TENSING RODRIGUES
While Valipattan was a port open to the sea at the mouth of River Sal, Camdrapur (Chandrapur / Chandor) was 15 km inland on River Kusavati, a tributary of Zuari. Gopakapattan, the other ancient port on Zuari, was at the mouth of the river. But why was Camdrapur so much inland? To use a term commonly used in international trade, what was the comparative cost advantage of Camdrapur?
Mind you, it was by no chance a domestic port catering to the domestic trade. It was referred to in some texts as Sindabur. In the footnotes to Allan b. Hassun’s letters Goitein explains the role of Sindabur in the Aden trade: “The ships coming from Aden travelled from Sindabur, the northern port leading to the pepper country, via a place called Manibar (Munaybar / Malabar?) to Faknur (Barkur in Udupi district), a capital city in the Malabar country, and from there to Kulam-Kawlam (Koulam Mali / Quilon), the southernmost port on the Malabar Coast.” [Goitein, 1987: ‘Portrait of a Medieval Trader – Three Letters from Cairo Geniza’, in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 50, no. 3, 459] However, the location of Manibar is not very clear; most of the time it seems to refer to Malabar as a whole. For the Jewish merchants from Aden, Kulam (Quilon) turned out to be the principal destination; the dhows that started from Aden took about 30 days to reach Quilon. [Goitein, 1987: 457] Most probably, as Allan’s letter suggests, these dhows took a halt in Camdrapur for want of favourable monsoon winds, and also in order to take provisions; this needs to be viewed in the context of what the traders called ‘mawasim’ (mausam), the ‘port-specific sailing seasons’, which dictated optimal arrival and departure times for each of the principal ports of the Indian Ocean. [Margariti, 2007: ‘Aden and the Indian Ocean Trade – 150 Years in the Life of a Medieval Arabian Port’, 38]
Geniza documents suggest that unlike from or to Valipattan, there were most probably no ships sailing exclusively to Camdrapur. A letter written by Sad b. Marab from Aden in 1156 CE to Hillel b. Naman, regarding his son-in-law’s drowning due to floundering of a ship off Aden, refers to a voyage from Aden to Baribatan. (Chakravarti finds a clear phonetic affinity between Baribatan and Balipattan.) [Chakravarti, 2012: ‘Merchants, Merchandise and Merchantmen in the Western Seaboard of India’, in Om Prakash (ed) ‘The Trading World of Indian Ocean* 1500-1800, 84’]
The letter reads: “These are the details of their drowning. The ship they were in, that is the Kulami, sailed from Aden together with the other ships that set sail. This ship and the Baribatani were in the same position. The two of them travelled together for about four days out of Aden. On the eve of the fifth day the sailors of the Baribatani heard the cries of the sailors of the Kulami and their screams and shrieks in the night as the water inundated them. When morning came, the sailors of the Baribatani did not encounter any trace or evidence of the Kulami, because from the time the two had left Aden they had kept abreast of each other. The two did not separate until this tragedy befell the Kulami.” [Goitein et al, 2008: ‘India Traders of the Middle Ages’ – ‘Documents from the Cairo Geniza’ – ‘India Book’, 534] Kulami and Baribatani were the names of two ships that had left Aden. As Goitein points out in the introduction to the letter, the ships were named for their destination; Kulami was sailing to Kulam, that is Quilon or Koulam Mali, the southernmost port on the Malabar Coast; and, Baribatani was sailing to Baribatan or Balipattan. In Geniza documents we do not find any instances of a ship named after Sindabur in this manner. Thus, it may be safe to infer that there were most probably no ships sailing exclusively to Camdrapur.
As of now we do not know of any Jewish merchants living in Balipattan or Camdrapur, or about any Jewish settlements there, unlike in Mangalore or Malabar. The Jewish settlements in Malabar require no elaboration; as for Mangalore, Abraham ben Yiju for instance, a Tunisian Jewish merchant is known to have had his permanent residence there in the early 12th century. [Goitein et al, 2008: India Traders of the Middle Ages – Documents from the Cairo Geniza – ‘India Book’, 57] In this context a comment by Malekandathil in one of his elaborate studies of Jews in Goa becomes significant, though somewhat speculative: ‘The fact that a small, temporary settlement of Jewish traders seems to have arisen on the west coast of India, can be inferred from the records of the Cairo Geniza.’ He elaborates it in the footnote; however he does not back it up with any information from Geniza documents: ‘Although the Jewish traders of this period generally returned to Egypt after completing their business, one can also find Jewish traders coming repeatedly to certain centres of maritime trade, such as Sindabur in Goa, Koulam Mali in Kerala, and Kambay in Gujarat, where some form of temporary Jewish mercantile settlements arose with the help of commercial agents and collaborators to reinforce their maritime trade.’ [Malekandathil, 2009: ‘Jews of Goa and the Trading World of the Indian Ocean, 1000–1650’, in Weil (ed): ‘The Jews of Goa’, 28] References to Jewish settlements in Koulam Mali and Kambay are not difficult to find; but any evidence of Jewish settlements at Sindabur in Goa is yet to come by.