were Agashi, Danda near Kelva-Mahim, Sorab perhaps Sopara, Bassein, Bhiwndi, Kalyan, Bombay, and Panvel. [All of these ports were not necessarily under Gujarat, as in the same list are included Dabhol, Goa, Kalikat, Kulam or Quilon, and the Maldives. Ditto 129, 130.] The claim of the Gujarat historian to so large a share of the north Konkan coast is supported by the Italian traveller Varthema, who, in 1502, placed Chaul in Gujarat.[Badger's Varthema, 114.] So, also, the early Portuguese accounts, though they make the Bet or Kalyan river the border line between Gujarat and the Deccan, [Faria y Souza (Kerr's Voyages,VI. 83) says ' The river Bate; falling into the sea near Bombaim, divides the kingdoms of Gujarat and Deccan.'] notice that in 1530 there was a Gujarat governor of Nagothna, and that in 1540 there were Gujarat commandants of the hill-forts of Karnala in Panvel and of Sankshi in Pen.

Trade.

Of the trade of the Thana ports during the two hundred years between the Muhammadan conquest and the arrival of the Portuguese information is scanty. For the first forty years of this period Thana was the port of the Musalman rulers of Daulatabad. Then, when the Bahmanis (1347) moved their capital to Kulbarga, trade passed south to Chaul and to Dabhol in Ratnagiri. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, though some traffic continued from Mahim and Thana through the Tal pass to Burhanpur, the trade of the north Konkan ports was further reduced by their conquest by the Ahmadabad kings. The establishment of Ahmadnagar as a separate kingdom, a few years before the close of the fifteenth century (1490), again raised Chaul to the rank of a first class port. During this period Persia was prosperous, and a great trade centered in the ports of the Persian Gulf. The constant demand for horses kept up a close connection between the Thana and east Arabian ports, and there was a considerable trade with the Zanzibar coast. [Vasco da Cama, 1497, found the people of Corrientes in East Africa clothed in cotton, silk, and satin. At Mozambique Moorish merchants from the Red Sea and India exchanged Indian goods for Sofala gold. In the warehouses were pepper, ginger, cotton, silver, pearls, rubies, velvets, and other Indian articles. Mombaza had all Indian commodities, and Melinda had Indian wares and Indian merchants. Stevenson's Sketch of Discovery, 340-341.] The great wealth and power of Venice, and the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (1453), turned the commerce between Europe and Asia to the Red Sea route, but in India the bulk of the Red Sea trade settled in the Malabar ports. [In the fifteenth century the revenues of Venice and the wealth of its merchants exceeded anything known in other parts of Europe. In 1420 its shipping included 3000 trading vessels with 17,000 sailors, 300 large ships with 8000 sailors, and 46 galleasses or caracks with 11,000 sailors. Robertson's India, 141, 347.] There is little trace of direct trade between Thana ports and Ceylon, the Eastern Archipelago, or China. This trade seems also to have centered in Malabar. The chief Thana ports during these two hundred years were Thana, a considerable town and a celebrated place of trade, Chaul a center of trade, Sopara a place of consequence, and Mahim a port and centre of trade. [Thana Jordanus and Odericus (1320) Yule's Cathay, I. 57, 230; Abu-l-fida (1330) Yule's Marco Polo, II. 331; Chaul, or Chivil, Nikitin (1474) India in XV. Century, 8 ; Sopara, Jordanus (1323) Yule's Cathay, I. 227; Mahim (1429) Briggs' Ferishta, IV. 29.] The chief ports which had dealings with the Thana coast were Quilon and Kalikat in Malabar, Cambay in Gujarat, Ormuz in the Persian Gulf, Dhafar in east Arabia, Aden Jidda and AEthiopia in the Red Sea, and the African ports, [References chiefly from Jordanus (1323) Yule's Cathay, I. 130; Ibn Batuta (1342) Lee's Edition and in Yule's Marco Polo and Reinaud's Abu-l-fida; Nicolo Conti (1420), Abd-er-Razzak (1442) and Santo Stefano (1496) in India in XV. Century.] Compared with the previous period, the chief changes in the articles of trade were the apparent increase in the export of rice, wheat, and betelnut and leaves to the Persian and Arab coasts; in the export of fine Deccan-made muslins; in the import of the rich silks of Venice, the brocades and cloth of gold of Persia, and the satins of China; and in the import of woollen cloth, camlets, mirrors, arms, gold and silver ornaments, and other articles from Venice. [Robertson's India, 137.] Of articles of Food, rice, green ginger, sugarcane, butter, and sesamum oil were produced in Thana and sent probably to the Arab and African ports. [Oderic (1320) Yule's Cathay, I. 57.] Wheat was exported probably to Ormuz and Arabia; [Jordanus' Mirabilia (1320), 12-21.] palm wine and palm sugar were produced in abundance, and there were jacks, mangoes, sweet and sour limes, and cocoanuts; [Jordanus' Mirabilia, 16.] betelnuts and leaves were grown on the Konkan and Malabar coasts and sent in large quantities to the Arab ports and to Ormuz.