Article

Persian merchants and missionaries in medieval Malaya

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Persian merchants and missionaries in medieval Malaya

Brian E. Colless published “Persian Merchants and Missionaries in Medieval Malaya” in 1969 in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (Vol. 42, No. 2), presenting a comprehensive re-examination of Western Asian commercial and religious presence in the Malay Peninsula during the first seven centuries CE. Drawing on previously underutilized Syriac (Nestorian Christian) sources alongside Chinese, Arabic, and Ptolemaic evidence, Colless argues that Persian merchants and missionaries operated in the region far earlier and more extensively than the prevailing scholarly consensus—particularly O.W. Wolters’ thesis—allowed, and that the ancient entrepot known as Kalah was located at Klang rather than Mergui.

Summary

Colless opens by engaging directly with Wolters’ 1967 argument that Malay shipping, not Persian vessels, dominated the luxury-goods trade with China in the fifth and sixth centuries, and that Persian ships voyaged no further east than Ceylon (pp. 11–12). Colless concedes that unambiguous evidence for Persian ubiquity cannot be produced, but introduces Syriac literary material demonstrating the presence of Persian Christians in the Indies by 650 at the latest, and that Persian merchants were known to cross the Bay of Bengal and reach Malaya and China (pp. 14–16). He supplements this with Chinese references to 500 families of hu (Iranians) in the kingdom of Tun-sun on the Malay Peninsula, which he interprets as a Persian trading colony likely entered via the southern sea-route (p. 13).

The article’s central contribution is a detailed topographical argument for the location of the Malayan entrepots. Colless systematically evaluates and rejects the identifications of Kalah with Kra (Hall), Mergui (Wheatley), and Kedah, instead aligning with Fatimi’s case for Klang on the grounds of sailing-time data, the position of Barus as a port on the Strait of Malacca, tin-mining evidence, and the Chinese statement that Ko-lo lay south-east of P’an-p’an (pp. 22–31). He then identifies Qaqullah (also Ko-ku-lo, Takkola, Takola) with Takuapa and Kakha Island, supported by Lamb’s archaeological finds of Islamic pottery there in the ninth and tenth centuries and by Ibn Sa’id’s geographical description of the mountain and river complex (pp. 31–38). P’an-p’an is placed at Kra, and Fo-lo-an at Kuala Berang on the Trengganu River, where the earliest Islamic inscription on the Peninsula was found (pp. 36, 39–42).

A secondary thread runs throughout the article: the role of Nestorian Christian missionaries as agents of cultural transmission. Colless shows that the Syriac Church maintained organized sees in India (defined as extending to Kalah/Klang) and China from at least the fifth century, that monks travelled by sea to these regions, and that the “pearl of great price” motif served as a shared cultural symbol linking Persian merchants and missionaries (pp. 17–21). He concludes by situating Persian influence within broader processes of Indianisation and Islamisation, suggesting that Sassanian control of trade routes played a role analogous to the later Portuguese disruption of Asian commerce (pp. 44–46).

Key Findings

  • The Syriac patriarch Ishoyahb III (r. 647/650–657/8) defined “India” as extending “from the maritime borders of the Persian kingdom to the country called QLH [Kalah], a distance of 1,200 parasangs,” placing Kalah firmly in the East Indies and establishing it as the furthest limit of the Nestorian mission in that direction (p. 21).
  • Chia-Tan’s itinerary (785–805) places Ko-lo (Kalah) on the northern shore of the Strait of Malacca, passed when sailing up from Srivijaya toward Barus and the Nicobars, with Ko-ku-lo (Qaqullah) further west (i.e., further up the Strait), a sequence that only works if Kalah is at Klang and Qaqullah at Takuapa (pp. 25–27).
  • Ibn Khurdadhbih’s sailing times—six days from the Nicobars to Kalah, then two days to Barus—parallel the Chinese data and confirm that Barus was an east-coast Sumatran outlet for camphor, not the modern west-coast location, thereby fixing Kalah at approximately 3°N latitude (Klang) rather than 9–10°N (Mergui or Kra) (pp. 26–27).
  • Alastair Lamb’s archaeological survey identified only two sites on the Malay Peninsula with significant Islamic pottery and glass: Kakha Island near Takuapa (ninth–tenth centuries) and Pengkalan Bujang in Kedah (thirteenth–fourteenth centuries), which Colless assigns to Qaqullah and Kedah respectively, leaving Klang’s absence of Islamic finds to be explained by centuries of tin-mining and alluvial burial (pp. 23, 30–31).
  • The Chronicle of Seert records that the fifth-century Catholicos Ahai was sent by Yazdagird I to investigate claims about “merchandise and pearls transported in ships from India and China,” and that the sixth-century bishop Ezekiel was dispatched by Khosrau Anoshirwan to fish for pearls—both passages attesting to Persian maritime reach and the pearl motif that also characterizes Iranian merchants in Chinese tales (pp. 18–19).
  • The Nestorian patriarch Elias ordained a metropolitan and two bishops in 1503 “for India and the isles of the sea, which are between Dabhagh, Sin, and Masin,” demonstrating that the Church still maintained an organizational claim over the South-East Asian region a millennium after its initial expansion (p. 43).

Conclusion

Colless’ definitive historical takeaway is that the lower west coast of the Malay Peninsula—specifically the Klang and Sungei Ujong regions—was home to a flourishing entrepot of great antiquity that served as the primary rendezvous for Middle Eastern and Chinese shipping well before the rise of Malacca, thereby correcting Wheatley’s assertion that no kingdom of importance existed on that stretch of coast in the pre-Malaccan period (pp. 30, 41). More broadly, he demonstrates that Persian commercial and religious activity in South-East Asia was continuous from at least the third century through the sixteenth, that Nestorian missionaries and merchants were co-present agents of cultural transmission, and that the mechanisms of Indianisation and Islamisation in the region cannot be understood without accounting for the role of Western Asian maritime networks in carrying both goods and ideas across the Indian Ocean.

Context

  • The article was published in the JMBRAS, the flagship journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, and draws heavily on the Society’s own prior publications, including Wheatley’s The Golden Khersonese (1961), Lamb’s archaeological surveys (1964), and Tibbetts’ studies of early Muslim traders (1957), situating it within a vibrant mid-century programme of historical geography and archaeology in Malaysian scholarship.
  • The illustrations included in the article (Figs. 4–9) document traditional Malay house types in Kota Bharu and Trengganu, suggesting that Colless was simultaneously conducting fieldwork on vernacular architecture, possibly in connection with a separate study of Persian architectural influence in the region.

References