From times immemorial, Indian and Arab merchants held the keys to trade between India’s Southwestern ports and the Persian Gulf. Large quantities of merchandise would depart in ships owned by wealthy merchant families with connections across the subcontinent and the Gulf.

But with the triumph of the Europeans in the Arabian Sea shipping lines the Portuguese and later the English took over the monopoly of this trade. While most Indian Nawabs and Rajahs were powerless to see this monopoly slipping away from their hands and content with the still enormous profits as taxes they levied from these European merchant companies, it was with the advent of Haidar Ali in the Malabar coast in 1765, and after him his son Tipu Sultan that for the first time restrictions were placed on the European trade with Malabar. [1]

Tipu Sultan’s father, Haidar Ali had initially tried to establish a trading settlement in Shiraz but was offered Bandar Abbas by the Persians which was for some reason not taken advantage of. However the relations that were established with the Imam Ahmad of Oman led to more fruitful results. Such was the dependency of Oman on Indian rice that when its export from the port at Mangalore was withheld, it caused great hardship to the people there. [2] In July 1775, the Imam dispatched an envoy to Mangalore to find out why the export of rice to Muscat (the largest port city in Oman and it’s capital) had been prohibited. This was on account of a general order prohibiting rice shipment to foreign powers. However, the envoy was received by Haidar’s representative at Mangalore and the next year Haidar sent his representative to Muscat to sign an agreement with the Imam and to permanently stay there as the Mysorean envoy to Oman. The house that he occupied there was named the Bait ul-Nawab (House of the Nawab).

The discovery of the design of the Mohr (Seal) of Tipu Sultan’s factory at Muscat in the course of our (my and Adnan Rashid’s) study of Mysore’s seals [3] is an important milestone in confirming the importance of Muscat as a gateway to Mysorean trade and enterprise in the Persian Gulf as well as further insights into the date of the seal itself.

This seal is in Persian which reads

kan z(e)r kh(i)Zr

kothi masQaT

This translates into

Gold Mine Khizr

Warehouse Muscat

The text on the seal is in a format that is specific to Mysore’s departmental seals where the first line of the seal usually has a combination of poetic phrase which is always related to the context of the department for which the stamp has been made and many a time a religious verse or reference too. The second line is always the name of the department itself.

Line I:

The wealth of merchandise that this warehouse is endowed with is testament to the epithet ‘Gold Mine’ bestowed to it.  Khizr, is a figure described but not mentioned by name in the Quran as a righteous servant of God possessing great wisdom or mystic knowledge[4] Legend also represents him as a sort of tutelary guardian[5] of the waters – which needed to be crossed for Mysorean and Omani ships to visit each other’s’ ports.

Line II:

Kothi is Hindustani for warehouse (also called factory by the English) and this line points to this seal belonging to the warehouse at Muscat.

The dating of the Seal:

Most Islamic seals have dates – the year of striking on them but these dates are almost in every case missing from Tipu Sultan’s government seals. Kirkpatrick in the ‘Select Letters of Tippoo Sultan’ mentions of a letter where Tipu says –‘the year being indicated by “the numerical value of each inscription, reckoned according to the Zar notation”, its insertion is unnecessary’. He mentions that it is only Line I of each of Tipu’s government seals which will points us to the year when the seal was struck. This numerical tagging of alphabets is derived from the Islamic methods of numeration where the nine units, the nine tens, the first nine hundreds and the number one thousand are assigned consecutively to the twenty eight letters of the Arabic alphabet arranged alphabetically.

Kirkpatrick himself in one of the letters observes the description of a seal of the Muscat factory which he says ‘is not perfectly legible’. He gives the date of this seal as 1201 AH (1786 – 1787) after numerically tagging each letter that the seal is described to contain. Fortunately for us, we have discovered not only the description of the seal but also the sketch of it which will make our attempt at deciphering the date on the seal easier than that of Kirkpatrick’s. Tagging each alphabet of the poetic part (Line I) of the seal inscription we have –

k(400)a(1)n(700) z(20)r(10) kh(7)Z(60)r(10)

400+1+700+20+10+7+60+10 = 1208

1208 AH is 1793 – 1794 CE which means that this particular seal was cast that year. What needs to be remembered here is that this date is only for the seal and not for the warehouse which would have been built earlier. What also needs to be remembered is that the same department seal could be cast in different years and this is why the seal that Kirkpatrick saw, though not as legible as ours’ had a different date to it.

Now with a Mysorean factory there, Muscat emerged as the entry port from which Mysorean merchandise was distributed across the Persian Gulf and goods from the Gulf sent out to Mysore. The Sultans purpose in establishing these trade depots can best be expressed in his own words – “Sending in charge of your deputies or agents to other countries, the produce of our dominions, and disposing of the same there; the produce of those countries must be bought hither in return; and sold at such prices as will afford profit.”

