the human record: sources of global history, volume...

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The Human Record: Sources of Global History, Volume II: Since 1500, Seventh EditionAlfred J. Andrea, James H. Overfi eld

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PROLOGUE

Primary Sources and How to Read ThemImagine a course in chemistry in which you never set foot in a laboratory or a course on the history of jazz in which you never listen to a note of music. You would consider such courses defi cient and would complain to your academic advi-sor or college dean about fl awed teaching methods and wasted tuition. And you would be right. No one can understand chemistry without doing experiments; no one can understand music without listening to performances.

In much the same way, no one can understand history without reading and ana-lyzing primary sources. Simply defi ned, in most instances, primary sources are historical records produced at the same time the event or period that is being studied took place or soon thereafter. They are distinct from secondary sources—books, articles, televi-sion documentaries, and even historical fi lms produced well after the events they describe and analyze. Secondary sources—histories in the conventional sense of the term—organize the jumble of past events into understandable narratives. They provide interpretations, sometimes make comparisons, and almost always discuss motive and causation. When done well, they provide pleasure and insight. But such works, no matter how well done, are still secondary in that they are written well after the fact and derive their evidence and information from primary sources.

History is an ambitious discipline that deals with all aspects of past human activity and belief. This means that the primary sources historians use to recreate the past are equally wide-ranging and diverse. Most primary sources are written—government records, law codes, private correspondence, literary works, religious texts, merchants’ account books, memoirs, and the list goes on. So important are written records to the study of history that some historians refer to societies and cultures with no system of writing as “prehistoric.” This does not mean they lack a history; it means there is no way to construct a detailed narrative of their histories due to the lack of written records. Of course, even so-called prehistoric societies leave behind evidence of their experiences, creativity, and belief systems in their oral traditions and their artifacts.

Let us look fi rst at oral traditions, which can include legends, religious rituals, proverbs, genealogies, and a variety of other forms of wisdom and knowledge. Sim-ply put, they constitute a society’s remembered past as passed down by word of mouth. The diffi culty of working with such evidence is signifi cant. You are aware of how stories change as they are transmitted from person to person. Imagine how dif-fi cult it is to use such stories as historical evidence. Yet, despite the challenge they offer, these sources cannot be overlooked.

Although the oral traditions of ancient societies were in many cases written down long after they were fi rst articulated, they are often the only recorded evidence that we have of a far-distant society or event. So, the farther back in history we go, the more we see the inadequacy of the defi nition of primary sources that we

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offered above (“historical records produced at the same time the event or period that is being studied took place or soon thereafter”). The early chapters of Volume I contain quite a few primary sources based on oral traditions; in some cases, they were recorded many centuries after the events and people they deal with. We will inform you when this is the case and offer information and suggestions as to which questions you can validly ask of them to enable you to use them effectively.

Artifacts—anything, other than a document, that was crafted by hand or machine—can help us place oral traditions into a clearer context by producing tan-gible evidence that supports or calls into question this form of testimony. Artifacts can also tell us something about prehistoric societies whose oral traditions are lost to us. They also serve as primary sources for historians who study literate cul-tures. Written records, no matter how extensive and diverse, never allow us to draw a complete picture of the past, and we can fi ll at least some of those gaps by studying what human hands have fashioned. Everyday objects—such as fabrics, tools, kitchen implements, weapons, farm equipment, jewelry, pieces of furniture, and family photographs—provide windows into the ways that people lived. Grander cultural products—paintings, sculpture, buildings, musical compositions, and, more recently, fi lm—are equally important because they also refl ect the values, attitudes, and styles of living of their creators and those for whom they were created.

To be a historian is to work with primary sources in all their diverse forms. But to do so effectively is not easy. Each source provides only one glimpse of reality, and no single source by itself gives us the whole picture of past events and developments. Many sources are diffi cult to understand and can be interpreted only after the pre-cise meaning of their words has been deciphered and their backgrounds thoroughly investigated. Many sources contain distortions and errors that can be discovered only by rigorous internal analysis and comparison with evidence from other sources. Only after all these source-related diffi culties have been overcome can a historian hope to achieve a coherent and reasonably accurate understanding of the past.

