The Boundless Sea

by David Abulafia

  In the late tenth century Fustat, long the nucleus of Cairo, was displaced by a new city built a couple of miles away by the new Fatimid caliphs. The new Cairo lay around the imposing citadel of Ptolemaic Babylonia. The creation of a new capital transformed Fustat into a suburb inhabited by non-Muslims: one of its Coptic churches was said to stand on the site where Joseph, Mary and Jesus had taken refuge following their flight into Egypt. Competing legends about the Ben Ezra synagogue went much further back in time, so that it became known as the synagogue Moses had used when he was living in Egypt. Be that as it may, it was certainly the synagogue where another famous Moses, the philosopher Moses Maimonides, based himself after his own flight to Egypt, which had taken him from Córdoba and Fez, both ruled by the hardline Almohad caliphs, all the way to Egypt. Not surprisingly, then, the Genizah documents contain several handwritten letters and discarded notes from the great Maimonides. His brother David was one of the India traders, and when he was drowned in the Indian Ocean in 1169 Maimonides was plunged into despair for several years. David had set out on his journey by sailing down the Nile and then crossing the desert in the company of a caravan to reach Aydhab. Or, rather, that was the intention; David and another Jewish merchant became detached from their companions, and had to make their way to Aydhab without anyone to protect them from bandits. David wrote back to Moses, admitting that everything had gone wrong because he had acted in ignorance:

  When we were in the desert, we regretted what we had done, but the matter had gone out of our hands. Yet God willed that we should be saved. We arrived at Aydhab safely with our entire baggage. We were unloading our things at the city gate, when the caravans arrived. Their passengers had been robbed and wounded and some had died of thirst.23

  Anyone reading those documents, or indeed this book, might well conclude that robbers, pirates and typhoons made these long-distance journeys risky to the point of foolhardiness.24 David ben Maimon seems to have thought that when he wrote to his brother from Aydhab. He was also worried about how the boat was built: the sight of an Arab dhow whose planks were tied together by ropes, in the traditional way, could shock a traveller familiar with the vessels that sailed the ‘Sea of Tripoli’, that is, the Mediterranean: ‘we set sail in a ship with not a single nail of iron in it, but held together by ropes; may God protect it with His shield! … I am about to cross the great ocean, not a sea like that of Tripoli; and I do not know if we will ever meet again.’25 They did not, for, once out in the ocean, David’s ship went down with all hands.

  The Genizah documents have transformed knowledge of the India trade and have shown how torn and discarded letters thought to be of no value can shed more light on the conduct of trade than official records. Yet this material, though quite plentiful, is not unique. And one is bound to ask whether the Jews of Fustat were typical of a society in which, after all, Jews were only a minority. It was obvious, for instance, that Jews were not especially interested in the grain trade, but were very interested in flax and silk. No one can say whether the family ties that bound together Jewish trading families from Sicily, Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen were replicated among Muslim trading families – probably not. That is why it was so exciting when the excavators of the so-called Shaykh’s House at Qusayr al-Qadim on the Red Sea found the remains of about 150 documents that had mostly been torn to shreds, but could nonetheless be reconstructed.26 This material is a little later than the vast bulk of the Genizah documents, but should be looked at now, as the maritime route down the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean is followed stage by stage. The Qusayr documents reveal the business affairs of an early thirteenth-century merchant named Abu Mufarrij, and the information they contain can once again be compared with the archaeological record, including evidence that ceramics arrived in the Red Sea from as far away as China, and gold probably came up the African coast from Kilwa and Zanzibar.

