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Claudine Salmon Based essentially on sources emanating from the Chinese world, this article attempts to provide an overview of the Persian merchants who visited the various harbours of South China through the ages. The archaeological finds of the last decades show that sporadic relations between South China and the Persian world occurred before the coming of Islam and they would deserve to be analysed in the light of the difficulties encountered by merchants following the northern road. From the Tang onwards, thanks to various factors in China proper as well as in the Persian Golf, the maritime trade with the Muslim world developed tremendously. It even intensified during the second half of the 8th century in connection with the set-back of China in Transoxiana and in the area of Kashgar on the one hand, and with the foundation of the capital of the Abassids in Bagdad in 762 and the rise of maritime trade in the harbour of Bassora on the other. For the first time we clearly perceive in written sources the formation of Arabo-Persian communities in various harbours of South China, among others Canton and Yangzhou. With the fall of Kaifeng in 1126, the Song Dynasty lost its access to Central Asia; after the establishment of the new capital in Hangzhou the dynasty launched a new policy that was oriented towards maritime trade. For different reasons the Mongols developed a similar policy, relying extensively on Persians and other Muslims for commercial as well as administrative purposes. Thanks to this policy the Persians could control the economic life of the harbour of Quanzhou. Similarly, various measures taken by the new Ming Dynasty caused the decline of these Arabo-Persian communities in South China. If the Chinese sources are silent regarding the economic life of these communities, they nevertheless allow us to gain interesting insights into their social life and the way they gradually became integrated into the local society.
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