Syria and Egypt were amongst its earliest conquests; and the power thus interposed between the Greeks and their former channels of trade, effectually excluded them from the commerce of India.  The Persians and the Arabs became its undisputed masters, and Alexandria and Seleucia declined in importance as Bassora and Bagdad rose to the rank of Oriental emporiums.[1]

[Footnote 1:  ROBERTSON was of opinion, that such was the aversion of the Persions to the sea, that “no commercial intercourse took place between Persia and India.”—­India, s. i. p. 9.  But this is at variance with the testimony of COSMAS INDICO-PLEUSTES, as well as of HAMZA of Ispahan and others.]

Early in the sixth century, the Persians under Chosroes Nouschirvan held a distinguished position in the East, their ships frequented the harbours of India, and their fleet was successful in an expedition against Ceylon to redress the wrongs done to some of their fellow-countrymen who had settled there for purposes of trade.[1]

[Footnote 1:  HAMZA ISPAHANENSIS, Annal. vol. ii. c. 2. p. 43.  Petropol, 1848, 8vo.  REINAUD, Memoire sur l’ Inde, p. 124.]

The Arabs, who had been familiar with India before it was known to the Greeks,[1] and who had probably availed themselves of the monsoons long before Hippalus ventured to trust to them, began in the fourth and fifth centuries to establish themselves as merchants at Cambay and Surat, at Mangalore, Calicut, Coulam, and other Malabar ports[2], whence they migrated to Ceylon, the government of which was remarkable for its toleration of all religious sects[3], and its hospitable reception of fugitives.

[Footnote 1:  There is an obscure sentence in PLINY which would seem to imply that the Arabs had settled in Ceylon before the first century of our Christian era:—­“Regi cultum Liberi patris, coeteris Arabum.”—­Lib. vi. c. 22.]

[Footnote 2:  GILDEMEISTER; Scriptores Arabi de Rebus Indicis, p. 40.]

[Footnote 3:  EDRISI, tom. i p. 72.]

It is a curious circumstance, related by BELADORY, who lived at the court of the Khalif of Bagdad in the ninth century, that an outrage committed by Indian pirates upon some Mahometan ladies, the daughters of traders who had died in Ceylon, and whose families the King Daloopiatissa II., A.D. 700, was sending to their homes in the valley of the Tigris, served as the plea under which Hadjadj, the fanatical governor of Irak, directed the first Mahometan expedition for subjugating the valley of the Indus.[1]

[Footnote 1:  The chief of the Indus was the Buddhist Prince Daher, whose capital was at Daybal, near the modern Karachee.  The story, as it appears in the MS. of Beladory in the library of Leyden, has been extracted by REINAUD in his Fragmens Arabes et Persans relatifs a l’Inde, No. v. p. 161, with the following translation:—­