The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [25]
The true port city by definition links very distant maritime spaces, and this is the reason for what is perhaps its most noticeable characteristic. Ports are inclusive, cosmopolitan, while the inland is much less varied, much more exclusive, single faceted rather than diverse. As Murphey noted:
Port functions, more than anything else, make a city cosmopolitan.... A port city is open to the world, or at least to a varied section of it. In it races, cultures, and ideas as well as goods from a variety of places jostle, mix, and enrich each other and the life of the city. The smell of the sea and the harbour, still to be found... in all of them, like the sound of boat whistles or the moving tides, is a symbol of their multiple links with a wider world, samples of which are present in microcosm within their own urban areas.18
An English writer on the Gulf in the late nineteenth century put it well:
A sea-coast people, looking mainly to foreign lands and the ocean for livelihood and commerce, accustomed to see among them not infrequently men of dress, manners, and religion differing from their own, many of them themselves travellers or voyagers to Basrah, Bagdad, Bahreyn, 'Oman, and some even farther, they are commonly free from that half-wondering, half-suspicious feeling which the sight of a stranger occasions in the isolated desert-girded centre; in short, experience, that best of masters, has gone far to unteach the lessons of ignorance, intolerance, and national aversion.19
The location of port cities depended on many variables. In the Red Sea Jiddah was both a trade centre and the gateway to the Holy City of Mecca. Aydhab, on the other shore, prospered entirely because of its location. It funnelled African Muslim pilgrims across to Jiddah. As described in 1183, it
has no walls, and most of its houses are booths of reeds. It has, however, some houses, newly-built, of plaster . . . its people, by reason of the pilgrims, enjoy many benefits, especially at the time of their passing through, since for each load of victuals that the pilgrims bring, they receive a fixed food tax.... A further advantage they gain from the pilgrims is in the hiring of their jilab: ships which bring them much profit in conveying the pilgrims to Jiddah and returning them when dispersing after the discharge of their pious duty. There are no people of easy circumstances in 'Aydhab but have a jilabah or two which bring them an ample livelihood. Glory to God who apportions sustenance to all in divers forms. There is no God but He.20
One would assume that ports are on the coast, and indeed this is the case today. Modern port cities have to deal with huge tankers and carriers and container ships, and so must be located on the sea shore, for the ships are too large to easily travel far up rivers or estuaries, the Rhine and the St Lawrence system notwithstanding. In earlier times when ships were smaller and artificial harbours unknown this was far from the case. Smaller ships could penetrate up rivers and estuaries, thereby getting closer to production centres, and further away from pirates.
Among rivers where important ports were located are the Mekeong system, the Irrawaddy, the Tigris-Euphrates, the Ganga, and the Zambezi system. Malyn Newitt has described this last system. 'The valley of the Zambezi... is in many ways like an extension of the coastal zone, a finger of low veldt extending 300 miles [480 km] into the interior.' In the East African case what we are used to conceptualising as port cities, Kilwa, Sofala, Angoche, and Mombasa, shared very similar roles with Sena and Tete, respectively 260 and 515 km from the sea.21 The best term for Sena and Tete is 'inland port cities', or maybe 'fluvial ports'.
Important river ports are also to be found in southeast Asia. Thomas Bowrey described several of them. Kedah was on a large river