Routledge Handbook on China-Middle East Relations by Jonathan Fulton

Author:Jonathan Fulton [Fulton, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367472702
Google: -WJ_zgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 58394154
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

The historical dimension

Archaeological and textual evidence suggests that intermittent contact has existed between the regions now recognized as Oman and China since late antiquity.2 Following the rise of Islam, regularized long-distance trade between Tang-ruled Southern China and the Abbasid hinterlands of Iraq and Persia was well established. As a consequence, Omani coastal towns such as Muscat, Qalhat, and Sohar assumed key roles in the exchange of commodities that marked such long-distance trade, including ambergris, frankincense, silk, and ceramics. The tenth-century geographer Shamsuddin al-Maqdisi identified Sohar (in addition to Aden in Yemen) as the “Gateway to China” (dalheez al-sin), a description indicative of the port’s early significance for China-bound trade.3 The status enjoyed by Omani coastal towns in mediating trans-Asian maritime trade was further reinforced by the naval dominance exerted by Omani “captains” (nawakidh) and seafarers over the Indian Oceanic routes, and as indicated in multiple tenth-century sources such as Abu’l Hasan al-Mas’udi’s Muruj al-thahab wa ma’adin al-jawahir [Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems] and Akhbar al-hind wal sin [Accounts of India and China].4 The Belitung shipwreck, the remains of a ninth-century Arab (likely Omani) dhow carrying over 60,000 Tang-era earthenware ceramics, confirms this overall picture.5 This early iteration of long-distance trade not only allowed the Omani coast to prosper, but also contributed to the emergence of a sizable Omani presence among the foreign trader diasporas that thronged the Chinese entrepôts of Guangzhou, Yangzhou, and Quanzhou. Among these early sojourners from Oman was the wealthy Jewish trader Ishaq bin Yahuda of Sohar and the Abu ‘Ubayda Abdullah bin al-Qasim ‘al-Saghir, a native of Bisya and a benefactor of the early Ibadi movement.6

This episode of sustained contact during the eighth through tenth centuries came to an abrupt end as a result of a series of simultaneous upheavals that rocked both side of the Asiatic landmass, most notably the Huang Chao rebellion (881–884), the Basra-centered Zanj uprising (869–883), and the expansion of Qarmatian power in eastern Arabia.7 Although these disruptions transformed the nature of trans-Asian maritime trade away from its long-distance character, contact between the Omani coast and China persisted and even recovered by the late Song and Yuan eras. An Omani merchant is believed to have been associated with the construction of the famous “Lighthouse” (guangta) minaret of the Huaisheng Mosque in Guangzhou in the mid-eleventh century.8 Envoys from Muscat are mentioned in Chinese records as having been received by the imperial court and in having maintained close contact with the “headsmen” (fanzhang) of the (by now well-rooted) foreign trader community in Guangzhou.9 During the period of Mongol rule, which saw significant voluntary and involuntary influxes of “assembled” (semu) foreigners from Central and Western Asia brought to serve in the Yuan administrative bureaucracies and military, a few Omanis are mentioned to have assumed positions of high status: Sayyid bin Abu ‘Ali, a prominent Qalhati merchant long-established in Malabar, came into the benefaction of Kublai Khan (r. 1260–1294) and spent his twilight years in Khanbaliq, modern-day Beijing.10

By the sixteenth century, the intermediary role long occupied by Omani seafarers and merchants in the Indian Ocean was coming to an end.

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