Т. 1. «Азия и Африка: Наследие и современность»

Asia and Africa: their Heritage and Modernity. Vol. 1 15 Источниковедение и историография  Ближнего Востока It is also necessary to point out that the controversial, Byzantine hagiographical source, The Acts of St. Gregentius , describes certain characteristics of the Himyarite Jews, i.e. common habitations, inter-marriages, etc., but it is not clear whether it reflects the actual situation of the Himyarite Jews in the 6 th century or whether it was a later interpolation 1 . Regarding the second discussion of this study, the role of the Indian mariners in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean international sea trade acquires great significance at the turn of the sixth century A. D., as reflected in the hagiographical source The Martyrdom of St. Arethas . Indian ships from the Hellenistic times were engaged in the lucrative silk trade which, starting fromKlysma near present Suez, reached India and expanded even further to China 2 . Additionally, Indian sailors-merchants frequently traded in the port ofAlexandria 3 and held a key position in the Roman maritime trade 4 . As Casson correctly pointed out, even at the peak of the Roman— Indian trade in the 2 nd and 3 rd centuries it was carried out by individual Roman or Indian merchants without any governmental coordination or support 5 . As I also previously mentioned, “there were no ethnic [Roman] merchant fleets [in the Indian-Arabian maritime trade routes], but only merchant ships owned by individual Roman owners, and we can only speak about Roman trade preponderance based on the maritime activities of the individual Roman merchants” 6 . By the 6 th century AD while the supremacy of the Byzantines’ naval power (the successors of the Romans) in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean was lost, overshadowed by the newly developed Ethiopian navy, still the Indo-Arabian sea trade continued to be left in the hands of the individual Roman and Indian merchants 7 . 1 V. Christides, “The Dawn of the Urbanization in the Kingdom of the HImyarites in the 6 th century”. P. 44–45. 2 For the early activities of the Indians in Socotra (Greek Diosccourides ), located close to the Yemenite coast, see A. Wink, Al-Hind, the Making of the Indo-Islamic World , vol. I, Leiden; New York; Köln 1996. P. 45; A. Ubaydli, “The Population of Sūquṭrā in the Early Arabic Sources”, in Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 19 (1989). P. 137–154. 3 L. Casson, trans. and commentary, The Periplus Maris Erythraei , Princeton 1989. P. 34. 4 For the Indo-Arabic trade see E. Heldaas Seland, “The Indian Ships at Moscha and the Indo-Arabian Trading Circuit”, Proceedings for the Seminar for Arabian Studies 38 (2008); idem, Ports and Power in the Periplus: Complex Societies and Maritime Trade on the Indian Ocean in the First Century AD, Oxford 2010, with an exhaustive relevant bibliography; E. H. Warmington, The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India , New Delhi 1995. 5 L. Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei , 36–37, where he refutes M. Charlesworth’s opposite view, in P. Coleman-Norton, ed., Studies in Roman Economic and Social History in Honor of Allen Chester Johnson, Princeton 1951. P. 135–136. 6 V. Christides, “What Went Wrong in the Long Distance Roman Naval Power in the Red Sea and in the Indian Ocean in the Late Third Century AD?”, in Graeco-Latina et Orientalia Studia in Honorem Angeli Urbani Heptagenarii , ed. S. Khalil Samir and J. P. Monferrer-Sala, Cordoba 2013. P. 75 (article: P. 63–85). 7 V. Christides, “What Went Wrong in the Long Distance Roman Naval Power.” P. 73–75.