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Indians in the Ocean

Indians in the Ocean

Cultures of Trade and Travel c. 1000-1500 | A History of Medieval India through Indian Ocean Trade, Commerce and Cultural Exchange

Mahmood Kooria
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Long before European ships dominated the Indian Ocean, traders and travellers from the Indian subcontinent were already navigating its vast waters. In search of profit, adventure, and knowledge, their journeys shaped how Indians evolved as a society, what they consumed in their material lives, and how and why they produced and circulated oceanic knowledge.

Indians in the Ocean explores the ocean’s role in shaping the economic and cultural histories of the subcontinent between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. Drawing on a rich array of historical sources in many languages, it reconstructs the experiences of people from the region who travelled, traded, and participated in the global economy at a time when the oceans formed the principal highways linking countries and communities across continents.

Imprint: Penguin Business

Published: Sep/2026

ISBN: 9789377300616 (Paperback)

Length : 302 Pages

MRP : ₹499.00

Indians in the Ocean

Cultures of Trade and Travel c. 1000-1500 | A History of Medieval India through Indian Ocean Trade, Commerce and Cultural Exchange

Mahmood Kooria

Long before European ships dominated the Indian Ocean, traders and travellers from the Indian subcontinent were already navigating its vast waters. In search of profit, adventure, and knowledge, their journeys shaped how Indians evolved as a society, what they consumed in their material lives, and how and why they produced and circulated oceanic knowledge.

Indians in the Ocean explores the ocean’s role in shaping the economic and cultural histories of the subcontinent between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. Drawing on a rich array of historical sources in many languages, it reconstructs the experiences of people from the region who travelled, traded, and participated in the global economy at a time when the oceans formed the principal highways linking countries and communities across continents.

Buying Options
Paperback / Hardback

Mahmood Kooria

Mahmood Kooria is a historian of the Indian Ocean World, currently teaching at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, and Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Global History. He did his PhD in Global History at the Leiden University Institute for History in 2016, authored Islamic Law in Circulation: Shafi?i Texts across the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean (Cambridge, 2022), and co-edited Malabar in the Indian Ocean World: Cosmopolitanism in a Maritime Historical Region (Oxford, 2018). In 2024, he won the Infosys Prize in Humanities and Social Sciences for his contributions to the studies of Islam and Malabar in the Indian Ocean world.

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