A ‘State Sector’ in overseas trade: The imperial Mughal shipping establishment at Surat

That the Mughal emperors and princes owned sea-going ships and that the main base of these vessels was Surat have been well-known facts, though seldom discussed at any length. ¹ In a paper, I have collected data on the construction and working life of three such vessels of Shāhjahān’s time, that were based in Surat, namely, the Shāhī, the Ganj-āwar and the Sāḥibī. ² The history of such imperial and quasi-imperial shipping, of course, occupies a time much longer than Shāhjahān’s reign; and there were other imperial ships than the three named above that were brought into service, and operated from Surat.

As early as 1576 there were two imperial ships, the Ilāhī and Salīmī (the name of the first reflecting Akbar’s increasingly pantheistic views and that of the latter named apparently after Prince Salīm (the future emperor Jahāngīr), on both of which ḥajj pilgrims were sent off from Surat. ³ The Ilāhī was apparently requisitioned by ‘Azīz Koka, the Governor of Gujarat, for his flight from the port of Balawal, near Somnath, to Arabia in 1593. ⁴

In Jahāngīr’s reign, we hear of the Raḥīmī (‘Rahemy’) mentioned in Henry Middleton’s report of 1612, where it is described as the Queen-mother’s ship, voyaging from Surat to Jedda, and big enough to carry 1500 persons. ⁵ But Raḥīmī, along with Karīmī and Sālarī, is said to have been constructed by Mirza ‘Abdu’r Raḥīm Khānkhānān himself, according to his biographer, who was writing in 1616. ⁶ Since all these three ships are said to have been engaged in ḥajj traffic and so in voyages to the Red Sea, the Raḥīmī must be the same ship as the ‘Rahemy’, described by Middleton. It is possible that it was formally owned by the Khānkhānān’s mother, who having married Akbar during her widowhood, was the step-mother of Jahāngīr, and so could be described as Queen Mother. It is noteworthy that in 1618 John Hatch described a Surat ship of ‘the Great Mogol’s Mother’s’, of 12–1400 tons containing over 1000 persons, which could only have been the Raḥīmī. ⁷

In 1619 another ‘greate shippe’, the Ganj-āwar (‘Ganjawer’), was reported to have been recently constructed at Surat; it was intending to proceed on voyage to Mokha. ⁸ It is mentioned in a parwāncha of 1626. It transpires from another parwāncha of 1629 that it was an imperial ship, which had now been formally gifted by the new emperor Shāhjahān to his queen Mumtāz Maḥal. ⁹ Ganjāwar remained in active service till at least 1650, when it seems to have been mentioned for the last time. ¹⁰

Another large ship was constructed at Surat by Shāhjahān, when prince, called Shāhī. It was first noticed by the English in 1617. When Shāhjahān became emperor in 1628, it naturally became an imperial ship, but was also gifted to Mumtāz Maḥal. ¹¹ A ‘vessel of immense bigness’, it was wrecked in 1637, through being set to sail to the Red Sea too late in the season. ¹²

Shāhjahān’s influential eldest daughter Jahānāra (‘Begam Ṣāḥib’), who for years held Surat in her jāgīr, had a ship called Ṣāḥibī built there in 1643 for the Red Sea traffic. In its management and profitable voyages, the Emperor himself showed considerable interest. ¹³ The last we hear of Ṣāḥibī is in 1663, when it was to sail from Mokha to Surat. ¹⁴

A new imperial ship Salāmat Ras was built some time before 1641, when it is first mentioned. ¹⁵ In 1655 the Ottoman envoy imprudently declined to travel on this vessel to Jedda, and took another vessel which got wrecked. ¹⁶ But in 1676 a vessel bearing this name which carried about 500 persons was now said to be owned by Muḥammad Chalebī Baghdādī. ¹⁷ It seems that this vessel had, by then, been sold away by the Mughal government.