To illustrate some of the challenges of working with primary sources, let us imag-ine a time in the future when a historian decides to write a history of your college class in connection with its fi ftieth reunion. Since no one has written a book or article about your class, our historian has no secondary sources to consult and must rely entirely on primary sources. What primary sources might he or she use? The list is a long one: the school catalogue, class lists, academic transcripts, yearbooks, college rules and regulations, and similar offi cial documents; lecture notes, syllabi, examinations, term papers, and textbooks; diaries and private letters; articles from the campus newspaper and programs for sporting events, concerts, and plays; post-ers and handbills; recollections written down or otherwise recorded by some of your classmates long after they graduated. With a bit of thought, you could add other items to the list, among them some artifacts, such as souvenirs sold in the campus store, and other unwritten sources, such as recordings of music popular at the time and photographs and videotapes of student life and activity.

Even with this imposing list of sources, our future historian will have only an in-complete record of the events that made up your class’ experiences. Many of those



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moments—telephone conversations, meetings with professors, and gossip exchanged at the student union—never made it into any written record. Also consider the fact that all the sources available to our future historian will be fortunate survivors. They will represent only a small percentage of the material generated by you, your classmates, professors, and administrators over a two- or four-year period. Waste-baskets and recycling bins will have claimed much written material; the “delete” key, inevitable changes in computer technology, and old websites dumped as “obsolete” will make it impossible to retrieve some basic sources, such as your college’s website, e-mail, and a vast amount of other online materials. It is also probable that it will be diffi cult to fi nd information about certain groups within your class, such as part-time students, nontraditional students, and commuters. The past always has its so-called silent or near-silent groups of people. Of course, they were never truly silent, but often nobody was listening to them. It is the historian’s task to fi nd whatever evi-dence exists that gives them a voice, but often that evidence is tantalizingly slim.

For these reasons, the evidence available to our future historian will be fragmentary at best. This is always the case when doing historical research. The records of the past cannot be retained in their totality, not even records that pertain to the recent past.

How will our future historian use the many individual pieces of surviving docu-mentary evidence about your class? As he or she reviews the list, it will quickly become apparent that no single primary source provides a complete or unbiased picture. Each source has its own perspective, value, and limitations. Imagine that the personal essays submitted by applicants for admission were a historian’s only sources of information about the student body. On reading them, our researcher might draw the false conclusion that the school attracted only the most gifted, tal-ented, interesting, and intellectually committed students imaginable.

Despite their fl aws, however, essays composed by applicants for admission are still important pieces of historical evidence. They refl ect the would-be students’ perceptions of the school’s cultural values and the types of people it hopes to attract, and usually the applicants are right on the mark because they have studied the college’s or university’s website and read the brochures prepared by its admissions offi ce. Admissions materials and, to a degree, even the school’s offi cial catalogue (assuming a fi fty-year-old online catalogue can be recovered) are forms of creative advertising, and both present an ide-alized picture of campus life. But such publications have value for the careful researcher because they refl ect the values of the faculty and administrators who composed them. The catalogue also provides useful information regarding rules and regulations, courses, instructors, school organizations, and similar items. Such factual information, however, is the raw material of history, not history itself, and certainly it does not refl ect anything close to the full historical reality of your class’ collective experience.

What is true of the catalogue is equally true of the student newspaper and every other piece of evidence pertinent to your class. Each primary source is a part of a larger whole, but as we have already seen, we do not have all the pieces. Think of historical evidence in terms of a jigsaw puzzle. Many of the pieces are missing, but it is possible to put the remaining pieces together to form a fairly accurate and coherent picture. The picture that emerges will not be complete, but it is valid and useful, and from it, one can often



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make educated guesses as to what the missing pieces look like. The keys to putting to-gether this historical puzzle are hard work and imagination. Each is absolutely necessary.

Examining Primary SourcesHard work speaks for itself, but students are often unaware that historians also need imagination to reconstruct the past. After all, many students ask, doesn’t history consist of irrefutable dates, names, and facts? Where does imagination enter into the process of learning these facts? Again, let us consider your class’s history and its documentary sources. Many of those documents provide factual data—dates, names, grades, statistics. While these data are important, individually and collectively they have no historical meaning until they have been interpreted. Your college class is more than a collection of statistics and facts. It is a group of individuals who, despite their differences, shared and molded a collective experience. It was and is a community evolving within a particular time and place. Any valid or useful history must reach beyond dates, names, and facts and interpret the historical characteristics and role of your class. What were its values? How did it change and why? What impact did it have? These are some of the important questions a historian asks of the evidence.

To arrive at answers, the historian must examine every piece of relevant evidence in its full context and wring from that evidence as many inferences as possible. An infer-ence is a logical conclusion drawn from evidence, and it is the heart and soul of historical inquiry. Facts are the raw materials of history, but inferences are its fi nished products.

