For six days the wind was favourable; but it was now December of the
year 1503; and on the seventh day out, the North Eastern monsoon drove
the vessel back “with 25 others, laden with madder for the dyeing of
clothes. By dint of very great labour, we made the port of Zeila” (on
the African Coast, opposite to Aden); “and tarried there five days both
to see it and to wait for better weather.” Zeila was a great place
for traffic in gold and ivory, the law was well administered; but the
cruel slave-trade prevailed there then as, in a different form, it did
up to our own times. The Christian dominions of Abyssinian “Prester
John” were raided by Arabs; his subjects captured; and sold in Egypt,
Arabia, Persia and India. The merchants here would seem to have found
a profitable trade in beasts left with but a single horn; for Varthema
saw some, which, however, were quite different from those wonderful
unicorns at Mecca. He gives a faithful description of the black and
white Berbera sheep of Zeila.
The weather having improved, the ship touched at Berbera, and then
sailed up the Gulf of Aden and across the Arabian Sea. Twelve days saw
her at Diu, an island to the south of the Indian Peninsula of Kathiawar
and subject to the Sultan of Gujarat. Varthema calls it the “port of
the Turks”; but by Turks we must understand Mohammedan inhabitants of
the Levant who had settled at Diu. It was an important halt for ships
trading between India and Arabia and Persia. The vessel which bore
Varthema must have been a tramp, picking up what cargo offered, and
altering her course from time to time, to dispose of it; for, after
spending two days at Diu, we find her taking a three days run up the
Gulf of Cambay to Gogo, a place “of great traffic, fat, and rich; where
all are Mohammedans.” She now recrossed the ocean to Eastern Arabia,
and put in at Julfar, on the shores of Oman. Once again she reversed
her course; and a favourable wind bore her to Muscat, a port which is
still of some importance, and which, at that time, was one of the small
independent States of Arabia. Then she tacked back, and came to New
Ormuz, a port on the island of Jeruan.
Old Ormuz was a city on the mainland, which Marco Polo visited in the
eighth decade of the Thirteenth Century, but, shortly after his time,
almost all the population deserted the old city for the island. As in
the days of Ibn Batûta it was famous for its pearl-fisheries. “Here,”
writes Varthema, “are found the largest pearls in the world”; and hence
it is that Milton couples the wealth of Ormuz with that of India.[18]
“At three days’ voyage from this island, fishers pay out ropes, one
from either end of their little boats. To each rope, a big stone is
tied, so as to keep the boat moored; and they pay out yet another rope
to the bottom, with a stone to it, from the middle of the boat, whereby
one of these fishermen, having hung two bags round his neck and tied
a big stone to his feet, goes down fifteen paces into the water, and
stays there as long as he is able, to find those oysters wherein are
pearls. These he puts into the bag, and gets quit of the stone at his
feet, and comes up by one of the ropes aforesaid.” The pearl-diver
is not given the wholly impossible time under water which Ibn Batûta
credited him with. With customary caution our Italian is content to say
that he “stays there as long as he is able.”
This trade and the city of Ormuz were in the hands of Arabs, who paid
tribute to the King of Persia, and were dependent for food on the
mainland. Ormuz was one of the great centres along that trade-route
between the East and the Levant, which traversed the Persian Gulf,
and made its way by Bagdad, and the Euphrates Valley and Aleppo to
the Mediterranean; just as Aden was one of the great centres of the
other route through the Red Sea and Egypt to Cairo and Alexandria. Our
traveller would pass along streets crowded with men from many nations.
From Ormuz comes a tale of cold-blooded parricide, fratricide, and
subtle perfidy very characteristic of the dynastic families of Asia.
“At the time when I visited this land, there happened that which you
shall hear.” The Sultan of Ormuz had eleven sons, of whom the youngest
was judged to lack half his wits, and the eldest was, beyond doubt, “a
devil unchained.” This Sultan had purchased two Abyssinian children,
and brought them up as carefully as if they had been his own sons;
for it was a practice in Arabia and India to rely on the valour and
sagacity of Abyssinian slaves, to entrust them with the most important
military commands, and to consult them as closest advisers. One of
these men was named Caim; the other Mohammed. One night, when, all was
dark and silent in the palace, that “devil unchained,” the eldest son
found an opportunity to put out the eyes of his father, his mother
and all his brethren excepting those of his youngest brother; for he
supposed him to be incapable of aspiring to the throne. Not satisfied
with blinding his victims, he caused them to be burned alive within
the palace-enclosure. Next morning he proclaimed himself Sultan; and
the supposed fool fled to a mosque; for the rights of sanctuary were
to be found there, if anywhere. At first, the city was in tumult; but
the bloody deed was over and done with; and a city of trade is soon
glad to quiet down and resume business. The problem now before the
new Sultan was: how to get rid of Caim and Mohammed. Both men were
in high position: that were a small matter; but they held command of
fortresses. Somehow, he managed to get Mohammed to venture into his
presence, and, after making much of him, breathed into his ear that,
if he would slay Caim, he should be rewarded with the command of five
fortresses. Mohammed protested: “‘O Sidi, I have shared bread with him
from our childhood; for thirty years. By Allah, I cannot bring my mind
to do this thing.’ Then said the Sultan: ‘Well, let it alone.’” Having
failed in the attempt to induce Mohammed to murder Caim, the Sultan now
tried to induce Caim to murder Mohammed. Caim made not the least demur,
and straightway sought out his old friend and companion. Mohammed at
once read what had happened written in the face of his false friend,
and charged him with the fact. Caim, guilt-stricken, cast his dagger at
the feet of Mohammed, fell on his knees, and implored forgiveness of
the meditated crime. Mohammed reproached Caim in the mildest way, and
then either from magnanimity or from policy, or from both, he passed
over his treachery; but made him vow to go to the Sultan and pretend
that he had done the deed.
