Qatar
Trade
in the Ancient Persian Gulf
The Persian Gulf lies between two of the major
breadbaskets of the ancient world, theTigris-Euphrates area
(Mesopotamia, meaning
"between the rivers") in present-day Iraq and the Nile Valley
in Egypt. Mesopotamia, a part of the area known as the Fertile Crescent,
was important not only for food production but also for connecting East to
West.
Rivers
provided the water that made agriculture possible. Agriculture, in turn,
enabled people to settle in one area and to accumulate a food surplus that
allowed them to pursue tasks besides growing food, namely, to create a
civilization. They chose leaders, such as kings and priests; they built
monuments; they devised systems of morality and religion; and they started to
trade.
Mesopotamia became the linchpin of ancient
international trade. The fertile soil between the Tigris and the Euphrates
produced a arge surplus of food; however, it did not support forests to produce
the timber necessary to build permanent structures. The region also lacked the
mineral resources to make metals. Accordingly, the early inhabitants of
Mesopotamia were forced to go abroad and trade their food for other raw
materials. They found copper at Magan, an ancient city that lay somewhere in
the contemporary state of Oman and, via Magan, traded with people in the Indus Valley for
lumber and other finished goods. [See Silk Roads.]
Trade
between Mesopotamia and India was facilitated by the small size of the Persian
Gulf. Water provided the easiest way to transport goods, and sailors crossed
the gulf fairly early, moving out along the coasts of Persia and India until
they reached the mouth of the Indus. Merchants and sailors became middlemen who
used their position to profit from the movement of goods through the gulf. The
people of Magan were both middlemen and suppliers because the city was a source
of copper as well as a transit point for Indian trade. Over time, other cities
developed that were exclusively entrepôts, or commercial way stations. One of
the best known of these cities was Dilmun.
Dilmun
probably lay on what is now the island state of Bahrain. Excavations on the
island reveal rich burial mounds from the Dilmun period (ca. 4000 to 2000
B.C.). Scholars believe the monuments on the island indicate that residents, in
addition to farming, earned money from the East-West trade and that other cities
on the gulf coast survived similarly.
The
trading cities on the gulf were closely linked to Mesopotamia, reflected in the
similarities between the archaeological finds in the two areas. The similar
finds suggest that the people of the gulf coast and the people of the Tigris
and Euphrates valley developed increasingly complex societies and beliefs.
The people of the gulf coast differed from those of
the interior of the Arabian Peninsula. The people in the interior were nomads
who had no time to build cities or monuments and no need to develop elaborate
social structures. When the desert provided insufficient food for their flocks,
the tribes pushed into the date groves or farmlands of the settled towns.
Centers on the gulf coast were subject to such nomadic incursions, as were the
people of Mesopotamia. As a result, after the second millennium B.C. the gulf
began to take on an increasingly Arab character. Some Arab tribes from the
interior left their flocks and took over the date groves that ringed the region's
oases, while others took up sailing and began to take part in the trade and
piracy that were the region's economic mainstays. These nomadic incursions
periodically changed the ethnic balance
Meanwhile, trade flourished in the
second millennium B.C., as reflected in the wealth of Dilmun. In about 1800
B.C., however, both the quality and the amount of goods that passed through
Dilmun declined, and many scholars attribute this to a corresponding decline in
the Mesopotamian markets. Concurrently, an alternate trade route arose that
linked India to the Mediterranean Sea via the Arabian Sea, then through the
Gulf of Aden, thence into the Red Sea where the pharaohs had built a shallow
canal that linked the Red Sea to the Nile. This new route gave access not only
to Mediterranean ports but also, through the Mediterranean ports, to the West
as well.
One
of the ways that rulers directed goods toward their own country was to control
transit points on the trade routes. Oman was significant to rulers in
Mesopotamia because it provided a source of raw materials as well as a
transshipment point for goods from the East. Although a valuable prize, Oman's
large navy gave it influence over other cities in the gulf. When Mesopotamia
was strong, its rulers sought to take over Oman. When Oman was strong, its
rulers pushed up through the gulf and into Mesopotamia. One of the basic
conflicts in gulf history has been the struggle of indigenous peoples against
outside powers who sought to control the gulf because of its strategic importance.
Competition
between Red Sea and Persian Gulf trade routes was complicated by the rise of
new land routes around 1000 B.C. Technological advances in the second and first
millennia B.C. made land routes increasingly viable for moving goods. The domestication
of the camel and the development of a saddle enabling the animal to carry large
loads allowed merchants to send goods across Arabia as well. As a result,
inland centers developed at the end of the first millennium B.C. to service the
increasing caravan traffic. These overland trade routes helped to Arabize the
gulf by bringing the nomads of the interior into closer contact with their
relatives on the coast.
Data
as of January 1993
Source: Library of Congress Country Studies
Source: Library of Congress Country Studies