The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [85]
He prayed hard, and reflected on his fate.
I was in the middle of these reflections, and everything about me spoke of dejection and trouble, when at length, by virtue of that Divine promise: 'Who is He who hears the prayers of the afflicted, and drives away his misery?' [Quran, s. 27, verse 63] on a sudden, the zephyr of God's infinite mercy began to blow upon me.... The morning of joy began to dawn from the East of happiness.... The impetuous hurricane was changed to a favourable wind, the tossing of the waves ceased, and the seas, in conformity with my desires, became completely calm.152
We get only glimpses of what it was really like travelling by sea at this time. Many of the accounts we do have, such as some of those just quoted in the discussion of 'superstition', are about the dangers of life at sea, for as one would expect these impacted decisively on landlubbers. Given the large role of Muslims in trade at this time, many accounts are from Muslim men travelling to trade, or for fun. There is a large and fabulous Islamic travel literature. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, from the time when the Abbasid empire was at its height, is best known, but there is also Buzurg's collection from the tenth century, with copious tall stories featuring giant whales, mermaids, islands with only women, a snake that ate an elephant, as so on. Sindbad is equally fabulous and exciting, but he does at least provide an evocative explanation for why people wanted to travel. He was constantly prompted to leave a secure and mundane life ashore and head off for adventure and profit. 'I was living a life of unexampled pleasure [in Baghdad] when, one day, the old desire entered my head to visit far countries and strange people, to voyage among the isles and curiously regard things hitherto unknown to me; also, the trading habit rose in me again.' This happens to explain the start of each voyage. For example, concerning the beginning of his sixth voyage:
I was sitting one day taking the air before my door and feeling as happy as I had ever felt, when I saw a group of merchants passing in the street, who had every appearance of returned travellers. This sight recalled to me how joyful a thing it is to return from journeying, to see the birth land after far voyage, and the thought made me want to travel again. I equipped myself with merchandise of price, suitable for the sea, and left the city of Baghdad for Basrah. There I found a great ship filled with merchants and notables as well provided with goods for trading as myself, so I had my bales carried on board, and soon we peacefully set sail from Basrah.153
Many Muslims travelled by sea to fulfil their pious obligation to perform the hajj. Ibn Jubayr was merely going across the Red Sea, from 'Aydhab to Jiddah, yet he had a horror voyage, one which, given the notorious difficulty of navigation in these treacherous waters, was probably not that unusual. It took eight days to cover a distance, as the crow flies, of about 300 km.
There had been the sudden crises of the sea, the perversity of the wind, the many reefs encountered, and the emergencies that arose from the imperfections of the sailing gear which time and again became entangled and broke when sails were raised or lowered or an anchor raised. At times the bottom of the jilabah would run against a reef when passing through them, and we would listen to a rumbling that called us to abandon hope. Many times we died and lived again....154
We quoted above Abd-er-Razzak's account of a storm in 1444, and how his prayers saved the ship. This occurred on his return voyage back to Hurmuz, but when he had set out from there in 1442 it was his first sea voyage, and he was already a bit apprehensive: 'The events, the perils, which accompany a voyage by sea (and which in themselves constitute a shoreless and a boundless ocean),