XXX. 1333-45 A.D. IBN BATTŪTA

(A) On the rebellion of Bahā-ud-dīn Gushtāsp

On the rebellion of the son of the Sultan’s paternal aunt and what relates to it:

The Sultān Tughlaq had a nephew (son of his sister) called Bahā-ud-dīn Gushtāsp (Hystaspe), who was appointed governor of a province. When his uncle died, he refused to take the oath of allegiance to his son; he was a brave soldier, a hero. The king sent against him an army commanded by powerful amīrs like Malik Majīr and the Vazir KHwājah Jahān who was commander-in-chief. The cavalry on both sides were engaged, and the combat was fierce, both the armies exhibiting great courage. In the end the Sultan’s troops prevailed, and Bahā-ud-dīn fled to one of the Hindu kings named the Rāī Kanbīlah (raia or rāja). The term ‘rāī’ among these people, as among Christians,¹ means ‘king.’ As for Kanbīlah, it is the name of the country where the ‘rāja’ lived. This prince possessed territories situated on inaccessible mountains, and he was one of the principal Sultans of the infidels.

When Bahā-ud-dīn fled to this king, he was pursued by the soldiers of the monarch of India who beset these countries. The infidel prince, perceiving the danger to which he was exposed as his stores of grain became exhausted and fearing that they might capture him by force, told Bahā-ud-dīn: “You see in what condition we are; I have decided to perish with my family and all those who wish to follow me. Go to the Sultan so and so (he mentioned the name of a Hindu prince) and stay with him, he will protect you.” He sent some one with him to conduct him there; then he ordered a great fire to be prepared, and this was done. Then he burnt his effects, and said to his wives and daughters: “I intend to die, and those of you who wish to do as I do, may do so.” Then each one of his wives bathed, anointed herself with sandal named muqasari, kissed the earth before the rāi of Kanbīlah and cast herself on the pyre; they all perished. The wives of the amirs, vazīrs, and nobles of his state followed them; other women besides did likewise.

The king bathed in his turn, anointed himself with sandal and took his arms, but did not put on the cuirass. Those of his men who wished to die with him followed his example in every respect. They went out to fight with the troops of the Sultan and fought till all of them met their death. The town was invaded, and its inhabitants were taken captive, and eleven sons of the rāi of Kanbīlah thus captured were sent to the Sultan, and they were made Mussulmans. The sovereign made them amīrs and honoured them greatly as much for their illustrious birth as in consideration of the conduct of their father. I saw in the Sultan’s palace, among these brothers, Naṣr, Bakhtiyār and Almuhardār, ’the Guardian of the Seal.’ He keeps the ring with which is sealed the water (doubtless Ganges water) which the monarch is to drink; his surname is Abu Muslim, and we were comrades and friends.

After the death of the rāi of Kanbīlah, the troops of the Sultan marched to the infidel country where Bahā-ud-dīn had taken refuge, and surrounded it. This prince said: “I can not do like rāi Kanbīlah”. He caught hold of Bahā-ud-dīn and delivered him to the army of the Emperor of India. They fettered his legs, tied his hands to his neck and conducted him thus before the Sultan. The Sultan ordered him to be taken before his wives and female relations; they insulted him and spat upon him. Then he ordered him to be flayed alive: after he had been skinned, his flesh was cooked with rice and some of it was sent to his wife and children. They put the remnants on a large plate and gave them to the elephants which declined to eat them. The Sultan ordered the skin to be stuffed with straw, and paraded in all the provinces together with the stuffed figure of Bahādūr Būrah.

—Voyages D’Ibn Batoutah, ed. Defrémery and Sanguinetti, iii, pp. 318-21, (cf. Elliot and Dowson, iii 614-6).

(B) Rebellion in Ma’bar

The rebellion of Sharīf Jalāl-ud-dīn in the province of Ma’bar, and the death of the Vazir’s nephew (sister’s son) who joined this revolt :

The Sultan had appointed the Sharīf Jalāl-ud-dīn Aḥasan Shah governor of the country of Ma’bar (the passage, the South-east of the peninsula), which is at a distance of six months’ march from Delhi. Jalāl-ud-dīn rebelled, usurped the power, killed the lieutenants and agents of the sovereign, and struck coins of gold and silver in his own name. On one side of the dinars he had the following words engraved: ’the offspring of Tā-hā and Yā-sīn (these letters which constitute the titles of the two chapters of the Quran, xx and xxxvi, are among the epithets applied usually to Muḥammad), the father of fakirs and indigents, the glory of the world and of religion;’ and on the other face: ‘He who puts his trust in the help of the Merciful; Aḥasan Shah Sultan.’

Hearing of this revolt, the emperor set out to suppress it. He camped in a place called Kushak-i-Zar meaning ‘castle of gold’; and he spent eight days there attending to the needs of the people. It was then that they brought to him the nephew of the vazīr KHwājah Jahān, as also three or four amīrs—all with fetters on their feet and their hands tied to their necks. The Sultan had sent this vazīr with the advance guard; and he had arrived at the town of Zhār (Dhār); which was at a distance of twenty-four days’ march from Delhi; and where he stopped some time. The son of his sister was an intrepid fellow, a brave warrior; he plotted with three other chiefs, who were caught at the same time as himself, to kill his uncle and flee to the rebel Sharīf in the province of Ma’bar, carrying with them all the treasures and provisions. They had decided to attack the vazir at the moment when he came out to go for the Friday prayer; but one person who was in the know of their plans denounced them. He was called Malik Nuṣrat, the chamberlain; and he told the vazir that the proof of their project would be found in their wearing cuirasses under their robes. The vazir had them produced before him and found them in the condition stated; he sent them to the Sultan.

I was with the emperor, when these conspirators arrived; one of them was tall and bearded, but he trembled and read the chapter Yā-sīn of the Quran (xxxvi, the prayer of the dying). In accordance with the Sultan’s order, the amīrs in question were thrown to the elephants which are trained to kill men, and the son of the vazīr’s sister was sent to his uncle that he might kill him; and he did so.

—Op. cit. iii. pp. 328-30. (Elliot and Dowson, iii, p. 618).

Pestilence in the Sultan’s army :

The emperor reached the country of Tiling on his way to the province of Ma’bar to put down the rebel Sharīf. He encamped in the town of Badrakōṭ, capital of Tiling, three months’ march from Ma’bar. Then a pestilence broke out in his army and a great part of it perished thereby. The slaves and the mameluks died as well as the chief amīrs like Malik Daulat Shāh, whom the Sultan always called ‘O! uncle,’ and amīr ‘Abd-ul-lah alharavy . . . . . . . . . When the emperor saw the calamity that had befallen the troops, he returned to Daulatabad. The provinces rose, anarchy reigned in the country.

—Op. cit. iii, pp. 333-4. (Elliot and Dowson iii, p. 618-9.)

(BB) Rebellion in Tiling

Of the rebellion of the Sultan’s lieutenant in the country of Tiling :

When the Sultan returned from Tiling, he left behind Tāj-ul-Mulk Nuṣrat KHān, an old courtier, as his lieutenant in this country. Hearing the (false) news of the death of the sovereign, he had his obsequies celebrated, usurped the power and received oaths of allegiance from the people in his capital, Badrakōṭ.² When the Sultan came to know of these things, he sent his preceptor, Quṭlu KHān, at the head of a numerous army. A terrible combat ensued in which whole multitudes perished; finally Quṭlu KHān invested his adversary in the capital; Badrakōṭ was fortified; but the siege did much damage to its inhabitants, and Quṭlu KHān began to open a breach. Then Nuṣrat KHān surrendered himself with a safe conduct into the hands of the enemy commandant who assured him of his life and sent him to the Sultan. He also pardoned the citizens and the troops.

—Op. cit. iii pp. 340-41.

(C) i. Summary of Ibn Battūta’s travel in S. India: Yule.

From KANAUJ Ibn Battūta and his companions turned southwards to the fortress of GWALIOR, which Ibn Battūta had visited previously, and had then taken occasion to describe with fair accuracy. At PARWAN, a place which they passed through on leaving Gwalior, and which was much harassed by lions (probably tigers rather), the traveller heard that certain malignant Jogis were in the habit of assuming the form of those animals by night. This gives him an opportunity of speaking of others of the Jogi class who used to allow themselves to be buried for months, or even for a twelvemonth together, and afterwards revived. At Mangalore he afterwards made acquaintance with a Mussulman who had acquired this art from the Jogis. The route continued through Bundelkhand and Malwa to the city of DAULATABAD, with its celebrated fortress of DWAIGIR (Deogiri), and thence down the Valley of the Tapti to KINBAIAT (Cambay).

From Cambay they went to Kawe, a place on a tidal gulf belonging to the Pagan Raja Jalansi, and thence to KANDAHAR, a considerable city on another estuary, and belonging to the same prince, who professed loyalty to Delhi, and treated them hospitably. Here they took ship, three vessels being provided for them. After two days they stopped to water at the Isle of BAIRAM, four miles from the main. This island had been formerly peopled, but it remained abandoned by the natives since its capture by the Mahomedans, though one of the king’s officers had made an attempt to resettle it, putting in a small garrison and mounting manganels for its defence. Next day they were at KUKAH, a great city with extensive bazaars, anchoring four miles from the shore on account of the vast recession of the tide. This city belonged to another pagan king, Dunkul, not too loyal to the Sultan. Three days’ sail from this brought the party abreast of the Island of SINDABUR, but they passed on and anchored under a smaller island near the mainland, in which there was a temple, a grove, and a piece of water. Landing here, the traveller had a curious adventure with a Jogi, whom he found by the wall of the temple. Next day they came to HUNAWUR (or Onore), a city governed by a Mahomedan prince with great power at sea; apparently a pirate, like his successors in later times, but an enlightened ruler, for Ibn Battūta found in his city twenty-three schools for boys and thirteen for girls, the latter a thing which he had seen nowhere else in his travels.

After visiting several of the northern ports of Malabar, then very numerous and flourishing, they arrived at CALICUT, which the traveller describes as one of the finest ports in the world, frequented for trade by the people of China, the Archipelago, Ceylon, the Maldives, Yemen, and the Persian Gulf. Here they were honourably received by the king, who bore the title of SAMARI (the Zamorin of the Portuguese), and made their landing in great state. But all this was to be followed by speedy grief, as the traveller himself observes.

At Calicut they abode for three months, awaiting the season for the voyage to China, viz., the spring. All the communication with that country, according to Ibn Battūta (the fact itself is perhaps questionable), was conducted in Chinese vessels, of which there were three classes: the biggest called JUNK, the middle-sized ZAO, and the third KAKAM. The greater ships had from three to twelve sails, made of strips of bamboo woven like mats. Each of them had a crew of 1000 men, viz., 600 sailors and 400 soldiers, and had three tenders attached, which were called respectively the HALF, the THIRD, and the QUARTER, names apparently indicating their proportionate size. The vessels for this trade were built nowhere except at ZAITUN and SINKALAN, the city also called SIN-UL-SIN, and were all made with triple sides, fastened with enormous spikes, three cubits in length. Each ship had four decks, and numerous private and public cabins for the merchant passengers, with closets and all sorts of conveniences. The sailors frequently had pot-herbs, ginger, etc., growing on board in wooden tubs. The commander of the ship was a very great personage, and, when he landed, the soldiers belonging to his ship marched before him with sword and spear and martial music.

The oars or sweeps used on these great junks were more like masts than oars, and each was pulled by from ten to thirty men. They stood to their work in two ranks, facing each other, pulling by means of a strong cable fastened to the oar (which itself was, I suppose, too great for their grasp), and singing out to the stroke, La, La! La, La!

The only ports of Malabar frequented for trade by the China vessels were Kaulam, Calicut, and Hili; but those which intended to pass the Monsoon in India, used to go into the harbour of FANDARAINA for that purpose. Thirteen of these ships, of different sizes, were lying at Calicut when Ibn Battūta’s party were there.

The Zamorin prepared accommodation on board one of the junks for the party from Delhi; but Ibn Battūta, having ladies with him, went to the agent for the vessel, a Mahomedan called Suleiman ul-Safadi-ul-Shami, to obtain a private cabin for them, having, it would seem, in his usual happy-go-lucky way, deferred this to the last moment. The agent told him that the cabins were all taken up by the Chinese merchants, who had (apparently) “return tickets.” There was one, indeed, belonging to his own son-in-law, which Ibn Battūta could have, but it was not fitted up; however if he took that now, probably he would be able to make some better arrangement on the voyage; (it would seem from this that shipping agency in those days was a good deal like what it sometimes is now). So one Thursday afternoon our traveller’s baggage and slaves, male and female, were put on board, whilst he stayed ashore to attend the Friday service before embarking. His colleagues, with the presents for China, were already on board. But the next morning early, the Eunuch Hilal, Ibn Battūta’s servant, came to complain that the cabin assigned to them was a wretched little hole, and would never do. Appeal was made to the captain, but he said it could not be helped; if, however, they liked to go in a KAKAM which was there, they might pick and choose. Our traveller consented, and had his goods and his women-kind transferred to the kakam before public prayer time. In the afternoon the sea rose (it always did in the afternoon, he observes), and it was impossible to embark. By this time the China ships were all gone except that with the presents, another junk which was going to stop over the monsoon at Fandaraina, and the kakam, on which all the moor’s property was embarked. When he got up on Saturday morning the junk with his colleagues, and the kakam, had weighed, and got outside the harbour. The junk bound for Fandaraina was wrecked inside. There was a young girl on board, much beloved by her master, a certain merchant. He offered ten pieces of gold to any one who would save her. One of the sailors from Hormuz did save her, at the imminent risk of his life, and then refused the reward. “I did it for the love of God,” said this good man. The junk with the presents also was wrecked on the reefs outside, and all on board perished. Many bodies were cast up by the waves; among others those of the Envoy Zahir-uddin, with the skull fractured, and of Malik Sunbul the eunuch, with a nail through his temples. Among the rest of the people who flocked to the shore to see what was going on, there came down the Zamorin himself, with nothing on but a scrap of a turban and a white cotton Dhoti, attended by a boy with an umbrella. And, to crown all, when the kakam’s people saw what had befallen their consort, they made all sail to seaward, carrying off with them our traveller’s slaves, his girls and gear, and leaving him there on the beach of Calicut gazing after them, with nought remaining to him but his prayer-carpet, ten pieces of gold, and an emancipated slave, which last absconded forthwith!

He was told that the kakam must touch at Kaulam, so he determined to go thither. It was a ten days’ journey, whether by land or water, so he set off by the lagoons with a Mussulman whom he had hired to attend on him, but who got continually drunk, and only added to the depression of the traveller’s spirits. On the tenth day he reached Kaulam, the Columbum of our friars, which he describes as one of the finest cities of Malabar, with splendid bazaars, and wealthy merchants, there termed Suli, some of whom were Mahomedans. There was also a Mahomedan Kazi and Shabandar (Master Attendant), etc. Kaulam was the first port at which the China ships touched on reaching India, and most of the Chinese merchants frequented it. The king was an Infidel, called TIRAWARI, a man of awful justice, of which a startling instance is cited by Ibn Battūta. One day when the king was riding with his son-in-law, the latter picked up a mango, which had fallen over a garden wall. The king’s eye was upon him; he was immediately ordered to be ripped open and divided asunder, the parts being exposed on each side of the way, and a half of the fatal mango beside each!

The unfortunate ambassador could hear nothing of his kakam, but he fell in with the Chinese envoys who had been wrecked in another junk. They were refitted by their countrymen at Kaulam, and got off to China, where Ibn Battūta afterwards encountered them.

He had sore misgivings about returning to tell his tale at Delhi, feeling strong suspicion that Sultan Mahomed would be only too glad to have such a crow to pluck with him. So he decided on going to his friend the Sultan Jamal-ud-din at Hunawur, and to stop with him till he could hear some news of the missing kakam. The prince received him, but evidently with no hearty welcome. For the traveller tells that he had no servant allowed him, and spent nearly all his time in the mosque—always a sign that things were going badly with Ibn Battūta—where he read the whole Koran through daily, and by and by twice a day. So he passed his time for three months.

The King of Hunawur was projecting an expedition against the Island of Sindabur. Ibn Battūta thought of joining it, and on taking the sortes koranicae he turned up xxii, 41, “Surely God will succour those who succour Him;” which so pleased the king that he determined to accompany the expedition also. Some three months after the capture of Sindabur the restless man started again on his travels, going down the coast to Calicut. Here he fell in with two of his missing slaves, who told him that his favourite girl was dead; that the King of Java (probably Sumatra) had appropriated the other women, and that the rest of the party were dispersed, some in Java, some in China, some in Bengal. So there was an end of the kakam.

He went back to Hunawur and Sindabur, where the Mussulman forces were speedily beleaguered by the Hindu prince whom they had expelled. Things beginning to look bad, Ibn Battūta, after some two months’ stay, made his escape and got back to Calicut.

Here he took it into his head to visit the DHIBAT-UL-MAHAL or Maldive (Male diva) Islands, of which he had heard wonderful stories.

One of the marvels of these islands was that they were under a female sovereign, Kadija, daughter of the late Sultan Jalal-ud-din Omar, who had been set up as queen on the deposition of her brother for misconduct. Her husband, the preacher Jamal-ud-din, actually governed, but all orders were issued in the name of the princess, and she was prayed for by name in the Friday Service.

Ibn Battūta was welcomed to the islands, and was appointed Kazi, marrying the daughter of one of the Wazirs and three wives besides. The lax devotion of the people and the primitive costume of the women affected his pious heart; he tried hard but in vain to reform the latter, and to introduce the system that he had witnessed at Urghanj, of driving folk to mosque on Friday with the constable’s staff.

Before long he was deep in discontent, quarrels and intrigues, and in August 1344 he left the Maldives for Ceylon.

