On arriving at Aden; which was a place of call for every ship trading
with India, Persia, and Ethiopia, custom-house officers at once came on
board the ship, ascertained whence and when it had sailed, the nature
of its freight, and how many were on board. Then the masts, sails,
rudders and anchors were removed to ensure the payment of dues. On the
second day after Varthema’s arrival, a passenger or sailor on board
called him a “Christian dog, son of a dog,” the usual polished address
of the proud Moslem to one who, albeit a co-believer, had not the good
fortune to be born in the faith. This exclamation aroused a suspicion
that he was a spy; for, a year before, Portuguese had appeared for the
first time in the Arabian Sea, had captured certain vessels, and killed
many of their crews. He was seized at once and violently carried off
to the deputy of the Sultan of Yemen. Now this Sultan was an unusually
merciful man, who rarely (Varthema says never) put anyone to death; so
he was merely clapped into gaol, and his legs fettered with eighteen
pounds weight of iron. On the third day of imprisonment, some Moslem
sailors who had escaped in the warfare with the Portuguese, attacked
the prison with the intention of slaying him; and the inhabitants
were divided as to what they should do. The Emir’s deputy decided
to spare the prisoners (another suspected person would seem to have
been incarcerated with Varthema); and they languished sixty-five days
in gaol. Then a message came from the Sultan, demanding that they
should be brought before himself. So, instead of voyaging to Persia,
Varthema, still in irons, was put on a camel and taken an eight days’
journey inland to Radâä. Ibn Abd-el Wahâb, Sultan of Yemen, was busy
marshalling a large army. In it, were three thousand horsemen, born of
Christian parents, but sold, while still children, by “Prester John,”
as the Portuguese called the King of Abyssinia. These slaves formed the
bodyguard of the Sultan. At this moment the rule of Yemen was disputed
among petty despots, and the Sultan was bent on reducing the turbulent,
rebellious tribes to his sole sway.
Varthema is brought in to the Sultan’s presence; his life hangs on
a hair; it is as if the sharp edge of the scimitar were already at
his neck; yet he does not lose his presence of mind. “I am of the
country of Rûm, my lord,” he began; and he began with a “parliamentary
expression” for, to an Arab, Rûm meant Asia Minor, recently the
possession of _New_ Rome, _i.e._, of the Byzantine Empire. “I became a
Mohammedan at Cairo (another trifling inexactitude). I came to Medina
of the Prophet, to Mecca, and then to your country. Everyone says, sir,
that you are a sheik” (a Mohammedan priest). “Sir, I am your slave.
Sir, do you not know that I am a Moslem?” The Sultan called upon him
to repeat the formula: “‘There is no God but the God: Mohammed is the
Prophet of God.’ But, whether it was the will of God, or by reason of
fear which gat hold of me, I could not pronounce these words.” Our hero
was indeed lucky, for the merciful Sultan only ordered him to be taken
to prison and kept there under strict guard while he should be away.
For he was about to attack Sanäa, the ancient capital of Yemen. And so,
“they guarded me for three months, supplying me with a loaf of millet
each morning, and another in the evening; yet six such loaves had not
satisfied my hunger for a single day; nevertheless, if I might have had
my fill of water, I had thought myself happy.”
In the East, the body of an insane person is believed to be occupied
by some spirit; and mad folk are therefore treated as irresponsible.
Varthema knew this, and he, two fellow-prisoners, one of whom he twice
speaks of as “my companion,” and yet another, “a Moor,” arranged
that one of the number should pretend to be mad in order to help the
others. The trick is time-honoured in the East; thereby David escaped
the hands of Achish, King of Gath. Lots were cast, and the lot fell
to Varthema. We can see him, like the Israelite King, “changing his
behaviour, scrabbling at the doors of the gate, and letting the spittle
fall down upon his beard”; he was allowed to go out, crowds of children
following him and shying stones at him. In self-defence he had to store
up a plentiful supply of like missiles in his garment and give a sharp
return. “Truly,” says he, “I never was so tired with labour and worn
out as during the first three days of my feigning.”
