Answer:
The Indian Ocean trade routes connected Southeast Asia, India, Arabia, and East Africa, beginning at least as early as the third century BCE. ... Domestication of the camel helped bring coastal trade goods such as silk, porcelain, spices, incense, and ivory to inland empires, as well. Enslaved people were also traded.
Muslim
But despite this diversity, for the most part, especially on the Western half of the Indian Ocean basin, the trade was dominated by Muslim merchants. Why? Largely because they had the money to build ships, although we will see that in the 15th century, the Chinese state could have changed that balance completely.
