Islamabad, November 28, 2021 (PPI-OT):The history of Indians contact with Arabia, goes back to ancient times, long before the rise of Islam or the Muslim conquest of South Asia, said Prof Emeritus Aslam Syed while responding to a question at a Webinar on Saturday.
Arab traders used to take south, middle and northern routes of the subcontinent to reach India. A professor of Berkley University, who was busy in archeological excavations of Harappa, found a jar full of Lebanese olive oil. Later, the evidence shows that South Asia had its trade base at Alexandria; the famous ancient city of Syria, was a brisk center of Indian trade, said Prof Syed in reply to a question on Discourse of History on Indo-Pak History from Antiquity to Modernity IV: Indians and the Arabs here.
The guest speaker Prof Emeritus Aslam Syed has been serving the Center for Religious Studies, Ruhr Universität, Bochum, Germany. He remained Chairman, Department of History, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad and also served the NIHCR as its Director.
Prof Syed revealed that archaeological excavations in different Arab countries have established some identical elements in the cultural life of the Arabs and South Asia in general and India in particular. It is now well-established fact that Arab navigational interests brought South Asia and Arabia closer.
The Webinar, arranged online by the National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research (NIHCR), Centre of Excellence, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, was attended by over 700 participants ranging from students, teachers and researchers to have greater insights into the valuable views of the guest speaker.
Replying a question, the guest speaker said that the material for building vessels was imported from India. The Arabs discovered the Far East and acted as the commercial link between East and West. They sailed the Indian Ocean and into the Pacific Ocean and they reached China, he said.
Responding to a question, Prof Syed said that Muslims presence was manifest in the coastal regions of Southern India from the earliest days of Islam, as evidenced by the establishment of Arab trading settlements, with minor political impact prior to the conquests in Northern India from the beginning of the 8th century, which solidified the influence of Islam leading to tangible political and socio-cultural impacts in the region.
The NIHCR Director Dr Sajid Mahmood Awan was of the view that the history of India furnishes an amazing picture of the syntheses of many divergent cultural trends which were gradually transformed by a process of mutual adjustment and assimilation.
Supplementing Dr Awan’s observation, Prof Syed said that Islam played a significant role by contributing to India’s multi-cultural and multi-religious ethos, embedding the subcontinent in the Arab-Islamic maritime civilization, stretching from southern Africa to China, particularly in connecting Africa as well as the great Turkic empires of Central Asia. It offers a pertinent example of the interaction of human minds and the effects of cultural and civilizational contacts on indigenous customs, religion, literature and arts, he said.
It was the 23rd consecutive session on the Discourse of History, a brainchild of the NIHCR Director Dr Sajid Mahmood Awan. This activity inculcates interest to learn more and more about history not only among students, scholars and historians as well as among ordinary people belonging to any field of life to know about nations’ ways of running their States in a journey from antiquity to modernity.
The NIHCR Director Dr Awan conducted the Webinar by triggering a dialogue with Dr Syed for substantiating this discourse. This inclusive activity has been taken up every week for the benefit of students in general and capacity-building of the teachers and researchers in particular, he said.
For more information, contact:
National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research (NIHCR)
Quaid-e-Azam University, New Campus, Shadara Road,
Islamabad, Pakistan
Tel: +92-51-2896153-54/102
Fax: +92-51-2896152
Email: dirnihcr@gmail.com, nihcr@yahoo.com
Website: www.nihcr.edu.pk