Now, the prison adjoined the palace; and there remained in the palace
one of the Sultan’s three wives with her “twelve or thirteen very
comely maidens, rather more than inclining to black. This queen” (so
Varthema dubs her) “was very tender-hearted to me. She was for ever
at her lattice with her damsels, staying there throughout the day to
see me and to talk with me; and I, while many men and merchants were
jeering at me, went naked before the queen; for she took very great
pleasure in seeing me. I might not go from her sight; and she gave me
right good food to eat; so that I gained my point.”
One of the most striking characteristics of the men of the Renaissance
is the combination of great intellectual power and lofty enthusiasm
with mediæval brutality. Now, the Sultana, in whose veins the warm
blood of the East flowed freely, suffered from the dull monotony of the
harem. She wanted excitement. She suggested to the supposed madman that
he should slay and spare not; for the fault would not be imputed to
him. He took the hint at once. He called on a fat sheep to declare its
religion, repeating the very words which the Sultan had addressed to
him: “Prove yourself a Moslem.” “The patient beast making no reply, I
took a staff and broke its legs. The queen looked on laughing, and fed
me with the flesh thereof during three days; nor do I remember to have
eaten better. Three days later, I killed an ass, which was bringing
water to the palace, in the same way; because that he would not become
a Moslem. And, in like manner, I cudgelled a Jew, so that I left him
for dead.” One of the gaolers, whom he declares to have been more mad
than he, called him “Christian dog, son of a dog.” This was enough: a
fierce battle by lapidation began—Varthema alone, on the one side; the
gaoler and children on the other. Varthema allowed himself to be badly
hit by two stones, “which I could have avoided easily; but I wanted to
give colour to my madness. So I went back to my prison, and blocked
the door up with large stones, and there I lived for the space of two
days without meat or drink. The queen and others thought I might be
dead, and caused the door to be broken open. Then these dogs brought
me pieces of marble saying, ‘eat; this is sugar;’ and others gave me
grapes filled with earth, and called it salt; but I ate the marble and
grapes and everything, all mixed up.”
It was an enlightened custom in Mohammedan countries to examine into
the mental condition of insane people at regular intervals. Rabbi
Benjamin, of Tudela, the Spanish Jew, tells us that, in the sixth
decade of the Twelfth Century, he found Commissioners in lunacy at
Baghdad; although he also speaks of that barbarous practice of chaining
the madman which obtained in England until some centuries later. Two
Mohammedan Ascetics, who dwelt in the mountains as hermits, were
brought to the prison to determine whether Varthema might be a person
bereft of mere mundane reason through his exceptional sanctity, or
only ordinarily mad. The hermits took opposite views on this knotty
question, and spent an hour in violently contradicting one another.
The prisoner lost all patience and, anxious to be quit of them, put a
stop to the discussion by the simple device which Gulliver employed to
extinguish the conflagration at Lilliput. “Whereupon,” says he, “they
ran off crying ‘he is mad; he is no saint.’ The queen and her maidens
saw all this, for they were looking on from their casement, and burst
into laughter, vowing that ‘by God, by the head of the Prophet, there
is no one in the world like this man.’”
Next day Varthema followed this up by laying hold of the gaoler by
those two horns or tufts of hair which were then, as now, fashionable
in Arabia, kneeling on his stomach, and so belabouring him that
he “left him for dead,” like the Jew. The queen was again vastly
entertained, and called out: “Kill those beasts.”
But it was discovered that, all this time, Varthema’s fellow-prisoners
had been digging a hole through the prison wall, and, moreover, had
contrived to get free from their shackles. The Sultan’s deputy was
fully aware of the favour with which the Sultana regarded Varthema; and
the lady knew him to be ready to carry out her commands. She ordered
the prisoner to be kept in irons, but to be removed into a doorless
lower chamber of the palace, and to be provided with a good bed, good
food and perfumed baths. For, as the reader will guess, she had fallen
in love with the captive. Sexual love among Arabians is anything but
a refined or spiritual passion; and the harem has not been found
precisely a temple of chastity anywhere,—mainly, perhaps, because
it is a harem. And this lady possessed a temperament as sanguine
and scandalous as any Messalina or Faustina or Empress of all the
Russias. Alas! Fate doomed her to bloom unseen in Arabia, and waste her
sweetness on its desert air. At the end of a few days, she started by
bringing Varthema some dainty dish in the dead of night. He tells us
how, “coming into my chamber, she called ‘Jonah! Come. Are you hungry?’