Timber, sandalwood, calico, cardamom, pepper, rice, ivory and cloth were exported to the Gulf while silkworms, saffron-seeds, pistachio, sulphur, copper, china-ware were imported from there. The Imam of Muscat and Tipu Sultan enjoyed excellent relationship with each other often crossing the narrow boundaries of profit and trade. Preferential treatment to Mysorean and Omani merchants in each other’s’ ports gave a fillip to this trade. While the Europeans had to pay a duty of 5%, Indian 8% and the rest of the Arabs and Persians 6 1/4%, merchants from Mysore paid only 4%. Similar privileges were also given in kind to the Imam and his subjects at Mysore ports which now stretched across Canara and Malabar.

The factory or warehouse at Muscat was placed under the administrative control of the Asaf of Jamalabad (Mangalore). The head of this factory was a darogha, and under him were mutsaddis (writers) and gumashtas (agents) as well as a body of troops. [6] The buying and selling was done either directly by the darogha himself or through a broker. Tipu Sultan’s chief broker at Muscat was Seth Mao. Tipu maintained a brisk correspondence with the darogha at Muscat giving him detailed instructions about buying and selling transactions and various other matters relating to trade and organization of the warehouse or factory. Letters from Tipu to the Darogha at Muscat abound with him ordering for rock salt and sulphur to be purchased in lieu for rice from Mysore. There are also orders to source young date trees, saffron plant seeds as well as send gardeners to take care of these young plants in Mysore. Tipu’s preferred policy of commerce in kind and not cash helped Mysore to stay bullion rich and thus prosperous during Tipu’s reign.

This particular letter[7] from Tipu Sultan to the Imam of Muscat is testament to the most brotherly ties between the two states:

To the Imaum of Muscat ; dated 4th Hydery.

[After compliments] A Dorr (sailing vessel), the property of Rutn Jee and Jeevviui Doss, merchants of Muscat, having in these days [i. e. lately] been dismasted in a storm, came into Byle-Koal, ( a sea-port), belonging to the Sircar. Although, in such cases, it is customary for the prince, or ruler of the place, where a ship happens to be wrecked, to take possession of it, and whatever it contains ; yet, as there is no distinction between the country of the Sircar and Muscat, and as the above mentioned merchants declared themselves to be your subjects, the vessel in question, together with all the stores contained in it, has been restored to the aforesaid merchants, and is, accordingly, now dispatched to you, along with this friendly epistle. For the rest, peace be with you.

This is a fascinating letter which shows Tipu Sultan speaking of an Omani merchant ship wrecked in Mysorean waters which as per law then would be property of the state of Mysore. Tipu Sultan goes on in the letter to inform the Imam that since the merchants were Omani subjects, he regarded ‘no distinction between the country of the Sircar (Mysore) and Muscat’ and that all the goods as well as the vessel was to be restituted to the Omanis.

It is to Oman that Tipu turned to when he decided upon setting up silk farming centers in Mysore and silk worms were sent for [8] and received with great care from Muscat. Mysore today is among India’s largest centers for silk production and textiles which is a bequest to it from Oman in the late 18^th C.

While no figures are traceable of the volume of Mysore exports to and imports from Muscat; from another letter of a broker at Muscat, addressed to the British Governor of Bombay, mention is made of five or six vessels, laden with goods, arriving annually at Muscat flying Mysorean flags. This was in addition to innumerable dhows and dinghies, belonging to Arab and Mysorean merchantmen plying the seas.

After the defeat of Mysore in the 4th Anglo-Mysore war and Tipu Sultan’s death the factory at Muscat actually continued to function under the Wadiyars for a year before the British shut it down [9] and ordered for the return of the staff stationed there in 1800.

It was a testament to Mysorean and Omani belief in lasting friendship between these two states that Oman treated Mysore as a most favored partner even collecting lower taxes from Mysorean traders in relation to the tax from traders hailing from other Indian states. It also remains to be said that Oman even as back in the 18^th C contained Hindu merchants who as Omani subjects traded with Mysore just as Mysore under Tipu Sultan had a Hindu Mao Seth to represent its interests in Oman. The Imam of Muscat would have had to play a fine balancing act with British merchants and the East India Company which would not have appreciated this relationship.

Tipu Sultan returned this favour by ensuring that the Imam of Muscat, traders and citizens of Oman received the choicest of Mysorean wares at most competitive prices. Mysore under Tipu Sultan emerged as the last bastion of resistance to colonialism under the British and it was in no small way a result of Tipu Sultan’s genius in creating what could be said an early model of a Military-fiscal state here. And the kothi at Muscat did play a large role in this success.

References

[1] Waqai-I Manzil-I Rum, Tipu Sultan’s mission to Constantinople; Khwaja Abdul Qadir, (ed.) Mohibbul Hasan
[2] History of the Imams and Seyyids of Oman; Salil B. Razik, (trans.) G P Badger
[3] Seals of the Khodadad Sarkar; Nidhin Olikara & Adnan Rashid, To be published
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khidr
[5] Select Letters of Tippoo Sultan; Appendix E, (Trans. Ed.) W. Kirkpatrick
[6] Waqai-I Manzil-I Rum, Tipu Sultan’s mission to Constantinople; Khwaja Abdul Qadir, (ed.) Mohibbul Hasan
[7] Select letters of Tipu Sultan; (trans./ed.)W. Kirkpatrick [8] Select letters of Tipu Sultan; (trans./ed.)W. Kirkpatrick, Letter CCLXXII

[9] India office Records, BL