Were they in contact with Chinese Muslims of the period?

canton had a large muslim population which was massacred around 840 by a tang emperor, and a minority of the modern hui probably derive from maritime, not inland, contacts. but from what i have read these were much more likely to be assimilated into han society than the hui of the northwest (who later migrated to beijing). generally the modern chinese muslims are assumed to have derived from the central asians who came with the mongols in the 13th century, but there are plenty of records of muslims in china in the 700s.

whether they were south asian or not is debatable. the chinese had a hard time distinguishing muslims of various kinds, and sometimes muslims from jews. what is clear is that the muslim maritime hegemony went no further than the arc between central vietnam and the philippines, and even then it was contested. the chams, a malay people of vietnam and cambodia, converted, and there were muslims on manilla bay when the spanish arrived. most historians who have ventured to guess assume that the phillipines, which is ethno-culturally similar to the rest of maritime southeast asia, would have been islamicized if the europeans did not intervene.

also, i think we should be careful about assuming the ethnic identity of the southeast asian traders. these things are fluid. even south asian muslims referred to themselves as “moors” (in the phillipines “moros”) it makes sense that people who assumed they were arab. btw, the spread of the shafi sunni school:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Madhhab_Map2.png

endcap on the india ocean trade

I’ve always though that if Austronesians could get to Madagascar, then they could obviously get to the East Coast of Africa – so I wonder if this is reflected in these results?

Did the Muslim trade from South Asia extend to Vietnam, China and other place North?

Were they in contact with Chinese Muslims of the period?

the point though is that at some point between 1000 and 1500 it looks like muslims took over the long distance indian ocean trade networks. we see the network mostly on the back end, when the europeans challenged it. there was a period when hindu states sponsored trade missions to southeast asia. the cholas of tamil nadu did for example. but not beyond a certain point in time. the muslims had co-religionists all across the indian ocean, from madagascar to malacca. the hindus did not. when the europeans took over the indian ocean it opened the way again for hindu merchants, who reappear in arabia.

Also Kerala and Gujarat are located on the west coast, so relatively more distant from SE Asia.

the two are not analogous. kerala is only on the “west coast” in a technical sense. socio-culturally it’s an extension of tamil country on the other side of the ghats. so kerala had access to arabia, and, it was a major entrepot for spices from the east indies via the bay of bengal.

but again, as i keep telling you, you can’t assume random sampling from south asians when it comes to trade. in east africa most south asians are gujarati merchants, hindu patels, or muslim ismailis. they’re not gujarati peasants. when cheng ho and the portuguese arrived they noted that hindus ran the army, christians were tolerated and own land, and muslims controlled international trade.

Also Kerala is located on the west coast, so relatively more distant from SE Asia.

you continue to operate under the assumption that there’s random sampling in these sorts of activities. so you dismiss the moors, even though i pointed out that they’re located on the east coast. the moors have traditionally been fisherman and traders, while the buddhists have been farmers, in their region. since you won’t accept the likelihood of non-random sampling by religion/caste (continuing to point out the total proportions as if that’s relevant in your inferences), i guess we’re not going to go anywhere here. thanks for the exchange, it’s done.

Sorry, I accidentally wrote “Hindu” while I should have written “non-Muslim”.

the musilms of sri lanka (who call themselves “moors”), are ~10% of the population, are shafi

I know, but they are in the minority in the total population.

maldives is muslim

I know, but the Maldives is negligible because of its low population.

the coastal trading communities of western india which are muslim (e.g., mapilla and ismailis) are far less uniformily hanafi than the muslims of the gangetic plain or pakistan (those of kerala are shafi)

I know them too, but, again, they are in the minority in the predominantly non-Muslim (overwhelmingly Hindu) coastal India.

european observers noted (often with anger) that indian muslims dominated international maritime trade in south asia by 1500 (this was noted by cheng ho’s fleet in the early 15th century too)

This I didn’t know, though still it doesn’t change the fact that there were many non-Muslim Subcontinental (including Sri Lanka and beyond) sailors and maritime traders, and they were very probably in much bigger numbers than their Muslim Subcontinental counterparts even around the year 1500 given the demographics of the Subcontinent.

i think with those facts i’ve entered into the record the confusion should be mitigated some.

also, know gujarati muslims used to be much more religiously diverse than today. they were homogenized forcibly by aurangzeb in the 17th century.

* I am including Sri Lanka and the other nearby islands in India.

in general i agree with this (even if someone might quibble with the term ‘persian islamic culture’). but, i will enter in one exception: the muslims of kerala in south india are part of the south arabian islamic culture. unlike sunnis in the rest of the subcontinent they are not hanafi but shafi. southeast asians are shafi too btw, and generally they prefer to claim arab antecedents for their religion. though as i said, there tends to be an assumption that the eastern half of the indian ocean trade in the bay of bengali to indonesia was run by south asian muslims, not arabs. though they may have been shafi muslims from south india who were therefore culturally connected with south arabia, and not central asia.