تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 13.99
English (machine translation) 13.99
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13.99.1
Monkeys in those mountains are very numerous. They are black in colour with long tails, and the males have beards as men do. Shaykh ʿUthmān, his son and others told me that these monkeys have a leader whom they follow
13.99.2
Kinds of monkeys
13.99.3
as though he were a sultan. He binds on his head a band of tree leaves and leans on a staff, and on his right and left are four monkeys with staves in their hands. When the leading monkey sits down, the four monkeys stand at his head, and his female and his young come and sit before him every day. The monkeys come and sit at a distance from him; then one of the four monkeys speaks to them and all the monkeys go off, and then each of them brings a banana or a lemon or the like, and the leading monkey, his young and the four monkeys eat.
13.99.4
One of the yogis told me that he had seen the four monkeys before their leader beating a monkey with staves, and then they plucked out its fur after the beating. Trustworthy people told me that when one of these monkeys gets hold of a girl who cannot defend herself, it has intercourse with her! One of the people of this island told me that there was one of these monkeys in his house; a daughter of his went into one of the rooms and it went in after her; she screamed at it, but it overpowered her. He said, 'We went in on her while it was between her legs, and we killed it!' Then we departed for the Inlet of Bamboo; it was from this inlet that Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn Khafīf took out the two rubies which he gave to the sultan of this island, as we related in the first journey.
13.99.5
Then we travelled to a place known as the Old Woman's House, which is the last of the inhabited country. Then we travelled to the cave of Bābā Ṭāhir, who was one of the pious, then to the cave of al-Sabīk — with a after the undotted s, i after the b (with one dot), a long y and a k. Al-Sabīk was one of the infidel sultans, and he withdrew there for worship.
Linked texts (1)
- تحفة النظار في غرائب الأمصار وعجائب الأسفار — Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Arabic