[Abd-er-Razzak (1440) India in XV. Century, 32.] Of Spices, pepper ginger and cardamoms came from the Malabar coast, cinnamon from Ceylon, cubebs nutmegs mace and cardamoms from Java, and cloves from Sumatra. These spices were sent to the Deccan, and probably to Africa, Arabia, and Persia. [Oderic (1320) Yule's Catbay, I. 77; Jordanus' Mirabilia (1320), 31; John of Monte Corvino (1330) in Yule's Cathay, I. 213; and Ibn Batuta (1340) in Yule's Cathay, II. 472.] Of articles of Dress, cotton cloth made in Thana, [Abu-l-fida (1327) in Yule's Marco Polo, II. 331.] and gold and silver embroidered muslins and fine gauze from Burhanpur and other Deccan cities were sent to Persia, Arabia, Africa, and China, where one cotton coat was worth three silk coats; [To Arabia and Persia (1413) Jour. Beng. A. S. V-2, 461; to China, Ibn Batuta (1340) in Yule's Cathay, II. 480; to Africa (1498) Vincent's Commerce, II. 246.] velvet was made in Thana, [Giovani Botero (1580) in Yule's Marco Polo, II, 331.] and silks were brought from the Deccan, China, Persia, and Europe, interchanged, and exported to Africa and Arabia; [From Venice rich silks, Robertson's India, 137; from Persia, damasks and satins, Abd-er Razzak (1440) India in XV. Century, 30; Deccan, Chinese, and Persian silks, were sent to Africa (1498) Vincent's Commerce, II. 246.] woollen cloth came from Europe by the Red Sea. [Robertson's India, 137.] Of Precious Stones, diamonds ' the best under heaven' were sent from India, and pearls and rubies from Abyssinia, Persia, and Ceylon. AEthiopia was rich in precious stones, and coral came from the Red Sea. There was a large demand for pearls and other precious stones in Africa. [Indian diamonds, Jordanus (1320) Mirabilia, 20; Persian and Ceylon, pearls, ditto 30, 45; and Abyssinian pearls, Santo Stefano (1495) India in XV. Century, 4.] Of Metals, silver came from China and probably through the Red Sea from Germany and went to Sofala; [Silver from China, Ibn Batuta (1340) in Yule's Cathay, II. 357; from Germany, Robertson's India, 138; to Sofala, Vincent's Commerce, II. 246.] tin was brought from Sumatra and probably through the Red Sea from England;[Tin from Sumatra, Oderic (1320) in Yule sCathay, I. 85; from England, Robertson's India, 137.] gold, iron; and electrum were not imported. [Jordanus' Mirabilia (1320), 23; Nicolo Conti (1420) India in XV. Century, 30, mentions the import of Venetian ducats.] Of Timber, bamboos were exported and brazil-wood was brought from the Malabar coast. [Abu-l-fida (1327) in Yule's Marco Polo, II. 331, 371; Oderic (1320) in Yule's Cathay, I. 77-78.] Of Drugs and Perfumes, incense and myrrh came from Arabia, alum from Asia Minor, ambergris from Africa, aloes wood camphor and benzoin from Sumatra and Java, musk myrrh and rhubarb from China, and tabashir or bamboo-sugar was still made in Thana and exported. [Myrrh from Arabia, Jordanus (1320) Mirabilia, 45; alum from Turkey, ditto 57; ambergris, ditto 43; aloes wood from Java, Ibn Batuta (1340) in Yule's Cathay, II. 469-470, 472; musk and myrrh from China, ditto 357; rhubarb, Jordanus' Mirabilia, 47; tabashir Abu-l-fida (1327) in Yule's Marco Polo, II. 331, 371.] Of Tools and House Gear, 'noble earthenware full of good qualities ' came from China and probably went to the, Deccan and to the Persian Gulf, [Jordanus' Mirabilia (1320), 48; Ibn Batuta (1340) in Yule's Cathay, II. 478.] and mirrors, arms, gold and silver ornaments, glass, and other articles came from Venice.[Robertson's India, 137. It seems probable that, during the fifteenth century, fire-arms were introduced from Venice into India through Egypt. Like bindikia or bullet in Egypt (Creasy's Ottoman Turks, I. 233 note 1), the Indian word banduk or gun seems to be a corruption of Binikia, that is Yinikia or Venetian. The Portuguese (1498) found the Indian Moors or Musalmans as well armed as, sometimes better armed than, themselves. The knowledge of fire-arms did not come from the far east, as the Javanese words for fire-arms are European, sanapang a musket being the Dutch snaphan, and satingar a match-lock being the Portuguese sapingarda. See Crawfurd's Archipelago, I. 227; II. 171-172.] Of Animals, many horses were brought from Ormuz and from Aden. [Ibn Batuta (1340) in Yule's Marco Polo, II. 373. The Russian, Athanasius Nikitin (1470) brought horses from Ormuz through Chaul to Junnar in Poona. He says horses are not born in India, and are fed on peas, boiled sugar, and oil. India in XV. Century, 10.] Of Human Beings, soldiers of fortune came from Khurasan and Abyssinia, and negro slaves from Africa. [Nikitin (1470) India in XV. Century, 9, 10,12; Vincent's Commerce, II. 122.]