Every American schoolchild learns at an early age that “in fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” In subsequent history classes, he or she might learn other facts about the famous explorer: that he was born in Genoa in 1451; that he made three other transatlantic voyages in 1493, 1497, and 1503; that he died in Spain in 1506. Knowing these facts is of little value, however, unless it con-tributes to our understanding of the motives, causes, and signifi cance of Columbus’s voyages. Why did Columbus sail west? Why did Spain support such enterprises? Why were Europeans willing and able to exploit, as they did, the so-called New World? What were the short- and long-term consequences of the European presence in the Americas? Finding answers to questions such as these are the historian’s ultimate goal, and these answers can be reached only by studying primary sources.

One noted historian, Robin Winks, wrote a book entitled The Historian as Detec-tive, and the image is appropriate although inexact. Like a detective, the historian ex-amines evidence to reconstruct events. Like a detective, the historian is interested in discovering “what happened, who did it, and why.” Like a detective interrogating witnesses, the historian also must carefully examine the testimony of sources.

First and foremost, the historian must evaluate the validity of the source. Is it what it purports to be? Artful forgeries have misled many historians. Even authentic sources still can be misleading if the author lied or deliberately misrepresented reality. In ad-dition, the historian can easily be led astray by not fully understanding the perspective refl ected in the document. As is soon learned by any detective who has examined



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eyewitnesses to an event, even honest witnesses’ accounts can differ widely. The de-tective has the opportunity to re-examine witnesses and offer them the opportunity to change their testimony in the light of new evidence and deeper refl ection. The his-torian is not so fortunate. Even when the historian compares a piece of documentary evidence with other evidence in order to uncover its fl aws, there is no way to cross-examine its author. Given this fact, the historian must understand as fully as possible the source’s perspective. Thus, the historian must ask several key questions—all of which share the letter W:

• What kind of document is it?

• Who wrote it?

• For whom and why?

• Where was it composed and when?

What is important because understanding the nature of a source gives the historian an idea of what kind of information he or she can expect to fi nd in it. Many sources simply do not address the questions a historian would like to ask of them, and know-ing this can prevent a great deal of frustration. Your class’s historian would be foolish to try to learn much about the academic quality of your school’s courses from a study of the registrar’s class lists and grade sheets; student and faculty class notes, copies of syllabi, examinations, student papers, and textbooks would be far more useful.

Who, for whom, and why are equally important questions. The offi cial catalogue and publicity materials prepared by the admissions offi ce undoubtedly address some issues pertaining to student social life. But should documents such as these— designed to attract potential students and to place the school in the best possible light—be read and accepted uncritically? Obviously not. They must be tested against student testimony discovered in such sources as private letters, memoirs, posters, the student newspaper, and the yearbook.

Where and when are also important questions to ask of any primary source. As a rule, distance from an event in space and time colors perceptions and can diminish the reli-ability of a source. Imagine that a classmate had celebrated the twenty-fi fth class reunion by recording her or his memories and refl ections. That document or video could be an insightful and valuable source of information for your class’s historian. Conceivably this graduate would have had a perspective and information that he or she lacked a quarter of a century earlier. Just as conceivably, that person’s memory of what college was like might have faded to the point where the recollections have little evidentiary value.

You and the SourcesThis book will actively involve you in the work of historical inquiry by asking you to draw inferences based on your analysis of primary source evidence. This might prove diffi cult at fi rst, but it is well within your capability.

You will analyze two types of evidence: documents and artifacts. Each source in The Human Record is authentic, so you do not have to worry about validating it. Editorial material in this book also supplies you with the information necessary to place each



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piece of evidence into its proper context and will suggest questions you legitimately can and should ask of each source.

It is important to keep in mind that historians approach each source with questions, even though they might be vaguely formulated. Like detectives, historians want to discover some particular truth or shed light on an issue. This requires asking specifi c questions of the witnesses or, in the historian’s case, of the evidence. These questions should not be prejudgments. One of the worst errors a historian can make is setting out to prove a point or to defend an ideological position. Questions are essential, but they are starting points, nothing else. Therefore, as you approach a source, have your question or questions fi xed in your mind, and constantly remind yourself as you work your way through a source what issue or issues you are investigating—but at the same time, keep an open mind. You are not an advocate or a debater. Your mission is to discover the truth, insofar as you can, by following the evidence and asking the right questions of it. Each source in this anthology is preceded by a number of suggested Questions for Analysis. You or your professor might want to ask other questions. Whatever the case, keep focused on your questions and issues, and take notes as you read a source. Never rely on unaided memory; it will almost inevitably lead you astray.

