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INDIA xxviii. IRANIAN IMMIGRANTS IN INDIA Although emigration from the Iranian plateau to the Indian subcontinent is not a phenomenon specific to any particular period, the trend does seem to have grown in significance after the foundation of Muslim governments on the subcontinent (see v. and vi. above). Immigrants from…

INDIA xxx. INDIAN MERCHANTS IN CENTRAL ASIA AND IRAN The Indian merchant diaspora in Central Asia and Persia emerged in the mid-16th century and remained active for over four centuries. The earliest available report of an Indian merchant diaspora community in Central Asia is found in the account of Anthony…

INDIA xxxi. INDIAN MERCHANTS IN 19TH-CENTURY AFGHANISTAN Indian communities in Afghanistan performed an array of commercial functions in both the private and state sectors that served to integrate the Afghan economy and link it to surrounding markets in Central and South Asia. These were socially diverse communities; their collective experiences…

INDIA xxxiii. INDO-MUSLIM PHYSICIANS Medicine (ṭebb, pezeški) constitutes the scientific field on which the largest corpus of works has been composed in Muslim India. Most of these works were written in Persian, and to a lesser extent in Arabic, and later in Urdu from the Colonial period. Main scholars and…

INDIAN OCEAN. This subject will deal with the role of Indian Ocean in international trade in the following periods: i. Pre-Islamic period. ii. Islamic Period. See Supplement.   i. PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD The Indian Ocean is the third largest ocean in the world, covering some 75,000,000 sq. km. It unites culturally…

INDIGO (Pers. nil), the common name of a broad genus, Indigofera, with numerous species, widely distributed throughout Asia, Africa, and the Americas. A member of the leguminous pea family, indigo is variously classified as an herb or small shrub; its stalks are long, bearing raceme flowers. It is usually perennial,…

INDO-EUROPEAN TELEGRAPH COMPANY (IETC), a telegraph company that controlled telegraph wires between Tehran and the Russian border and onward through Russia and Germany to London. Unlike the Indo-European Telegraph Department (IETD; q.v.) operated by the British Indian government and the native Iranian system, the Indo-European Telegraph Company (IETC) was privately…

INDO-EUROPEAN TELEGRAPH DEPARTMENT (IETD), a branch of the British Government of India, based in London, which managed a series of telegraph lines in Iran. The Indo-European Telegraph Department was distinct from both the Indo-European Telegraph Company backed by the Siemens Company, which operated a telegraph line from Tehran to Tabriz and…

INDO-GREEK DYNASTY, Greco-Bactrian kings who ruled over the region south of the Hindu Kush in the second and first century B.C.E. Alexander of Macedon’s conquest of the Achaemenid satrapies of Bactria and Sogdia in Central Asia and the Indian territories south of the Hindu Kush (Hendukosh) plunged these regions into…