Barbosa's (1500-1514) details of the course of trade at Chaul are of special value, as what he says is probably true of the trade of the Thana ports from the earliest times. The system must have been much the same in Thana during the time of the Khalifs of Baghdad (700-1000); in Kalyan during the times of the Sassanians (300-600); in Chaul during the times of the Egyptian Greeks (B.C. 100-A.D. 200); and perhaps at Sopara at the time of Solomon (B.C. 1000). The great centre of foreign trade was not necessarily a large city. There were perhaps few inhabitants except during December January February and March when vessels from all parts of Asia thronged the port, and, when, from the Deccan and from Upper India, came great caravans of oxen with packs like donkeys, and, on the tops of the packs, long white sacks laid crosswise, one man driving thirty or forty beasts before him. The caravans stopped about a league from the city, and there traders from all the cities and towns in the country set up shops of goods and of cloth. During those four months the place was a fair, and then the merchants went back to their homes till the next season. [Stanley's Barbosa, 69-71.]

Among the merchants who carried on trade in the Thana ports were Hindus, Musalmans, Egyptians, and a small but increasing number of Europeans. [Alexandrian merchants in Thana, Oderio (1320) in Yule's Cathay, I. 60; Marignoli (1347); Nicolo Conti(1400-1440), a Venetian; Athanasius Nikitin (1470), a Russian; Santo Stefano (1496), a Genoese.] Hindus continued to travel and trade to foreign ports, being met in Ormuz, Aden, Zanzibar, and Malacca. [Hindus at Ormuz, Abd-er-Razzak (1442) India in XV. Century, 6; at Aden, Ibn Batuta (1340) in Yule's Marco Polo, II. 376; at Melinda, (1498) Barros in Da Gama's Three Voyages, 137 note 1; at Malacca, Abu-l-fida (1327) Madras Journal of Literature and Science (1878), 213. Abu-l-fida (1320) notices the greet number of Indian plants at Dafar on the east coast of Arabia. Veteris Geographic Scriptores, III. 51.] There would seem to have been little change in the style of ships that frequented the Thana coast. Of the local or Indian ships some were very great, but they were put together with a needle and thread without iron, and with no decks. They took in so much water that men had always to stand in the pool and bail. [Jordanus' Mirabilia (1320) 16, 54. Abu-l-fida (1320) notices that Indian ships came and set sail from Aden. Veteris Geographic Scriptores, III. 53. Ibn Batuta (1340) found large Indian ships at Aden. Yule's Cathay, II. 399. The ' junk' with 700 people which took Oderic from Kochin to China (1323) seems, but this is doubtful, to have been an Indian ship. Yule's Cathay, I. 73.] The Arab ships in the Red Sea had timbers sewn with cords, and sails of rush mats; those at Aden were plank-sewn and had cotton sails. [Santo Stefano (1495) India in XV. Century, 4.] The Persian Gulf boats were very frail and uncouth, stitched with twine and with no iron. [John of Monte Corvino (1292) in Yule's Cathay, I. 218; Oderic (1323) in Yule's Cathay, I. 57.] The Chinese ships, though it is doubtful if any came further than the Malabar coast, were much the same as those described by Marco Polo. [Jordanus' Mirabilia (1320) 55; Oderic (1320) in Yule's Cathay, I. 124; Ibn Batuta (1340) in Yule's Cathay, II. 417, an excellent account; Nicolo Conti (1430) India in XV. Century, 27.] The European travellers speak slightingly of the skill of the eastern sailors. ' Weather such as our mariners would deem splendid is to them awfully perilous. One European at sea is worth a hundred of them.' [Jordanus (1320) Mirabilia, 55. An exception is made in favour of the Kalikat seamen ' sons of Chinamen,' who were so brave that no pirate dare attack them. Abder-Razzak (1442) India in XV. Century, 19.] The Indian seas continued cursed with pirates. The Indian ships were armed against them with archers and Abyssinian soldiers.[Ibn Batuta (1340) Reinaud's Abu-l-fida, cdxxvii. When an Abyssinian was on board passengers had nothing to fear from pirates.] In the fifteenth century Abd-er-Razzak, 1440, notices pirates in the, Persian Gulf and at Kalikat, [Abder-Razzak in India in XV. Century, 7, 18.] and, about thirty years later, Nikitin complains that the sea was infested with pirates neither Christians nor Musalmans, who prayed to stone idols and knew not Christ. [Nikitin in India in XV. Century, 11.] During this century the Musalman kings of Ahmadabad made several expeditions against the pirates of Dwarka in Kathiawar, of Balsar in south Surat, and foreign corsairs from the Malabar coast. [Briggs' Ferishta, IV. 60-61; Ditto 65; Watson's Gujarat, 43.]