ABSTRACT
In the early decades of the nineteenth century, a system of credit similar in its essentials to the one described in the preceding chapter for Oman also existed in Kutch and East Africa. This system was controlled at the three outlets of Mandvi, Muscat and Zanzibar and was linked to Bombay by merchant groups or their agents who dominated the triangular East Africa-Gulf-western India maritime trade network. Interestingly this triangular network, using Omani ports as entrepôt stages for the re-export of East African goods to India and further afield towards the east, was described by al-Mas’ûdî as early as the tenth century:
The land of Zanj produces wild leopard skins. The people wear them as clothes, or export them to Muslim countries. They are the largest leopard skins and the most beautiful for making saddles…. It is from this country that come [ivory] tusks weighing fifty pounds or more. They usually go to Oman, and from there are sent to China and India. This is the chief trade route.1