Above all else, you must be honest and thorough as you study a source. Read each explanatory footnote carefully to avoid misunderstanding a word or an allusion. Try to understand exactly what the source is saying and what its author’s perspective is. Be careful not to wrench items, words, or ideas out of context, thereby distorting them. Be sure to read the entire source so that you understand as fully as possible what it says and does not say.

This is not as diffi cult as it sounds, but it does take concentration and work. And do not let the word “work” mislead you. True, primary source analysis demands attention to detail and some hard thought, but it is also rewarding. There is great satisfaction in developing a deeper and truer understanding of the past based on a careful exploration of the evidence. What is more, an ability to analyze and inter-pret evidence is a skill that will serve you well in whatever career you follow.

Analyzing Sample SourcesTo illustrate how you should go about this task and what is expected of you, we will now take you through an exercise. One of the features of this source book is what we call “Multiple Voices.“ Each volume is divided into parts, and each part contains one or more Multiple Voices sections. Each Multiple Voices feature is a set of short source excerpts that illustrates one of three phenomena: (1) multiple, more-or-less contemporary perspectives on a common event or phenomenon; (2) multiple sources that illustrate how something changes over time; (3) multiple perspectives from different cultures regarding a common concern or issue. The sample exercise we have constructed for this Prologue is a Multiple Voices feature that illustrates the third phenomenon: multiple perspectives from different cultures regarding a com-mon concern or issue. We have chosen three documents and an artifact that shed light on the importance and economic policies of the Indian port city of Calicut in



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the years preceding the entry on a large scale of Europeans into the Indian Ocean. We present this grouping of sources as it would appear in the book: fi rst a bit of background; next a discussion of the individual sources; then suggested Questions for Analysis; and fi nally the sources themselves, with explanatory notes.

Everyone Meets in Calicut

BACKGROUND

On May 20, 1498, after almost eleven months of sailing, the Portuguese captain-major Vasco da Gama anchored his three ships a few miles from Kozhikode (known to the Arabs as Kalikut and later to the British as Calicut) on India’s Malabar, or southwestern, Coast, thereby inaugurating Europe’s entry into the markets of the Indian Ocean. At the time of da Gama’s arrival, Calicut was the capital of the most important state in a region dotted with small powers. Despite lacking a good natural harbor, Calicut prospered as a center of trade for reasons suggested in the following sources. However, with the establishment of competitive Portuguese trading sta-tions along the Malabar Coast and elsewhere in the Indian Ocean as a consequence of da Gama’s initial contact with India and following da Gama’s bombardment of the city in 1503, Calicut’s fortunes rapidly declined, and its prominence ended.

THE SOURCES

We begin with an account of Calicut contained in the anonymous Logbook ( Roteiro) of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama, often referred to simply as the Roteiro. The journal, which is incomplete, was kept by an anonymous crew member aboard the San Rafael. Although the author’s identity is unknown, what is certain is that the Roteiro is authentic.

The second source, Ibn Battuta’s Rihla, or A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels Encountered in Travel, predates the Roteiro by a century and a half. Abu Abdallah Muhammad Ibn Battuta (1304–1368?) left his home in Tangier on the coast of Morocco in 1325 at the age of 21 to begin a 26-year journey throughout the Islamic World and beyond. When he returned to Morocco in 1349, he had logged about 73,000 miles of travel, including more than seven years spent as a qadi, or religious judge, in the Islamic sultanate of Delhi in northern India. In 1341, Sultan Muhammad Tughluq (r. 1325–1351) invited Ibn Battuta to travel to China as his ambassador. On his way to China, Ibn Battuta stopped at Calicut. In 1354, the traveler began to collaborate with a professional scribe, Ibn Juzayy, to fashion his many adventures into a rihla, or book of religious travels, one of the most popular forms of literature in the Islamic world. It took almost two years to complete his long and complex story. Some of that story was fabri-cated, as even contemporaries noticed, but most of the rihla has the ring of authenticity. The excerpt describes Calicut as seen in 1341 and remembered about 15 years later, and there is no good reason to doubt that this is an eyewitness account.

