Trade and the spread of Islam across the world
Islamic Studies · Key Stage 3 · The School
Two very different routes
Islam reached different regions in different ways, and this lesson looks at one route in particular: trade. Muslim merchants sailing the Indian Ocean and travelling overland carried goods, and travelled alongside teachers and preachers. Where they settled, traded and married, Islam often took root gradually — over generations, not in a single campaign.
Southeast Asia
Arab Muslim traders were visiting Indonesia as early as the 8th century. Islam began to spread there only from the end of the 13th century, first in north Sumatra. Local rulers converted, often followed gradually by their people; marriage between traders and local families spread contact further. Arabic words entered Malay and Indonesian. No single conquest explains why Indonesia is majority Muslim today. Accounts of the spread point to trade, marriage and teachers working together over centuries.
East Africa
Along the SWAHILI COAST — city-states including Kilwa, Mombasa and Zanzibar — Muslim traders from Arabia and Persia settled among Bantu-speaking communities from around the 8th century onward. SWAHILI itself, the language, blends Bantu grammar with a large Arabic vocabulary — a linguistic sign of centuries of trade and daily contact.
Here is one case. In 1292, returning from China, Marco Polo wrote about a kingdom on Sumatra's north coast. He called it Ferlec, and scholars think it was Perlak. Polo wrote that Muslim merchants came so often that the townspeople had become Muslim. Nearby, Sultan Malik al-Salih ruled Samudera Pasai. His gravestone is dated 1297. It is the earliest evidence found of a line of Muslim rulers in Indonesia. So by about 1297 a Muslim town and ruler are on record here, and Polo credits traders for the town. But scholars debate what such evidence proves. Gravestones and travellers' reports show only that Muslims were in a place at a certain time. Historian M. C. Ricklefs suggests that Sufi teachers, who were Muslim mystics, were likelier than merchants to win over Java's courts. So this coast points to one route, trade, but not the whole story.