ABSTRACT
With the fall of the Han Dynasty and the decline of Byzantium, Chinese and European involvement in the Indian Ocean trading scene receded for a time. The difficulties of China and Mediterranean Europe offered an opportunity for the original trading societies of the Indian Ocean periphery to reassert their independence. Most notably, the lands at the western edge of the Indian Ocean that had first led in civilization – the Fertile Crescent and Egypt – now reclaimed their prominence. The rise of Islam gave them a new unity and a rallying ideology, and Muslim networks displaced previous trading patterns. This chapter will look in turn at the four main sub-periods of this Arab-led period:
1 the rise of the newly-Islamic Arabs of Mecca and Medina in the early seventh century;
2 the Ummayad Caliphate of Damascus from the mid-seventh to the mideighth century;
3 the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad from the mid-eighth to the early tenth century; and
4 the Fatimid Caliphate of Cairo from the tenth through the eleventh century.
