OMAN-INDIA TIES, ACROSS SEA AND SPACE

through Malabar, Sri Lanka and beyond. In fact, Wilkinson notes that, around the 6th century CE, Arab sailors, particularly from the port of Sohar had the know-how to venture on a 2-year, 7000 kms-long journey, trading in spices, textiles, medicines and gemstones26. The ports of Sindh, Kutch, and Gujarat also attracted Arab merchants, but few actually settled there, with the exception of Cambay, Surat, and Karachi during the heyday of those ports, as well as Gwadar (300 miles to the west of Karachi), a dependency of Oman from 1783 to 195827. Historically, Oman was famous for exporting frankincense, dates, copper and Arabian horses to India. On the other side, India exported fabrics, spices and wood used by Omanis to build their ships. Omani ships used to take trade trips to the Indian ports and come back carrying Indian goods and commodities to the peninsula, which would further be taken inland or further to the ports of Basra or Eastern Africa. Central to this trade was the very important industry of boat and ship making which has its own fascinating history.

Dhows in the Indian Ocean The most important connection between the sea coasts along the Arabian Sea has always been the monsoon, from the Arabic mawsim, meaning weather.

Knowledge of the timing, intensity and length of these south-west and northeast winds was the hallmark of sailors, the people of the dhow. Although there is no written evidence to prove the origin of dhows, historians trace their roots to Arabs or Indians using them as fishing or trading vessels to transport goods along the coasts of Arab countries, as well as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and East Africa. Ships that are similar to the dhow have their presence in the 1001 Arabian Nights28. As trading became a way of life, building of dhows was also popularized in the ports of the Arabian Gulf by those who saw them as essential to their daily life. Among them were the boat builders and sailors of Majan (modern Oman) who traded copper and ivory with Mesopotamia. At about 26 Willimanson, A. (1973). Harvard Archaeological Survey in Oman: Suhar and the Sea trade in Oman in the 10th Century AD. 27 Arab merchants also traded with other Indian ports, of course, but the only sizable Arab communities were to be found in the ports on the Konkan and Malabar coasts because elsewhere it took too long for merchants to return to the Gulf. Those who sailed the farthest, to the Malabar coast, tended to settle down and take local wives, the legacy of which is the Mappilas (Indo-Arabs), a sizable minority accounting for a quarter of all people in Kerala and the majority of all Muslims in that state.

28 Alan Villiers was one of the first sailors to recreate the journeys of Arabs along the African and Arabian coasts in 1939. He later recounted these adventures in Sons of Sindbad (1940). Severin later re-created the journey from Oman to China. His account is The Sindbad Voyage (1982).

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