As he approached the island he speaks of seeing the Mountain of Serendib (compare Marignolli’s MONS SEYLLANI) rising high in air “like a column of smoke.” He landed at Batthalah (PATLAM), where he found a Pagan chief reigning, a piratical potentate called Airi Shakarwati, who treated him civilly and facilitated his making the journey to Adam’s Peak, whilst his skipper obligingly promised to wait for him.

In his journey he passes MANAR MANDALI, and the port of SALAWAT, and then crosses extensive plains abounding in elephants. These however did no harm to pilgrims and foreigners, owing to the benignant influence exercised over them by the Shaikh Abu Abdallah, who first opened the road to the Holy Footmark. He then reached KUNAKAR as he calls it, the residence of the lawful King of Ceylon, who was entitled Kunar, and possessed a white elephant. Close to this city was the pool called the Pool of Precious Stones, out of which some of the most valuable gems were extracted. His description of the ascent to the summit is vivid and minute, and probably most of the sites which he speaks of could be identified by the aid of those who act as guides to Mahomedan pilgrims, if such there still be. He descends on the opposite side (towards Ratnapura), and proceeds to visit DINWAR, a large place on the sea, inhabited by merchants (Devineuera or Dondera), where a vast idol temple then existed, GALLE (which he calls KALI), and COLUMBO (KALANBU), so returning by the coast to Patlam. Columbo is described as even then one of the finest cities of the island. It was the abode of the “Wazir and Admiral Jalasti,” who kept about him a body of 500 Abyssinians. This personage is not impossibly the same with the Khwaja Jahan, who so politely robbed John Marignolli. It is not said whose Wazir and Admiral he was.

At Patlam he took ship again for Maabar, but as he approached his destination he again came to grief, the ship grounding some six or eight miles from the shore. The crew abandoned the wreck, but our hero stuck by it, and was saved by some pagan natives.

On reaching the land, he reported his arrival to the de facto ruler of the country. This was the Sultan Ghaisuddin of Damghan, recently invested with the government of Maabar, a principality originally set up by his father-in-law, the Sheriff Jalal-ud-din. The latter had been appointed by Mahomed Tughlak to the military command of the province, but about 1338-9 had declared himself independent, striking coin in his own name, and proclaiming himself under the title of Ahhsan Shah Sultan. Ibn Battūta, during his stay at Delhi, had married one of the Sheriff’s daughters, named Hhurnasab. “She was a pious woman,” says her husband, “who used to spend the night in watching and prayer. She could read, but had not learned to write. She bore me a daughter, but what is becoming of either the one or the other is more than I can tell!” Thus Ibn Battūta was brother-in-law to the reigning Sultan, who, on receiving the traveller’s message, sent for him to his camp, two days’ journey distant. This brother-in-law was a ruffian, whose cruel massacres of women and children excited the traveller’s disgust and tacit remonstrance. However, he busied himself in engaging the Sultan in a scheme for the invasion of the Maldives, but before it came to anything the chief died of a pestilence. His nephew and successor, Sultan Nasir-uddin, was ready to take up the project, but Ibn Battūta got a fever at the capital, MUTRA (Madura), and hurried off to FATAN, a large and fine city on the sea, with an admirable harbour, where he found ships sailing for Yemen, and took his passage in one of them as far as Kaulam. Here he stayed for three months, and then went off for the fourth time to visit his friend the Sultan of Hunawur. On his way, however, off a small island between Fakanur and Hunawur (probably the Pigeon Island of modern maps), the vessel was attacked by pirates of the wrong kind, and the unlucky adventurer was deposited on the beach stript of everything but his drawers! On this occasion, as he mentions elsewhere incidentally, he lost a number of transcripts of epitaphs of celebrated persons which he had made at Bokhara, along with other matters, not improbably including the notes of his earlier travels. Returning to Calicut he was clothed by the charity of the Faithful. Here also he heard news of the Maldives; the Preacher Jamal-uddin was dead, and the Queen had married another of the Wazirs; moreover one of the wives whom he had abandoned had borne him a son. He had some hesitation about returning to the Islands, as he well might, considering what he had been plotting against them, but encouraged by a new cast of the Sortes he went and was civilly received. His expectations, however, or his caprices, were disappointed, for he seems to have stayed but five days, and then went on to Bengal.

—Yule: ‘Cathay and the Way Thither’, Vol. iv. Introductory Notice pp. 20-36.

(C) ii.—Ibn Battūta: Travels in S. India

From Ujjain we went to Daulatabad, a large and illustrious city which rivals the capital, Delhi, in importance and in the vastness of its lay-out. It is divided into three parts. One is Daulatabad, properly so called, reserved for the residence of the Sultan and his troops; the second part is called Katkah (Skt. Kaṭaka, camp), and the third is the citadel, unequalled for its strength, and called Davaiquir (Devagir).

At Daulatabad resides the great KHān, Quṭlu KHān, preceptor to the Sultan. He is the commandant of the city, and represents the Sultan there as well as in the lands of Sāghār, Tiling and their dependencies. The territory of these provinces extends for three months’ march, and is well populated. It is entirely under the authority of Quṭlu KHān and his lieutenants. The fortress of Devagir above mentioned is a rock situated in the midst of a plain; the rock has been scarped and a castle built on its summit; it is reached by a leather ladder which is raised at night.

There live with their children the Mufrid, that is to say the Zimāmy (soldiers entered in the army lists). In its dungeons are imprisoned persons convicted of serious crimes. In these dungeons there are huge rats, bigger than cats; in truth cats run away from them as they are unable to resist their attacks. Hence they can be caught only by recourse to ruses. I saw these rats at Devagir and marvelled at them.

The Malik Khaṭṭāb, the Afghān, related to me that he was at one time imprisoned in a dungeon in this fortress, called the dungeon of rats. ‘These animals,’ he said, ‘gathered near me by night to devour me. I defended myself against them, not without experiencing fatigue. I then saw some one in a dream who said to me: “Read the chapter on true piety (ch. 112 of the Quran) a hundred thousand times, and God will deliver you.” I recited this chapter (continued Khaṭṭāb), and when I had completed the required number of times, I was released. The cause of my release was this: Malik Mal was imprisoned in a chamber near mine; he fell ill, the rats ate his fingers and his eyes, and he died. When the Sultan heard of this, he said: “Release Khaṭṭāb lest he should come to the same end.”’

It was to the fortress of Devagir that Nāṣīr-ud-dīn, son of the same Malik Mal, and Qāẓī Jalāl-ud-dīn fled for refuge, when they were defeated by the Sultan.

The inhabitants of the territory of Daulatabad belong to the tribe of Mahrathas, to whose women God has granted a peculiar beauty, especially in their noses and eyebrows. They possess talents not found in other women, in the art of pleasing men, and they know everything connected with the union of the sexes. The idolaters of Daulatabad are devoted to commerce, and their principal trade consists in pearls; their wealth is enormous, and they are called Sāha (Skt. Sārthavāha); the singular of the word is sāh—and they resemble the Akārimā of Egypt.

There are in Daulatabad vines and pomegranates which yield two harvests in a year. By its population and the extent of its territory, and the number of very large and important cities in it, this province is very important for the revenues derived from it. I was told that a certain Hindu took a lease of the contributions from the province for seventeen crores. The province extends, as stated above, for a distance of three months’ march. A crore is a hundred lakhs, and a lakh is a hundred thousand dinars. But the Hindu did not keep his engagements; a balance remained to his charge; his treasures were seized, and he was himself flayed.

In Daulatabad there is a bazaar for singers and singing girls. This bazaar, called Tarb abād (abode of rejoicing) is among the largest and most beautiful in existence. It contains many shops, each with a door leading to the house of its proprietor, which has another gate independent of this. The shop is beautified with carpets, and in the midst of it, there is a sort of a large swing on which the singing girl sits or reclines. She is adorned with all kinds of jewels, and her attendants rock her swing. In the centre of the bazaar, there is a large pavilion, furnished with carpets, and gilded, where the chief musician goes and sits on all Thursdays, after the prayer at four in the evening, with his servants and slaves in front of him. The singing girls come in groups, and sing and dance in his presence till sunset when he withdraws.

In this bazaar there are mosques for prayer, where the priests recite the prayer called tarāwīḥ in the month of Ramẓān. One of the Hindu rulers, whenever he passed through this bazaar, used to alight in this pavilion, and the singing girls used to sing in his presence. One of the Muhammadan Sultans used to do likewise.

We proceeded from this place to the small town of Naẓarbār inhabited by Mahrathas, well-skilled in the mechanical arts. Their physicians, astrologers and nobles are called Brahmins and Kṣatriyas. Their food consists of rice, vegetables and oil of sesamé for they dislike giving pain to animals or slaughtering them; they wash themselves before eating, as we do (at home) to get rid of a pollution. They do not marry among their relatives at least up to the seventh remove. Neither do they drink wine, for this in their eyes is the greatest of vices; it is so in all India even among the Mussulmans; any one of them (Muslims) that drinks wine is punished with eighty stripes and imprisoned for three months in a dungeon which is opened only at meal-times.

From Naẓarbār we went to Sāghār, a large city on a considerable river of the same name.³ On the banks of this river, we see water wheels,⁴ and orchards where grow mangoes, bananas and sugar-cane. The inhabitants of the city are peaceable, religious and upright men, and all their acts are worthy of approbation. There are orchards, with hermitages meant for travellers. Some man founds an hermitage, bequeaths an orchard to it, and vests the supervision of it in his children; when the succession fails, the supervision passes to the magistrates. The population of Sāghār is very large; strangers go there for the company of the people, and because the town is exempt from taxes and dues.

From Sāghār we travelled to Kinbāyah (Cambay), situated on an arm of the sea resembling a river. It is navigable for ships and the ebb and flow of the tide are felt in it. I saw ships lying in the mud during the ebb floating on water at the flow. Kinbāyah is among the most beautiful cities by the elegance of its construction and the size of its mosques. This is due to the majority of its inhabitants being foreign merchants who are always building fine houses and superb temples, and vie with one another in doing so.

Among the large mansions of the place was that of Sharīf-ul-Sāmarry with whom I had the adventure of the pastry cakes.⁵ I have never seen more solid woodwork than I saw in his house; its door was like the gate of a town, and quite close to a large mosque also bearing the name Sāmarry. Then there is the residence of the Malik-ul-Tujār⁶ ul-Kāzarūnī which has also a mosque quite close, and the house of the trader Shams-ud-dīn Kulāh Dūz. The last two words signify ‘cap-maker’ in Persian. When Qāẓī Jalāl, the Afghān, rebelled, as stated already, this Shams-ud-dīn just mentioned, the captain of the ship Elias, one of the principal residents of Kinbāyah, and the chief of the medical men who has been spoken of above, wished to hold this city against the rebel. They attempted to dig a moat round it, as it had no walls. But Jalāl defeated them and entered the town. These three persons hid themselves in a house, and were afraid of being discovered. Hence they agreed to commit suicide, each of them striking another with a qattārah.⁷ Two died accordingly, but the chief of the medical men survived.

Among the principal merchants of Kinbāyah, there was again Najm-ud-dīn of Jilān endowed with a fine figure and enormous riches. He built a large house and a mosque in this city. Later, the Sultan sent for him, made him governor of Kinbāyah, and conferred honours on him. This led to the loss not only of his wealth, but of his life.

The commandant of Kinbāyah, at the moment of our arrival in the town, was Muqbil the Tilingi,⁸ who was greatly respected by the Sultan. He had with him Shaikh Zādah of Ispahān who deputised for him in all his affairs. This Shaikh had enormous wealth, and had a profound knowledge of state affairs. He was always sending out sums of money to his country and planning devices to take his flight. The Sultan came to know of this, and he wrote to Muqbil asking him to send this person to him, and Muqbil having sent him without delay, he was brought before the Sultan who placed him under guard. It was rarely that a person so guarded by the Sultan made good his escape. The Shaikh, however, struck a bargain with his keeper promising to pay him a sum of money, and they both fled. A trustworthy man told me that he met him in a corner of a mosque in the town of Qalhāt adding that he subsequently returned to his native country, collected his treasures and had nothing to fear any more.

The Malik Muqbil entertained us one day in his palace. By a curious chance, the Qāẓī of the town who was blind in his right eye, found himself seated opposite a Sharīf of Baghdād, who closely resembled him in his appearance and his infirmity except that he was blind in his left eye. The Sharīf looked at the Qāẓī and laughed. The Qāẓī having reprimanded him, he replied: ‘Do not reproach me, for I am better looking than you.’ ‘How is that?’ asked the Qāẓī. The Sharīf answered: ‘Because you are blind in your right eye, while I am that only in my left eye.’ The governor and the assistants laughed, and the Qāẓī looked foolish. He could make no answer, for in India the Sharīfs are held in great regard.

Among the good men of this town (Cambay) was the pilgrim Nāṣir, native of the country of Bakr, living in one of the pavilions of the principal mosque. We visited him and dined with him. He happened to go and meet the Qāẓī Jalāl when, in the course of his rebellion, he entered Kinbāyah. It was reported to the Sultan that he had prayed in favour of the rebel. He fled for fear of being put to death like Al Ḥaidari. Another virtuous man living in Kinbāyah is the merchant KHwājah Isḥaq who has a hermitage where all are fed. He spends a great deal on the fakirs and the indigent, and yet his wealth is ever increasing.

From Kinbāyah we proceeded to the town of Kāvy,⁹ situated on a bay where the flow and ebb of the tide are felt. It forms part of the territory of the infidel Rāī Jālansy of whom we shall speak presently. From Kāvy we went to Qandhār,¹⁰ a large city belonging to the infidels and situated on a gulf of the sea.

The Sultan of Qandhār is an infidel called Jālansy, who is subject to the authority of the Mussulmans, and sends an annual present to the king of India. When we reached Qandhār, he came out to receive us, and showed us the greatest consideration, and even quitted his palace to lodge us in it. The principal Mussulmans in his court came and visited us, such as the children of KHwājah Buhrah, one of whom was the patron of the captain Ibrāhīm who owned six vessels. At Qandhār we embarked on the sea.

We boarded a vessel belonging to this Ibrāhīm and called the Jākir. We took on this ship seventy horses that were part of the present offered by the king of India to the emperor of China, and we put the others with the horses of our companions in a ship belonging to a brother of Ibrāhīm and called Manuwart. Jālansy gave us a vessel on which we put the horses of Ẓahīr-ud-dīn, Sanbal and their comrades. He provisioned it for us with water, victuals and forage, and sent his son with us on a ship called the ‘Akairy resembling a galley, but more roomy. It has sixty oars, and, during a combat, it is covered with a roof so that arrows and stones may not hit the rowers. I embarked on the Jākir which had fifty bowmen and as many Abyssinian soldiers. The latter are dominant in this ocean, and when there is even one of them on board a vessel, pirates and Hindu idolaters refrain from attacking it.

After two days we reached the isle of Bairam (Perim)¹¹, which is deserted and four miles from the mainland. We disembarked there and drew some water from a reservoir. The island has remained deserted since the time the Muslims invaded it against the infidels. Desirous of re-peopling it, the Malik-ul-Tujār, of whom we have spoken, has built a fortification, placed mangonels in it and established some Mussulmans there.

We left Bairam and on the next day we reached the large town of Qūqah¹² which has extensive bazaars. We cast anchor four miles from the shore on account of the low tide. I got into a boat with some of my companions to reach the shore. The boat stuck in the mud, and we had to stop about a mile from the city. When the boat stuck, I leaned on two of my comrades. Though my assistants frightened me that the tide might return before I reached Qūqah and I could not swim very well, still I managed to reach the town in safety, and went round the bazaars. I saw there a mosque said to have been built by KHizr and Elias. I said my sunset prayer there, and came across a group of Ḥaidari fakirs accompanied by their superior. I then returned to my ship.

The Sultan of Qūqah is an infidel, Dunkūl by name, who professed submission to the king of India, but was in reality a rebel. Three days after setting sail again, we arrived at the island of Sandābūr,¹³ where there are thirty-six villages. It is surrounded by a gulf, and at the ebb tide the water in it is sweet and agreeable, whereas it is salt and bitter during high tide. There are two towns in the interior, one an ancient construction of the infidels, and the other built by the Mussulmans when they first conquered the island. In the latter there is a great cathedral mosque comparable to the mosques of Baghdād: it was founded by Captain Ḥasan, father of the Sultan Jamāl-ud-dīn Muḥammad of Hanaur, of whom and of my stay with whom when the island was conquered a second time, I shall speak later, D. V. We passed this island, and cast anchor at a small island near the mainland; on this island there were a temple, an orchard and a tank.

When we landed on this island, we saw a Jōgi leaning against the wall of a butkhānah, i.e., a temple of idols. He stood between two of these idols, and showed clear traces of self-mortification. We spoke to him, but he did not answer. We looked to see if there was any food near him, but there was none. As we were thus engaged, he gave a loud shout, and at once a cocoanut fell before him, and he presented it to us. We were surprised at this, and offered him pieces of gold and silver, but he did not accept them. We brought some provisions to him which he likewise refused. A mantle of camel-hair was spread before him; I turned it in my hands, and he handed it over to me. I had in my hand a chaplet of shells which he touched and I gave it to him; he polished it with his fingers, smelt it and kissed it, pointing to heaven and then in the direction of the Qiblah. My companions did not understand these signs, but I knew that he implied that he was a Mussulman who hid his religion from the inhabitants of this island. He lived on cocoanuts. When we took leave of him, I kissed his hand, and my comrades disapproved of my action. He perceived their disapproval, took my hand and kissed it smiling, and signalled to us that we might go back. We then went away, I being the last to leave. The Jōgi pulled me by my dress, and when I turned to him he gave me ten pieces of gold. When we went out of his presence, my friends asked me: ‘Why did he pull you?’ I replied: ‘He gave me these gold pieces.’ I gave three of them to Ẓahīr-ud-dīn and three to Sanbal, telling them: “This man is a Mussulman. Did you not see how he pointed to heaven to indicate that he acknowledged the Almighty God above, and how he pointed to the direction of Mecca, to show his recognition of the mission of the Prophet? This is confirmed by his taking the chaplet.” When I had said this, they turned to look at him again, but he was not there.

