Monsoon Kingdoms

The Indian Ocean world before Europe arrived

Said Al Harthi2 episodes2 min of audio44 playsEpisodic

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S1 · E2Oct 4, 20260:4922 plays Preview

The Bankers of Surat and the Letters of Credit

In the 1600s a Gujarati merchant could write a note in Surat and have it honoured in Mocha, Basra or Malacca. Said explains the hundi system and the families who ran it.

S1 · E1Sep 21, 20260:5022 plays Members

Kilwa, the Richest City You Have Never Heard Of

In 1331 Ibn Battuta called Kilwa one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Said walks its coral ruins and explains how gold from Zimbabwe made a small island fabulously rich.

About the show

For most of recorded history the Indian Ocean was the busiest sea on earth, and the monsoon winds ran it like a timetable: out in one season, home in the next. Said Al Harthi, an Omani maritime historian who learned to sail on a dhow before he learned to drive, tells the story of that world in Monsoon Kingdoms, a fortnightly narrated series of around forty-five minutes. Each episode takes one port, one people or one cargo: the Swahili city-states of Kilwa and Mombasa, the Chola navy, the Gujarati bankers of Surat, the Hadhrami diaspora, the Chinese treasure fleets, the pearl banks of the Gulf, the clove islands of Zanzibar. Said uses Arabic, Persian and Portuguese sources, many of which he translates himself, and he is careful to let East African, Indian and Southeast Asian voices lead. For listeners who want a history of the ocean that does not start with Vasco da Gama, and for anyone whose family has a dhow somewhere in its past.

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