‘Yes, by Allah!’ I replied; and I rose to my feet and went to her in my
shirt. And she said: ‘No, no, not with your shirt on.’ I answered: ‘O
Lady, I am not mad now’; whereto she: ‘By Allah, I know you never were
mad. In the world there is no man like you.’ So, to please her, I took
off my shirt, holding it before me for the sake of decency; and thus
did she keep me for a space of two hours, gazing at me as if I had been
a nymph, and making her plaint to God in this wise: ‘O Allah! Thou hast
made this man white as the sun. Me, Thou hast made black. O Allah! O
Prophet! my husband is black; my son is black; this man is white. Would
that this man might become my husband! And while speaking thus, she
wept and sighed continuously, and kept passing her hands over me all
the time, and promising that she would make the Sultan remove my irons
when he returned.’
“Next night the queen came with two of her damsels, and said, ‘Come
hither, Jonah.’ I replied that I would come. ‘Would you like me to come
and stay a little while with you,’ she asked. I answered, ‘no, lady. I
am in chains; and that is enough.’ Then she said, ‘Have no fear. I take
it all on my own head. If you do not want me, I will call Gazelle, or
Tajiah, or Gulzerana to come instead.’ She spoke thus because she was
working to come herself. But I never gave way; for I had thought it all
out.”
Varthema had no desire to remain in Yemen, even should he mount its
throne,—a far less likely event than discovery and a horrible death.
“I did not wish to lose both my soul and my body,” he writes. “I wept
all night, commending myself to God.”
“Three days after this the Sultan returned, and straightway the queen
sent to tell me that, if I would stay with her, she would make me rich.”
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Varthema is the man to
mould circumstances to his will: no web, however cunningly woven shall
hold him prisoner; his keen wit is ready to comply with the Sultana’s
request, if she will have his fetters struck off.
The lady fell into the trap. She manifests the clever, feminine guile
of the harem in her dealings with Ibn Abd-el-Wahâb, but she is no match
for Varthema. The Sultan is a strong man and a mighty man of valour;
but he is uxorious, and as wax in her hands. She ordered the prisoner
to be brought at once before the Sultan and herself. Ibn Abd-el-Wahâb,
good easy man, asked Varthema whither he desired to go if he should
choose to release him. The mendacious Italian replied: “‘O Lord, I
have neither father nor mother; wife nor child; brother nor sister;
only Allah, the Prophet, and you. You give me food, and I am your
slave.’ And I wept without ceasing.” Then the artful Sultana reminded
the Sultan that he would have to account to God, of whose anger he
should beware, for having kept an innocent man so long time in prison.
Abd-el-Wahâb proved as unsuspicious and benevolent as history declares
him to have been; yet he was as firm and able as a ruler as he was bold
and experienced in arms. His Sultana knew how to play on his merits
and convert them into defects. He at once granted Varthema liberty to
go whithersoever he chose. “And, immediately, he had my irons struck
off; and I knelt before him; and kissed his feet and the hands of the
queen. She took me by the hand, saying: ‘Come with me, poor wight, for
I know thou art dying of hunger.’ When I was with her in her chamber,
she kissed me more than a hundred times; and then she gave me excellent
food. But I had seen her speak privily to the Sultan, and I thought
she had begged me from him for a slave. Wherefore, I said: ‘I will
not eat, unless you promise me my freedom.’ She replied: ‘Be silent,
madman. You know not what Allah will bestow. If you are good, you shall
be an Emir.’ Now, I knew what kind of lordship she desired to bestow
on me; so I answered that she should let me get into fitter condition;
for fear filled me with other than amorous thoughts. She replied: ‘By
Allah, you say well. I will give you eggs, fowls, pigeons, pepper,
cinnamon, cloves and cocoa-nuts every day.’[17] So, at these good words
and promises, I plucked up heart a bit. To restore me to health, I
stayed fifteen or twenty days in the palace. One day, she sent for me
and asked if I would go a-hunting with her; which offer I refused not;
and, at our return, feigned me to fall sick by reason of weakness; and
so continued for the space of eight days; during which time she was
unceasing in sending persons to visit me. One day, I sent to tell her
that I had vowed to God and Mohammed to visit a holy man at Aden, who
was reputed to work miracles.”