Other smaller vessels also plied under the imperial flag. In 1651–52 Prince Aurangzeb had a ship built at Surat, while he received as a gift another, called Bādāward, when still incomplete, from the imperial government (Khāliṣa Sharīfa). ¹⁸

Early in Aurangzeb’s reign in 1661 a parwāna of the Imperial Finance Minister Rāja Raghunāth refers to repairs being carried at Surat on the imperial ship Ganj-i Sawāī, and this constitutes perhaps the first reference to her. ¹⁹ In 1662 English factors at Surat were instructing their colleague at Mokha to return ‘on the Gunsavy one of this King’s jounks’. ²⁰ The Ganj-i Sawāī seems to have had a violent end in 1695. It was at that time held to be ‘the largest ship of the port of Surat’. Having sold its cargo in Mokha and Jedda, consisting of the ‘products of India’, it was returning with ₹52 lakh of treasure to Surat. It was well armed with 80 guns and 400 muskets. But when attacked by English privateers, while still at eight or nine days’ voyage away from Surat, it put up little resistance and was brutally ransacked, losing all its cargo and money, while several of its passengers were taken away captive. ²¹

The Ganj-i Sawāī was, perhaps, the last of the great imperial ships. But apparently, there were all the time lesser vessels as well built and maintained in the imperial establishment. In 1668 the Governor of Surat pressed the English factors at Surat to supply ‘10 great anchors, 35 to 40 cwt. Apiece’, which were needed ‘for the King’s jouncks’. ²² Obviously, therefore, there must have been two or more large vessels for which such heavy anchors were required.

The imperial flotilla was not intended to form a navy. Its purpose was to obtain income from charges for passage and freight, and, from the profits so obtained, to carry free of cost a certain number of ḥajj pilgrims. The vessels regularly made a voyage to the Red Sea or Gulf of Aden with the north-western monsoon and returned with the south-eastern monsoon.

The financial basis of the imperial shipping enterprise is made clear by Princes Jahānāra’s instructions given in 1643 to the captain and crew of her vessel Ṣāḥibī. In these instructions the Princess makes it clear that the vessel could not ply without the passage of merchants and the freight (naul) of their cargos. It was only when revenues from such passage and freight were obtained that free places could be found for ‘Mughal and Indian’ pilgrims, many of whom were to be admitted upon the certificates (ḥasbu’l ḥukms) issued by the Princess’s dīwān. Care is taken to insist that such free-passage pilgrims were not allowed to carry any merchandise on behalf of merchants. The captain was to set aside ₹10,000 or 15,000 as rā’su’l māl or capital stock for trade, and profits made out of it, along with the (net?) freight (naul), were to be deposited in the treasury of the ship’s steward (taḥwīldār). The princess herself desired that good horses be purchased at Mecca to be brought to India. ²³ We have actually two dastaks or official certificates for the cargo of merchants (both Hindus and Muslims) to be put aboard the imperial ship Ganjāwar at Surat in 1643. ²⁴

A passage in Tavernier’s account of his travels confirms the financial arrangements involved in the imperial ship’s voyages, and, for this reason, it may be quoted in full:

I remember in the year 1642 a vessel of the Great Mogul arrived at Suwali, which is the port of Surat, from Mecca, where there were a number of these Fakirs or Dervishes. For every year the Great Mogul sends two large vessels there to carry pilgrims, who thus get a free passage. When these vessels are ready to depart, the Fakirs come from all parts of India to embark. The vessels are loaded with good articles which are disposed of at Mecca, and all the profit made is given in charity to the poor pilgrims. The principal only is retained, and it serves for another year, and this principal is, at least, 6,00,000 rupees. ²⁵

We may treat ₹6,00,000 mentioned by Tavernier, as the circulating capital, spent on the maintenance and repair of the ships, wages of crew, charity, etc., which was recovered from the naul of merchants and trading profits. It was to be distinguished from the ‘fixed capital’, originally invested in the ships’ construction whose amount unfortunately remains unknown to us. ²⁶ It was possible that there was annually some net profit paid into the treasury which may be called a return on that capital. For this we have only a single piece of evidence that we consider below.

In a collection of Persian documents compiled in late eighteenth century, there is a table (fihrist) of revenues of ‘ṣūba Ahmadabad ‘urf Gujarat’, which probably belongs to a period before 1671. This has the following entry: ‘Naul of the ships of the Khāliṣa Sharīfa [jama‘]: 12,00,000 dāms; actual revenue [ḥāṣil]: ₹29,000’. ²⁷ We may suppose that it was expected that imperial ships could provide out of the naul or freight a net annual profit of ₹29,000 to the imperial treasury. This was for those times, not a small amount.

In the eighteenth century, the decline came. A retired Mughal official kept a diary from 1718 to 1728, during the latter part of which period he lived at Surat. There is a short entry in the diary under the Hijri date corresponding to 13 October 1726: ‘Nawāb Suhrāb Khān has sold the imperial ship Banhānī(?) and is selling away the equipment (ālāt) of other ships’. ²⁸ Suhrāb Khān was, then, the Mut‘asaddī or Customer of Surat. Presumably, the ships were already laid up and no longer voyaging under the imperial flag.