تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 13.95
English (machine translation) 13.95
- Language
- English
13.95.1
On one of those islands I saw a woman who had a single breast on her chest, and she had two daughters: one of them was like her, with a single breast, and the other had two breasts, except that one of them was large and had milk in it and the other small with no milk in it; and I marvelled at their case! We reached one of those islands, a small one with only a single house on it, in which lived a weaver who had a wife and children and a few coconut palms, and a small boat in which he fished and in which he went wherever he wished among the islands; on his island there were also a few banana plants. We saw no land birds on it except two crows, which came out to us when we reached the island and circled our ship. By God, I envied that man, and wished that the island had been mine, so that I might withdraw to it until certainty [death] came to me! Then I reached the island of Mulūk, where the ship of the nākhudha Ibrāhīm was, the one in which I had resolved to travel to al-Maʿbar. He came to me with his companions and they entertained me handsomely. The vizier had written for me to be given on this island one hundred and twenty bustūs of kawda, that is cowries, and twenty cups of aṭwān, that is coconut honey, and a fixed quantity of betel, areca nut and fish every day.
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I stayed on this island seventy days and married two women there. It is one of the finest of the islands, green and fresh. Among its wonders I saw that a branch is cut from its trees and planted in the ground or in a wall, and it puts out leaves and becomes a tree; and I saw that the pomegranate there never ceases, bearing fruit all year round.
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The people of this island feared that the nākhudha Ibrāhīm would plunder them on his departure, and so wanted to hold the weapons in his ship until the day he sailed. A quarrel arose over this, and we returned to al-Mahal but did not enter it; I wrote to the vizier informing him of it, and he wrote that there was no ground for taking the weapons. We returned to Mulūk and sailed from it in the middle of Rabīʿ al-Thānī in the year forty-five. In Shaʿbān of this year the vizier Jamāl al-Dīn died, God have mercy on him; the sultana was pregnant by him and gave birth after his death, and the vizier ʿAbd Allāh married her.
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We set sail, and we had no skilled pilot with us. The distance between the islands and al-Maʿbar is three days, but we travelled nine days, and on the ninth of them we came out at the island of Saylān, and we saw the mountain of Sarandīb
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on it, rising into the sky like a column of smoke. When we reached it the sailors said: 'This harbour is not in the country of the sultan into whose country merchants enter in safety; this is a harbour in the country of Sultan Ayrī Shakarwatī, who is one of the tyrannous evildoers, and he has ships that commit piracy at sea.' So we were afraid to land at his harbour. Then the wind grew strong and we feared drowning, and I said to the nākhudha: 'Put me ashore, and I will obtain a safe-conduct for you from this sultan!' He did so and put me ashore, and the infidels came to us and said: 'What are you?' I told them that I was the brother-in-law and friend of the sultan of al-Maʿbar, that I had come to visit him, and that what was in the ship was a gift for him. They went to their sultan and informed him of it, and he summoned me, and I went to him at the town of Baṭṭāla — its name is pronounced with a over the single-dotted b, and the undotted ṭ with a and doubled. It is his capital, a small, fine town with a wooden wall and wooden towers. All its shores are full of cinnamon sticks, which the torrents bring down, and they pile up on the shore like hillocks; the people of al-Maʿbar and al-Mulaybār carry them away without payment, except that in return they present the sultan with a garment or the like. Between the country of al-Maʿbar and this island is a journey of a day and a night. There is also on it
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much brazilwood, and the Indian aloeswood known as kalakhī, though it is not like the qamārī and qāqulī, which we shall mention.
Linked texts (1)
- تحفة النظار في غرائب الأمصار وعجائب الأسفار — Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Arabic