The next day we came to Hanaur (Honavar) situated on a large gulf navigable for large ships. The city is a mile and a half away from the sea. In the rainy season the sea is so disturbed that for four consecutive months there can be no sailing except for fishing.

The day we arrived at Hanaur, a Hindu Jōgi came to meet me secretly, and gave me six gold pieces, saying: ‘The Brahmin (for so he called the Jōgi who got my chaplet and gave me the dinars) sent you this money.’ I took the dinars from him and offered him one of them, which he refused. When he went away, I informed my companions of this, telling them: ‘If you wish, you can take your share of this sum.’ They declined, but they were astonished at this occurrence, and said: ‘We added an equal sum to the six pieces of gold you gave us, and left the whole amount, between the two idols in the spot where we met this person.’ I was very much surprised by all that concerned this man, and I kept the dinars he had presented to me.

The people of Hanaur profess the doctrine of Shāfi’ī; they are pious, devoted, courageous, and wage war on the sea with infidels. They are noted for this; fortune has deserted them after they conquered Sandabur, as we shall narrate.

Among the holy men I met at Hanaur was Shaikh Muḥammad ul-Nāqūry who entertained me in his hermitage. He cooked food with his own hand, regarding as impure anything prepared by slaves, male or female. I also met the jurisconsult Isma’īl who was teaching the Quran. He was given to fasting, looked conceited, but had a generous heart. I saw too the Qāẓī of the town, Nūr-ud-dīn ‘Aly and the preacher whose name I have forgotten.

The women of Hanaur and of all the coastal districts do not wear stitched cloths, but only unsewn garments. They tie one end of the cloth round their waist and drape the rest over the head and chest. They are beautiful and chaste; each of them wears a ring of gold in her nose. One notable feature is that they all know the Quran by heart. I saw in Hanaur thirteen schools for the instruction of girls, and twenty-three for boys, a thing I have not seen anywhere else.

The people of Hanaur live by maritime trade, and own no cultivated land. The inhabitants of Malabar pay a fixed sum every year to Sultan Jamāl-ud-dīn (of Hanaur) as they are afraid of his power on the sea. His army comprises six thousand men, horse and foot. This Sultan Jamāl-ud-dīn Muḥammad, son of Ḥasan, is one of the best and most powerful sovereigns. He is subject to the supremacy of an infidel king named Hariab¹⁴ of whom we shall speak later. Sultan Jamāl-ud-dīn is fond of praying in the company of others of the faith. He has the practice of going to the mosque before daybreak and there reading the Quran till it is dawn; then he prays for the first time, and goes for a ride outside the city. He returns to the mosque about nine o’clock, and, after prostrating himself there, goes back to his palace. He fasts on full-moon days. During my sojourn near him, he invited me to break the fast in his company, and I assisted at this ceremony as well as the jurisconsults ‘Aly and Isma’īl. They placed four seats on the ground; he sat on one of them and the rest of us sat on the others.

The order observed in the Sultan’s meal is as follows: there is set a table of copper called khwancha (in Persian) and on it they place a plate of the same metal, which they call tālam. A beautiful slave, clad in silk, comes and causes to be placed before the prince saucepans containing the food. She has a large spoon of copper with which she takes a spoonful of rice and serves it on the plate; she pours ghee on it, and places some pickled pepper in bunches, green ginger, and pickled lemons and mangoes. The guest eats a mouthful and then some of the preserves. When the spoonful that she served on the plate is consumed, she serves another spoonful of rice, and serves in another bowl a roast fowl with which some more rice is eaten. After this second course, she fetches, still in a saucepan, another species of fowl and serves it; this is always eaten with rice.

When the different kinds of fowl have been done with, there follow divers sorts of fish and more rice with them. After the fish, they serve vegetables cooked in butter, and milk foods, also taken with rice. At the end of all these courses, kūshān i.e., butter-milk is brought, and this finishes the meal. When butter-milk is served, it means that there is nothing more to eat. Above all, they drink hot water, for cold water is harmful in the rainy season.

On another occasion I spent eleven months with the Sultan without ever eating bread, for the people there live only on rice. I also spent three years in the Maldive islands, in Silān (Ceylon) and in the countries of Ma’bar and Malabar, eating only rice, so that I could swallow it only with water.

The dress of the Sultan of Hanaur consists of clothes of very fine silk and linen; he ties a loin-cloth round his body, and wears two cloths one over the other; he plaits his hair and ties a small turban round it. When he mounts a horse, he puts on a tunic and two cloths over it. They beat a kettle-drum and sound the trumpet before him.

This time we spent three days at his court; he gave us provisions for the journey and we took leave of him. At the end of three more days we reached Malabar, the land of pepper. It extends along the sea coast for a length of two months’ journey, from Sandābūr (Goa) to Kūlam (Quilon). For the whole distance, the road passes under the shade of trees; at every half-mile, there is a wooden structure with platforms on which all travellers, Muslim or infidel, may sit. Near each of these rest houses, there is a well for drinking and an infidel is placed in charge of it. He supplies the water in vessels to infidels; in the case of Muslims he pours the water into their hands, and continues to do so until they signal to him to stop. The idolaters of Malabar do not allow Muslims to enter their houses or eat from their vessels. If a Muslim should do the contrary, they break the vessel or give it to the Muhammadan. When a Muhammadan goes to a place where there is no house belonging to one of his class, the infidels cook the food and serve it to him on banana leaves; dogs and birds eat what is left over. In all the places on the road through Malabar, there are Muslim houses where their co-religionists can alight and buy all their requirements. But for these, no Mussulman could travel in this country.

On this road, which as we said extends for two months’ march, there is not a palm’s breadth of land that is not cultivated. Everybody has his own garden and his house in the middle, the whole being surrounded by a wooden enclosure. The road runs through these gardens. When it comes up to the enclosure of an orchard, it goes up by one flight of wooden steps, and descends into the neighbouring orchard by another; this happens over the whole length of the road. No one travels in this country on an animal, and only the Sultan owns horses. The principal vehicle of the people is a palanquin carried on the shoulders of slaves or hired labourers; those that do not get up on a palanquin, whoever they be, go on foot. People who have baggages or moveables like merchandise hire out men who carry them on their backs. One merchant may be accompanied by about hundred men carrying his wares. Everyone of these men carries a stout stick fitted with an iron point at the lower end and a hook of the same metal at the top; when the porter is fatigued and does not find any place for resting himself, he sticks his baton into the ground and suspends his burden on it. After rest, he takes up his charge without any one to assist him and resumes his march.

I have not seen a safer road than this, for the Hindus put to death any one who steals a single nut. Again, when a fruit drops on the ground no one picks it up until the owner takes it. I heard that once several Hindus passed by the road and that one of them picked up a nut. The governor, coming to know of it, ordered a stake to be driven into the ground and its upper end to be cut and fixed on a wooden plank in such wise that a portion of it showed up above the plank. The culprit was extended on it and fixed to the stake which entered his abdomen and came out by the back; he was left in this posture to serve as an example to the spectators. On the road there are many stakes like this, so that passers by may see them and be warned.

Now, we sometimes met infidels on the road by night, who, when they saw us, turned aside to let us pass. Mussulmans are held in the highest regard in this country except that the people, as we said, do not eat with them or allow them to enter their houses.

There are twelve infidel Sultans in Malabar; the more powerful among them having an army of fifty thousand troops, the weaker ones only three thousand. But there is no discord among them, and the strong does not covet what the weak possesses. At the boundary of each state there is a wooden gate on which is engraved the name of the Sultan whose territory begins there; they call it ’the gate of security’ of N. When a Mussulman or an infidel flees from the state of one of these princes because of some delinquency, and reaches the gate of security of another prince, he is safe and cannot be caught by him from whom he had fled though he may be powerful, having many troops at his disposal.

The sovereigns of this country transmit their royalty to their sister’s son to the exclusion of their own children. I have not found this rule elsewhere, except with the Messūfah who wear the liṣām (veil which covers the lower part of the face) and who will be referred to later.¹⁵ When a ruler of Malabar wishes to put a stop to his subjects buying and selling, he gives his orders to one of his slaves who hangs before the shops a branch of a tree with its foliage intact. No one buys or sells so long as these branches remain before the shops.

The pepper-plant resembles the vine; they plant it near the cocoanut trees, round which they climb like the stem of the vine; only, unlike the vine, the pepper-plant has no tendrils. The leaves are like those of the rue; and partly also resemble the leaves of a bramble. The pepper-plant bears small bunches of berries which, when green, resemble those of the abu-Qinnīnah (raisin?). When autumn arrives, they gather the pepper and spread it in the sun on mats, as they spread grapes when they wish to dry them. They do this until it becomes perfectly dry and black, and then they sell it to the merchants. People in our country maintain that the wrinkles on the pepper are caused by its being roasted on the fire; but this is not so, and it is due only to the action of the sun. I have seen this in the town of Qālqōṭ (Calicut) where they measure pepper by the bushel as we do millet in our lands.

The first town of Malabar we entered was Abu Sarūr (Barcelore), a small place situated on a large bay and rich in cocoanuts. The chief of the Mussulman population here is Shaikh Jum’a, known as Abu Sittah ‘father of six,’ a generous man who has spent all his wealth on fakirs and the indigent. Two days after our departure from this town, we reached Fākanūr (Bākanūr),¹⁶ a large town on a bay. There was an abundance of excellent sugar-cane, unequalled in the rest of the country. There are some Mussulmans and their chief is called Ḥusain-ul-Salāṭ. There is a Qāẓī and a preacher, and this Ḥusain has built a mosque for the Friday prayer.

The Sultan of Fākanūr is an infidel called Bāsadav (Vāsudeva). He has about thirty ships of war under the command of Lūlā, a Muslim, a bad man and a pirate who robs merchants. When we anchored at Fākanūr, the Sultan sent his son to us to stay as a hostage on the vessel. When we went to see him, he entertained us with great cordiality for three days as a mark of respect for the Emperor of India and with a desire to gain by trade with our men. It is the custom of the country that each vessel which passes near a town must necessarily enter the port and offer the prince a present, ’the right of the port’ as it is called. If a ship fails to do so, the people pursue her in their vessels, bring her forcibly into port, impose a double tax on her and detain her as long as they like.

We left Fākanūr, and at the end of three days we arrived at Manjarūr (Mangalore),¹⁷ a large town on the bay of Dunb, the largest inlet in Malabar. It is here that most of the merchants from Fārs and Yemen disembark. Pepper and ginger are here in great abundance.

The Sultan of Manjarūr is one of the principal rulers of this country. His name is Rām-dav (Rāma-deva). There are in Manjarūr about 4000 Mussulmans who live in a suburb. Conflicts occur often between them and the inhabitants of the city, and the Sultan reconciles them as he has need of the merchants. We saw in Manjarūr a Qāẓī, a distinguished and generous man, who professes the doctrine of Shāfi’ī, and teaches the sciences; his name is Badr-ud-dīn of Ma’bar. He came first to visit us on board and asked us to land and go into the town. We answered him: “We will not do so, until the Sultan sends his son to stay on board."— ‘The Sultan of Fākanūr,’ he replied, ‘did so only because the Mussulmans living in his town had no power; but here the Sultan fears us.’ We persisted in our refusal until the Sultan sent his son as the Sultan of Fākanūr had done. When we landed he treated us with great consideration, and we stayed there three days.

Then we left for Hily¹⁸ and reached it in two days. It is a large town, well-built and situated on a large bay navigable for large ships. The ships from China come here; they enter only this port and the ports of Kūlam and Calicut. Hily is respected alike by Mussulmans and idolaters on account of its great mosque, a source of blessings and of light. Sailors make vows of considerable offerings to it, and it possesses a rich treasury, placed under the supervision of the preacher Ḥusain and of Ḥasan-ul-vazzān (the weigher) the chief of the Muslims. There are in this mosque a certain number of students who learn the sciences and receive stipends from its revenues. It has a kitchen whence food is supplied to travellers and poor Muslims in the town. I met in the mosque the virtuous theologian, Sa’īd by name, a native of Maddshau. He had a fine figure and a good character and he fasted often. He told me that he had lived at Mecca for fourteen years and as many at Medina, that he had seen the amīr of Mecca, Abu Nemi, and of Medina, Manṣūr, son of Jamāz, and lastly that he had travelled in India and China.

From Hily we went to Jurfattan,¹⁹ at a distance of three parasangs. There I saw a theologian from Baghdād, a man of great merit, named Ṣarṣary, after a village ten miles from Baghdād on the road to Kūfah . . . . . . . . . He had a very rich brother living at Jurfattan who had young children. This brother had died commending the infants to him; I left him as he was preparing to take them to Baghdād. For it is the custom among the people of India and of Sudan not to interfere in the succession to strangers who die among them, though they leave behind millions in gold. Their money remains in the hands of the chief of the Mussulmans till it is received by those lawfully entitled to it.

The Sultan of Jurfattan, Kōyal, by name, is one of the most powerful rulers of Malabar, and he owns a number of vessels which sail to ‘Amān (Oman), Fārs and Yemen. Dahfattan and Budfattan are included in his state. We sailed from Jurfattan to Dahfattan,²⁰ a large town on a bay, with many orchards in it. Here are found cocoanut palms, pepper and betel leaf and nut, and much qalqaṣ (colocassia) with which the Hindus cook their food; and as for banana, I have not seen any country which produces it more or cheaper. We have at Dahfattan a very large bāīn or tank, five hundred feet long and three hundred broad. It has a facing of red stone and has on its sides twenty-eight domes of stone, each containing four seats of the same material. Each of these pavilions is reached by a flight of stone steps. In the middle of the tank there is a large pavilion three stories high, each of them having four seats. I heard that this bāīn was erected by the father of Sultan Kōyal. Opposite to this, there is a cathedral mosque for the Mussulmans. The mosque has steps by which the faithful descend to the tank and wash themselves. The theologian Ḥusain told me that the mosque and the bāīn were built by one of the ancestors of Kōyal who was a Mussulman; his conversion came about in the following marvellous manner.

Near the mosque I saw a beautiful green tree with leaves like those of the fig, except that they were smooth. It was surrounded by a wall and had a niche or small chapel near it where I prayed and kneeled twice. The tree is called dirakht-i-shahādat, ’the tree of testimony.’ I was told that every year when autumn came this tree dropped one leaf which had changed its colour first to yellow, and then into red, that on this leaf was written with the pen of divine power, the words: ‘There is no God but God, and Muḥammad is the Prophet of God.’ Ḥusain and many other trustworthy men told me that they had seen this leaf and read the inscription on it. Ḥusain added that when the time came for the leaf falling, reliable persons among the Muslims as well as the infidels came and sat beneath the tree, and when the leaf fell, the Muslims took one half of it, the other half being deposited in the treasury of the infidel Sultan. The people use it often for the purpose of curing their diseases.²¹

This tree was the cause of the grandfather of Kōyal going over to Islam. He could read Arabic, and when he deciphered the inscription and understood its import, he embraced the Islamic religion and practised it to perfection. His story is transmitted by tradition among Hindus. Ḥusain told me that one of the children of this Sultan returned to idolatry after the death of his father, behaved unjustly, and ordered the tree to be torn up by the roots. The order was executed and no vestige of the tree was left. But it grew up again and regained its original state. And the king died suddenly soon after.

From Dahfattan we proceeded to Budfattan,²² a considerable town also on a bay. There is a mosque here near the sea outside the town, and Muslim strangers resort to it, for there are no Mussulmans at Budfattan, most of the inhabitants being Brahmin idolaters who hate Mussulmans. The harbour here is one of the most beautiful; the water is sweet, and there is an abundance of areca-nut which is exported to India²³ and China.

I was told that the reason why the Brahmins have allowed this mosque to remain is that one of them demolished its roof to make the roof of his own house with the material; but the house caught fire and he perished with his children and his moveables. The Hindus respect this temple, and no longer entertain any ill designs against it. They render homage to it, store water before it so that travellers may drink, and place a trellis at the gate to prevent birds entering in.

Then we sailed to Fandarinā, a large and beautiful town with gardens and bazaars. Here the Mussulmans occupy three quarters, each having a mosque; the chief temple on the beach is admirable; it has belvederes and halls facing the sea. The Qāẓī and preacher of Fandarinā is a man from ‘Amān and he has a good brother. The ships from China pass the winter here.

We went from Fandarinā to Calicut one of the great ports of Malabar. Men from China, Java, Ceylon, the Maldives, Yemen and Fārs come here as well as merchants from all parts. Its harbour is one of the largest in the world.

The Sultan of Calicut is an idolater known as the Sāmuri (the Zamorin). He is advanced in age and shaves his beard, like some of the Greeks. I saw him at Calicut and spoke to him, as it was God’s pleasure. The chief of the merchants in this town was Ibrāhīm, the chief of the port, a native of Baḥrain. He is a distinguished man endowed with generous qualities; the merchants meet in his house and dine at his table. The Qāẓī of Calicut was Fakhr-ud-dīn ‘Uṣmān, a distinguished and generous man. The head of the hermitage was the Shaikh Shahāb-ud-dīn of Kazrūn, and the people of India and China vow and send offerings to him (may God enable us to profit by his merits!). In this town also lives the very rich and celebrated ship-owner Miṣqāl, who possesses numerous vessels employed in his trade with India,²⁴ China, Yemen and Fārs.

When we reached the town, Ibrāhīm, the chief of the port, came out to receive us, and so did the Qāẓī, the Shaikh Shahāb-ud-dīn, the principal merchants and the deputy (nāib) of the Hindu sovereign, Qalāj by name. They had drums, trumpets bugles and standards on their ships. We entered the harbour in great pomp, such as I did not see elsewhere in these lands. But it was a joy to be followed by distress. We remained in the harbour of Calicut, where there were already thirteen vessels from China. We then went into the city and each of us was accommodated in a house. We remained there three months awaiting the day of our voyage to China. We were the guests of the idolatrous sovereign. Voyages in the Sea of China are made only in Chinese vessels, and now, we shall describe the arrangements relating to them.

