Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/65

 CHINESE AND ARAB TRADE WITH INDIA 29 for the ill-treatment of Arab merchantmen and pilgrims near the mouth of the Indus on their voyage from Ceylon. During the following centuries the Indian Ocean became an outlying domain of Islam. The Arab geog- raphers mapped the course from the Persian Gulf to China into " seven seas," each having a name of its own, and with the Arab-Chinese harbour of Gampu on their eastern limit. As the Chinese trade grew in volume, Ceylon had to share her gains as the meeting mart of Europe and Asia with entrepots still further east. Abulfeda, the princely geographer of the four- teenth century (1273-1331), mentions Malacca as the most important trading-place between Arabia and China, the common resort of Moslems, Persians, Hindus, and Chinese. While Greek and Roman merchants had enriched themselves by the Indo-Egyptian trade, the actual sea- passage from India to Egypt, like the actual caravan route from the Persian Gulf to the Levant, remained in the hands of Semitic races. Colonies of Arabs and Jews settled in an early century of our era, or perhaps before it, on the southern Bombay coast, where their descendants form distinct communities at the present day. The voyages of Sinbad the Sailor are a popular romance of the Indian trade under the caliphs of Bagh- dad, probably in the ninth century A. D. Although inserted in the " Thousand and One Nights, " they form a distinct work in Arabic. Sinbad traverses the ocean regions from the Persian Gulf to Malabar, the Maldive