One of the most well-known Syrian merchant in Kerala’s history must be Thomas of Cana, who landed in Kodungallur with seventy-two Jewish-Christian families around 345 CE. By then, Kerala already had a large community of Christians who traced their beliefs to the evangelical activities of Thomas the Apostle in the first century CE. Thomas is believed to have first converted Jewish families in Kerala — people belonging to his community from the region of present-day Syria-Palestine-Lebanon, which means that they had been living in Kerala long before his arrival. Indeed, certain words in the Old Testament and Jewish legends place them on the Malabar coast as early as the sixth century BCE, although historians balk at these unproven claims.
What is undisputed is that Kerala was once a global trade destination of the world. At its ports laid anchor ships from Graeco-Roman Egypt, Arabia, Indonesia, China, east Africa, and other parts of India. Kerala’s produce and goods from inland India — ebony, teak, pepper, spices, and carnelian beads, were traded by merchants from all over the known world. By the time an Egyptian merchant penned his travel notes in Periplus Maris Erythraei, ca. 50 CE, Kerala was already famous among maritime trade circles. But how did this state of affairs come to be? Considering that much of the native economy and culture was agrarian since very ancient times, who was the influencer that put Kerala’s name on the world’s trade map? When did Kerala’s trade begin, much less its fame?
M.G.S. Narayanan theorizes in his book, Cultural Symbiosis in Kerala, that “Jews and Christians came to this undeveloped semi-tribal society [Kerala] devoid of naval power and coinage, with shiploads of gold and the promise of trade.” Although his colorful description of Kerala’s early society is undoubtedly naive, it was very likely the “Jews and Christians” who started trade with Kerala, but probably not during the timeframe he had in mind (ca. 78 BCE and later) and not by the religious labels he assigns to them.
There are no written records at all about Kerala’s rise to global mercantile fame, but there is a suggestion of the beginnings of trade in the ancient folklore Keralolpatthi. According to this tale, Cheraman Perumal, the last viceroy of the faraway king who once ruled Kerala, is said to have summoned a chonakar from his hometown in the distant land and established him in Kerala as the first aazhi raja, ‘ruler of coastal domains.’ He then summoned many traders from foreign lands and settled them along coastal regions explicitly for the purpose of conducting trade.
The word chonakar is used today in Kerala to refer to people of the Islamic faith, in particular, traders by traditional occupation. There was a Muslim aazhi raja during the time of the Portuguese and presumably earlier. So, both the chonakar and the aazhi raja of the folktale are factual. But Kerala’s trade was flourishing in 50 CE when the Egyptian merchant penned his famous travel notes, and Islam was several centuries later than that; so, it is unlikely that the first trader given the title of aazhi raja was Muslim if Keralolpatthi is true. Could he have been an Arab, a forefather perhaps of his later descendants who converted to the Islamic faith?
People today tend to associate the word Islam with Arabs; however, in the time of Prophet Muhammad (ca. 600 CE), the ancestors of people seen as “Arabs” today comprised various tribes such as Phoenicians, Minaeans, and Sabaeans. Along with the Islamic religion, some of these tribes adopted Arab identities later in history, while others among them adopted Christian beliefs earlier. Among these tribes, Phoenicians — inhabitants of present-day Palestine and Syria — were maritime experts since very ancient times. Their skills in naval shipbuilding and navigation on the oceans were unparalleled. They were among the first global traders of the world.
By the latter half of the second millennium BCE, Phoenicians were owners of great commercial fleets on the Mediterranean, and possibly on the Red Sea. Their trading ships called on Egyptian harbors with cedar and other valuables from the Levant. They belonged to no one nation, for they were a confederation of seafaring traders rather than a country bound by territorial borders. Bearing no desire to conquer any people, seeking no profits beyond what their traditional trade brought them, owing no allegiance to anyone but the gods of the oceans, these politically neutral, peaceful people plied the seas with their large ocean-going vessels, tying the world together with invisible mercantile threads while keeping themselves at a safe distance from treacherous political winds of their times.
Their amicable commercial relationship with Egypt dated back to predynastic times before 2900 BCE. The first ocean-going Egyptian vessels (ca. 2560 BCE) were made with Phoenician technology and called kpn ships, referring to Byblos, a central harbor town of Phoenicia (see my previous article Ships, Boats, and Barges). By ca. 1900 BCE, Phoenician sailors were working alongside Egyptians on the Red Sea. Mixed enterprise flourished as both the pharaoh and merchants contributed capital to invest in manufacturing ships and in long-distance trade. The hallmark of Egyptian foreign policy during 2000–1650 BCE was expansion of trade with the help of Phoenicians throughout regions where Egypt could assert her influence.
Attesting to the growing importance of maritime trade in Egyptian policy, archeological evidence suggests that pharaohs ca. 1990–1800 BCE preferred the sea route, rather than inland roads for trade. During this time, the eastern Nile delta town of Avaris experienced a massive influx of Phoenician immigrants including sailors and ship carpenters. These immigrant Phoenicians engaged in foreign trade, sea travel, and boat production for Egyptian ocean-going enterprises. Archeological evidence in Egypt shows that around early to late 1800 BCE, Egyptian pharaohs bestowed the title ‘ruler’ on a high personality of Phoenician origin who was responsible to the Egyptian crown for regulating trade expeditions on behalf of Egypt, exactly like the aazhi raja of Kerala.
In fact, chon-khr meant ‘Phoenician sailor’ in Egyptian, and thus, unbelievable as it may sound, Keralolpatthi may have chronicled actual historical facts in its narrative of Cheraman, viceroy of the Egyptian pharaoh, summoning Phoenician sailors from Avaris to Kerala around 1880 BCE (providing yet another corroboration of the timeline), settling them along coastal regions, and bestowing the title ‘ruler’ on their leader in an echo of the Egyptian policies of his homeland. Hence, it was not “Brahmin-Kshatriya prejudice against trade and navigation [that] induced [the rulers of Kerala] to leave such ‘vulgar’ affairs [as trade] in the hands of foreigners,” as M.G.S. Narayanan theorized, but respect for ancient customs handed down from the time of pharaonic Egyptian hegemony in the land.
Pre-modern trade on the Indian Ocean was not as easy as a journey on land; if one lost his way, he could not stop by the nearest settlement and ask for directions. The journey required specific ship-based expertise, maritime navigational skills, and a good support system for merchant-sailors in the source and destination harbors, because the seasonality of the monsoon also meant that the sailors had to stay either at their homes or their destinations to ride out the seasonal storms. Because of the nature of open sea voyages: long duration, lack of proper communication, and political vulnerability of foreign traders to predation by their hosts, merchants often organized a community of resident compatriots on foreign ground, generally called “trading diasporas,” which served as go-betweens in cross-cultural international trade. These diaspora groups were experts on home and host cultures alike, and provided the necessary trust needed for their countrymen operating far away from home.
Thus, in the early to late 1800 BCE, for almost the same reasons that Egypt likely built a permanent settlement in Kerala — to profit from the natural resources of the land through a local colony, Phoenician merchant sailors must have formed a trading diaspora on the Malabar coast, launching Kerala into its three-thousand-five-hundred years long reign as a global trading powerhouse.
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