There are three kinds of Chinese vessels: 1. large ships, called junks; 2. middling ones called zū-s and 3. the smallest, kakams. On the large vessels there are three sails or more, up to a dozen. Their sails are made of cane reeds plaited together like mats; they are never lowered, but are turned about according to the direction of the wind. When the ships are anchored, the sails are allowed to float in the wind. Each of these ships is manned by a thousand men, six hundred sailors and four hundred soldiers among whom are archers, men armed with shields, and persons who throw naphtha. Each large vessel is followed by three smaller ones, a middle-sized, a third and a fourth sized. These vessels are built only in the city of Zaitūn in China or in Ṣīn-kalān (Canton). This is how they build the ships: They erect two walls of wood and fill the interspace between them by means of very thick planks joined together along their length and breadth by large nails each three cubits long. When the two walls have been joined together by means of these planks, they lay on the bottom of the vessel and then push the whole of it out on the sea where the construction is finished. The planks and the two walls which touch the water serve the crew for washing and other needs. On the sides of these planks are found the oars which are as big as masts and are manipulated each by ten or fifteen men together, standing. They make four decks on a vessel; it contains chambers, cabins, and saloons for the merchants. Many of these cabins contain chambers and water closets. They have keys and their occupants lock them. They take their wives and concubines with them. It often happens that a man lives in his cabin unknown to any others on board till they meet on their arrival in some place.

The sailors’ children live in these cabins. They grow vegetables, pulses and ginger in wooden tubs. The commander of a ship is like a great amīr; when he disembarks, archers and Abyssinians march in front of him with javelins, swords, drums, bugles and trumpets. When he arrives at the inn where he is to live, they place their lances on either side of the door and continue to do so throughout his stay. Some of the Chinese own many ships on which they send their factors abroad; in the whole world there is no people richer than the Chinese.

When the time came for sailing to China, the Sultan, i.e., the Zamorin, equipped for us one of the thirteen junks that were in the port of Calicut. The commander of the ship was one Sulaimān ul-Ṣafdi of Shām²⁵ already known to me. I said to him: ‘I want a cabin all to myself and for my slave-girls as it is my rule never to travel without them.’ He replied, ‘The Chinese merchants have taken the cabins for the voyage both ways. My son-in-law has a cabin which I shall give you, but it has no lavatory; it is possible that you may be able to exchange it for another.’ I issued instructions to my companions, and they took on board all my luggage and the slaves, male and female. This was on a Thursday; I remained on shore to get through my Friday prayer and then join them. The Malik Sanbal and Ẓahīr-ud-dīn also embarked with the present. Meanwhile, Hilāl, a eunuch of mine, came to me on Friday morning and said: “The cabin we have taken is very small and inconvenient.’ I mentioned this to the captain of the ship, and he answered: ‘It cannot be helped; but if you like to travel by the Kakam, you may have cabins of your choice.’ I accepted this, and in accordance with my instructions my companions transported my slave girls and my luggage to the Kakam and settled there before prayer time on Friday. Now it is usual for the sea to become rough after four in the evening, and then no one can embark. All the junks had gone except the one which contained the present, one other the owners of which had resolved to spend the winter at Fandarinā, and the Kakam mentioned above. We spent the Friday night on the shore, not being able to embark on the Kakam, and those on the Kakam being unable to come to us. I had only a carpet with me to sleep on. On Saturday morning both the junk and the Kakam had drifted far from the port. The junk bound for Fandarinā was dashed against rocks and wrecked; a part of the crew perished, the rest escaped. There was on this ship a slave girl well beloved of a merchant who offered ten pieces to any one who should save her. She had caught hold of a piece of wood at the back of the junk, and one of the sailors of Hormuz, in response to this appeal, rescued the young girl from danger; but he refused to receive the money, saying: ‘I did it only out of the love of God!’ When night came, the junk which carried the present was also dashed against the rocks, and all the men in it perished. The next morning we examined the spots where their bodies lay; I saw that Ẓahīr-ud-dīn had his head shattered, and that a nail had entered one of the temples of Sanbal and come out by the other; we prayed over their bodies and buried them. I saw the Hindu Sultan of Calicut, wearing a large white cloth round his waist from the navel down to the knees and a small turban on his head; he was bare-footed, and a parasol was held over his head by a young slave. A fire was lit before him on the beach, and his bodyguard were beating the people who were there to stop their stealing anything that the sea might cast up. The custom of Malabar is that every time there occurs a ship wreck, what is recovered goes to the treasury; this town is however an exception; indeed here the legitimate owners receive it, and this is why this city is flourishing and strangers come here in large numbers.

When the crew of the Kakam saw what had befallen the junk, they set sail and went away carrying all my property and slaves of both sexes. I was alone on the beach with only one slave whom I had enfranchised. When he saw what had happened to me, he left me, and I had nothing more with me than the ten pieces of gold which the yogi had given me and the carpet I had spread on the ground. The people there told me that the Kakam should necessarily enter the port of Kūlam (Quilon). I resolved then to go to this town, at a distance of ten days by land or by river²⁶—if any one prefers this. I started by the river and engaged a Muslim for carrying my carpet. The custom of the Hindus, when they travel by this river, is to disembark in the evening and spend the night in villages on its banks; the next morning they get back to the boat. We did likewise. There was no Mussulman on the boat except the one I had in my employ. He drank wine with the infidels when we disembarked and behaved to me like a drunken man. This annoyed me greatly.

The fifth day after our departure we reached Kanji-kari on the peak of a mountain; it is inhabited by Jews who have one among themselves for their chief and pay a poll tax to the Sultan of Kūlam (Quilon).

All the trees found near this river are cinnamon and brazil. Here they are used as firewood, and during this voyage we cooked our food in fire lighted with this wood. On the tenth day we came to the town of Kūlam (Quilon), one of the most beautiful towns in Malabar. Its bazaars are splendid and its merchants are known as Sōlis.²⁷ They are very rich; any one of them will buy a vessel with its tackle and load it with merchandise from his own house. There are in Kūlam many Muhammadan merchants; their chief is ‘Alā-ud-dīn Alāvjī, native of Avah in ‘Irāq. He is a rāfīẓī (or partizan of ‘Ali) and has friends who openly follow the same doctrine. The Qāẓī of Kūlam is a distinguished man from Qazwīn; the head of all the Muslims in this town is Muḥammad Shāh Bandar, the chief of the port, who has an excellent and generous brother, Taqī-ud-dīn. The principal mosque there is admirable; it was built by the merchant KHwāja Muhazzab. Kūlam is, of all the towns of Malabar, the nearest to China, and most of the Chinese merchants come there. Mussulmans are honoured and respected there.

The Sultan of Kūlam is an idolater, Tirwari (Tiruvadi) by name; he respects Muslims and severely punishes thieves and malefactors. I was an eyewitness to the following, among other events, at Kūlam; an archer from ‘Irāq killed one of his companions and fled to the house of Alāvjī. This murderer had enormous wealth. The Mussulmans wished to bury the victim, but the officers of the ruler stopped this saying: ‘he should not be buried till you surrender his murderer who will be put to death to avenge him.’ They left the body in the coffin in front of the Alāvjī’s house till it began to rot. Alāvjī then delivered the assassin to the officers offering to give over to them all his wealth if they would spare his life; but they refused, put the criminal to death and then buried his victim.

I was told that the ruler of Kūlam once went out for a ride outside the town. His path lay among orchards and his son-in-law, a prince, went with him. The latter picked up a mango which had dropped outside one of the orchards, and the Sultan saw this. He at once ordered that the prince should have his body split in twain, and each half exhibited on a cross on either side of the road, one half of the mango being put alongside each half of the body, to serve as a warning.

Another like occurrence which happened at Calicut was this. The nephew of the lieutenant of the ruler took by force a sword belonging to a Muslim merchant. The merchant complained to the uncle of the culprit and he promised to inquire into the affair. While he was seated at the gate of his house, he saw his nephew wearing this sword on his side; he called him and said: “This is the sword of the Mussulman.” “Yes”, answered the nephew. “Did you buy it of him?” asked his uncle. “No” replied the young man. Then the viceroy asked his followers to seize him and cut his neck with the same sword.

I spent some days at Kūlam in the hermitage of Shaikh Fakhr-ud-dīn, son of Shaikh Shahāb-ud-dīn Alkāzarūnī, superior of the hermitage at Calicut. I had no news regarding the Kakam. But then the ambassadors of the king of China who had accompanied us and embarked on one of the junks above mentioned arrived there. Their ship had also been wrecked; the Chinese merchants provided them with clothes and they returned to China where I met them again later.

I wanted to return from Kūlam to the Sultan of Delhi to tell him what had happened to his present; but I was afraid that he might find fault with my conduct and reproach me for having separated myself from the present. I resolved then to go back to Sultan Jamāl-ud-dīn of Hanaur and stay with him till I should get news of the Kakam. I returned to Calicut and there I found vessels belonging to Sultan of India on which he had sent an Arab amīr²⁸ named Sayyid Ab-ul-Ḥasan. This person was one of the bard-i-dāri (Pers. pardah-dāri), i.e., the chief door-keeper. The Sultan had sent him with much money for enrolling as many Arabs as possible from the territories of Hormuz and of Qaṭīf; for this prince has an affection for Arabs. I went and saw this amīr, and found him inclined to spend the winter at Calicut and then go to the land of the Arabs. I consulted him on my return to the court of the Sultan; but he did not give his approval. However, I embarked with him at Calicut. We were then at the end of the season for these voyages. We sailed during the first half of the day after which we anchored till the next morning. We encountered four ships of war on the way, but they did us no harm, though we were afraid of them.

We reached the city of Hanaur and I went to meet the Sultan and salute him. He lodged me in a house where there was no servant, and invited me to recite the prayer with him. I sat most of the time in his mosque and I read the whole of the Quran each day. Later I read it twice a day beginning my first reading soon after the morning prayer and closing it about one o’clock in the afternoon. I then repeated my ablutions and resumed reading, completing the second reading by sunset. I continued to do this for three months, of which I spent forty days fully in religious exercises.

Sultan Jamāl-ud-dīn had equipped fifty-two vessels with a view to subduing Sandābūr (Goa). The sovereign of this island had quarrelled with his son, and the latter had written to Sultan Jamāl-ud-dīn requesting him to come and take the town, and promising to embrace Islam and marry the sister of the Sultan. When the vessels were ready, I wanted to go with them for the holy war. I consulted the Quran. On the first page I lighted on, I read the words: “In them (churches, mosques, etc.) the name of God is often mentioned. Certainly God will help those who help him.”²⁹ I rejoiced at this, and when the Sultan came for his prayer, at four in the evening, I said to him: ‘I wish to go also.’ ‘Then you will be the chief of the expedition,’ he replied. I told him what I had read in the Quran when I opened it. This pleased him, and he resolved to join the expedition himself though he had not thought of it before. He embarked on one of the vessels and I with him. It was on a Saturday. We reached Sandābūr and entered its bay on Monday evening. We found the people ready for the fight, having already set up their mangonels. We passed the night near the town, and at dawn, the drums, trumpets and bugles resounded, and the ships advanced. The besieged made a discharge from their mangonels. I saw a stone strike one of the men near the Sultan. The men from the ships jumped into the water, with shields and swords in their hands. The Sultan got into an ‘Akairy, a kind of boat. I jumped into the water with the rest. There were near us two tartans³⁰ open abaft with horses in them. They are so constructed that a cavalier can mount his horse in them and put on his armour and then come out. It was thus that cavaliers were mounted on these two ships.

God granted the victory to the Mussulmans and Sandābūr was conquered. We entered the town at the point of the sword, and most of the infidels took refuge in the palace of their ruler. We fired the palace, and when they came out, we seized them. The Sultan spared their lives and restored to them their women and children. They were ten thousand in number, and they got a suburb of the city for their residence. The Sultan himself occupied the palace and gave the neighbouring houses to his courtiers. He gave me a young captive girl named Lemky, whom I called Mubāraka (blessed). Her husband wanted to buy her back, but I refused. The Sultan presented me a costly robe of Egyptian material found among the treasures of the infidel ruler. I stayed with the Sultan at Sandābūr from the day of the conquest, the 13th of the first Jumādī, to the middle of Sha’bān;³¹ then I sought permission to leave, and he made me promise that I would come back to him.

I left by sea for Hanaur whence I went in succession to Fākanūr, Manjarūr, Hily, Jurfattan, Dahfattan, Budfattan, Fandarīnā, Calicut—all places already mentioned. I then went to Shālyāt,³² a most beautiful town, where they make the fabrics that go by its name. I stayed there long and then returned to Calicut. Two of my slaves who had embarked on the Kakam came to this town and informed me that the slave girl who was with child and for whom I was much concerned was dead; that the ruler of Jāvah³³ had appropriated the other slave girls; that my goods had become the booty of strangers; and that my comrades were dispersed in China, Jāvah and Bengal.³⁴

When I heard this, I returned to Hanaur and Sandābūr; I reached Sandābūr at the end of Muḥarram and stayed there till the second day of the month Rabi’ II. The infidel Sultan of this town, against whom we had succeeded, now advanced to recapture the city, and all the infidels fled to his side. The troops of the Sultan were scattered in the villages and they abandoned us. The infidels besieged us and pressed us hard. When the situation became difficult, I came out of the town, still being besieged, and returned to Calicut. I made up my mind to go to Zibat-ul-Mahal (the Maldives) of which I had heard much. Ten days after we embarked at Calicut, we reached the islands of Zibat-ul-Mahal. Zibat figures as the feminine of zīb (wolf, in Arabic; it is an alteration from Sanskrit Dvīpa, island). These islands are among the most marvellous in the world and number nearly two thousand. About a hundred of these islands or a little less are found grouped together in a circle in the form of a ring; the whole group has one entrance like a gateway, and ships enter only by this. When a ship arrives near any one of these, it is absolutely necessary for it to take one of the inhabitants as a guide, in order that under his guidance it may cross to the other islands. They are all so close to one another that as soon as you leave one island the tops of the palms on another island become visible. If a vessel loses its course, it cannot enter these islands and the wind sweeps it to Ma’bar (Coromandel coast) or to Silān (Ceylon).

The people in these islands are all Mussulmans, pious and honest. The islands are divided into regions or ‘climates,’ each ruled by a governor styled Kardūy. The regions are: 1. Bālbūr; 2. Kannalūs; 3. Mahal, which gives its name to all the islands and forms the residence of the sovereigns; 4. Talādib; 5. Karāiduv; 6. Taim; 7. Taldumtī, 8. Haldumtī, differing from the preceding only in the first letter; 9. Barīdu; 10. Kandakal; 11. Malūk; 12. Sawīd. The last is the farthest of all. All the Maldive islands are destitute of grains, except that a food cereal resembling millet is grown in the region of Sawīd and transported thence to Mahal. The people subsist on a fish similar to lairūn and called Qulb-ul-mās.³⁵ It has red flesh; it has no fat, but it smells like mutton. When they catch it, they cut each fish into four, cook it lightly and then place it in a palm-leaf basket and smoke it. They eat it when it is quite dry. From here it is also exported to India, China and Yemen.

Most of the trees on these islands are cocoa-palms; together with fish, they provide the subsistence of the people. The cocoa-palm is a marvellous tree. Each tree yields twelve clusters each year, one every month. Some are small, others large, some dry, the rest green, and this goes on continually. From the fruit they make milk, oil and honey. With its honey they make sweetmeats, pastries, eaten with dried cocoanuts. All the cocoanut foods and fish which the people here live on are a strong incentive to venery. The people of these islands are capable of surprising things in this line. I had in this country four wives, not to speak of concubines. I went round to all of them by day and spent the night with each one of them by turns; I lived like this for the year and half that I spent in the Maldives.

We find among the vegetal products of these islands the Jamūn (Eugenia Jambu), the citron, lemon and colocassia. The natives prepare a flour from the root of colocassia; from this flour they make a kind of vermicelli, which when cooked in coco-nut milk makes one of the best dishes known; I liked it very much.

The people of the Maldive islands are honest and pious, of sincere faith and steady mind. They eat what is lawful, and their prayers are fulfilled. When one of them meets another, he says to him: God is my Lord, Muhammad is my prophet; I am a poor ignoramus.’ Their bodies are weak; they do not engage in combats or warfare, and prayer is their weapon. One day, when I ordered the right hand of a thief to be cut off, many of the natives who were present in the court-room fainted. The pirates of India do not attack them, and cause them no fear, for they have found by experience that any one who takes anything of theirs soon encounters misfortune. When enemy ships come to this country, they seize the strangers whom they find there, but do no harm to any one of the natives. If an infidel takes something for himself, be it only a lemon, the chief of the infidels punishes him, and causes him to be beaten so severely that he dreads the results of the act. If it were otherwise, surely these people would be the most contemptible of men in the eyes of their aggressors, on account of the feebleness of their bodies. In each of their islands, there are beautiful mosques, and most of their buildings are of wood.

The islanders are a clean people; they avoid filth, and the majority bathe twice a day to keep clean because of the extreme heat of the climate and the profuse perspiration. They make much use of scented oils like that of sandalwood and anoint themselves with musk got from Maqdashū.³⁶ It is one of their habits that, after morning prayer, each woman goes to meet her husband or her son, with a box of collyrium, rose-water and the oil of musk; he applies the collyrium to his eyelashes, and rubs himself with rose-water and musk-oil, thus polishing his skin and removing all trace of fatigue from his countenance.