  The sheikh was very seriously interested in flour and other foodstuffs, which marks him out from the Jewish merchants of the Genizah: ‘to be delivered to Sheikh Abu Mufarrij from the south are: one and a quarter loads of grain and an oil strainer, to be loaded on the vessel Good Tidings.’27 Qusayr was another place in a barren spot, so there was a constant need for basic supplies. It is not surprising that wheat was much more expensive in Qusayr than in the great Egyptian cities; it could cost four times what one would expect to pay in Alexandria and twice what people paid in Cairo.28 The letters from Qusayr al-Qadim fill out our picture of trade in the region by shifting the emphasis away from the spices and fine goods enumerated in the Genizah documents towards humbler but more vital products such as wheat, chickpeas, beans, dates, oil and rice, the staples of daily existence. The wheat sometimes came in the form of grain, sometimes ground down into flour. The quantities mentioned were considerable: as much as three tons in one document, which was enough to feed four or five households for an entire year.29 In view of the arid setting in which Qusayr al-Qadim stands, the grain may well have been grown some distance away, whether in the Nile valley, arriving by way of Qus, or in Yemen, in the corner of south Arabia exposed to the monsoon rains. Qusayr was known to Arab writers as Qusayr furda al-Qus, meaning ‘Qusayr the gateway of Qus’ (the word furda had overtones of ‘government checkpoint’, a place where tiresome customs officers would tax everything that came and went).30 Yemen was certainly seen as an especially important trading partner; the geographer Yaqut ar-Rumi, who was of Greek origin and who died in 1229, wrote of Qusayr: ‘there is a harbour for ships coming from Yemen’.31 Unfortunately it is often hard to work out whether Abu Mufarrij was exporting or importing the products he handled.

  Using these documents, we can see what was happening in the upper reaches of the Red Sea, in a port that gave access to the Egyptian trading station at Qus on the Nile, and thence by way of the River Nile to Cairo and Alexandria.32 Qusayr lay at the closest point to the Nile of any of the Red Sea ports. This did not make Qusayr into a truly major centre of Indian Ocean traffic, and some of its business was directed at other ports within the Red Sea, including those directly opposite that led into the Arabian desert, and pointed towards the holy city of Mecca, which – because of its barren environment – drew in supplies of wheat and other basic necessities from Qusayr and similar small ports. One constraint on Qusayr’s growth was the lack of good-quality water; in the nineteenth century, drinking water was brought from a well six miles away, although the water stank of sulphur, while another spring in the area produced saline water laced with phosphorus, which was only good for animals, if that.33 Still, one should not underestimate Qusayr’s importance: fragments of ships have been found there, sometimes used to line graves, and they were taken from both sewn-plank and nailed-plank ships similar to dhows.34 Ships that arrived in Qusayr would sometimes be taken to pieces and carried on the backs of camels across the desert to Qus, where they would be reassembled and refloated, this time on the Nile.

  Sheikh Abu Mufarrij had the support of loyal servants who wrote to him regularly, reporting on what they had despatched:

  By God, by God! Anything you want, let me know. Whatever you, the Master, need, write me a memo and send it through the porters; I will ship off your orders. Upon the delivery of the crops as ordered hereby, you should send us the full payment. Peace be upon you. God’s mercy and blessings.35

  Physical remains from Qusayr confirm the passage through the little town of a great variety of foods brought from all around the Indian Ocean. Some tubers of taro, which is a south-east-Asian vegetable, have been found, along with coconut shells, as well as citron, the large lemon-shaped citrus fruit that was much in demand in Jewish communities, for use during the rituals of the Feast of Tabernacles. Dates, almonds, watermelons, pistachios, cardamom, black pepper and aubergine all appear among the finds from Islamic Qusayr.36 Archaeology fills out the picture that can be drawn from the sheikh’s correspondence. Almonds and eggs comprised a third of one cargo handled by Abu Mufarrij; the letters testify that the town bought fresh and dried fr
uit, including watermelons and lemons, which were not for export, except perhaps to supply ships in port. The sheikh’s overriding desire for grain is nicely matched by the finds of seeds on the site of Qusayr al-Qadim.

  The sheikh’s agents bought and sold humdrum items such as hawsers and mattocks; but perfumes and pepper were also of interest. Thousands of finds of fragments of cordage confirm that the sheikh’s interest in supplying ropes continued over the centuries, and many were evidently used on board ship.37 So too were clothes, some quite ordinary, such as good-quality galabiyahs, and others ‘decorated with gold and gems’, or woven from pure silk, or ‘Ethiopian gowns’. Slaves were not one of his strong interests. Like the Jewish merchants, he was interested in buying large amounts of flax, and he handled fine coral too, probably of Mediterranean origin, because that was where very good coral, bright red in colour, could most easily be obtained.38 Abu Mufarrij ran something grander than the Qusayr General Stores, but his interests were very eclectic, and he was evidently one of the town’s main provisioners, whether in food (especially grain) or in what would have been called fancy goods in the nineteenth century. And now and again he revealed that he was interested in more ambitious trading enterprises. One letter sent to the sheikh explained how some valuable Persian goods would soon arrive by sea on a couple of ships: ‘semi-precious stones, pearls and beads’.39 Abu Mufarrij was well versed in the commercial practices of his day, offering credit and arranging transfers, which avoided the need to handle cash.40

