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Saturday, June 8, 2019

Shahs of Astrakhan

Astrakhan 1681

‘Sutur’ was a leading Indian merchant in the 17th-century Astrakhan. This Russian town has been the traditional economic and cultural capital of the Caspian region. Consolidation of Russian authority and expansion towards South under the Romanovs, opened a new Asiatic route of commerce for Russia. The Muscovite state with its modest trading class, then decided to welcome Armenians, Iranians, and Indian merchants. A series of documents preserved in the Russian archives in recent years helped to throw considerable light on this Indian diaspora, led by merchants like Sutur.

Perhaps we would never get to know the real name of ‘Sutur’ as all our information about this extraordinary Indian merchant comes from Russian sources, where he is always identified as ‘Sutur’. In a series of remarkable petitions submitted to the Tsar–and preserved in Russian archives–Sutur mentions that he arrived at Astrakhan from Iran in the 1620s because of favourable business conditions. His brothers worked in Northern Iranian cities as merchants. While generally praising the rule of law under the Tsars, once he complained about a government functionary, who used to harass merchants. His complaint led to quick removal of the officer concerned. Sutur claimed that in 1646, at his invitation, his brothers and twenty-five other Indian merchants arrived at Astrakhan with large amount of merchandise and some of them settled down at Astrakhan.

In 1647, Sutur had obtained permission to set up an Indian gostiny dvor, literally guest house but in effect, a residential bazaar at Astrakhan. This dvor was completed in 1649, when a government census found that twenty-six Indian merchants are living there. They were substantial merchants–Sutur himself dealt in all sorts of commodities and he sourced his stuff from Isfahan and Qazvin, where his brothers were settled. At one point, he went ahead and created another base in Moscow, where he himself stayed for three years.

Ateshgah or fire temple of Baku, used as a place of worship by Hindu and Sikh merchants
Indian merchants and moneylenders were present in significant numbers in Safavid Iran (1500-1722) and Uzbek Khanates or Turan (1500-1920). This important trading diaspora is almost unknown to modern scholarship as there is very little documentation available of them. Merchants like Sutur did not go directly from India but advanced to Astrakhan from his base in Isfahan or Qazvin. Indian diaspora in Iran and Turan not only had the advantage of a common language (Persian) but also operated within the common Timurid legacy in terms of political framework and a similar approach to commerce. Russia was somewhat different but the Russian state welcomed the Indian merchants as they had almost no mercantile class of her own.

For centuries, India dominated the global trade by dint of its cotton exports and the picture was no different for the 17th-century Persian or Russian markets. Varieties of cotton, sugar, and indigo and a few speciality products formed the Indian export basket, the principal imports items were horses, some silk and other luxury goods. Overall, India enjoyed a positive trade balance made up by export of gold and silver by Iran and Turan.

Invocation to Lord Ganesh, Baku Fire Temple
Apart from Muslim Afghan merchants, often from Lohani or Luharni tribes, those who were known as Multani or simply as bania in Iranian and Russian records, were mainly Khattris and also Marwaris and Jains. Their home base was Multan, where rich patriarchs, called Shahs, deputed their underlings or gumasthas to trade in far-off places. In Isfahan alone, there were 10,000 ‘permanently settled’ Indians during the mid-seventeenth century. There were many others in Iranian and Afghan towns, between Multan and Isfahan, their networks were spread all over cities and towns of Afghanistan from Kandahar to Kunduz.

Invocation to Sikh Adi Grantha, baku Fire Temple
In 1727, an Indian merchant ‘Vishnat Narmaldas(ov)’ died while on a business trip to Kizil Yar on the Terek River. Before his death, he had asked another Indian ‘Ardial’ (Hardayal?) to take his property back to his father and relatives in India, but a third Indian, ‘Narayan Chanchamal(ov)’ petitioned the Russian authorities not to allow Ardial to leave the city of Astrakhan as he had claims against the deceased. This petition, which was eventually sent back to the Indian community to settle as per their customary law–presents a unique picture of an Indian mercantile community in a far-off land. Living inside their gostiny dvor, rich Indian merchants had their assistants and priests with them. They maintained their traditional lifestyle including daily rituals, food habits, and concepts of ritual pollution. They were praised for their fairness and hard work as well as high degree of personal hygiene.

