Hot on Baba’s Trail’s again…

May 9, 2015

This document is part of my continuing archival reporting on the fabulous Coja (or Coji) Baba Sultanum or Baba for short. Those interested can see the documentary trail below on last two items. The document in question is in a roll of parchment documents dating to the 1690s and contains the deposition of Baba and Agha Piri Calendar in court as part of their claim to the goods Kidd had confiscated or rather looted/stolen. I first photographed it in May of 2003 with a shitty 2 megapixel Olympus camera and subsequently rephotographed it with a 5 MP and just yesterday with a crisp-sharp 24 megapixel.

Here is the transcription in part. The deposition begins with the following description of the merchant habits of Armenian maritime traders that contains information very useful for economic historians working on how Armenian and other merchants used to trade in India over three hundred years ago:

Imprimis [firstly] that it is the manner & Custom of Armenian Merchants in their trading for one of more merchants to buy or hire a ship to send abroad to Bengall or any other place or port, and and in that ship Severall Merchants lay goods and carry Rupees and bills of Exchange, and several of the said Merchants themselves and the factors of others of them go in the said Ship and sometimes some of them go over land and upon the arrival of the said Ship and Merchants at the port or place designed, the said merchants and factors do by agreement dispose themselves two or three or more in a Company and go to the markets and other places of trade in said country and purchase such goods as are proper and then bring them to the place or port where the ship is and they divide the goods so purchased according to each man’s proportion, and that being done they separetely make the said goods divided with each mans particular marke, and loade the same upon the said ship and said merchants or factors return to the ship with said goods. And the Master of the said ship signes a bill of loading to each person certifying how many Bayles belong to each person not naming the contents or prizes, but each merchant or factor encloseth in every ye Bayles a piling bill setting forth the contents of each Bayle and also brings with them the books which likewise contain the particulars of his goods and their prizes.