  The fascination of the Qusayr letters derives from their sheer ordinariness. The sheikh was a wealthy man, at least by the standards of his small, hot, dust-blown town, and the grand trade routes that linked Aydhab and Qusayr to the Far East were not his real concern. Those routes produced great profits for some people, but they had to be serviced, and Qusayr was a convenient service station. It was not a place of high culture – even less so than its ancient predecessors Myos Hormos, on whose remains it stood, or Bereniké, with its profusion of temples to many gods. But eastern influences seeped into Qusayr. These links to a wealthier and more exotic world are well represented by an inscribed ostrich egg, bearing a funerary poem:

  Leave your homeland in search of prosperity; depart! Travelling has five benefits: dispelling grief, earning livelihood, seeking knowledge, good manners and accompanying the praiseworthy. If it were said that in travelling there is humiliation and hardship, desert raid and overcoming difficulties, then certainly the death of the young man is better than his life in degradation between the slanderer and the envious.41

  A pious pilgrim had perhaps died en route to or from Mecca, and was being commemorated with high honour on a giant African egg – the egg being the symbol of resurrection. Exotic links are also well represented by the fragments of Chinese pottery recovered at Qusayr al-Qadim. The types of pottery found are typical enough: green celadons and white or bluish white wares, the sort of pottery that was becoming familiar on the streets of Fustat in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. If anything, Qusayr produced fewer Chinese objects than one would expect; most of the porcelain passed through the port en route to the great cities – around 700,000 sherds of Chinese pottery have been found at Fustat.42 However, one influence from China was block-printing. A few Arabic texts have been found in Qusayr which were printed from a carved wooden block, rather as Chinese printed texts were created in this period, and the view has even been hazarded that the blocks used for printing were made in China, and texts were then printed off there and exported to Middle Eastern consumers. These printed texts were used as amulets: ‘he who wrote this amulet, and he who carries it, will stay safe and sound.’43 These amulets may seem banal: praying to stay safe and sound was a natural reaction to the perils of the open sea. Yet they are a reminder that the account books of Abu Mufarrij, or of the Genizah merchants, only tell part of a human story of worries about how to survive in a maritime world full of danger from storms, reefs, pirates and capricious rulers.

  IV

  Heading down from Aydhab and Qusayr al-Qadim, the strait linking the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean (the Bab al-Mandeb) was of crucial strategic importance. Just beyond the strait, ships entered a small gulf that debouches into the Indian Ocean. There the major centre of exchange was Aden, a thriving town sunk in the crater of an extinct volcano that was well situated to watch comings and goings through the strait.44 Aden possessed its own resources, which were in part derived from the sea and the coastline: salt, fish and the highly prized whale product ambergris, which was occasionally washed up on the shore and was used in the production of perfume. Water, however, was in short supply, and an ingenious feat of engineering exploited the fact that the town lay within a crater by channelling water that had fallen on higher ground into a series of cisterns. There were even filters that removed some of the impurities from the water as it flowed downwards.45 Inland and further up the coast towards Oman, there were some fertile and well-watered areas that in good years produced plenty of grain to feed not just Aden but places further away such as Mecca.46 The overall picture is, then, not vastly dissimilar from that of Siraf: the city flourished as a centre of trade precisely because local resources were rather meagre; and Aden was very well placed to supervise the traffic heading out of the Red Sea towards India, as well as down the coast of east Africa.

