ABSTRACT
The modern historian Andre Wink has written on the commercial relationship between the Arabs and inhabitants of eastern India which had been hinted long back by the Algerian historian Maurice Lombard. After the establishment of the Sultanate in India in the early thirteenth century new towns began to emerge in northern and eastern India which had been termed by the late Muhammad Habib as the Second Urban Revolution. Long distance internal trade depended mainly on bullocks for transportation of goods. During the Sultanate period, the markets of Delhi and Multan were largely connected with the activities of the merchants of Lahore and the Middle East by caravan trade. According to tradition the long distance trade of the Chinese was in the hands of the Kling merchants. In the commerce of the Indian Ocean there were not only the rich merchants but also ordinary smaller merchants.