The third source, The Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores, is Chinese. Its author, Ma Huan (ca. 1380–after 1451), accompanied the fourth (1413–1415), sixth (1421–1423),



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and seventh (1431–1433) expeditions of the great Ming fl eets that the Yongle Em-peror (r. 1402–1424) and his successor sent into the Indian Ocean under the com-mand of Admiral Zheng He (1371–1433). The main purpose of the seven expeditions, which began in 1405 and ended in 1433, was to reassert Chinese hegemony in coastal lands touched by the Indian Ocean. Ma Huan, who was a Chinese Muslim, served as an Arabic translator on his fi rst voyage and upon his return home transcribed his notes into book form. After sailing on two other expeditions, he amended his account accordingly and published a book in 1451 that encapsulated all three expedi-tions and described in detail the lands visited and actions taken by the fl eets during those voyages. In this excerpt he describes Calicut, known to the Chinese as Guli.

The fourth source, an artifact, is a detail of the western portions of India and the adjoining Arabian Sea from the Catalan World Atlas, which was drawn in 1375 on the island of Majorca, probably by Abraham Cresques (1325–1387), a Jewish “master of maps of the world” who served the king of Aragon in northeastern Spain (Catalo-nia), which had seized Majorca from the Moors in 1229. Cresques’s map was based on the best available literary and cartographic sources and refl ected the facts and fi ctions regarding Afro-Eurasia (the vast connected landmass that constitutes Africa and Eurasia) that circulated in educated circles in late-fourteenth-century Western Europe. In the segment shown here, we see at the top the Three Magi on their way to visit the Christ Child. Below them is the sultan of Delhi, whose Muslim state dom-inated northern India; below him is the raja of Vijayanagara, who presided over the most powerful Hindu state in southern India. Between them are an elephant and its handler. In the Arabian Sea, at the bottom of the map are pearl divers, as described by Marco Polo. Above the pearl divers is a vessel with two men in conical hats.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS

1. According to the Roteiro, why was Calicut so important, and, by implication, why was it necessary for Portugal to gain direct access to it?

2. What does Ibn Battuta tell us about the roles of foreigners in Calicut, and specifi cally which foreigners?

3. From what the three documentary sources tell us, what factors contributed to Calicut’s prosperity?

4. What does the Catalan World Atlas tell us about Western Europe’s knowledge of the Malabar Coast and India in general by the late fourteenth century?

5. Overall, what can we say with certainty about Calicut prior to its rapid decline in the sixteenth century?

1 • Roteiro

From this country of Calicut . . . come the spices that are consumed in the East and the West, in Portugal, as in all other countries of the world,

as also [are] precious stones of every description. Th e following spices are to be found in this city of Calicut, being its own produce: much ginger and pepper and cinnamon, although the last is not of so fi ne a quality as that brought from an



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island called Çillon [Ceylon],1 which is eight days journey from Calicut. Calicut is the staple for all this cinnamon. Cloves are brought to this city from an island called Melqua (Melaka].2 Th e Mecca vessels carry these spices from there to a city in Mecca3 called Judeâ [Jeddah],4 and from the said island to Judeâ is a voyage of 50 days sailing before the wind. . . . At Judeâ they dis-charge their cargoes, paying customs duties to the Grand Sultan.5 Th e merchandise is then transshipped to smaller vessels, which carry it through the Red Sea to a place close to Santa Catarina of Mount Sinai,6 called Tuuz [El Tûr]7

where customs dues are paid once more. From

that place the merchants carry the spices on the backs of camels . . . to Quayro [Cairo], a journey occupying ten days. At Quayro duties are paid again. On this road to Cairo they are frequently robbed by thieves. . . .

At Cairo the spices are embarked on the river Nile . . . and descending8 that river for two days they reach a place called Roxette [Rosetta], where duties have to be paid once more. Th ere they are placed on camels, and are conveyed in one day to a city called Alexandria, which is a sea-port.9 Th is city is visited by the galleys of Venice and Genoa, in search of these spices, which yield the Grand Sultan [an annual] revenue of 600,000 cruzados.10

1The present-day island nation of Sri Lanka. At this time, Ceylon alone produced true cinnamon. The other cinnamon-like spice is cassia, which is made from the bark of a related tree that originated in China.2The straits and city of Melaka (also known as Malacca) were not the source. Cloves came from the Southeast Asian islands known as the Moluccas (or Spice Islands), which today con-stitute the province of Maluku in the Republic of Indonesia.3Actually Arabia, Mecca (or Makkah) being the inland holy city of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula. Today Mecca is lo-cated in Saudi Arabia.

4Jeddah (or Jidda) is the Arabian Peninsula’s main port city on the Red Sea.5The Mamluk dynasty of sultans that ruled Egypt from 1250 to 1517.6Saint Catherine’s Monastery—an ancient Christian monas-tery in Egypt that still exists.7A port on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.8Sailing north.9On the Mediterranean.10A Portuguese gold coin that received its name from the crusader’s cross emblazoned on it.