‘Sukhanant Dyrymdas’ was an archetypical Multani Shah. He came to Astrakhan from Multan at the age of seventeen, died in Moscow at the age of sixty in 1759. His estate, consisting of cash, goods, letters of credit, and other valuables, was valued at three lakh Roubles (this is at a time when a substantial Russian merchant’s worth was around 1,000 Roubles). Most Indians traded in all kinds of goods and the larger among them indulged in money lending, bill discounting, and other banking activities. For Astrakhan Indians, their supply hinterland stretched up to Multan, through Iran and Afghanistan and their forward trading networks terminated either in Moscow or Nizhnii Novgorod. In 1684, twenty-one Indian merchants were there in Moscow, where they shared a gostiny dvor with Armenians, Bukharans, and Iranians. In Astrakhan itself, their number increased to 209 by 1725 and up to half of them were merchants and moneylenders, others were relatives, assistants, and priests. Some of them, presumably Muslims, lived in Bukharan dvor also. A few married local ladies and settled down outside gostiny. There were rare examples of a few converting to Russian Orthodox Church. Around the same time, there were around 300 Indian merchants in Bukhara.

From Moscow to Astrakhan and from Isfahan, Balkh and Bukhara to Kabul and Multan–they were all linked through kinship and hundi networks. The general practice was to advance another family member or retainer to the next post. This family/kinship based agency system–driven from their home base of Multan by wealthy patriarchs was in no way different from their European contemporaries in Genoa or Pisa. In pre-modern world, in the absence of a universal commercial law and state as an implementing agency for enforcing commercial contract, it was this family/kinship bonds and trust as well as fear of social sanction, in case a trust is broken, used to ensure commercial compliance. Indian merchants like Sukhanant or Sutur were at par or sometimes even better than their European counterparts in terms of their business ethos and financial skills and ability to organise family firms across the vast geography. Their organisational pattern as well as business practices in many ways conformed to a common Eurasian merchant type.

In 1723, ‘Anbu Ram Mulin’ petitioned the Tsar, Peter the Great to permit him to trade in St Petersburg and Archangel and to transit through Russia to trade in Germany on the one side and China on the other. This reflects the confidence of a trading community–which according to the statistics of the next year–imported three times more to Astrakhan than their nearest rivals, the Armenians. In the face of growing opposition from emerging Russian business lobbies, he was denied such permission. His immediate business prospect was, however, no way affected. But the rosy world of Anbu Ram and his compatriots was about to crumble–and it was politics which was chiefly responsible for that.

A year before his remarkable petition, the Safavid rule melted away in front of a ragtag Afghan army. The power vacuum created by this Ghilzai sack of Isfahan lasted nearly seven decades. There were already complaints about extortionate Persian bureaucracy, now the total absence of order in their hinterland destroyed the supply chain of Indian merchants of Astrakhan. They were dealt an even more severe blow as the Mughal central authority went on a downward spiral and for decades, their home base of Punjab remained seriously disturbed. In next two decades, Indian population in Astrakhan was halved and by the turn of the century it was almost over.

Alexander Burnes
In 1832, when Alexander Burnes arrived in Kabul on his way to Central Asia, he reported on Hindu moneylenders in Afghanistan. He was informed that Hindu merchants run their commercial networks/agencies from Astrakhan and Meshid to Calcutta. He was offered bills of exchange on Nizhnii Novgorod (on the Upper Volga region), Astrakhan, and Bukhara–this was the last time we heard about traditional Indian merchant establishments in Astrakhan and interiors of Russia. In Central Asia, of course, they continued as the prime moneylenders till the Russian Revolution. In fact, as the last vestiges of Multani networks, Hindu and Sikh moneychangers were visible on the streets of Kabul even a few years back.

For more such stories related to Indian business history, see Laxminama: Monks, Merchants, Money and Mantra by Anshuman Tiwari and Anindya Sengupta Bloomsbury 2018


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