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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.

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Ralph Kauz ist als Sinologe und Iranist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter des IfI in Wien.
Er hat sich zum Thema der Beziehungen zwischen Ming-China und dem Timuridenreich habilitiert (veröffentlicht 2005 als Monographie) und ist Privatdozent an der Universität München. Zuvor hat er über das politische System Irans gearbeitet (Monographie über politische Parteien, 1995) und forscht derzeit über den Austausch zwischen China, Zentralasien und Iran in spätmittelalterlicher und frühmoderner Zeit.

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Ralph Kauz is a scholar of both Sinology and Iranian Studies. A researcher at the IfI in Vienna, he holds a habilitation based on a thesis on the relations of Ming China and the Timurid empire (published as a monograph, 2005) at the University of Munich, where he also teaches. He has worked earlier on the political system of modern Iran (monograph on political parties, 1995) and is currently pursuing research on interactions between China, Central Asia and Iran in the late medieval and early modern periods.

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