Multani Shroff: Bankers of the Silk Road
The Overland Finance Masters
How bankers from Multan and Shikarpur financed trade across the Silk Road, funding Afghan emperors, maintaining agents from Astrakhan to Calcutta, and pioneering the hundi credit system that moved money without moving gold.
The Bankers Who Financed Empires
In 1557, the English explorer Anthony Jenkinson arrived at the gates of Bukhara after an epic journey across the Caspian Sea. He had come to mine the fabled Silk Road city's riches for London's Muscovy Company. What he discovered astonished him: Indian merchants had already beaten him there.
These weren't the Gujarati traders of the Indian Ocean. They were Multanis, merchant-bankers from the Punjab city of Multan, and later from Shikarpur in Sindh. While Gujaratis dominated the sea routes, Multanis controlled the overland Silk Road. Their hundis (bills of exchange) financed caravans from Delhi to Bukhara. Their agents sat in Kandahar, Kabul, Isfahan, and even Astrakhan on the Russian steppe.
The 17th-century French jeweler Tavernier observed that Indian money-changers "surpassed the Jews in their shrewdness." He wasn't exaggerating. The Multani and Shikarpuri shroffs had built a financial network spanning three continents, and they did it without armies, navies, or colonial backing.
The Multan Advantage
Multan sits at a critical junction: where the Punjab plains meet the passes leading to Afghanistan and Central Asia. The 10th-century Arab historian Al-Masudi noted that Central Asian caravans from Islamic Khorasan assembled at Multan before continuing into India.
This geography created opportunity. Multanis became:
1. Currency Specialists: They exchanged the dozens of currencies circulating across the Mughal, Afghan, Persian, and Central Asian economies. A merchant arriving from Bukhara with Uzbek tangas needed someone who could convert them to Mughal rupees.
2. Credit Providers: Caravan trade required credit. A merchant couldn't carry enough gold for months of travel. Multani shroffs issued hundis that could be cashed in distant cities, Kabul, Kandahar, Meshad, Bukhara, wherever their agents operated.
3. Trade Financiers: They advanced supplies to armies and merchants in exchange for a share of profits or loot. When Ahmad Shah Durrani's Afghan forces sacked Delhi in 1748, Multani bankers transformed hoarded Mughal treasure into "high velocity money for trading and investment."