The dress of these people consists of simple cloths; one they wear round their loins in the place of drawers, and others of material called Siyāb-ul-waliyān³⁷ on their backs, as Muslim pilgrims wear the iḥrām. Some wear a turban while others substitute a small kerchief. When any one meets the Qāẓī or the preacher, he removes his garment from his shoulders exposing his back and thus accompanies him to his house. Another custom of theirs is this: when one of them marries and goes to his wife’s house, she spreads, in his honour, cotton cloth on the ground from the threshold of her house to the nuptial chamber; she places handfuls of cowries on either side of his path, and herself stands expecting him near the entrance to the apartment. When he comes near her, she throws a cloth at his feet, which his servants take. If the woman goes to her husband’s house, the same forms are observed by the husband. The same rule is observed by the people of these islands when they salute their sovereign, and it is absolutely necessary to throw cloth at his feet on such occasions.

Their buildings are of wood and they take care to raise the floor of their houses well above the ground level as a precaution against humidity, for the soil is moist in these islands. They do this by employing cut stones of two or three cubits each in several rows and laying beams of cocoa-nut palms across; then they raise the walls with planks. They give evidence of very great skill in this work. In the vestibule of the house they build an apartment called mālam where the master of the house sits with his friends. This room has two doors, one opening on the vestibule by which strangers enter and the other on the side of the house by which the master of the house enters. Near this chamber there is a jar full of water, and a vessel called walanj made from the shell of the cocoanut. It has a handle two cubits long, and it is enough for raising water from the wells which are not deep.

All the inhabitants of the Maldives, high and low, are barefooted; the streets there are swept very clean; they are shaded with trees, and to walk there is like walking in a garden. Still, it is essential for every person before entering a house to wash his feet with the water from the jar placed near the mālam and to rub them with a rough mat of palm-fibre which he finds there. Everybody who enters a mosque also does likewise.

When a vessel arrives, usually the people of the neighbouring island come in small boats bringing betel and cocoanut to meet the visitors; each one offers these to whomsoever he likes among the persons on the ship, and thus becomes his host, and carries to his house the goods belonging to his guest as if he were one of his near relatives. Any one among the newcomers that wants to marry may do so, on condition that at the time of his departure he divorces his wife, for the people of Maldives never leave their country. If a person does not marry, his food is cooked and served by the lady of the house where he lodges, and she supplies him the provisions for his journey at the time of his departure; in return for all of which she is content to receive the smallest present from him. The gain to the treasury, called bandar, consists in the right to purchase a certain portion of all the merchandise in the vessel at a fixed price, whether it is worth that or more; they call this the law of bandar. This bandar has, in each island a wooden warehouse where the governor, i.e., the Kardūry, gathers, buys, and barters all the merchandise. The natives buy earthenware with poultry, and one pot will fetch five or six chickens here.

From these islands are exported fish, as already mentioned, cocoanuts, cloths, waliyān and cotton turbans. Also brass vessels commonly used by the natives, cowries and qanbar i.e., fibrous rind of the cocoanut. The natives macerate this rind in pits dug on the seashore and then beat it with mallets; then the women spin it; they make thread from it for sewing together the planks of ships and export it to China, India and Yemen in the form of ropes. The qanbar is better than hemp. It is with such cords that the ships of India and Yemen are sewn; for the Indian ocean is full of rocks; and if a vessel joined with iron nails strikes against a rock it would fall to pieces, whereas if it is sewn with cords it gains a certain elasticity and does not break.

The inhabitants of these islands use cowries as their money. This is the name of an animal (a mollusc) which is got from the sea and deposited in pits dug on the shore. Its flesh disappears and only its white shell remains. A hundred of these shells is called syāh, and seven hundred fāl; 12,000 cowries form a kuttāi, and 100,000 a bustu. They settle accounts in the bazaar with these cowries on the basis of four bustu for a gold dinar. They often fall in price so that twelve bustu are sold for a dinar. The islanders sell them to the people of Bengal³⁸ in exchange for rice, for cowries are used as money also there. They are sold also to the Yemenites who use them as ballast for their ships in the place of sand. These cowries form the medium of exchange among the negroes also in their native country. I saw them sold at Mâly and at Jūjū (Gogo) on the basis of 1150 for a gold dinar.

The women of these isles do not cover their heads, not even their queen. They comb their hair and gather it on one side. Most of them wear only one cloth which covers them from the navel downwards; the rest of the body remains bare. It is in this dress that they walk about in the bazaars and elsewhere. When I held the office of Qāẓī in these isles, I made efforts to put an end to this habit and to get them to clothe themselves, but I could not succeed. No woman was admitted to my presence in a case unless her body was covered; but beyond this I could do nothing against this usage. Some women wear, in addition to the cloth, a chemise with short and broad sleeves. I had some slave girls who dressed like the inhabitants of Delhi. They covered their heads, but this rather disfigured than adorned them, as they were not used to it.

The women of Maldives adorn themselves with bracelets, covering both their arms with these from wrist to elbow. These jewels are of silver; only the wives of the Sultan and his relations wear bracelets of gold. They have also anklets, and golden collars round their necks. One of their singular habits is to seek employment as household servants for a fixed wage of not more than five dinars, their maintenance being also a charge on their employer. They do not consider this dishonourable and most of the girls follow this practice. You find ten or twenty such girls in a rich man’s house. Each servant is charged with the cost of any vessels broken by her. When a girl wishes to change from one house to another, her new master lends her the sum she owes to her former employer, and she remits it to him. The chief occupation of these hired women is to spin qanbar.

It is easy to get married in these islands because of the smallness of the dowry and the approval with which intercourse with women is viewed. Most men say nothing about the nuptial gift; they are satisfied with pronouncing the creed of Islam and giving a nuptial gift in conformity with law. When ships arrive, their crews marry wives, and they divorce them before their departure; it is a sort of temporary marriage. The women of Maldives never leave their country. I have not seen any place in the world where the company of women is more agreeable. In the native households, the wife does not entrust to any one the task of serving her husband; she serves his food, cleans up after his meal, and washes his hands; she offers him water for his ablutions and she covers his feet when he goes to sleep. The wife never eats with her husband, and no man knows what his wife eats. I married several women when I was there; some of them ate with me at my request, others refused so that I never succeeded in my efforts to see them at their table.

The motive for which the people of these islands embraced Islam; description of evil spirits which caused damage to them every month:

Trustworthy men among the inhabitants of the Maldives, such as the theologian ‘Isā of Yemen, the theologian and professor ‘Aly, the Qāẓī ‘Abd-ul-lah and others told me that the people of these islands were idolaters, and that there appeared before them every month an evil spirit, from among the spirits that came from the sea. It resembled a vessel full of lights. The custom of the natives who saw this was to get hold of a young virgin, adorn her and conduct her to a butkhānah,³⁹ i.e., an idol temple, which was built on the beach and had a window through which she could be seen. There they left her for a night, and came back in the morning; then they found the young girl deflowered and dead. They did not miss drawing lots each month, and whoever had his name chosen gave up his daughter. Later on there arrived in that place a Maghribī called Ab-ul-Barkāt, the Berber, who knew the illustrious Quran by heart. He stayed in the house of an old woman in the island Mahal. One day when he visited his hostess, he found that she had gathered her family together and that these women wept as if they had gone to a funeral. He questioned them on the subject of their sorrow, but they did not tell him the cause. A dragoman turned up and informed him that the lot had fallen on the old lady, and that she had only one daughter whom the evil spirit would kill. Ab-ul-Barkāt told the old lady: “I shall go tonight in the place of your daughter.” Now he was completely without a beard, and they brought him in the night and left him within the temple after he had finished his ablutions. He started to recite the Quran; then he perceived the demon by the window and continued his recitation. As soon as the demon came within hearing distance, he plunged into the sea, and when morning came, the Maghribī was still engaged in reciting the Quran. The old woman, her family and the people of the island came as usual to remove the body of the girl and burn it. They saw the stranger who recited the Quran and took him to their king, called Shinūrāzah,⁴⁰ and reported to him this occurrence. The king was astonished at it; the Maghribī bade him embrace Islam and roused in him the desire to do so. Shinūrāzah told him; “Remain with me for a month, and if you repeat once more what you have done and escape the evil spirit, I shall change my faith.” The stranger lived among the idolaters, and God ordained that the king receive the true faith. He became a Muslim before the end of the month, as also his wives, children and his courtiers. When the next month began, the Maghribī was conducted to the temple of idols; but the demon did not come, and the Berber recited the Quran till the morning. The Sultan and his subjects came in the morning and found him thus engaged. They broke the idols and demolished the temple. The people of the island embraced Islam and sent messengers to the other islands, the inhabitants of which were also converted. The Maghribī remained among these people greatly esteemed by them. The natives began to profess his doctrine which was that of the Imām Malik. Even to-day, they venerate the Maghribīs because of him. He built a mosque, which is known under his name. I read the following inscription engraved on wood on the grilled tribune of the great mosque: “The Sultan Aḥmad Shinūrāzah has embraced Islam at the hands of Ab-ul-Barkāt, the Berber, and the Maghribī.” This Sultan has assigned a third of the imposts on these islands as alms to the travellers in recognition of his having embraced Islam by their intervention. This portion of the taxes still bears a name which recalls this circumstance.

Because of the demon spoken of here, many of the islands of the Maldives were depopulated before their conversion to Islam. When we entered the country, I had no knowledge of this event. One night, when I was attending to my business, I suddenly heard the people reciting in a high voice the formulas: “There is no god but God” and “God is Almighty.” I saw children carrying the Quran on their heads, and women who struck on basins and vases of copper. I was surprised at what they did, and I said: “What has happened to you?” They replied: “Have you not looked at the sea?” I then turned to the sea and noticed a kind of a great ship seemingly full of lamps and stoves. They told me: “It is the demon; it generally appears once a month. But when we do what you see us doing, it goes back and does no harm to us.”

One of the wonders of these islands is that they have a woman for their ruler, viz., KHadījah, daughter of Sultan Jalāl-ud-dīn ‘Umar, son of Sultan Ṣalāḥ-ud-dīn Ṣāliḥ-ul-Bangālī.⁴¹ The kingship belonged at first to her grandfather, then to her father, and when he died, her brother Shahāb-ud-dīn became king. He was a minor, and the vazīr, ‘Abd-ul-lah, son of Muḥammad-ul-Ḥaẓramy⁴² married the prince’s mother, and gained control over him. The same man later married Sultānah KHadījah on the death of her first husband, the vazīr Jamāl-ud-dīn, as we shall see. When Shahāb-ud-dīn came of age, he drove out his step-father, the vazīr ‘Abd-ul-lah, and exiled him to the islands of Suwaid. He remained sole master, chose a freedman named ‘Ali Kalky as Vazīr whom he dismissed at the end of three years and exiled to Suwaid. Shahāb-ud-dīn, however, was a libertine who went out every night to meet the wives of his officers and courtiers, and so he was deposed and deported to the region of Haldatany, where he was put to death soon after.

The only survivors of the royal family were the sisters of the late monarch, KHadījah, the eldest, Miriam and Fāṭimah. The people raised to the throne KHadījah, who was married to their preacher Jamāl-ud-dīn who become vazīr and real master of the state, and promoted his son Muḥammad to the place of preacher, vacated by him; but orders are issued only in the name of KHadījah. They write these on palm leaves with a curved iron tool resembling a knife. They write on paper only copies of the Quran and scientific treatises. The preacher mentions the Sultānah in the prayers on Fridays and other days in these terms. “My god, succour thy servant whom thou in thy knowledge hast preferred over other mortals, and whom thou hast made the instrument of thy grace towards all Mussulmans, that is to say, the Sultānah KHadījah, daughter of the Sultan Jalāl-ud-dīn, son of Sultan Ṣalāḥ-ud-dīn.”

When a stranger arrives among these people and visits the hall of audience, called dar, custom requires that he should take two cloths with him. He makes an obeisance to the Sultānah, and throws down one of the two cloths; then he salutes her vazīr, who is also her husband, Jamāl-ud-dīn, and throws down the second cloth. The army of this Sultānah comprises a thousand foreigners, though some of the soldiers are natives. They come every day to the hall of audience, salute her, and go back. Their pay consists of rice which is supplied to them every month at the bandar. At the end of the month, they come to the hall of audience, salute the vazir, and tell him: “Convey our homages to the sovereign and inform her that we have come to ask for our pay”; thereupon the necessary orders are issued. The Qāẓī and the officials, who bear the title ‘vazīrs’ in this country, also present themselves every day in the audience hall. They make an obeisance and depart after the eunuchs have transmitted their homage to the sovereign.

The people of the Maldives call the supreme vazīr, lieutenant of the Sultānah. Kalky; and the Qāẓī, Fandayārqālwā. All sentences proceed from Qāẓī, who is treated with greater respect than all the other officials, and whose orders are carried out like those of the Sultan, or even better. He sits on a carpet in the court hall; he receives the income from three islands for his own use, in accordance with an old custom established by Sultan Aḥmad Shinūrāzah. The preacher is called Handijary, the chief of the treasury Fāmaldāry, the receiver-general of finances Māfākalwā, the Magistrate of police Fatnāyak and the admiral Mānāyak. All these persons have the title of vazīr. There is no prison in these islands; culprits are shut up in wooden houses meant for the storage of merchandise, each being confined in a wooden cell like the Christian prisoners of Morocco.

When I arrived in this country, I disembarked on the island of Kannalūs, a fine island with many mosques. I put up in the house of one of the most pious inhabitants. The theologian ‘Aly gave me a feast; he was a distinguished man; he had sons who devoted themselves to study. I met a man called Muḥammad, native of Ẓafār-ul-Ḥumūz, who entertained me and told me: ‘If you enter the island of Mahal, the vazīr will detain you by force, for the people have no Qāẓī there.’ Now my plan was to go from there to Ma’bar (Coromandel coast), Sarandīb (Ceylon) and Bengal, and thence to Ṣīn (China). I came to the Maldives in a vessel of the captain ‘Umar-ul-hanaury who was among the virtuous pilgrims. We spent six days at Kannalūs; then he engaged a small boat for going to the isle of Mahal with a present to the sovereign and her husband. I wished to go with him, but he said: ‘The boat is not large enough to take you and your companions; if you will come without them, you may do so.’ I declined this offer, and ‘Umar went away. But the wind was against him, and after four days, he returned much fatigued. He made excuses to me, and entreated me to accompany him with my companions.

We set sail in the morning and reached some island by midday; we sailed thence and spent the night on another island. After sailing for four days, we reached the region of Taim, where Hilāl was governor. He saluted me, gave me a feast, and then came to see me with four men, two of whom carried on their shoulders a pole from which four chickens were suspended, while the two others carried similar poles with about ten cocoanuts tied to them. I was surprised at the value they set on these miserable objects, but I learned that they acted like this out of consideration and regard.

We left these people, and disembarked on the sixth day in the island of Uṣmān, a great and good man. He received us with honour and entertained us suitably. On the eighth day we put into port in an island belonging to the vazīr Talamdy. At last on the tenth day we came to the Mahal island where the Sultānah and her husband dwelt, and we entered the port. It is the rule here that no one is allowed to disembark without the permission of the inhabitants. They gave us permission, and I wished to go to some mosque; but the slaves who were on the shore stopped me saying that it was essential to visit the vazīr. I had enjoined the captain to plead ignorance if he was questioned about me; this I did lest they should detain me; for I did not know that an ill-advised gossip had written to them about me that I had been Qāẓī at Delhi. When we reached the court hall, we sat on the benches placed near the third door from the entrance. The Qāẓī, ‘Isā-ul-Yemeny, turned up and saluted me. On my side I saluted the vazīr. The captain of the ship Ibrāhīm (called ‘Umar elsewhere) brought ten pieces of cloth, made a salute to the sovereign and threw down one of these cloths; then he bent his knee in honour of the vazīr and threw down another cloth, and so on to the last. They asked him about me, and he said ‘I do not know him.’

Then they gave us betel and rosewater, a mark of honour among these people. The vazīr put us up in a house, and sent us food consisting of a large basinful of rice and other plates of meat salted and dried in the sun, chickens, ghee and fish. The next day I went with the captain of the ship and the Qāẓī ‘Isā-ul-Yemeny to visit a hermitage founded at the extremity of the island by the virtuous Shaikh Najīb. We returned by night, and the next morning the vazīr sent me a robe and meal comprising the same items as before, and cocoanuts and honey extracted from them which the islanders called qurbāny, ‘sugar water’. They brought also 100,000 cowries for my expenses. At the end of ten days, there came a vessel from Ceylon which carried Arab and Persian fakirs who knew me and who told the servants of the vazīr all about me; this greatly increased the joy he experienced at my arrival. He sent for me at the commencement of the Ramẓān. I found the chiefs and the vazīr already gathered there, and food was being served on tables each taken up by a number of friends. The grand vazīr seated me by his side along with the Qāẓī ‘Isā, the vazīr Fāmaldārī or chief of the treasury, and the vazīr ‘Umar dahard, i.e., the general of the army. The meal of these islanders consists of rice, chicken, ghee, fish and flesh salted and dried in the sun, and cooked banana. After food they drink the wine of cocoanut palm mixed with spices for promoting digestion. On the ninth day of Ramẓān, the son-in-law of the vazīr died. His wife, the daughter of this minister, had already been married to Sultan Shahāb-ud-dīn, but neither of her husbands had lived with her on account of her tender age. The vazīr, her father, took her back into his house and gave me her house which was one of the best. I asked for permission to entertain the fakirs who had returned after a pilgrimage to the Foot of Adam in the island of Ceylon. He gave me the permission and sent me five sheep, rare animals on these islands, as they are imported from Ma’bar, Malabar, and Maqdashu. The vazīr sent me also rice, chicken, ghee and spices. I had all these things carried to the house of vazīr Sulaimān, the Mānāyak (admiral), who added more to them and had them cooked with the greatest care and also sent me carpets and brass vessels. We broke the fast, according to custom, in the palace of the Sultānah, with the grand vazīr, and I begged him to allow some of the vazīrs to assist me at my feast. He told me that he would himself come there, and I thanked him duly and came back to my house; but he had already come with the vazīrs and the magnates of the court. He was seated in a high wooden pavilion. All who came, chiefs or vazīrs, saluted the grand vazīr and threw before him a piece of unsewn cloth, so that the total of such cloths was nearly a hundred, and these the fakirs took. The food was then served and eaten; then the readers of the Quran gave a reading with their fine voices after which they began to chant and dance. I had a fire made, and the fakirs entered it and trod upon it with their feet; some among them swallowed burning charcoal as one eats sweets, till the flame died out.