  This attracted the envy of rivals. The rulers of Kish, or Qays, just inside the Persian Gulf, hoped to gain control of the trade routes not just through the Gulf, which had withered by the mid-twelfth century, but along the southern flank of Arabia, past Oman and Yemen. So in 1135 they attacked Aden, hoping at the very least to seize the port installations and customs house; Aden was already divided between two cousins, one of whom was in charge of the port. The lord of the port offered to surrender and then plied the attackers with so much food and wine that they were unable to resist when the lord’s men waded into the staggering mass of invaders, and it was later said that they beheaded so many of them that this district was henceforth known as ‘The Skulls’. In reality, Aden was besieged for a couple of months, and relief arrived in the form of two large ships that belonged to Ramisht of Siraf; these were boarded by Adeni troops who were able to attack the aggressors from the rear:

  Finally, Ramisht’s two ships arrived. The enemy tried to seize them, but the wind was good, so that they were dispersed on the sea to the right and to the left. The two ships entered the port safely, where they were immediately manned with troops. At this juncture, the enemy could do nothing more, either in the harbour or in the town.47

  So wrote a Jewish merchant based in Aden to a business partner in Egypt.

  Its rulers were well aware that Aden was the jewel in their crown. There were eagle-eyed customs officers who prodded and probed the merchandise that passed through the government checkpoint, or furda; detailed records were kept as every piece of cloth was patiently counted in front of the no doubt impatient merchants. This was the sort of treatment Genizah merchants were familiar with from the customs house at Alexandria, and all this acts as a reminder that the high cost of spices was less the result of rarity or even the long voyage that brought them to Aden and Alexandria, than of a sequence of payments to one government after another, not to mention bribes and sweeteners – it would be good to know how much smuggling took place, but Aden looks as if it was the sort of walled and well-guarded city where that was well-nigh impossible.48 Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims were supposed to pay twice the taxes of the faithful, but the rule was rarely applied. From the furda, one door gave on to the harbour front and the other on to the city streets with their multi-storeyed merchant houses built of stone – whether they were quite as tall as the town houses of modern Yemen is uncertain, but the most desirable houses stood near the sea, from which cooling breezes blew that could not reach the lower depths of the crater.49 The general impression is of communities of diverse origins living peacefully side by side, but the atmosphere changed at the end of the twelfth century, when
the sultan insisted that all the Jews of Aden and the rest of Yemen must accept Islam, though foreign merchants passing through seem to have been exempt (presumably because they were the subjects of other rulers, whom the sultan preferred not to annoy). A few Adeni Jews resisted and were beheaded, but even the head of the Jewish community embraced Islam. This event stirred the Jewish world. Maimonides wrote a famous tract in which he counselled the Yemenite Jews to be patient; he saw this forced conversion as a sign that the coming of the Messiah and the redemption of Israel were imminent. However, the persecution waned and the community recovered.50

  Aden was also a base from which the Cairo merchants sent letters eastwards to India, with information about the state of the pepper market – anticipating where prices would be profitable was fundamental to the business practice of these merchants, who were not mere passive agents.51 The sailing season out of Aden was, by natural circumstances, well co-ordinated with that of the Mediterranean, with ships setting out for India at the start of autumn, which gave time for goods that were being carried down the Red Sea to reach their eastern Mediterranean destinations from as far away as Sicily, Tunisia and Spain. Aden was therefore a nodal point not just in the Indian Ocean maritime networks, but in what can reasonably be called (before the discovery of the Americas) a global network that stretched from Atlantic Seville to the Spice Islands of the Indian Ocean. Broadly speaking the port was very lively from the end of August to May of the following year. Ships converged on Aden from India, Somalia, Eritrea and Zanj (east Africa), so that Aden became a market where the produce of Africa, Asia and the Mediterranean was exchanged.52

  V

  Moving deeper into the Indian Ocean, the Egyptian merchants who had called in at Aden took advantage of the monsoons to head across the open sea to India. At first sight, the chances of reconstructing the maritime world of India in the tenth to thirteenth centuries might seem slim. Apart from some inscriptions and occasional literary references, the lack of letters and account books appears to be a fundamental obstacle. But this is not the case if the letters of the Jewish merchants from Fustat are taken into account, particularly letters to and from figures such as Abraham ibn Yiju, who actually lived for a while on the coast of India. The Fustat traders had plenty of contact with Indian princes, merchants and shipowners. For instance, Pidyar was an Indian, or possibly Persian, shipowner with whom they dealt; he possessed a small fleet, and employed at least one Muslim captain, of whatever ethnic origin.53 There were also local Jewish and Muslim shipowners, such as the head of the Jewish community in Yemen, whose brand new ship named the Kulami sank five days out of Aden even though it had set out with a sister ship, the Baribatani: