by Severin, Tim
I hurried my steps, going first to the royal library for a private conversation with Musa, and then on to our lodgings where Osric was standing at a window, staring out at the fountain in the courtyard and deep in thought. He looked round, surprised at my sudden, urgent arrival.
‘Osric, I need your help,’ I told him. ‘I’ve been talking with Abram.’
He listened as I described the extent of the dragoman’s treachery. ‘He can’t be allowed to get away with it,’ I concluded.
‘What do you propose?’ Osric asked.
‘I’m relying on Jaffar’s interest in our bestiary as a text book for Prince Abdallah. I’ve just spoken with Musa. He confirms that the book is in the royal library and has agreed to update the entry about elephants before it gets sent to the vizier.’
‘What’s Musa going to add?’ Osric asked, puzzled.
I quoted the sentences I had so carefully composed to be written below the illustration of the two green-painted elephants, with their large, doleful eyes, white curving tusks, and their trunks about to touch. ‘It is claimed that some elephants are white. The elephant sent by Caliph Haroun al Rashid as a gift for Carolus, King of the Franks, was reported by its escort to have been white.’
Slowly a smile began to spread across Osric’s thin face. ‘Prince Abdallah is sure to come across this claim in his lessons with Jaffar. He will demand to know much more about this white elephant, just as he did about the rukh.’
I returned his smile. ‘And Jaffar will send for Abram, and then our former dragoman is in a fix. He may try to bluff it out. He can say that the elephant for Carolus really was white. And you and I both know what happens next . . .’
Osric finished for me: ‘The Caliph launches another animal-catching expedition, this time to find and bring back a white elephant. Who better to be given the task than Abram?’ He laughed.
I beamed at Osric, all awkwardness between us forgotten. ‘More likely Abram’s lie will be exposed. It’s easy enough for Jaffar to check on the colour of the elephant that was sent. It will be found that Abram interfered with the Caliph’s foreign policy. The “blade of his vengeance”, the palace executioner, awaits.’
‘You said you needed my help?’
‘I think Abram was being truthful when he said he never wanted to bring about our deaths, only to wreck the embassy. So, if he does risk execution, can you ask Zaynab to plead for clemency? Try to get his punishment reduced to a ban on his ever carrying on any business within the caliphate.’
‘Would that be enough?’ Osric asked.
‘It will put an end to his ambition to make a commercial fortune in the caliphate.’
Osric shook his head in admiration. ‘Sigwulf, you really should stay on in Baghdad. You seem admirably adapted to the court politics.’
I stepped forward and embraced my friend. ‘We lost an aurochs and never found a griffin nor a rukh, but we made sure that Carolus and Haroun will continue to exchange embassies. Whenever one leaves Baghdad, send me your news – and Zaynab’s.’
Osric turned aside and picked up a thin sheaf of papers. ‘You’d better keep these,’ he said, placing our pages from the Oneirokritikon in my hand. ‘I can always consult Artimedorus’s writings in the royal library. But when you get back to Aachen, you may find yourself needing every signpost in an uncertain future.’
Historical and Zoological Note
In July of AD 802, the arrival of a live elephant created a sensation at Charlemagne’s court. The elephant, named Abul Abbas, was a gift from Haroun al Rashid, the Caliph of Baghdad. The elephant’s journey, except for the sea crossing between North Africa and Genoa, must largely have been on foot, an extraordinary achievement by the animal and its keepers. The exchange of rare and expensive presents – including exotic animals – was a feature of international diplomacy. Haroun despatched Abul Abbas after receiving from Charlemagne an embassy led by two Franks, Lanterfrid and Sigmund, and a Frankish Jew, Isaac. There is no record of what presents they might have carried with them but historians surmise that Charlemagne would have given horses, hounds and precious fabrics.
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Why visitors entering the Round City were required to wear white clothes, when the household colour of Haroun’s family was black remains a puzzle. Haroun was only twenty years old when he came to power and relied heavily on the advice of a Persian family, the Barmakids. His favourite was Jaffar, son of the Chief Vizier. Jaffar accumulated such influence and wealth that he issued his own coins. Archaeologists have found a gold dinar issued by Jaffar and dated AD 798 in treasure discovered on the coast of Zanzibar. Arab merchants traded to East Africa from the seventh century AD, perhaps earlier. They took advantage of the annual reversal of the monsoon winds to make the round trip from home ports in the Arabian Gulf and Oman, and developed a complex system of astro-navigation based on an encyclopaedic knowledge of the stars.
An even more unusual gold dinar came to light in Rome in the first half of the nineteenth century. The coin was minted in England by King Offa of Mercia and imitated gold dinars issued by Haroun’s grandfather, Caliph al-Mansour, in AD 773–4. How it got to Rome is a mystery. The coin is unlikely to have been a gift from Offa to the pope because the inscription proclaims Allah as the only God. More probably the coin was intended for use as currency in Mediterranean trade. It seems that Offa’s moneyer could not read Arab script because he inserted Offa’s name upside down. The coin is now in the British Museum.
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Many animals in the medieval bestiaries or books of beasts can be traced back to creatures listed in an anonymous second-century Greek compilation known as the Physiologus. The behaviour of the animal was considered to be as important as its size and appearance. Various classical authors, notably Pliny, also contributed descriptions of wonderfully weird beasts, as did garbled reports filtering back to Europe of unusual animals roaming foreign lands. The basilisk, for example, was said to be either a cross between a rooster, snake and a lion, whose gaze could turn a man to stone, or a small serpent with a breath so toxic that if a man on horseback struck it with a spear, the venom ran up the spear shaft and killed both rider and steed. In fact, several bestiary animals that might have been disbelieved by a sceptic as fantasies, were real. They included the ostrich, dromedary, chameleon and the remora. The latter, a suckerfish, attaches itself to a larger host fish or to a vessel’s hull by sucker plates on its head. Additionally, the medieval mind credited it with being able to stop a vessel moving through the water, hence its name: in Latin remora means ‘delay’.
Two of the imaginary bestiary creatures have had second lives. The little snake with a tiny horn above each eye that Walo picks up in the Egyptian desert is now known as a cerastes viper, a miniature version of the long-horned cerastes serpent shown in the Book of Beasts. In Central America the basilisk lizard (basiliscus) has crests or ‘sails’ on its spine, making it look exactly like the picture of its namesake in the bestiaries. The medieval observer would be amazed by the basilisk lizard’s genuine ability to stand up on two hind legs and run for a short distance across the surface of water. The modern nickname is – Jesus Christ Lizard.
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Ibn Khordadbeh, Director of Posts and Police for the caliphate, wrote the best surviving account of the Radhanites, the roving Jewish merchants, a hundred years after Sigwulf’s imaginary journey. According to Ibn Khordadbeh, the Radhanites could speak Arabic, Persian, Latin, Frankish, Spanish and Slavic, and they ranged across an astonishing network of trade routes that extended from France in the West to China in the East, and included India. Khordadbeh describes the route that Sigwulf uses from Pelusium at the mouth of the Nile, by camel caravan across the desert, to Suez, where the Radhanites took ship ‘on the Eastern Sea’.
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The belief that the long, spiral tooth of the narwhal was an alicorn, a unicorn’s horn, persisted until the sixteenth century. An alicorn was worth many times its weight in gold, as much for its presumed medicinal value as for its rarity
. An alicorn was supposed to detect and react to poison. Dipped into a poisoned drink, it made the liquid bubble or darken. Ground into powder it was an antidote for poisoning, as well as a cure for epilepsy and a guard against plague and fever. Unsurprisingly, an alicorn was a popular gift for monarchs who feared for their lives. Queen Elizabeth I of England, Mary Queen of Scots, and Philip II of Spain all had alicorns in their treasuries.
That other royal gift, the elephant Abul Abbas, lived until AD 810 when he was in his forties. He died of pneumonia after swimming in the Rhine, so it is said. He will reappear in the third volume of SAXON.
Also by Tim Severin
NON-FICTION
The Brendan Voyage
The Sindbad Voyage
The Jason Voyage
The Ulysses Voyage
Crusader
In Search of Genghis Khan
The China Voyage
The Spice Island Voyage
In Search of Moby Dick
Seeking Robinson Crusoe
FICTION
Viking: Odinn’s Child
Viking: Sworn Brother
Viking: King’s Man
Corsair
Buccaneer
Sea Robber
Saxon: The Book of Dreams
First published 2013 by Macmillan
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ISBN 978-0-230-76687-7
Copyright © Tim Severin 2013
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