Ismaili missionaries paired religious conversion with trade in medieval India

Evidence

The traveller al-Muqaddası, who visited Multan in 375/985–6, records that the bidding-prayer was recited in the name of the Fatimid Caliph, that they followed his orders in matters of faith and law, and that messengers and gifts went regularly to Egypt. Small communities of Isma ilis are still to be found in North Western Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in the Pamir, in eastern Iran—strung out along the trans-Asian highways. On the Gujerati coast, Fatimid commercial activities were accompanied by a vigorous religious propaganda, and the planting of what in time became the great Isma ili community of India. It is perhaps significant that these Isma ilis are still known as Bohra, a Gujerati word meaning merchant. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 410

Categorization

• DEFINE: Bohra derives from a Gujarati word meaning merchant, reflecting the trading identity of the Indian Ismaili community.
• SEED: An angle on how ideological movements ride trade networks: the Bohra name itself encodes the mission-commerce fusion.