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That trade goes back thousands of years. For example the early writing on the subcontinent appears to have spread from the Middle East.
by gumby 4y ago
That trade goes back thousands of years. For example the early writing on the subcontinent appears to have spread from the Middle East.
- alephnerd 4y agoYep! There are a lot of historic regional trade routes that have long existed that are only starting to get visibility in Western English speaking academia. For example that between Malacca and Northern Australia or betwee Paleo-Siberian and North Asian ethnic groups together with the Inuit. There was an interesting book I found once at a used book store that specifically translated Gujarati language Ismaili papers and sermons brought by traders that spread Islam into SEA. Sadly I didn't get around to buying that book, but could probably find it.
- selimthegrim 4y agoWhere was this used bookstore?
- alephnerd 4y agoSan Francisco. It was published by University of California Press I think but I can't remembers. Odds are it's still there tbh.
- selimthegrim 4y agoAm going soon and will happily scope it out lol
- alephnerd 4y agoAwesome! It was in Russian Hill Bookstore on Polk. Lmk if you find it!
- afwf1 4y agoWasn't SEA converted to Sunni Islam?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- alephnerd 4y agoIran was Sunni before the Safavids. Sunni Iranian holdouts took refuge in South Asia (hence why Sunni Islam in Punjab, Pakhtunkwa, Kashmir, and Sindh is heavily Persianized), South East Asia (hence why Islam in Malaysia and Aceh rely heavily on Persianate motifs as well), and Central Asia, where there was always a longstanding Persian Sunni community in Khorasan and Fergana. That said, there was a decent amount of Shia polysterization as well in SEA that ended up getting mixed and merged into Sunni Islam due to political influence. (If interested in sources please reply to this thread because I'm lazy and don't feel like doing extra work unless there is actual interest)
- afwf1 4y agoThanks, I'm a Sunni Muslim with ancestry from a farming community near a Gujarat port city, and I'm interested in how Islam was spread in SEA. Wasn't the Persianization of Sunni Islam due to the Delhi Sultanate and Mughals who had Persian cultural links? And do we know which Sunni Muslims mostly spread Islam to SEA? From what I understand Gujarati Muslims were heavily involved but with no reference to the specifics of the communities. My DNA also surprisingly showed substantial persian-like ancestry.
- alephnerd 4y agoThe Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals did have a macro-level impact, but that ignores a lot of the cultural interchange and migration between Northern Indian regions and Iranian regions (specifically Khorasan - for example, I don't have a formal education in Dari/Farsi but I've found I can easily understand people speaking the Persian dialect from Mashhad and Herat simply because of varying Punjabi/Koshur/Swati Pakhto fluency). In fact, pre-partition, in a number of Northern South Asian regions like Punjab and JK the default language used for a number of Hindu and Sikh Khathas and Hukumnamas was Dari, and my own Hindu/Sikh great-grandparents have older documents and stuff written in Dari. On the religious side, a number of Babas and Gurus revered by Punjabi+Pakhtun+Koshur Hindus and Sikhs were Persian Sunni refugees or emigrants. For example, Lakhdata/Sakai Sarwar/Syed Ahmad Sultan and Mohiuddin Chishti/Khwaja Gharib Nawaz/Khwaja Baba are from Abbasid/Persianate Baghdad and Sistan respectively, though there are tombs for hundreds of Pirs littered all over Northern India. In fact, in Iran there are Fakirs/Darvishs as well in the same manner and motif as you'd find among the Hindu and Sikh community in South Asia. And ethnicity wise, I'd honestly not be surprised. Gujarat/Sindh/Punjab/Pakhtunkhwa/Balochistan/Kashmir all literally neighbored ethnically Persian regions like Sistan and Khorasan. Modern Shia and Sunni Islam is heavily modernized/reformed in the 19th century due to the impact Imperialism had on the Ottoman, Iranian, Bukharan and Mughal spheres. The same thing happened to modern Hinduism with the influence of revivalist and reformist movements like Arya Samaj and Sarvarkar and modern Sikhism with the Akali Dal. While the older traditions still persist in smaller towns due to the time capsule effect, those traditions and folklore are slowly dying away. Such is society I guess. For the SEA standpoint, it was a mix of Gujarati, Marathi, and Tamil Muslims. I don't have names off the top of my head (largely due to my linguistic and cultural ignorance of those regions). If you're still interested reply to this thread and I can spend some time digging into it. It's somewhere in my notes from when I was attempting to write a thesis on Subaltern Religious Traditons before I pivoted to Tech Policy and Econometrics.
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