1A Hindu.2In the local language, the title was Samudri raja, which means “Lord of the Sea.” The Portuguese would corrupt this to “Zamorin.”3A strange name, very much like being called “Goldie” in English. A measure of weight throughout the Islamic world, a mithqal was 4.72 grams of gold. This might mean the man was a Muslim from across the Arabian Sea.

4Yemen is the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula; Fars is the southern region of Iran along the Gulf of Oman.5They awaited the lessening of the northeastern monsoon winds, which blow from late November to April. The period around 11 April was considered the best time to begin a voyage from the Malabar Coast to the Bay of Bengal, which lies east of India.

2 • Ibn Battuta, A Gift to Th ose Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels Encountered in Travel

Th e sultan of Calicut is an infi del,1 known as “the Samari.”2 . . . In this town too lives the famous ship-owner Mithqal,3 who possesses vast wealth and many ships for his trade with India, China, Yemen, and Fars.4 When we reached the city, the principal inhabitants and merchants and the sultan’s repre-sentative came out to welcome us, with drums,

trumpets, bugles and standards on their ships. We entered the harbor in great pomp. . . . We stopped in the port of Calicut, in which there were at the time thirteen Chinese vessels, and disembarked. Every one of us was lodged in a house, and we stayed three months as the guests of the infi del, awaiting the sea-son of the voyage to China.5 On the Sea of China traveling is done in Chinese ships only. . . .

Th e Chinese vessels are of three kinds: large ships called chunks [junks], middle-sized ones called zaws [dhows], and small ones called kakams. Th e large



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3 • Ma Huan, Th e Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores

Th e Country of Guli

Th e king of the country is a Nankun1 man; he is a fi rm believer in the Buddhist religion and he ven-erates the elephant and the ox.2. . .

Th e king of the country and the people of the country all refrain from eating the fl esh of the ox. Th e great chiefs are Muslim people; they all refrain from eating the fl esh of the pig. Formerly there was a king who made a sworn compact with the Muslim people [who said to him], “You do not eat the ox; I do not eat the pig; we will reciprocally

ships have from twelve down to three sails, which are made of bamboo rods plaited like mats. Th ey are never lowered, but turned according to the di-rection of the wind. . . . A ship carries a comple-ment of a thousand men, six hundred of whom are sailors and four hundred men-at-arms, including archers . . . and arbalists, who throw naptha.6. . . Th e vessel has four decks and contains rooms, cab-ins, and salons for merchants; a cabin has chambers and a lavatory, and can be locked by its occupant, who takes along with him slave girls and wives. Often a man will live in his cabin unknown to any of the others on board until they meet on reaching some town. Th e sailors have their children on board ship, and they cultivate green stuff s, vegetables, and ginger in wooden tanks. Th e owner’s factor [agent-in-charge] on board ship is like a great amir.7 When he goes on shore he is preceded by archers and Abyssinians8 with javelins, swords, drums, trum-pets, and bugles. On reaching the house where he stays, they stand their lances on both sides of the door, and continue thus during his stay. Some of the Chinese own large numbers of ships on which their factors are sent to foreign countries. Th ere is

no people in the world wealthier than the Chinese. When the time came for the voyage to China, the sultan Samari made provision for us on one of the thirteen junks in the port of Calicut. Th e factor on the junk was called Sulayman of Safad,9 in Syria. . . .

> Disaster strikes. Ibn Battuta’s ship sinks in a storm in the harbor before he boards it, but it carries with it to the bottom all of his baggage, servants, and slaves.

Next morning we found the bodies of Sumbal and Zahir ad-Din,10 and having prayed over them bur-ied them. I saw the infi del, the sultan of Calicut . . . a fi re lit before him on the beach; his police offi -cers were beating the people to prevent them from plundering what the sea had cast up. In all the lands of Malabar, except in this one land alone, it is the custom that whenever a ship is wrecked all that is taken from it belongs to the treasury. At Calicut, however, it is retained by its owners, and for that reason Calicut has become a fl ourishing city and at-tracts large numbers of merchants.

6Crossbowmen who shoot missiles containing a mixture of fi ery materials.7Lord or commander.8Persons from the Horn of Africa—present-day Ethiopia, Eritrea, Dhbouti, and Somalia—and maybe even farther south along the Swahili Coast.

9Zefat in present-day Israel.10Envoys whom the sultan of Delhi had dispatched to accompany him.

1High caste—probably a member of the Kshatriya, or warrior-ruler, caste.