When the night came to an end the vazīr returned, and I accompanied him. We passed by a garden belonging to the treasury and the vazīr said to me: ‘This garden is yours; I shall have a house built there for you to live in.’ I praised his action and prayed for his welfare. The next day he sent me a slave-girl and his messenger told me: ‘The vazīr wants me to tell you that if this girl pleases you, she is yours; else he will send you a Mahratha girl.’ I like Mahratha girls, and so I replied to the messenger: ‘I want only Mahrathas.’ The minister had one sent to me by name Gulistān which means, ‘flower of the garden,’ (or, more exactly, ‘flower-garden.’) She knew Persian and pleased me very much. The people of Maldive islands speak a language I cannot understand.

The next day the vazīr sent me a young slave-girl from Coromandel, called ‘Anbari (colour of ambergris) i.e., black. The following night, after prayer, he came to my house with some of his servants, and entered it with two small slaves. I saluted him and he asked me how I fared. I prayed for his happiness and thanked him. One of the slaves placed before him a luqshah (buqshah) i.e., a kind of leather bag, from which he took out silk cloths and a casket containing pearls and jewels. The vazīr presented them to me, and added: “If I had sent you this with the slave-girl, she might have said—’this is my property, I brought from my master’s house.’ Now these things belong to you and you may present them to her.” I prayed to God for the minister’s good and rendered thanks to him as he deserved.

The vazīr Sulaimān, the Mānāyak, proposed that I should marry his daughter; I sent to ask of the vazīr Jamāl-ud-dīn permission to contract this marriage. My messenger returned and said: “This proposal is not to his liking as he wants you to marry his daughter when the legal period of her widowhood comes to an end.” I refused to agree to this union out of fear for the bad luck attaching to the daughter of the grand vazīr as both her husbands had died before consummating their marriage with her. Meanwhile, I fell ill and had a bad fever; for every one who enters these islands invariably catches fever. I took a firm resolve to leave the country; I sold a part of my jewels for cowries and engaged a vessel for sailing to Bengal. When I went to take leave of the vazīr, the Qāẓī came to meet me and said in the name of the vazīr: ‘If you wish to go, give back to us what we have given you, and then go.’ I answered, ‘With some of the jewels I have bought cowries, you may do what you like with them.’ After some time the Qāẓī returned; ’the vazīr,’ he reported, ‘says we gave you gold and not cowries.’ ‘Very well,’ said I, ‘I shall sell them and return your gold.’ As a result, I sent asking the merchants to buy the cowries from me, but the vazīr ordered them not to do so; for he meant thus to prevent my departure from his country. Afterwards he sent me one of his friends to say: ‘The vazīr wants me to tell you that if you stay with us you will have all you want.’ I said to myself: “I am in their power; if I will not stay with good grace, I shall have to do so by constraint; a voluntary stay is much the better.” And I told the messenger: ‘Very well, I shall stay with him.’ He returned to his master who was greatly pleased at my answer, and sent for me. When I entered his house, he got up, embraced me and said: ‘We wish you to be near us, and you wish to go away!’ I made my excuses to him which he accepted, and I told him: ‘If you wish me to stay, I shall make conditions.’ The vazīr replied, ‘state them and we shall accept.’ I said: ‘I cannot walk on foot.’ Now it is the custom of the country that no one rides a horse unless he be a vazīr. When they gave me a horse and I rode on it, the people, men and children, began to follow me in amazement, till at last I had to complain of it to the vazīr. He caused it to be proclaimed by beat of danqurah that no one should follow me; the danqurah is a kind of brass basin which is beaten with an iron rod and is heard far; after beating it, they proclaim in public what they want.

The vazīr told me: ‘If you would ride in a palanquin, it would be very good; else, we have a horse and a mare; choose whichever you like.’ I chose the mare, and they brought her to me at once, along with a robe. I asked the vazīr: ‘what shall I do with the cowries I have bought?’ He replied: ‘Send one of your companions to sell them in Bengal.’ ‘I shall do so,’ said I, ‘if you will send some one to assist him in the work.’ ‘Yes,’ he replied. I then sent my companion, Abu Muḥammad, son of Farhān, with whom they sent a man named the pilgrim ‘Aly.⁴³ Now the sea was rough, and the crew threw overboard all the cargo including the mast, the water and all other provisions meant for the journey. For sixteen days they were without sail or rudder, and after having endured hunger and thirst and fatigues, they reached the island of Ceylon. At the end of a year, my companion Abu Muḥammad returned to me after visiting the Foot (of Adam).

At the end of the month of Ramẓān, the vazīr sent me a robe, and we went to the place set apart for prayers. The way from the minister’s house to this place was decorated; cloth was spread (on the ground) and heaps of cowries placed to the right and left. All those among the amīrs and nobles who owned houses on the way had caused small cocoanut palms to be planted near them together with areca palms and bananas. Ropes had been stretched from tree to tree and green cocoanuts suspended from them. The master of the house stood near the door and, when the vazīr passed, threw at his feet a cloth of silk or cotton. The slaves of the minister picked them up as well as the cowries placed on his route. The vazīr walked on foot, wearing an ample robe of wool, of Egyptian make, and a large turban. He wore a silk napkin as his scarf; four parasols sheltered his head, and there were sandals on his feet. All the others, without exception, had bare feet. Trumpets, clarions and kettle-drums preceded him; the soldiers marched before and after him crying: ‘God is great,’ till they reached the place of prayer.

When prayer was finished, the vazīr’s son preached; then they brought a litter and the minister got into it. The amīrs and the other vazīrs saluted him and threw pieces of cloth according to custom. In former times the grand vazīr never went in a litter and only the kings did so. The litter was then lifted by porters, I mounted my horse, and we went to the palace. The minister sat on a raised seat, and there were vazīrs and amīrs near him. The slaves were standing with shields, swords and batons in their hands. Then they served food, and afterwards arecanut and betel; then they brought a small bowl containing sandal maqāṣyāry. As soon as a party finish their dinner, they smear themselves with sandal. That day I saw over some of their food a fish of a species of Sardine, salted and uncooked, which had been sent to them as a present from Kūlam (Quilon). This fish is plentiful on the Malabar coast, the vazīr took a sardine and started eating it, saying to me at the same time: ’eat this, it is not found in our country.’ I replied: ‘how shall I eat it; it is not cooked.’ ‘It is cooked,’ he answered; but I replied: ‘I know this fish well, for it abounds in my country.’

Of my marriage and my nomination as Qāẓī

On the second day of Shawwāl, I agreed with the vazīr Sulaimān Mānāyak or admiral, that I would marry his daughter; and I sent to ask of vazīr Jamāl-ud-dīn that the marriage should take place in his presence, in the palace. He agreed to this, and sent betel and sandal according to custom. People were ready for the ceremony, but the vazīr Sulaimān delayed; they sent for him, but still he did not come. He was sent for a second time, and he excused himself on the score of the illness of his daughter. But the grand vazīr told me in private: “His daughter has refused to marry, and she is the mistress of her own actions. There are the people assembled, and how do you like marrying the step-mother of the Sultānah?” (The son of the grand vazīr had married the daughter of this woman). I replied: “O! certainly.” He summoned the Qāẓī and the notaries. The profession of Mussulman faith was recited, and the vazīr gave the nuptial gift. After a few days, she was brought to me. She was one of the best of women. Such was the excellence of her manners, that when I became her husband, she anointed me with good scents and perfumed my garments; laughing all the while and showing no signs of inconvenience to her.

After I married this woman, the vazīr forced me to accept the functions of Qāẓī. The reason for my nomination was that I had reproached the Qāẓī for his taking the tenth part of all inheritances when he divided them among the parties entitled to them. I told him: “You should take only a fee fixed with the consent of the heirs.” And this judge did nothing properly. When I took up the functions of judge, I spent all my efforts to enforce the precepts of the law. The law-suits do not take place there as in our country. The first bad custom that I reformed related to the stay of divorced women in the house of those who had repudiated them; for each of these women continued to live in the house of her former husband, till she married another. I prevented their doing this on any account. About twenty-five men who had behaved like this were brought to me; I had them whipped and paraded in the market place; and as for the women, I forced them to leave the houses of these men. Afterwards, I strove to secure the strict observance of the prayers, and ordered the men to go quickly in the streets and bazaars immediately after the Friday prayer. Any one who was discovered not having prayed, I had beaten and paraded in public. I compelled the imams and mu’zzins holding fixed appointments to perform their duties assiduously; I wrote in the same sense to the magistrates of all the islands. Lastly, I tried to make the women wear clothes; but I did not succeed in this.

On the arrival of vazīr ‘Abd-ul-lah, son of Muḥammad ul-Ḥaẓramy, whom the Sultan Shahāb-ud-dīn had exiled to Sawaid; narrative of what passed between us:

I had espoused the step-daughter of this man, the daughter of his wife, and I loved her greatly. When the grand vazīr recalled him to the isle of Mahal, I sent him presents, went to meet him and accompanied him to the palace. He saluted the supreme vazīr who lodged him in a superb mansion where I visited him often. It happened that I spent the month of Ramẓān in prayers, and all people visited me except ‘Abd-ul-lah. The vazīr Jamāl-ud-dīn himself came to see me, and ‘Abd-ul-lah with him, to bear him company. An enmity arose between us. For when I came out of the retreat, the maternal uncles of my wife, the step-daughter of ‘Abd-ul-lah, complained to me. They were the sons of the vazīr Jamāl-ud-dīn ul-Sanjary. Their father had named vazīr ‘Abd-ul-lah as their guardian, and their properties were still in his hands, though, according to law, they had come out of his tutelage. They demanded his appearance before the tribunal. I had a rule, when I summoned one of the opposing parties of sending him a piece of paper with or without writing. As soon as they knew of it, they came to the tribunal; or else I punished them. I sent then a paper to ‘Abd-ul-lah as usual with me. This procedure made him very angry, and because of it he conceived a hatred against me. He concealed his enmity, and asked some one to speak in his place. Dishonest statements were repeated to me as having been made by him.

The custom of the islanders, weak or strong, was to salute the vazīr ‘Abd-ul-lah in the same manner as the vazīr Jamāl-ud-dīn. Their salutation consists in touching the ground with the forefinger, and then kissing the finger and placing it on the head. I gave order to the public crier, and he proclaimed it in the palace of the sovereign, in the presence of witnesses, that all persons who rendered homage to vazīr ‘Abd-ul-lah in the same way as to the grand vazīr would incur severe punishment. I required him to bind himself no more to allow people to do this. His enmity to me was aggravated by this. Meanwhile, I married yet another wife, daughter of a vazīr, much respected by the islanders, and a descendant of Sultan Dāūd, grandson of Sultan Aḥmad Shinūrāzah; then I married another who had been married to Sultan Shahāb-ud-dīn, and I had three mansions constructed in the garden given to me by the vazīr. As to my fourth wife, who was the step-daughter of the vazīr ‘Abd-ul-lah she lived in her own house. She was the best loved of them all. When I had contracted these marriages, the vazīr and the people of the island began to fear me much, because of their weakness. False rumours were carried to me and to the chief vazīr, largely owing to the exertions of vazīr ‘Abd-ul-lah, so that a definite estrangement came between us.

On my separation from these persons and the motive of it

One day it happened that the wife of a slave of the late Sultan Jamāl-ud-dīn complained about him to the vazīr, telling him that the slave was found having adulterous intercourse with a concubine of the Sultan. The vazīr sent witnesses who entered the house of the young man, found the slave sleeping with her on the same carpet, and imprisoned them. Next morning I heard the news, and went to the hall of audience, and took my seat as usual. I did not say a word about this affair. A courtesan came near me and said: “The vazīr sent me to ask you if you need anything.” I replied: “No.” The idea of the minister was that I should speak of the affair of the concubine and the slave; for it was my rule that no case came before me without my judging it. But as I disliked and hated him, I omitted to do this. I then returned to my house, and sat in the place where I pronounced my sentences. Forthwith there came a vazīr, who told me, on behalf of the grand vazīr: “Yesterday such and such a thing happened on account of the affair of the concubine and the slave; deal with them as the law requires.” I answered: “This is a case in which it is not proper to pronounce judgement outside the Sultan’s palace.” Then I went back there, the people assembled, and the concubine and the slave were summoned. I ordered both to be beaten on account of their tête-à-tête, and caused the woman to be set free and the slave to be imprisoned; after this, I returned to my house.

The vazīr sent me several of his principal servants to ask me to set the slave free. I told them: “You intercede with me in favour of a negro slave who has violated the honour of his master, and but yesterday, you yourselves deposed the Sultan Shahāb-ud-dīn and killed him, because he had entered the house of one of his slaves!” And at once I ordered the culprit to be beaten with bamboo sticks (which have greater effect than whipping) and paraded through all the island with a cord round his neck. The messengers of the vazīr went and told him what happened. He showed great excitement and was roused to great anger. He assembled the other vazīrs and commanders of the army and sent for me. I went, and, without making the usual salutation, bending my knee, I just said: ‘Salutation to you.’ Then I said to those present: “Be my witnesses, that I resign the functions of Qāẓī because of my inability to perform them.” The vazīr having addressed me, I mounted (the dais) and seated myself in a place where I was face to face with him; then I answered in the firmest possible manner. Meanwhile the mu’zzin called for the sunset prayer, and the grand vazīr entered his house saying: “It is said that I am sovereign; now I summoned this man in order to vent my anger on him, and he vented his on me.” The islanders showed me respect only because of the Sultan of India, for they know the esteem in which he holds me; and though they are at a great distance from him, there is great fear of him in their hearts.

When the grand vazīr entered his house, he sent for the Qāẓī who had been removed from office. He was eloquent and addressed me as follows: “Our master asks why, in the presence of witnesses, you failed to show him the respect that was his due, and why you did not render him homage”; I answered: “I saluted him only when my heart was satisfied with him; but as I am now dissatisfied, I have given up doing so. The salutation of Muslims consists only in the word salām, and this I said.” The vazīr sent this man a second time to me when he said: “Your object is just to leave us; pay the dowries of your wives and what you owe to the men, and then go if you will.” On hearing this, I bowed, went to my house, and cleared the debts I had contracted. In those days the vazīr had given me carpets, and other personal property comprising copper vessels and other objects. In fact he gave me everything I asked for, loved me and treated me with consideration; but he changed his mind, and had his fears roused regarding me.

When he heard that I had paid my debts and was preparing to go, he repented of what he had said, and put off giving me permission for my departure. I swore the most solemn oaths that it was absolutely essential for me to resume my voyage, and carried whatever I had to a mosque on the sea-coast, and divorced one of my wives. Another was with child, and I fixed a term of nine months for her within which I was to come back; if I defaulted, she would be free to act as she liked. I took with me the wife that had formerly been married to Sultan Shahāb-ud-dīn in order to restore her to her father who lived in Mulūk island, and my first wife whose daughter was the consanguineous sister of the Sultānah.

I made a compact with the vazīr ‘Umar dahard (or general of the army), and the vazīr Ḥasan, admiral, that I should go to the country of Ma’bar (Coromandel), the king of which was my brother-in-law,⁴⁴ and return from there with troops to bring the islands under his power, and that afterwards I should exercise authority in his name. I arranged that the hoisting of white flags on the ships was to serve as the signal between them and me; the moment they saw these, they were to rise in revolt on the island. I had never aimed at this till the day of my estrangement from the vazīr. He dreaded me and told the people: “Quite sure, this man will seize the vazīrate either in my life time or after my death.” He used to ask many questions concerning me, and said: “I have heard that the king of India has sent him money to enable him to stir up trouble against me.” He feared my departure, lest I should return with troops from the Coromandel coast. He sent word to me to wait till he could fit out a ship for me, but I refused.

The consanguineous sister of the Sultānah complained to her of the departure of her mother with me. The Sultānah wished to stop this, but could not do so. When she found her resolved to leave, she told her: “All the jewels you had were made from the money belonging to the customs house. If you have evidence to show that Jalāl-ud-dīn gave them to you, well and good; else, return them.” These jewels were of great value; nevertheless, my wife gave them back. The vazīrs and chiefs came to me while I was in the mosque, and begged me to return. I answered them: “If I had not sworn, certainly, I should return.” They rejoined: “Go then to some other island that you may keep your oath, and then come back,” to which I agreed in order to please them. When the day of my departure came, I went to bid farewell to the vazīr. He embraced me and wept so much that his tears fell on my feet. He spent the following night guarding the island himself out of fear that my relatives by marriage and my friends would rise against him.

At last I left the island and reached that of the vazīr ‘Aly. My wife was attacked by a severe pain, and she wanted to go back. I divorced her and left her there, and I wrote about this to the vazīr, for she was the mother of his son’s wife. I also divorced the wife for whom I had fixed a term (for my return) and I sent for a young slave whom I loved. Meanwhile we continued the voyage in the midst of these islands, passing one district after another.

Of the women who have only one breast:

In one of these isles, I saw a woman who had only one breast. She was the mother of two daughters, one of these resembling her completely, and the other had two breasts, one large and containing milk, while the other was small and had no milk. I was surprised by the form of these women.

