Modernity and Culture

From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean

Robert Ilbert, Leila Fawaz, C. A. Bayly

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9780231504775
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

Between the 1890s and 1920s, cities in the vast region stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean were experiencing political, social, economic, and cultural changes that had been set in motion at least since the early nineteenth century. As the age of pre-colonial empires gave way to colonial and national states, there was a sense that a particular liberalism of culture and economy had been irretrievably lost to a more intolerant age.

Avoiding such dichotomies as East/West and modernity/tradition, this book provides a comparative analysis of contested versions of the concept of modernity. The book examines not only the "high" culture of scholars and the literati, but also popular music, the visual arts, and journalism. The contributors incorporate discussion of the way in which the business in both commodities and ideas was conducted in the increasingly cosmopolitan cities of the time.

1	Trade and Port Cities in the Red Sea–Gulf of Aden Region in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century
	Michel Tuchscherer

A favored trade route between the regions surrounding the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea–Gulf of Aden area permitted contact between Mediterranean and Asiatic networks onto which regional and local networks were grafted. Port cities developed where these various networks came together as a result of both regional and more distant changes. Here I propose to analyze the elements that made the coherence of this area possible, as well the functions provided by the port cities, and then provide a chronology for this region’s evolution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The Diverse Function of Port Cities over Time

The area comprising the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden and their hinterlands forms a coherent environment organized around two complementary waterways, long and narrow appendages of the Indian Ocean oriented toward the Mediterranean. This interior sea separates the African shore from the Arabian Peninsula, though the opposite shores are never far apart. It is also inhospitable to shipping, as it provides few anchorages or harbors. The littoral borders desert and is usually narrow and sparsely populated, mostly by nomads. This region is poor in men, food, and resources, and as such not well suited to the development of either ports or cities.

Behind these coastal zones so ill-suited to human activity, there are relatively well-watered mountains and fertile oases where people have settled and states whose resources are essentially agricultural have developed. Though not attuned to the sea, these political entities have not been able to live in total autarky. With their continental borders on vast desert wastes or, in the case of Ethiopia, on vast marshes, they have always been keen to maintain the outlets to the sea to ensure communication with the outside world.

This physical coherence is reinforced by a certain number of common cultural traits shared by the region’s inhabitants. They almost all speak Semitic languages; they have maintained close relations since ancient times, to the north and south as well as from shore to shore; and they are marked by the three great monotheistic religions that developed near the Red Sea.

Commercial Activities

Although this region is coherent at both the physical and cultural levels, its trade displays a hierarchical pattern. At the highest level is long-distance trade, often dominated by networks of usually foreign merchants who have adopted sophisticated commercial practices. In ancient times this trade followed two routes: a sea route between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean south of the Red Sea and along the Arabian coast, and a land route in the north following the caravan routes in the Arabian Peninsula or the Nubian Desert. Until the nineteenth century, there was an almost continuous flow of gold and silver along this route from the Mediterranean to India and China to compensate for the consistently limited flow of goods. This trade was based on hard cash. The Ottoman dinar and Venetian ducat dominated transactions right up to the end of the sixteenth century, but during the first quarter of the seventeenth century American silver minted into Sevillian piasters or Dutch guilders also became common.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, this long-distance route remained subject to the implacable whim of the winds—the monsoons of the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden, the trade winds over the Red Sea. Isthmuses and straits were a hindrance, as well. In the vicinity of Bab al-Mandab, shifting from navigation on the high seas to coastal trade generally required the transfer of merchandise to other ships. The incoming ships preferred to discharge their cargo at Shihr or Aden, and, after the second half of the sixteenth century, at Mokha, rather than to undertake the long and risky voyage on the Red Sea. Near the Sinai Peninsula, shifting from sea to land required another transfer. In the upper latitudes of the 20th and 22nd parallels, a change in the prevailing winds often imposed another transfer. From the eleventh century under the Fatimids until the end of the fourteenth century under the Mamluks, ships unloaded their cargoes at Aydhab¹ on the African shore or sometimes at Suakin. From there, caravans carried the merchandise to the Nile Valley and then down the Nile River by felouque to Cairo, where it was carried by ship again to the ports of the Mediterranean.

