In the recent years trade cultural exchange and transfer of knowledge in the Indian Ocean
have come increasingly into the scope of various scholarly disciplines. The previous perception
that the exploitation of this sea did only start with the European colonial expansion at the
end of the 15th century had to be abandoned: The Europeans absorbed the long existing
structures rather than creating new ones. This concept of the Indian Ocean as a coherent space
of transfer is also adopted in this volume. Some of the articles were presented at a conference
held in Vienna while the others were supplied independently. The contributions are arranged
around the two poles represented by the western and the eastern part of the Indian Ocean
especially Iran and China but also other cultures and the manifold relations with the
land-based Silk Road are discussed. The time frame ranges from the 14th to the 17th century.