2Actually, he was a Hindu. His veneration of an ox (probably a bull) suggests he was a devotee of Shiva.



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respect the taboo”; [and this compact] has been honored right down to the present day. . . .

Th e king has two great chiefs who administer the aff airs of the country; both are Muslims.

Th e majority of the people in the country all profess the Muslim religion. Th ere are twenty or thirty temples of worship,3 and once in seven days they go to worship. . . .

If a [Chinese] treasure-ship goes there,4 it is left entirely to the two men to superintend the buy-ing and selling; the king sends a chief and a Zhedi Weinoji5 to examine the account books in the of-fi cial bureau; a broker comes and joins them; [and] a high offi cer who commands the ships discusses the choice of a certain date for fi xing prices. When the day arrives, they fi rst of all take the silk em-broideries . . . and other such goods that have been brought there [by the ship], and discuss the price of them one by one; when [the price] has been fi xed, they write out an agreement stating the amount of the price, [which] is retained by these persons.

Th e chief and the Zhedi, with his excellency the eunuch,6 all join hands together, and the broker then says, “In such and such a moon, on such and such a day, we have all joined hands and sealed our agreement with a hand-clasp; whether [the price] be dear or cheap, we will never repudiate or change it.”

After that, the Zhedi and the men of wealth then come bringing precious stones, pearls, cor-als, and other such things, so that they may be ex-amined and the price discussed; [this] cannot be settled in a day; [if done] quickly, [it takes] one moon; [if done] slowly, two or three moons.

Once the money-price has been fi xed after ex-amination and discussion, if a pearl or other such article is purchased, the price that must be paid for it is calculated by the chief and the Weinoji who carried out the original transaction. As to the quantity of the hemp-silk or other such article that must be given in exchange for it, goods are exchanged according to [the price fi xed by] the original hand-clasp—there is not the slightest deviation. . . .

Th e king uses gold of 60 percent to cast a coin for current use. . . . He also makes a coin of silver . . . for petty transactions. . . .

Th e people of the country also take the silk of the silk-worm, soften it by boiling, dye it all colors, and weave it into kerchiefs with decora-tive stripes at intervals . . . ; each length is sold for 100 gold coins.

As to pepper; the inhabitants of the moun-tainous countryside have established gardens, and it is extensively cultivated. When the period of the tenth moon arrives, the pepper ripens. It is collected, dried in the sun, and sold. Of course, big pepper-collectors come and collect it, and take it to the offi cial storehouse to be stored; if there is a buyer, an offi cial gives permission for the sale. Th e duty is collected according to the amount [of the purchase price] and is paid to the authorities. . . .

Foreign ships from every place come there; and the king of the country also sends a chief and a writer and others to watch the sales; thereupon they collect the duty and pay it to the authorities.

3The preceding sentence and the following reference to the weekly day of worship make it appear that these temples were mosques. It seems unlikely, however, that the major-ity of the population was Muslim and that Calicut had 20 or 30 mosques. More likely, it had several mosques and many Hindu temples. As a Muslim, Ma Huan might have thought, incorrectly, that Hindus, like Muslims, have a once-a-week day of communal prayer.4The fl eets commanded by Zheng He contained a signifi cant number of treasure ships—large ships along the lines de-scribed by Ibn Battuta that carried Chinese trade goods and

gifts, but which also were meant to carry back tribute, for-eign trade goods, exotic items, and persons of importance invited (or compelled) to visit the imperial court at Nanjing. By extension, Ma Huan means any Chinese trading vessel.5Probably his attempt to transliterate Waligi Chitty, or accountant.6The reference is to Zheng He, a eunuch, who commanded the treasure ships that visited Calicut during these voyages, but more broadly it probably also refers to the commander of any Chinese ship.



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4 • Th e Catalan World Atlas



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Interpreting the SourcesThese four pieces of evidence allow us to say quite a bit about Calicut before Euro-peans established a strong presence in the Indian Ocean. Let us begin with the two Western sources.

The Catalan World Atlas depicts what is unmistakably a Chinese vessel off the west coast of India. The plaited bamboo sails, which Ibn Battuta described, as well as the distinctive hats worn by the two men, make that identifi cation easy. Clearly, West-erners realized as early as the fourteenth century that the Chinese were major players in the commerce of the Indian subcontinent. The West’s knowledge of the great wealth of India, as well as its high degree of urbanization and its political fragmentation, is obvious from the portraits of the sultan of Delhi and the raja of Vijayanagara, as well as the symbols for the many cities dotting the coastline and interior. The pearl divers, elephant, and Three Magi only add to the overall picture of India’s riches and wonders. The fact is that between roughly 1250 and 1350, a signifi cant number of Europeans, especially missionaries and merchants, had trav-eled, largely by land, to China and India, and some of them, such as Marco Polo, had written widely circulated accounts of their experiences. Even if you did not know that, you can infer from this map segment alone that the fourteenth-century West was not totally ignorant of India’s geography and dynamics, including the importance of Chinese merchants in the commerce of the Malabar Coast.

