To next page
Abu Zaid al Hassan from Siraf & Sulaiman the Merchant (851) Silsilat-al-Tawarikh (travels in Asia)
-------------------------------------------------
Here is shown how they hold their courts of law and how they judge and sentence each other.
A: is a king or chief, sitting among his folk, listening to them and giving council.
B: a native is beheaded for stabbing a Dutchman. His head is then hung up on a tree.
C: the body is chopped up and carried out to the fields for the vultures.
D: shows a woman drinking from a jug to steal a pact with her husband and to swear on oath that she had nothing to do with other men.
E: two friends swear an oath of friendship and one strokes the other from top to toe with the soles of his feet.
F: when those not satisfied with the chief�s verdict, they fight it out between themselves.
G: the women mourn those who are to be condemned and take their farewell from them.
A: a common warrior or �confokom� who goes to battle with his bow and arrows.
B: a chief or ��ne� who goes to battle in the same way as the distinguished men do.
C: another �confokom�, with his lances and dagger in his belt.
-------------------------
Mostly taken from -M. Guillain: Documents sur l'histoire, la geographie....
-Marcel Devic : Le pays des Zendjs....
-Sarafa,Abu Zaid : Voyage du marchand arabe Sulayman en Inde ....
It is recorded that he returned from China via east Africa in 851.
The second sea, says Ya'kubi, starts at Ras al-jumjuma, is called sea of Larwi, it is a big sea, it contains the islands of wak-wak and other people of the Zang. On those islands there are kings. One can only navigate on that sea by the guidance of the stars. It contains big fish, many marvelous things and things impossible to describe.
From Ras al-jumjuma (or Ras al-hadd), says Masudi, the boats, leaving the Persian gulf , reach the second sea called sea of Lawri. One does not know how deep it is, and one can not exactly determine its limits because of the immense amount of water and its bigness; the sailors pretend that it is difficult to give a geographical description of it, because it has so many ramifications. But the boats pass over it together in two or three months, sometimes in even one month, with favorable wind and a healthy crew, and this over the biggest and most dangerous of all the seas united under the name sea of Abyssinie. In its immensity it has the sea of Zang which touches the coasts of that land. Amber is rare in the sea of Lawri, but it is found in big quantities on the Zang coasts and on the coasts of Sihr in Arabia.
(about amber) In the land of the Zendjs one can find it on the surface of the sea, it is round lightly bleu sometimes as big as an egg of an ostrich or a little smaller. There are pieces that are eaten by the fish called awal the one we have talked about already , when the sea is very agitated, it vomits the pieces of amber nearly as big as rocks. The fish eat it and die and float on top of the sea. Immediately, the people of Zang and other countries, who were waiting in their canoes for the favorable moment pull up the animal with harpoons and cables, cut the belly and retrieve the amber. The one who has to stand in the fish finds it smelling badly, and the perfume makers of Irak and Persia know this (amber) under the name nadd; the pieces found close to the back of the fish are much more pure then those who have stayed way longer inside its body.
Man of Oman used to sail to the islands that produce the coconut trees, carrying with them carpenter's and such like tools, and having felt as much wood as they want, they let it dry, then strip off the leaves, and with the bark of the tree they spin a yam, wherewith they sew the planks together, and so built a ship. Of the same wood, they cut and round away a mast; wove the leaves into sails, and the bark they make into cordage (barabat) and loading the finished ship with coconuts returned home to marked them. This business is very lucrative because all that has been collected one has been able to do it himself without anybody's help.
Note: this last paragraph seems to have nothing to do with east Africa, but has some value when put together with Al Biruni's remarks about the people of the Maldives. it gives testimony of people living on the shores and the islands of the ocean moving freely around, settling semi-permanent in several places.
The land of the Zanj is vast. The plants that grow there, such as dura (sorghum) which is the foundation of their diet , sugar cane and others, are all black in color.
(this you find repeated by Al-Idrisi)
The Zandj have several kings at war with each other. The kings have at their service people known as Almokhazza moun (or mubazzamun), the ones with the pierced nose. A bone has been put in their nose and on that are attached chains. At war, these people march at the head of the warriors, there is for each of them somebody who holds the chain keeping them from going to fast. Negotiators discuss between the two parties. If agreement is reached they all leave. If not, the chain is rolled around the neck of the warrior, he is left on his own, nobody leaves his place, all are killed at their spot. The Arabs exercise a great ascendancy over them, mixed with fear. When a man of this nation sees an Arab, he prostrates himself before him. He says here a man from the land where the date tree is growing. This shows how much they appreciate the date and what their feelings are towards the Arabs. Dates and figs were used as lures to kidnap both adults and children who adore the Arabs for providing such delicacies (this you also find repeated by Al-Idrisi). Religious speeches (butha) are made in front of these people.(butha really means the homilies on Friday towards the orthodox caliph) You can't find anywhere so many fortune-tellers then there are with these people in this language. The holy men of this country dress themselves with panther hides or monkey skins they hold a stick in the hand and when they approach houses, the people gather immediately. The holly man sometimes stays the whole day, till the evening, standing on his legs, preaching and remembering them about God. He gives examples of those among them that are dead, and what had happened to them. From this country is exported the Zendj-panther, of which the skin, a mix of red and white, is very big.
The same sea you have around Socothora, where grows the aloes of Socotra. This island is very close to the land of the Zendj as well as to the Arabs. Most of its people are Christians.
The pieces that are found on the coasts of this sea (of India) are thrown there by the waves. One finds the amber in the sea of India, but no one knows where it comes from. One only knows that the best Amber is the one found at Berbera and up to the ends of the land of the Zang, and also at Sihr and its surroundings. That amber has the shape of an egg and is gray. The people of that region go to find it, riding on camels during the moon-lit nights; they follow the coasts. They ride camels who are trained for that and who know how to look for amber on the coast. When the camel finds a piece of amber, it kneels down and its owner goes to collect it. One also finds pieces of amber floating on the water of a considerable weight. Sometimes those pieces are really big. When the fish called tal sees this piece, he eats it, but when the amber arrives in the stomach of the fish, he dies and floats on the water. There are people who look for that, with boats, and who know the times when the fish eats the amber. When they find a fish floating they pull him to the shore with iron harpoons put in the back of the fish, and with solid ropes. Then he is cut open and the amber taken out. The amber close to the belly of the fish is the mand and smells badly. One can find it among the perfume makers at Baghdad and Basra. The piece of amber which does not have the bad smell is extremely pure.
Abu Zaid Al Hassan is also the first to mention the Seychelles (islands populated by the Swahili). He refers to the High Islands beyond the Maldives a reference to those mountainous Islands
Maritime imports into Tang China include ivory, frankincense, copper, tortoise shell, camphor, and rhinoceros horn. All this was highly taxed.
The name Zanguebar isn't even Arab. It is made in the Persian way from the term Bar, an Indian word that means kingdom as well as coast, and the word Zang or Zendj.