The Persian Gulf Trade in Late Antiquity^*

TOURAJ DARYAEE
California State University, Fullerton

The Persians made themselves important in world history with the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire in the sixth century B.C.E. Their rise and center of power was from the province of Fars (Pars/ Persis) in the southwestern region of the Iranian plateau. Consequently in the Greek sources, the body of water that bordered this province came to be known as the Persian Gulf. The use of ethnic names for bodies of water certainly presumes either that group's dominance of the landmass or its seafaring activity. For the Persian Gulf, both are true. The Persian Gulf, however, has been less studied in terms of its economic importance and as a unit before the eighth century C.E. than other bodies of water. The reason for this is that most of our evidence, be it textual or archaeological, has come from the period in which the Abbasids made the Persian Gulf an important economic center. This essay attempts to discuss the importance of the Persian Gulf and its economic relationship with the province of Fars and East Asia before the eighth century C.E. There were voyages on the Persian Gulf in antiquity as far back as the Sumerian period. However, I would like to suggest that the amount of trade on the sea suddenly accelerated in Late Antiquity as a direct result of the conflicts between the major centralized empires: Persian and Roman. Furthermore, this acceleration in trade is demonstrated by the enormous output of Sasanian silver coinage. The essay be will divided into four sections: the province of Fars as an economic center, the Persian Gulf economy, Persians in East Asia, and the nontextual evidence for trade, which will be divided into two parts, the numismatic evidence and the epigraphical evidence.	1
The Province of Fars
As the Achaemenid Persians (550–330 B.C.E. ) rose to form an empire from the province of Fars, the Sasanian Persians (224–651 C.E. ) also rose to power from the same province in the third century C.E. The province of Fars was not only their homeland but also their religious center, as evidenced by their surviving monuments, and was located near the Persian Gulf. The urbanization project by the Parthians and then the Sasanians brought about an influx of population from other parts of the Iranian plateau. Forced migration from the Near East also brought about a rise in population. 1 Later Islamic sources as well as Middle Persian sources attest to the intense interest in the city-building projects of the Persian kings. The (The Provincial Capitals of ) 2 is a Middle Persian text naming cities throughout Central Asia, the Iranian Plateau, Mesopotamia, and the Near East, and gives us a good view of this Persian campaign. Many of the , which may be translated as "provincial capitals" or major cities, are said to have been built by the Sasanian kings, or rebuilt by them, thus receiving the kings' names. 3 Persian Muslim historians, such as Hamza al-Isfahani, also supply a long list of cities built by the various Sasanian kings that corroborates the . 4	. . .