Then we reached another of these islands, a small island with only one house in it, occupied by a weaver, who was married and father of a family. He had small cocoanut palms and a small boat which he used for fishing and for going to any of the islands at his pleasure. On his islet there were also some small bananas; we found no land birds there except two crows which flew towards us when we came and made a circle above our vessel. I really envied this man, and wished that his island had been mine, for me to retire in it and await the inevitable end of my time.

Then I came to the island of Mulūk, where a ship belonging to Captain Ibrāhīm was lying. I resolved to go in this ship to the Coromandel coast. This man visited me with his companions, and they entertained me at a fine feast. The vazīr had written to the effect that I was to be given in this island one hundred and twenty bustu of cowries, and twenty goblets of cocoanut-palm-wine, and each day a certain amount of betel, areca-nut and fish. I spent seventy days in Mulūk, and married two wives. Mulūk is among the most beautiful islands, verdant and fertile. Among the marvels of the island, I noticed that a branch cut from any tree and planted on the earth or on a wall, soon became covered with leaves and grew into a tree. I saw also that the pomegranate bore fruit throughout the year. The people of the island feared that Captain Ibrāhīm might plunder them at the time of his departure. As a result they wished to seize all the weapons on his ship and keep them till the day of his departure. A dispute arose on this account, and we returned to Mahal where we did not land. I wrote to the vazīr to tell him what had happened. He sent a letter to the effect that it was not right to have seized the arms of the crew. We then returned to Mulūk, and again set sail from there in the middle of the month of Rabī’ II of the year 745⁴⁵ (26th August 1344). In the month of Sha’bān of the same year (December, 1344), the vazīr Jamāl-ud-dīn died. The Sultānah was pregnant, and was delivered after his death. The vazīr ‘Abd-ul-lah married her. As for us, we sailed without a trained pilot in our midst; and though the distance between the Maldives and the Coromandel is just three days’ journey, we sailed for nine days and landed on the island of Silān (Ceylon) on the ninth day. We saw there the mountain of Sarandīb⁴⁶ rising in the air like a column of smoke. When we approached this island, the sailors said: “This port is not in the country of a Sultan whose lands merchants might enter in full security; but it lies in the territory of Sultan Airy Shakrauty (Ārya Cakravarti) who is a perverse and unjust man, and owns a pirate fleet.” Hence we were afraid to land in his port; but a high wind arose, and we dreaded the sinking of the ship. And I told the captain: “Get me ashore, and I shall get for you a safe-conduct from this Sultan.” He acted accordingly and put me ashore. The idolaters came to us and asked: “Who are you?” I told them that I was the brother-in-law and friend of the Sultan of Ma’bar, that I had set out to visit him, and that what was on board the vessel was a present meant for this prince. They went to their sovereign and conveyed my answer to him. He sent for me and I went to see him in the town of Baṭṭālah (Puttelam), his capital. It is a small and pretty place, surrounded by a wall and bastions of wood. The whole coast in the neighbourhood is covered with trunks of cinnamon trees washed down by the torrents. These trees are heaped on the shore and look like a sort of hillocks there. The people of Ma’bar (Coromandel) and Malabar take them without paying anything; in return for this favour, however, they make presents to the Sultan of cloth and similar things. Between the Ma’bar and the island of Ceylon, it is a day and a night’s journey. We also find on this island much brazil wood as well as Indian aloe, which is called alkalkhy (probably the Greek agallokon), but has no resemblance to Qamāry or Qāquly. We shall speak of this later.

The Sultan of Silān is called Airy Shakrauty; and he is powerful on the sea. Once, when I was on the Ma’bar Coast, I saw a hundred vessels of his, great and small, which came there. There were in the port eight ships belonging to the Sultan of the country reserved for a voyage to Yemen. The king ordered preparations to be made and appointed the persons to guard his vessels. When the Ceylonese despaired of finding an occasion to seize them, they said: “We have come only to protect our vessels which have also to go to Yemen.”

When I entered the house of the infidel Sultan, he rose, made me sit by his side and spoke to me with the utmost kindness. He told me: “Your companions may land in all security; they will be my guests till their departure. The Sultan of Ma’bar coast and I are friends.” Then he arranged for my lodging, and I spent three days with him, treated with great consideration, which increased every day. He understood Persian and enjoyed greatly what I related to him regarding foreign kings and their lands. One day I went to him when he had near him a quantity of pearls, brought to him from the fisheries in his country. His officers separated the valuable ones from the rest. He asked me: “Have you seen pearl fisheries in the countries you have travelled in?” “Yes,” I replied “I have seen them in the islands of Qais and Kish that belong to Ibn Sawwāmaly.” “I have heard of them,” he said, and then gave me many pearls and added: “Are there pearls equal to these in that island?” I replied: “I have seen only inferior pearls there.” My answer pleased him, and he said: “The pearls are yours.” “Do not blush!,” he added, “ask for whatever you want.” I then said: “I have had no other desire, since coming to this island, than to visit the celebrated Foot of Adam.” The people of the country call Adam, Bābā, and Ḥavā, Māmā. “That is easy” he replied, “I shall send some one with you to take you there.” “That is what I want,” said I, and then added: “The ship in which I came can proceed to Ma’bar in all safety, and when I come back, you will send me in your vessels.” “Certainly,” he said.

When I reported this to the Captain of the ship, he said to me: “I will not go till you come back, though I have to wait a year on your account.” I informed the Sultan of this reply, and he said to me: “The captain will be my guest till your return.”

The Sultan then gave me a palanquin which his slaves carried on their shoulders, and sent with me four of the yogis who have the custom of undertaking an annual pilgrimage to the Foot, three Brahmins, and ten others from among his companions, and fifteen men for carrying provisions. Water was to be had in plenty all along the route. On the first day, we camped near a river, which we crossed by a ferry made of bamboos. From there we travelled to Manār Mandaly, a fine town at the extremity of the Sultan’s territory; the people there treated us to a great feast. The repast comprised young buffalos, captured in a hunt in the adjoining wood, and brought home alive, of rice, ghi, fish, fowl and milk. We did not find any Muslim in this town, with the exception of a KHurāsānian who remained there for reasons of health and who accompanied us. We left for Bandar Salāwāt, a small town, and passed through a rough country with many water courses in it. There are many elephants, but they do no harm to pilgrims and strangers, and this is due to the holy influence of Shaikh Abu ‘Abd-ul-lah, son of the KHafīf, the first to open the road for visiting the Foot. Formerly the infidels stopped the Mussulmans from making this pilgrimage, annoyed them, and neither ate nor traded with them. But since the adventure that befell Shaikh Abu ‘Abd-ul-lah as has been narrated above,⁴⁷ they began to honour the Muslims, allowing them to enter their houses and eat with them. They even trust them with their wives and children. To this day they do great honour to the Shaikh and call him ’the great Shaikh’.

Then we went to the town of Kunkār, the residence of the principal sovereign of this country. It is built in a valley between two mountains near a large bay, called the bay of precious stones, because gems are found in it. Outside this town, there is the mosque of Shaikh Uṣmān of Shīrāz, surnamed Shāwush (the usher); the sovereign and the inhabitants of the place visit it and show their regard for him. It was he that served as guide to the Foot, and when he had one of his hands and feet cut off, his sons and slaves became guides in his place. He was thus mutilated because of his having killed a cow. Now the law of the Hindus ordains that whoever kills a cow should be slaughtered in the same manner, or packed in her skin and burned. As Shaikh Uṣmān was respected by the people, they stopped with cutting off his hand and foot, and made him a present of the revenue raised in a certain bazaar.

The Sultan of Kunkār is called Kunār,⁴⁸ and he has a white elephant. I have not seen another white elephant anywhere. The king rides on it on solemn occasions, and then its forehead is adorned with large gems. It so happened that the nobles in his empire rose against this monarch, put out his eyes, and made his son king. He himself continues to live in that town, a blind man.

The admirable gems called the bahramān (rubies or carbuncles) are to be seen only in this town. Among them, some are taken from the bay, and these are the most precious in the eyes of the natives; others are taken out of the earth. We find gems in all places in the island of Silān. In this land, the entire soil is private property. When a person buys a piece of land, he digs it for gems. He comes across white and ramified stones, and inside these stones gems lie hidden. The owner sends them to the lapidaries who strike them till they separate the gems from the stone hiding them. The gems are red (rubies), yellow (topazes), and blue (sapphires) or nīlam as they call it. The custom of the people is to reserve for the Sultan all precious stones of the value of a hundred fanams or more; the Sultan pays the price and takes them for himself. Stones of a lower value are retained by those who find them. A hundred fanams are equal to six gold pieces.

All the women of Ceylon have necklaces of precious stones of divers colours, and they have likewise bracelets on their hands and khalākhail (anklets) on their feet. The Sultan’s women make networks out of these gems for their head. I saw on the forehead of the white elephant seven of these gems, each bigger than a hen’s egg. I have also seen near the Sultan Airy Shakrauty (Ārya Cakravarti) a bowl of rubies of the size of the palm of the hand and containing the oil of aloes. When I expressed my surprise at this bowl, the Sultan said to me: “We have even larger articles made of the same material.”

We left Kunkār and stopped at a cave called after Usṭā Muḥammad Allūry. He was a good man; he dug out this cave on the slope of the mountain, near a small bay. Leaving this cave, we went on, and encamped near the bay called Khaur būznah (the bay of the monkeys). Būznah (Pers. Būzinah) is the same as the qurd (pl. of qird, monkey) in Arabic. Monkeys are very numerous on these mountains; they are black in colour, and have long tails. Those of the male sex have beards like men. Shaikh ‘Uṣmān, his son and other persons told me that these monkeys have a chief whom they obey as if he were a king. He wears on his forehead a fillet of leaves and leans upon a staff. Four monkeys, staves in hand, march on his right and left, and when the chief is seated, they stand behind him. His female and young ones come and sit before him every day; the other monkeys come and sit at some distance from him; then one of the four monkeys abovementioned addresses them, and all the monkeys withdraw; after this, each brings a banana or a lemon or some similar fruit. The king of the monkeys, his young ones and the four principal monkeys eat. A certain yōgi told me that he saw these four monkeys beating another monkey with sticks before their chief and then pulling out his hair.

Trustworthy men have told me that when one of these monkeys seizes a young girl, she cannot escape his lewdness. An inhabitant of the island of Ceylon narrated to me that there was a monkey in his house, and that when one of his daughters entered a room, the animal followed her. She raised a cry, but the monkey violated her. “We rushed up to her,” he continued, “we saw the monkey holding her in his embrace and we killed him.”

Now we left for the bay of bamboos whence Abu ‘Abd-ul-lah, son of the KHafīf, got the two rubies that he gave to the Sultan of this island, as we have stated earlier.⁴⁹ Then we travelled to a place called “The house of the Old Woman,” at the extreme limit of the inhabited world. Thence we went to the Cave of Bābā Ṭāhir, who was a good man, and then to the Cave of Sabīk, who was a Hindu sovereign that retired to this spot for giving himself up to devotional practices.

On the Flying Leech

In this place we saw the flying leech called zolu by the natives. It stays on the trees and herbs near the water, and when a man approaches, it rushes on him. Whatever the part of his body on which the leech settles, it bleeds profusely. The people keep a lemon ready to squeeze out its juice, in such a case, on the worm, which then falls away from the body; they then scrape the part of the body with a wooden knife kept for the purpose. They said that a certain pilgrim passing by this route was fastened on by the leeches, and that, as he was slack and did not press citron juice on them, all his blood was lost and he died. His name was Bābā KHūzy and there is a cave bearing his name. From this place, we proceeded to the seven caverns, and then to the hill of Iskandar (Alexander). Here there was a cave called the Ṣafhāny, a water-source and an inhabited castle, below which was a bay called ‘The place of the sinking of the contemplatives.’ In the same spot are found the cave of the orange and that of the Sultan. Near this last is the entrance (darwāzah in Pers., bāb in Arab.) to the mountain.

The mountain of Sarandīb (Adam’s Peak)

The mountain of Sarandīb is among the highest in the world; we saw it from the sea when we had still to travel nine days to reach it. When we ascended it, we saw clouds below us, hiding its base from our view. On this mountain there are many ever-green trees, flowers of many colours and a red rose as big as the palm of the hand. They say that on this rose there is an inscription of the name of the Almighty God and His Prophet.⁵⁰ On the mountain there are two paths leading to the Foot of Adam, called after the father and mother, i.e. Adam and Eve. Eve’s path is the easy route by which pilgrims return, and those who take it on their way to the Foot would be regarded as not having made the pilgrimage. Adam’s path is rough and difficult to climb. At the foot of the mountain, near the gate, is a grotto called after Iskandar (Alexander), and a spring.

The ancients have cut on the rock a sort of stairway leading up the mountain; they have also planted iron posts from which chains are suspended so that those who ascend may hold by them. There are ten of these chains, two at the base near the gate, seven others in succession after the first two, and, as for the tenth, it is the “Chain of the Profession of Faith” (Mussulman), so called because a person who reaches it and looks down to the foot of the mountain will be seized with hallucination and fear of falling, and will recite the words: “I declare that there is no other god but God, and that Muḥammad is His Prophet.” When you pass the tenth chain, you come to an ill-kept road. From the tenth chain to the Cave of KHiẓr, it is seven miles. This cave is situated in a wide area, and near by is a spring also called after KHiẓr and full of fish which no one catches. Near the cave, there are two cisterns cut in the rock, one on either side of the path. The pilgrims leave their belongings in the KHiẓr grotto, and from there ascend two miles further to the summit where the Foot is.

Description of the Foot

The notable foot-print of our Father Ādam⁵¹ is on a high black rock in a roomy place. The foot has sunk in the stone so as to leave its imprint as a clear depression in the rock; it is eleven spans long. Formerly the people of China came here; they cut from the rock the impression of the great toe and the adjoining parts, and put it in the temple of Zaitūn, which is visited by people from the remotest parts of the land. In the rock bearing the imprint of the Foot are dug out nine holes in which the infidel pilgrims put gold, precious stones and pearls. You can see the Fakirs, when they reach the grotto of KHiẓr, seeking to race one another to take what there is in these holes. For our part, we found only a few small stones and a little gold, which we gave to our guide. It is usual for pilgrims to pass three days in the grotto of KHiẓr, and on these days to visit the Foot morning and evening. We did it also.

At the end of the three days, we returned by the mother’s path, and encamped near the grotto of Shiam, who is the same as Shait, the son of Adam. We then came to the ‘bay of fish,’ the towns of Kurumlah, Jabarkāvān, Dildīnīvah and Atqalanjah. It was in the town last mentioned that the Shaikh Abu ‘Abd-ul-lah, son of the KHafīf, passed the winter. All these towns and stations are on the mountain. Near its foot, in the same road is found ‘dirakht-i-ravān’ ’the walking tree,’ an old tree from which not a single leaf falls. I have not met anybody who has seen its leaves. It is called ‘walking’ because a person who looks at it from the top of the mountain thinks that it is at a great distance from him at the foot of the hill, but when he looks at it from the base of the mountain, he believes quite the opposite. I saw there a group of yogis who never quit the foot of the mountain awaiting the fall of the leaves of this tree. It stands in an absolutely inaccessible place. The idolaters have all sorts of fables regarding this tree, one being that any one who eats of its leaves will recover his youth, though he be very old. But that is false.

Beneath this mountain is the large bay which yields precious stones. Its waters appear extremely blue to the eye. From this spot, we travelled for two days and reached the large town, Dinūr, situated on the sea coast, and inhabited by merchants. There is here a vast temple, the idol in which bears the name of the town. There are in this temple about a thousand Brahmins and yogis and about five hundred women, born of infidel fathers, who sing and dance every night before the idol. The town with its revenue belongs to the idol; all those who live in the temple and those who visit it are fed therefrom. The idol itself is of gold, and of the height of a man. It has two large rubies for its eyes, and these, I was told, shine like two lamps at night.

Then we left for the small town of Qāly (Galle), six parasangs from Dinūr. A Mussulman, called ship’s captain Ibrāhīm, entertained us in his house. We started thence to the town of Kalanbu (Colombo), one of the most beautiful and largest towns in the island. In it lives the Vazir prince of the sea, Jālastī, who has about five hundred Abyssinians with him. Three days after leaving Kalanbu we reached Baṭṭālah, mentioned once before. We visited its Sultan of whom we have spoken already. I found the ship’s captain Ibrāhīm awaiting me, and we started for Ma’bar. The wind was strong, and our ship was about to fill with water. We had no trained pilot, and so we drifted near some rocks, and narrowly escaped being wrecked; then we entered shallow water and our vessel grounded, and we were face to face with death. The passengers threw their belongings overboard, and bade farewell to one another. We cut down the mast of the ship and threw it into the sea; the sailors made a float of planks. We were two parasangs from the shore. I wished to get down on the raft; but I had two concubines and two companions, and they said to me: “Will you go on the raft and abandon us?” I preferred them to myself and said: “Get down both of you, along with the young girl that I like.” The other girl said: “I can swim well; I shall attach myself by a cord to the raft and swim with them.” My two comrades descended; one of them was Muḥammad, son of Farhān-ul-Tuzary, and the other an Egyptian. One of the girls was with them, and the second swam. The sailors tied ropes to the raft and swam with their aid. I put in their charge all my valuables, jewels and amber. They reached the shore in safety as the wind was favourable to them. As for myself, I stayed on the vessel, while the captain gained the shore on a plank. The sailors started making four rafts, but night came on before they were completed, and the water entered the ship. I got up on the poop and stayed there till the morning. Then many infidels came to us in one of their boats, and we went ashore with them, in the land of Ma’bar. We told them that we were friends of their Sultan to whom they paid tribute, and they wrote to inform him of this. He was engaged in a war with the infidels, at a distance of two days’ journey; I wrote to tell him what had happened to me.