When Jiddah later secured control of most of the trade,² two different routes were possible. Ships carried merchandise by sea up to the tip of Sinai, where it was brought ashore at Tur³ and transported to Cairo by caravan. This avoided risking the difficult journey up the Gulf of Suez against winds that were almost always contrary. The port of Qusayr was also popular for the same reasons: from there, merchandise could be brought up the Nile Valley to Cairo.⁴ In the other land route, from Jiddah, caravan merchandise went across the Arabian Peninsula to either Cairo or Damascus before reaching the Mediterranean.⁵

Although large-scale commerce crossed the entire zone from the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Aden, other commercial activity developed at a lower level among different regional entities built around political units that had formed in the hinterland beyond the inhospitable desert coasts. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Mamluks still controlled Egypt. Ethiopia was divided into a Christian kingdom established on the high plateau and a Muslim emirate in the southeast.⁶ In the Arabian Peninsula, the sharifs of Mecca controlled the Hijaz, but Cairo was under the suzerainty of the Mamluks.⁷ The Yemen was divided among the Zaydite imams on the high plateau, the weakened Tahirid state in the southern part,⁸ and the Kathiri sultanate consolidating in the Hadramawt.⁹ These entities carried on an active bilateral trade to alleviate chronic food shortages resulting from the arid climate. In Arabia, which was largely desert, the rare oases in the north and mountains of the south with very irregular rainfall were never able to meet food needs, especially of the coastal cities that could not be nourished by the meager resources of the local hinterland. The African shore, however, was in a much better position, and the immense Nile Valley nourished the holy cities of the Hijaz, mainly through waqfs.¹⁰ The Ethiopian steppes and high plateau also produced abundant quantities of grain and animal products for the Hijaz, as well as for the Yemen.¹¹ The African side could thus support the needs of the people on the opposite shore.

This regional commerce was largely run by local merchants. Products supplied by the African side were exchanged for the plentiful merchandise coming from the large-scale transit commerce from the port cities of the Arabian side. Money, which was common in the ports, yielded to barter or nonmetallic money in remote areas: peppercorns in Hadramawt,¹² salt or cloth in Ethiopia.¹³

Trade in the Red Sea–Gulf of Aden area was also stimulated by the pilgrimage routes, especially those that carried the faithful of the Muslim world to the holy sites of the Hijaz.¹⁴ But Christians from Ethiopia and the Nile Valley also went to Jerusalem,¹⁵ and numerous saints’ tombs attracted far-flung pilgrims, such as Isma‘ili Indians going to Haraz in the mountains of Yemen, and Muslims traveling to Mecca.¹⁶ The Mecca pilgrimage, held according to the calendar of the Hegira, only rarely coincided with the arrival in Jiddah of ships from Egypt, India, or Yemen, whose movements were determined by the seasonal patterns of the winds, and so even if the coming of thousands of pilgrims to the Hijaz greatly stimulated commerce, trade was still governed by natural factors such as the monsoons of the Indian Ocean, the harvest seasons of spices in Malabar and Sumatra, the manufacture of textiles in Gujurat,¹⁷ and, at the end of the sixteenth century, by the coffee harvest in the mountains of Yemen.

Transfer, Taxation, Distribution, and Export

Large-scale transit commerce and regional exchanges gave rise on both shores to port cities that performed specific functions. They were junction points between the caravan routes and sea lanes, or between sea...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents 
• Acknowledgments
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: The Connected World of Empires
• 1. Trade and Port Cities in the Red Sea-Gulf of Aden Region in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century
• 2. A Divided Sea: The Cairo Coffee Trade in the Red Sea Area during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
• 3. The Red Sea Ports During the Revolution in Transportation, 1800-1914
• 4. Port Cities as Nodal Points of Change: The Indian Ocean, 1890s-1920s
• 5. Haifa at the Crossroads: An Outpost of the New World Order
• 6. Islamic Universalism and the Construction of Regional Identity in Turn-of-the-Century Basra: Sheikh Ibrahim al-Haidari's Book Revisited
• 7. Damascus and the Pilgrim Caravan
• 8. Aspects of Economy and Society in the Syrian Provinces: Aleppo in Transition, 1880-1925
• 9. Representing Copts and Muhammadans: Empire, Nation, and Community in Egypt and India, 1880-1914
• 10. Izmir 1922: A Port City Unravels
• 11. Negotiating Colonial Modernity and Cultural Difference: Indian Muslim Conceptions of Community and Nation, 1878-1914
• 12. The Tangled Ends of an Empire and Its Sultan
• 13. Racial Readings of Empire: Britain, France, and Colonial Modernity in the Mediterranean and Asia
• 14. Alexandria: A Mediterranean Cosmopolitan Center of Cultural Production
• 15. Between Politics and Literature: Journals in Alexandria and Istanbul at the End of the Nineteenth Century
• 16. Printing and Urban Islam in the Mediterranean World, 1890-1920
• 17. Space and Time on the Indian Ocean Rim: Theory and History
• Index