The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [57]
Another example of sophisticated map making comes from Java, and like the previous two shows that there was a large degree of interaction and exchange of knowledge between map makers at this time. In 1512 the Portuguese captain Albuquerque was shown a Javanese chart which delineated the Cape of Good Hope, Portugal, Brazil, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the country where the gold is (Minangkabau in Sumatra), the clove islands, the Malukus, Java, the Banda islands, Siam, the navigation of the Chinese, and the courses followed by their ships. All the names are marked in Javanese script.40 This sort of interchange extended in some surprising directions. The Chinese, even if they did not travel, certainly picked up much information at second or third hand. One eighth-century Chinese author described the people of Bobali, which is somewhere in northern East Africa. They 'eat only meat. They often stick a needle into the veins of cattle and draw blood which they drink raw, mixed with milk.' Intriguing to find that this is clearly a description of the same people whom a sixteenth-century Portuguese cleric found. He wrote of the Segeju that 'They own much cattle, the milk and blood thereof being to them as food; they eat the flesh raw without any other manner of ordinary food, as it is said, and they bleed the oxen every other day.'41
Finally, another Muslim example, this time the Turk Piri Reis and his magnificent Kitab, completed in 1521 and now available in a stunning four volume facsimile edition with translation. He wrote of the 'great sea', that is the all-encircling sea:
All the others are united with the Bahr-Azam. The Ocean is the sea into which they are all collected. It encircles the world. It is the head of all the seas; from it all seas emerge and to it all return. As I have told you, the fact is that all the other seas are but gulfs of the Ocean. The sea is like a tree that spreads everywhere left and right. The source of them all is the Ocean, of which they are the branches and twigs.
He described the Portuguese voyages to India, and among other places identified Madeira, Cape Verde, Brazil, Abyssinia, and Mogadishu, which he says is near the entrance to the Red Sea. Below 55° S all is Darkness, and similarly above 55° N. He has a brief account of China, which he says is based on what the Portuguese say, and then a fabulous account of an island with all sorts of monstrous people, based on 'those who voyaged there'. His account of India is rather vague, and he thinks it is winter in India when it is summer in Europe. A few years after this Kitab he drew a map of the Atlantic which included the North American coast from Greenland to Florida, and was quite accurate.42
We have already quoted the famous Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta several times. This much-travelled scholar left a copious account of his travels and adventures all around the Indian Ocean and beyond, for he also visited many parts of Europe and West Africa; indeed he came from Morocco. In sum he covered 75,000 miles in a period of nearly thirty years. His travels date from the first half of the fourteenth century. In the rest of this chapter I intend to use him as a 'tin opener', to introduce the various topics I want to cover in this account of the Indian Ocean to about 1500. Each section will start with his observations, and will introduce my general discussion of the relevant topic, the latter based on other contemporary, and much secondary, literature. My intention here is rather different from Ross Dunn's.43 He has provided an excellent account of Ibn Battuta's travels and much detail to locate his descriptions. However, I will use his account merely to open up general matters to do with the Indian Ocean, such as port cities, piracy, the dangers of travels by sea, Muslim attitudes to sea travel, and especially his frequent mentions of a network of Islamic scholars, of whom he was one, who were spread all around the ocean, travelling frequently,