spend their earnings here.
Historical trading center
Bharuch was a major sea port in the important pre-compass coastal trading routes to points West, perhaps as far back as the days of the Pharaohs, which utilized the regular and predictable Monsoon winds or galleys. Many goods from the Far East were trans-shipped there for the annual monsoon winds making it a terminus for several key land-sea trade routes and Bharuch was definitely known to the Greeks, the various Persian Empires and in the Roman Republic and Empire and other Western centers of civilization right on through the end of the European Middle Ages.
In the 1st century AD, Bharuch port has been mentioned as Barigaza. Bharuch which was prosperous and powerful port was an important port of Gujarat until the 16th century. Arab traders used to enter Gujarat via Bharuch and do their business. British, Valandas etc. accepted the importance of Bharuch and established their business centre here. At the end of the 17th century, it was plundered twice but resurged quickly after the plunder and a proverb was also phrased for it, “Bhangyu Bhangyu Toye Bharuch”.
As a trading depot, the limitations of coastal shipping made it a regular terminus via several mixed trade routes of the fabled spice and silk trading between East and West.
Narmada River's inland access to central and northern India and with a location in the sheltered Gulf of Khambhat in the era of coastal sea travel grew and prospered as a trading transshipment center and ship building port. Until very modern times the only effective way to move goods was by water transport, and Bharuch had sheltered waters in a era without weather forecasting, compasses, and when shipping was necessarily limited to coastal navigation, and the general East-West course of the Narmada gave access to the rich inland empire’s at the upper reaches of the Narmada,
