Nakhudas and Nauvittakas: Ship-Owning Merchants in the West Coast of India (C. Ad 1000-1500)

Abstract

Among the diverse types of merchants active in India during the Þrst half of the second millennium,

'Unfinished Business': Ethnic Complementarities and the Political Contagion of Conflict and Peace in Gujarat

“…The Periplus Maris Erythraei (Casson, ed, 1989), an ancient Greek navigator's handbook (ca 1-4th century) provided the locations of a number of pre-Muslim and early Muslim ports which were then supplemented by moving forward in time, examining the records of contemporary Muslim, Christian and Chinese observers, including Chau Jukua (1225), Ibn Ibn Battuta (1355), Ludovico di Verthema (1503), Duarte Barbosa (1519) and Zayn al-Din al Malibari (1528). These contemporary accounts were augmented by secondary sources (Yule, ed, 1866, Subrahmanyam, 1990, Chaudhuri, 1995, Chakravarti, 2000. Finally, every town listed in the Imperial gazetteers of India from 1907 was examined for evidence of contemporary and medieval trade and to trace its foundation and historic role as an administrative, as well as a trade, center.…”