Bombay

"He started active trading from a very small quayside warehouse, owned by Zacharia. It was rat-free but far removed from the spacious ancestral serdab in Baghdad which at times bulged with merchandise like an Aladdin's Cave. The dhow captains slowly came to know him as a man of honour whose word could be trusted even in the smallest enterprise. He bought wharf space and rented it to traders who arrived by sea or overland to sell their goods and stock up. He added steadily to his capital but preferred to act as a middleman, particularly for Bombay merchants, rather than compete independently with local dealers who had more substantial reserves. It was the birth of a lifelong antipathy to all gambling transactions, however tempting. Cautiously he began to export a few horses, dates, sheepskins and small consignments of pearls to India, content with the lighter cargoes of silks and metal-ware that came back. With neither boats nor camels to distribute goods, he wisely decided to limit his imports."

"There was no falling off in personal initiative after their father's death; quite the reverse. His counsel would be missed, but they could at last speak their minds, liberated from a sense of being pieces on a chessboard. Each son now had the stimulus of a solid personal holding in the business. Apart from estate in England valued at £160,000, their father had left 'upwards of two million sterling', according to the vague Press announcement. No precise figure was ever published, but it was generally assumed in Bombay that he had been worth over five million pounds."