The Roteiro illustrates why the Portuguese desired direct overseas access to the rich markets of India and beyond. Given the numerous duties and profi t mar-gins placed on spices that made their way to Egypt and from there to Europe, the Portuguese realized that access to the markets of the Malabar Coast and beyond would enable them cut out many of the middle agents who profi ted greatly from this lucrative trade. At this point, there is no good reason for you to know that the over-land trade routes between Europe and the “Indies” (a vague term that referred to India, China, and other distant lands in Asia and East Africa) had largely broken down after about 1350 (see Vol. I, Chapter 11) and that the closing down of those routes spurred Portugal and Spain to fi nd alternate ways by sea. What you can easily infer from this source is that the Portuguese expected to make much more per year than the 600,000 cruzados that the sultan of Egypt enjoyed, once they had direct access to Calicut. As we learn from this anonymous author, not only was Calicut a major commercial emporium, it was also a center of spice and gemstone production.

The Roteiro makes clear how important Calicut was to the commerce of Arabia and Egypt, Venice, Genoa, and the Spice Islands; Ibn Battuta and Ma Huan show us how central Calicut was to the overseas trade of China and other segments of the Islamic world. Our Moroccan and Chinese eyewitnesses further depict Calicut as an international city, where Muslims served both Chinese shipowners and the Hindu ruler of Calicut as trusted, high-ranking offi cials in charge of commercial activities. Both authors also shed light on policies adopted by the rulers of Calicut



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to encourage commerce and friendly relations with neighboring and far-distant powers.

Ibn Battuta tells us how his diplomatic party was received with great ceremony and how the Samudri raja arranged for his transportation aboard a Chinese ves-sel. Even more revealing are his descriptions of the sizes and types of the Chinese ships that did business at Calicut; the high status and honor accorded the factors, or agents-in-charge, of these Chinese ships; and the manner in which the ruler of Calicut protected the goods of shipwrecked merchants. The size of their ships alone suggests that the Chinese invested heavily in their trade with Calicut, but they did so because they knew that they would be welcomed and treated fairly at the port city. And why not? The rulers of Calicut understood that the prosperity of their city depended on the satisfaction of visiting merchants.

Ma Huan provides additional detail in this regard. The rajas of Calicut maintained a policy of religious toleration, which, given how much they depended on Muslim offi cials and merchants, was the only logical policy to follow. And this was in an age when bitter wars were fought between the Muslim-dominated sultanate of Delhi and Hindu Vijayanagara. The rajas also provided for a well-run and honest market-place by commissioning offi cials who were responsible for facilitating all commercial transactions and guaranteeing all contracts. Inasmuch as a tax on all sales was paid into the ruler’s treasury, it was in his best interest to grease the wheels of trade and to guarantee that once a deal was struck, it was inviolate. The fact that the raja minted gold and silver coins suggests that these policies worked well.

Finally, Ma Huan supports and supplements evidence from the Roteiro regard-ing Calicut’s industries. Pepper production, which was carefully regulated by the state in regard to collection, storage, and sale (although the trees were apparently cultivated in small family garden plots), was a major staple of Calicut’s economy. Likewise, Calicut’s silk industry produced expensive bolts of silk, and the region was also a major source for coral and gemstones, especially pearls. Despite its native silk production, however, Calicut was a center for trade in Chinese embroidered silk. Apparently the high quality of this product allowed it to compete favorably with Indian silk.

Well, as you can see, interpreting historical sources is not an arcane science or esoteric art. Yes, it is challenging, but it is a skill that you can master. Look at it this way: it is an exercise that mainly requires close attention and common sense. You must fi rst read and study each source carefully and thoroughly. Then, using the evi-dence you have picked up from the documents and artifacts, answer the Questions for Analysis. It is that straightforward. If you work with us, trusting us to provide you with all of the necessary background information and clues that you need to make sense out of these sources, you will succeed.

One last word: Have fun doing it because you should fi nd it enjoyable to meet the challenge of reconstructing the past through its human records.



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