تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 13.66
English (machine translation) 13.66
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13.66.1
The procedure is this: a copper table, which they call khawnja, is brought, and on it is placed a copper tray, which they call the ṭālam — with a after the ṭ and a after the l. A beautiful slave-girl wrapped in a silk cloth comes and sets the pots of food before him. She has a large copper ladle, with which she takes one ladleful of rice and puts it on the ṭālam, pours ghee over it, and adds with it bunches of pickled pepper, green ginger, pickled lemons and mangoes. One eats a mouthful and follows it with some of those pickles. When the ladleful she put on the ṭālam is finished, she ladles out another ladleful of rice and empties a cooked chicken into a small bowl, and the rice is eaten with that too. When the second ladleful is finished, she ladles again and empties out another kind of chicken, which is eaten with it. When the kinds of chicken are finished, they bring kinds of fish, with which they also eat the rice. When the kinds of fish are finished, they bring vegetables cooked in ghee and milk dishes, with which they eat the rice. When all that is finished, they bring the kūshān, which is curdled milk, and with it they end their meal; when it is set down, it is known that nothing remains to be eaten after it. Then they drink hot water after it, because cold water harms them in the rainy season.
13.66.2
On another occasion I stayed with this sultan for eleven months without eating bread; their food is only rice. I also remained in the islands of al-Mahal, Saylān, and the lands of al-Maʿbar and Mulaybār for three years eating nothing but rice, until I could only swallow it with water.
13.66.3
This sultan's clothing is wraps of silk and fine linen. He ties a waist-cloth round his middle and wraps himself in two wraps, one over the other; he knots his hair and winds a small turban round it. When he rides he puts on a qabāʾ and wraps two wraps over it. Drums and trumpets carried by men are played before him.
13.66.4
Our stay with him this time was three days; he gave us provisions and we departed from him. After three days we reached the land of al-Mulaybār (with u after the m, a after the l, a quiescent y — the last letter of the alphabet — a after the one-dotted b,
13.66.5
then alif and r). It is the land of pepper, and its length is a journey of two months along the seashore from Sandābūr to Kawlam. The road throughout runs beneath the shade of trees, and at every half mile there is a wooden house with benches on which every comer and goer, Muslim or infidel, sits. At each of these houses there is a well from which people drink, and an infidel man is in charge of it: if one is an infidel he gives him water in vessels, and if one is a Muslim he pours it into his hands and keeps pouring for him until he signals to him or stops. It is the custom of the infidels in the land of al-Mulaybār that a Muslim may not enter their houses or eat from their vessels; if he eats from them, they break them or give them to the Muslims. When a Muslim comes to a place in that land where there is no Muslim house, they cook food for him and pour it out for him on banana leaves, pouring the sauce over it, and whatever he leaves is eaten by the dogs and birds.
13.66.6
At every halting place on this road there are houses of Muslims, with whom Muslims lodge and from whom they buy everything they need, and they cook food for them; were it not for them, no Muslim would travel it. On this road, which we said is a journey of two months, there is not a span of ground or more that is not cultivated. Every person has his own garden with his house in the middle of it, and around the whole there is a wooden fence. The road passes through the gardens, and when it reaches the fence of a garden there are wooden steps to climb up and other steps to go down into the next garden — and so for the two months' journey! No one travels in that country on a mount, and horses are found only with the sultan. Most of its people ride in a palanquin (dawla) on the shoulders of slaves or hired men, and whoever does not ride in a palanquin goes on foot, whoever he may be. Whoever has baggage or goods, of trade or otherwise, hires men who carry it on their backs, so that you see there a merchant with a hundred men, more or fewer, carrying his goods. Each of them has in his hand a thick staff with an iron tip at its base and an iron hook at its top; when he tires and finds no bench to rest on, he plants his staff in the ground and hangs his load from it, and when he has rested he takes up his load without help and goes on with it.
13.66.7
I have not seen a safer road than this one. They kill a thief for a single coconut, and if any fruit falls no one picks it up until its owner takes it! I was told that some Hindus passed along the road and one of them picked up a coconut. News of this reached the governor, who ordered a stake to be planted in the ground, its upper end sharpened and pushed through a wooden board until it projected from it. The man was stretched on the board and impaled on the stake, lying on his belly, until it came out of his back, and he was left as a warning to onlookers! There are many of these stakes of this kind along those roads, so that people may see them and take heed. We used to meet infidels on this road at night, and when they saw us they stepped aside from the road until we had passed. The Muslims are the most honoured of people there, except that, as we have said, they do not eat with them or admit them into their houses.
13.66.8
How people are carried in the palanquin
13.66.9
In the land of al-Mulaybār there are twelve infidel sultans. Some of them are strong, with armies of fifty thousand, and some weak, with armies of three thousand, yet there is no strife at all between them, and the strong do not covet seizing what the weak possess. Between the land of one and that of his neighbour there is a wooden gate inscribed with the name of the one whose jurisdiction begins there, which they call "the gate of safety of so-and-so." If a Muslim or an infidel flees from the land of one of them on account of a crime and reaches the gate of safety of another, his life is safe, and the one he fled from cannot seize him, even if he is the strong one with numbers and armies. The sultans of that country bequeath their kingdom to their sister's son rather than to their own children; I have seen no one do this except the Massūfa, the people of the veil, whom we shall mention later. When a sultan of the people of al-Mulaybār wishes to stop people from buying and selling, he orders one of his servants, who hangs some leafy tree branches on the shops, and no one buys or sells as long as those branches remain on them.
Linked texts (1)
- تحفة النظار في غرائب الأمصار وعجائب الأسفار — Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Arabic