The idolaters in question took us into a large wood and showed us a fruit that looked like a water-melon; it grows on the muql, the dwarf palm. Inside this fruit is a kind of cotton, containing a honey-like substance, which is extracted and made into a kind of pastry called ’tall’ and quite like sugar. They also served us excellent fish. We stayed there three days at the end of which an amīr, named Qamar-ud-dīn came from the Sultan together with a detachment of horse and foot. They brought a palanquin and ten horses. I mounted a horse, and so did my friends, the captain of the ship, and one of the two girls; the other was carried in the palanquin. We reached the fort of Harkātū⁵² where we spent the night, and where I left the young girls, some of my slaves, and my companions. The second day we arrived at the camp of the Sultan.

The Sultan of Ma’bar was Ghayāṣ-ud-dīn-ul Dāmaghāny; at first he was a cavalier in the service of Malik Majīr, son of Abu-ul-rajā,⁵³ one of the officers of Sultan Muḥammad; then he served the amīr Ḥājī, son of the Sayyid Sultan Jalāl-ud-dīn. At last, he was invested with royalty. Before this he was called Sirāj-ud-dīn; but at his accession he took the name Ghayāṣ-ud-dīn. Formerly Ma’bar was subject to the authority of Sultan Muḥammad, king of Delhi. Later, my father-in-law the Sharīf Jalāl-ud-dīn Aḥsan Shah raised a revolt against him, and ruled for five years, after which he was killed and replaced by one of his amīrs, ‘Alā-ud-dīn Udaiy who ruled for a year. At the end of this period, he went to war against the infidels, seized much of their wealth as spoil and returned to his kingdom. The following year, he went on a second expedition against them, and routed them and put a large number to the sword. The same day on which he inflicted this disaster on them, he happened to remove his helmet in order to drink; an arrow shot by an unknown hand struck him and he died at once. His son-in-law, Quṭb-ud-dīn, was placed on the throne; but as his conduct was unpopular, he was killed at the end of forty days. The Sultan Ghayāṣ-ud-dīn was invested with authority, he married the daughter of the Sultan and the Sharīf Jalāl-ud-dīn; it is her sister that I had married in Delhi.

My arrival at the court of Sultan Ghayāṣ-ud-dīn :

When we came near his camp, the Sultan sent one of his chamberlains to receive us. He was seated in a wooden tower. It is the custom in all India that no one enters the Sultan’s presence without boots on. Now, I had no boots with me, an idolater gave me a pair, though there were some Mussulmans there, and I was surprised that the infidel was more generous to me than these. I then appeared before the Sultan who asked me to be seated, sent for the Qāẓī and the Ḥāji⁵⁴ Ṣadr-ul-Zamān Bahā-ud-dīn, and lodged me in three tents near himself. The people of the country call these tents khiyām (pl. of khaimāh). The Sultan sent me carpets and food comprising the rice and meat usual in this country. It is the rule here, as in our own lands, to serve butter-milk at the end of the meal.

Later, I had an interview with the Sultan, and proposed to him the plan of despatching an army to the Maldives. He resolved to do this, and chose the ships for the enterprise. He intended to send a present to the Sultānah of the Maldives, and robes of honour and gifts to the amīrs and vazīrs. He entrusted to me the task of drawing up his contract of marriage with the sister of the Sultānah; finally he ordered three vessels to be loaded with alms for the poor in the islands, and said to me; “You will come back at the end of five days.” But the admiral KHwājah Sarlak told him: “It will be possible to reach the Maldives only in three months from now.” “If that be so,” replied the Sultan addressing me, “come to Fattan; after we finish the present campaign, we may return to our capital Mutrah (Madura); and the expedition will start from there.” I then stayed with him and, while waiting, I sent for my slave-girls and comrades.

The march of the Sultan and his disgraceful conduct in massacring women and children :

The country we had to traverse was an impenetrable jungle of trees and reeds. The Sultan ordered that every one in the army, great and small alike, should carry a hatchet to cut down these obstacles. When the camp was struck, he set out on horseback towards the forest together with his soldiers who felled the trees from morning to noon. Then food was served, and the whole army ate, troop by troop; afterwards they resumed cutting trees till the evening. All the infidels found in the jungle were taken prisoners; they had stakes sharpened at both ends and made the prisoners carry them on their shoulders. Each was accompanied by his wife and children, and they were thus led to the camp. It is the practice here to surround the camp with a palisade, called katkar and having four gates. They make a second katkar round the king’s habitation. Outside the principal enclosure, they raise platforms about three feet high, and light fires on them at night. Slaves and sentinels spend the night here, each holding in his hand a bundle of very thin reeds. When the infidels approach for a night attack on the camp, all the sentries light their faggots, and thanks to the flames, the night becomes as bright as day, and the cavalry sets out in pursuit of the idolaters.

In the morning, the Hindus who had been made prisoners the day before, were divided into four groups, and each of these was led to one of the four gates of the main enclosure. There they were impaled on the posts they had themselves carried. Afterwards their wives were butchered and tied to the stakes by their hair. The children were massacred on the bosoms of their mothers, and their corpses left there. Then they struck camp and started cutting down the trees in another forest, and all the Hindus who were made captive were treated in the same manner. This is a shameful practice, and I have not seen any other sovereign adopt it; it was because of this that God hastened the end of Ghayāṣ-ud-dīn.

One day the Qāẓī and I were dining with this prince, the Qāẓī being to his right and I to his left, and an idolater was brought before him together with his wife and son aged seven years. The Sultan made a sign with his hand to the executioners to cut off the head of this man; then he said to them in Arabic; ‘and his son and his wife’. They cut off their heads, and I turned my eyes away. When I composed myself, I found their heads lying on the ground.

On another occasion I was with Sultan Ghayāṣ-ud-dīn when a Hindu was brought to him. He spoke some words that I could not understand, and at once many of his followers drew their swords. I got up hurriedly, and he said: ‘Where do you go?’ I answered: “I go to say my afternoon (4 p.m.) prayer.” He understood my motive, laughed, and ordered the hands and feet of the idolater to be cut off. On my return I found this unhappy man swimming in his blood.

The victory which Ghayāṣ-ud-dīn won over the infidels, and which is among the greatest successes of Islam :

Adjoining his state was that of an infidel sovereign named Balāl Dev, who was one of the principal Hindu kings. His army exceeded 100,000 men, besides 20,000 Mussulmans, rakes, criminals and fugitive slaves. This monarch aspired to conquer the country of Ma’bar, of which the Muslim army numbered only 6000 troops, a good half of them being excellent soldiers, and the rest absolutely worthless. The Muhammadans came to blows with him near the village of Kubbān; he routed them, and they had to fall back on Mutrah (Madura), their capital. The infidel sovereign camped near Kubbān (Koppam, Kaṇṇanūr), one of the largest and strongest places held by the Mussulmans. He besieged it for six months, at the end of which the garrison had provisions for only fourteen days. Balāl Dev proposed to the besieged to offer them a safe conduct if they would retire leaving him to occupy the town; but they replied: “We must inform our Sultan of this.” He then offered them a truce for fourteen days and they wrote to Sultan Ghayāṣ-ud-dīn describing their situation to him. The Sultan read their letter to the people on the following Friday. The faithful wept and said: “We will sacrifice our lives to God; if the infidel takes that town, he will then lay siege to us; we prefer to die by the sword.” They then engaged to expose themselves to death, and set out the next day, removing their turbans from their heads and placing them round the necks of their horses, which was an indication that each of them sought death. They posted the bravest and most courageous among them, some three hundred, as the vanguard; the right wing was under Saif-ud-dīn Bahādūr (hero), a pious and brave lawyer, and the left under Al Malik Muḥammad, the silhadār (armour bearer). The Sultan himself was in the centre with three thousand, and the rear-guard was formed by another three thousand under the command of Asad-ud-dīn Kaikhusrū Alfārisy (the Fārsian). In this order, the Mussulmans set out at the siesta hour towards the infidel camp and attacked it, when the soldiers were off their guard, having sent away their horses to graze. The infidels, thinking that robbers were attacking the camp, went out in disorder to combat the assailants. Meanwhile, Sultan Ghayāṣ-ud-dīn arrived, and the Hindus suffered the worst of all defeats. Their sovereign tried to mount a horse though he was aged eighty. Nāṣir-ud-dīn, nephew and successor of the Sultan, overtook the old man and was about to kill him, for he did not know who he was. But one of his slaves said: ‘He is the Hindu sovereign’; he then made him prisoner and led him to his uncle, who treated him with apparent consideration till he extorted from him his riches, his elephants and horses, and promised to release him. When he had yielded up all his wealth to him, he had him killed and flayed. His skin was stuffed with straw and hung up on the wall of Madura where I saw it in the same position.

To return to our subject. I left the camp and went to the town of Fattan, a large and fine city on the coast. It has an admirable harbour, and there is a large wooden pavilion in it erected on stout beams and reached by a covered pathway also made of wood. When an enemy arrives, all the ships in port are attached to this pavilion; the soldiers and archers mount up the pavilion, and the enemy gets no chance of inflicting any injury. In this town there is a beautiful mosque built of stone, and grapes and excellent pomegranates are available in large quantities. Here I met the pious Shaikh Muḥammad-ul-īsābūry, one of the fakirs who have a troubled spirit and who let their hair hang loose over their shoulders. He kept a lion with him which he had tamed, and which ate with the fakirs and sat with them. The Shaikh had about thirty fakirs with him, one of whom owned a gazelle which lived in the same place as the lion who did no harm to it. I stayed in Fattan.

Meantime, a yogi had prepared for Sultan Ghayāṣ-ud-dīn some pills calculated to improve his virility. It is said that iron filings were among the ingredients of these pills. The Sultan swallowed a larger dose than was good for him and fell ill. In this state he reached Fattan; I went out to meet him and offered him a present. When he had settled down, he sent for admiral KHwājah Sarūr, and said to him: “Take up nothing but equipping the vessels chosen for the expedition to the Maldives.” He wished to remit to me the cost of the present I had made to him; I refused, but repented afterwards, for he died, and I got nothing. The Sultan remained at Fattan for half a month, and then left for his capital; I stayed there for fifteen days after his departure, and then started for Madura, the place of his residence, a large town with broad streets. The first prince who made it his capital was my father-in-law, the Sultan Sharīf Jalāl-ud-dīn Aḥasan Shah, who made it look like Delhi, building it with care.

On my arrival at Madura, I found a contagious disease prevailing there; people died of it in a short time. Those who were attacked by it succumbed on the second or third day; if death was delayed, it was only till the fourth day. When I went out, I saw only the sick or the dead. I bought a young slave girl here, being assured that she was healthy; but she died the next day. One day a woman whose husband had been a vazīr of Sultan Aḥasan Shah came to see me with her son aged eight years, a nice lad full of intelligence and spirit. She complained of poverty, and I gave some money to her and her son. Both of them were strong and healthy; but the next day the mother returned, asking for a shroud for her son, as he had died suddenly. I saw in the audience hall of the Sultan, at the time of his death, hundreds of women servants who had been brought to pound rice for preparing food for other persons than the sovereign; these women, taking ill, were thrown on the ground, exposed to the sun’s heat.

When Ghayāṣ-ud-dīn entered Madura, he found that his mother, his wife and his son had fallen ill. He remained three days in the city, and then he went out to a river at a distance of one parasang, on the banks of which is a temple belonging to the infidels. I went to meet him on a Thursday and he ordered me to be lodged with the Qāẓī. When the tents had been erected for me, I saw people hastening along pushing one another. One of them said: “The Sultan is dead”; another asserted that it was his son that had died. We ascertained the truth, and found that the son was dead. The Sultan had no other son, and this death aggravated his own disease. The Thursday following, the mother of the Sultan died.

The death of the Sultan, the accession of his brother’s son and my separation from the new prince :

The third Thursday, Ghayāṣ-ud-dīn died. I heard of it and hastened to return to town, for fear of a tumult. I met the nephew and successor, Nāṣir-ud-dīn, who had been called to the camp as the Sultan had left no son. He urged me to retrace my steps and return to the camp with him; but I refused, and he took this refusal to heart. Nāṣir-ud-dīn had been a domestic servant at Delhi before his uncle came to the throne. When Ghayāṣ-ud-dīn became king, the nephew fled to him in the guise of a fakir, and it was the will of fate that he should rule after his uncle. When they had sworn allegiance to Nāṣir-ud-dīn, poets recited his praises and he gave them magnificent gifts. The first that rose to recite verses was the Qāẓī Ṣadr-ul-Zamān, to whom he gave five hundred gold pieces and a robe of honour; then came the vazīr al-Qāẓī (the judge) whom the Sultan gratified with two thousand pieces of silver. As for myself, he presented me with three hundred gold pieces and a robe of honour. He distributed alms to the fakirs and the poor. When the preacher delivered the first discourse in which he inserted the name of the new sovereign, they showered on him drachmas and dinars from plates of gold and silver. The funeral of Sultan Ghayāṣ-ud-dīn was celebrated with pomp. Every day the Quran was read in full near his tomb. Then those whose duty it was to read the tenth section of the holy book gave a reading, after which food was served and the public ate; finally, silver pieces were distributed to each person according to his rank. These things were done for forty days. They repeated the ceremony every year on the anniversary day of the death of the deceased.

The first measure of Sultan Nāṣīr-ud-dīn was to dismiss the vazīr of his uncle, and to exact sums of money from him. He installed in the vazirate Malik Badr-ud-dīn, the same man that had been sent by his uncle to meet me when I was at Fattan. He died not long after, and the Sultan appointed KHwājah Sarūr, the admiral, as vazīr, and ordered that he should be styled KHwājah Jahān, just like the vazīr of Delhi. Whoever addressed him by any other title had to pay a certain number of gold pieces (as fine). After this Sultan Nāṣīr-ud-dīn killed the son of his paternal aunt, who was the husband of Ghayāṣ-ud-dīn’s daughter, and married her himself. He heard that Malik Mas’ūd had visited his cousin in the prison before he was put to death, and he murdered him as also Malik Bahādūr, a generous and virtuous hero. He gave orders that I should be provided with all the vessels that his uncle had assigned for my expedition to the Maldives.

But I fell ill of a fever which is fatal in this country, and thought that it would be my end. God inspired me to have recourse to the tamarind, which is very abundant in this country. I took about a pound of it, put it in water and drank it. It relaxed me for three days, and God cured me of the disease. I took a dislike to the town of Madura, and asked the Sultan for permission to go away. He said to me: “Why should you go? There is only one month for going to the Maldives. Stay then till we give you all that the master of the world (the late Sultan) ordered to be given to you.” I refused, and he wrote in my favour to Fattan that I might sail in any vessel of my choice. I returned to Fattan, and found there eight vessels sailing for Yemen, and I boarded one of them. We met four ships of war which engaged us for a time and then retired; afterwards, we reached Kūlam (Quilon). As I still felt the effects of my illness, I stayed three months in this town, and then embarked with a view to go to Sultan Jamāl-ud-dīn of Hanaur; but the idolaters attacked us between Hanaur and Fākanūr.

How we were despoiled by the Hindus :

When we reached the small island between Hanaur and Fākanūr, the Hindus assailed us with a dozen war ships, and after a vigorous combat, overpowered us. They took all I had, including the reserve I had kept against emergencies, as well as the pearls, precious stones given to me by the king of Ceylon, my clothes, and the provisions for travel given to me by good and holy men. They left me no dress but a pair of trousers. They seized the belongings of all the passengers and sailors, and forced us to disembark. I returned to Calicut and entered one of the mosques there. A jurisconsult sent me a robe, the Qāẓī a turban and a certain merchant another robe. Here I learnt of the marriage of vazīr ‘Abd-ul-lah with the Sultānah KHadījah, after the death of the vazīr Jamāl-ud-dīn; and I also learned that the wife whom I had left pregnant had given birth to a male child. I wanted then to go to the Maldives, but I recollected my enmity with the vazīr ‘Abd-ul-lah. Hence I opened the Quran and these words caught my eyes: “Angels shall descend on them and say to them: ‘Fear not, and be not sad’” (Quran, xli. 30). I implored the benediction of God, and set sail. At the end of ten days I reached the islands and disembarked on Kannalūs. The governor of this island, ‘Abd-ul-‘Azīz Almaqdashāwy, welcomed me kindly, entertained me and fitted out a boat for me. I then went to Hululy, the island to which the Sultānah and her sisters went for diversion and for bathing. The natives call these amusements tatjar and indulge in them on board. The vazīrs and chiefs sent the Sultānah presents and gifts when she was on this island. I met there the sister of the Sultānah, her husband, the preacher Muḥammad, son of vazīr Jamāl-ud-dīn, and his mother, who had been my wife. The preacher visited me and ate with me.

Meanwhile some of the islanders went to vazīr ‘Abd-ul-lah and told him of my arrival. He made enquiries about my condition and about my companions.

They told him that I had come to take my son, aged about two years. The mother of the child went to the vazīr to lodge a complaint about my plan; but he told her: ‘I will not hinder him from taking his son.’ He pressed me, to go to the island (of Mahal), and lodged me in a house opposite the tower of his palace that he might know all about my movements. He sent me a complete robe, betel and rosewater according to custom. I took to him two pieces of silk to throw them before him when I saluted him. They took it from me, and the vazīr did not come out that day to receive me. My son was brought to me, and it seemed to me that his stay with the islanders suited him best. So I gave him back to them. I remained five days in the island, and it seemed best for me to hasten my departure and I asked for permission to leave. The vazīr called me, and I went to him. They brought the two pieces of silk they had taken from me before, and I threw them down while saluting the vazīr according to custom. He made me sit by his side, and asked me how I fared. I ate with him and washed my hands in the same basin as he, which he never does with any one. Then they brought betel, and I returned. The vazīr sent me cloths and bustus (hundreds of thousands) of cowries, and behaved himself perfectly.

I started again; we spent forty-three days on the sea, and then reached Bengal, a vast country abounding in rice.

—Voyages D’Ibn Batoutah, ed. C. Defrémery and Dr. B. R. Sanguinetti, Vol. iv. pp. 46-210.⁵⁵