We may not count meanness among the _petits défauts_ of this lady of
spacious passions. She was “well pleased” with Varthema’s suggestion,
and provided him with a camel and twenty-five golden ducats—a sum
which would go a long way in Arabia. We shall see presently to what use
he applied it. Eight days’ journeying brought him to the holy man of
Aden; and the second day after his arrival, he professed that he was
cured. He wrote to the Sultana that, since Allah had been so merciful,
he wished to see the whole of her kingdom. “This I did because the
fleet which was there could not set sail again for a month. I spoke
with a skipper in secret, and told him I wished to go to India, and
would give him a handsome present if he would take me. He replied that
he wished to touch at Persia first.” Nothing better could have fallen
in with Varthema’s wishes. Meanwhile he would explore Arabia Felix.
So, having adroitly contrived to reject the love of the Light of the
Harem without exciting her fury, and even coming by her purse, he turns
the opportune gift to account, and fills up the month of waiting by
a zig-zag camel-ride through Southern Yemen—the first and boldest
European traveller in the district, and the one who has penetrated
it must thoroughly. With the intention of doing this in his mind, he
ends his chapters on “How the women of Arabia Felix are partial to
White Men,” and on “The liberality of the Queen.”
His record of Southern Yemen bears witness to a shrewd observant eye
and a tenacious memory. Probably he travelled mostly with caravans.
He gives an account of the natural features of the land, its curious
domesticated animals, its wild beasts, its vegetable productions, its
trade, the colour, manners and dress of its strange natives—all borne
out by a variety of independent testimony. He visited many cities.
One, he found barbarous and poor; another, renowned for its attar of
roses. Several of these towns were flourishing centres of trade. He
even got to Sanäa, the walls whereof were so wide that “eight horses
might go abreast on the top of them.” Apparently Abd-el-Wahâb had
not yet conquered the petty chieftain, El Mansûr, who reigned there;
so Varthema found himself in the domain of the Sultan’s bitter foe.
We hear that rumour gave this ruler a mad son who would bite, and
slay, and then feed on his human victims. Varthema again tells us of
other madmen, Shiites and Sunnites, the rival sects of the Mohammedan
world, who kill each other like dogs for Religion’s sake. At Yerim,
he talked with many who asserted that they had reached their hundred
and twenty-fifth year; but, since there was no registration of birth,
we may venture to entertain our doubts. He tells us how it was the
fashion throughout Arabia to twist the hair into horns, and how the
women wore loose trousers. He came to El-Makrana, where “the Sultan
keeps more gold than a hundred camels might bear; and I say this
because I have seen it.” What became of that mighty bulk of gold? The
Arabian chroniclers tell us the firm, merciful and increasing rule of
Abd-el-Wahâb in Yemen had a tragic end: Turkish invaders captured him
and put him to death, not in the heat of warfare, but in cold blood.
Varthema “ran some risk from the multitude of apes” (of which Niebuhr
also speaks), and from “animals like lions (hyenas?). We passed on in
very great danger from the said animals, and with no little hunting of
them. However, we killed very many with bows and slings and dogs; and
thereby passed in safety.”
On reaching Aden he repeated the trick which had proved so successful
at Jidda. “I took shelter in a mosque,” he says, “feigning to be sick,
and there I lurked all day long; but, at night, I went forth to find
the skipper of the ship; and he smuggled me aboard.”