“When the Sultan saw him, he demanded: ‘Hast thou slain thy friend?’
Caim answered: ‘I have, Sidi, by Allah!’ Then the Sultan: ‘Come here’;
and Caim went close up to him; whereupon, the Sultan seized him and did
him to death with his dagger.” Three days passed, and then Mohammed
stole stealthily into the Sultan’s chamber, who, when he saw him, was
greatly perturbed, and exclaimed: ‘O dog, son of a dog, are thou still
alive?’ Mohammed replied: ‘Yea, I live, in spite of thee, and thee
will I slay, thou worse than dog or devil!’ Both men being armed, they
fought together for a space of time; but in the end, Mohammed killed
the Sultan, and put the palace into a state of defence. But, because he
was much beloved, the populace ran thither with shouts of ‘Long live
Sultan Mohammed.’
Mohammed was a man as prudent and experienced as he was ready and
resolute: he saw a way to do the state good service and to preserve for
himself the reality of power while maintaining the shows of legality
and removing the occasions of envy. At the end of twenty days, he call
the chief citizens together, “and spake to them in this wise: That what
he had done had been of strong necessity; that he knew he had no right
to the throne; and that he begged them to allow him to transfer his
power to the son who was supposed to be crazy. And thus the son became
Sultan; but, nevertheless Mohammed rules. The whole city said, ‘of a
surety, this man is the friend of Allah.’ For which reason, he was made
Governor of the City and of the Sultan; the Sultan being in the state
aforesaid.”
A very narrow little strait lies between Ormuz and the mainland of
Persia. Varthema left his “tramp,” and crossed over. His itinerary
through the ancient and renowned Empire is by no means clear; but we
find him at Herat, 600 miles in a bee-line from Ormuz, and at that time
the capital of Khôrasân and the residence of its able ruler—Sultan
Hosein Mirza, a man who boasted his descent from Timour the Tartar.
Varthema speaks of Herat as being a great market for stuffs, especially
silk stuffs, and for rhubarb. Badger, commenting on this statement,
suggests that Herat lay on the direct route along which rhubarb was
conveyed between Thibet, Mongolia, and the West. Certainly exports and
imports of Persia, India, Turkestan and Afghanistan passed through
Herat.
It strikes one as singular that, although Varthema Would seem to have
journeyed some 1,500 miles in Persia, he says very little about the
country. This may be because the Venetians were directly acquainted
with that fascinating Empire; and consequent on this, a general
knowledge of it would spread throughout Italy. For, when the great blow
was struck at Venetian trade by the Turkish capture of Constantinople
and Negroponte, and the “Queen of the Adriatic” no longer held “the
gorgeous East in fee,” she sent three separate embassies on a bold and
perilous mission. She sought to secure the alliance of Persia against
their common foe, the Ottoman Turk. Few records of travel and adventure
are more animating or fuller of interest than those of the Venetian
Ambassadors, Barbaro and Contarini.[19] Varthema must have made a bold
journey. The “Adventures of Hadji Baba of Ispahan” probably furnish as
true and vivid a picture of what life and travel in Persia were like
in the early years of the sixteenth century as they do of that which
was to be experienced in the early years of the nineteenth century,
Persia has remained in the same case of what may be called immutable
instability from the days when she was won for Islam down to the days
of the immortal Morier and to our own times.
From Herat, he took the caravan-route back to Shiraz in Persia, a
journey of fully 700 miles. Here was a great mart for the turquoises,
rubies and other jewels of Khôrasân and Badakshan, as well as for musk
and ultramarine; and he learned something of the business capacity of
the Persian; he complains that “our musk”—that delight, with other
overpowering scents of his nation and time—“is adulterated by these
folk, who are master-hands for intellect, and misleaders beyond all
other peoples.”
It is a problem how Varthema contrived to cover such vast distances
on what was probably a lean purse. He is silent as to his financial
resources; as we have said it is unlikely that his private means were
considerable, and it would seem that he did not trade. As a Mameluke he
would receive payment which carried him to Aden; and the money which
the enamoured Sultana furnished him with would partly, if not wholly,
give him the means to reach Persia. But he employed his infinite
power to charm; he was burthened with no weak scruple as to blinding
a newly-captured friend and using him, with wise moderation, in the
service of that central purpose which was the heart of all his being.
And thus, as we shall presently see, like Iago, he made his fool his
purse. But he is capable of appreciating the good qualities of the
generous friend whom he made his dupe; and is careful to pay tribute
to him. If he must deceive in order to use him, it is to realize his
purpose of seeing the world at first-hand and recording its wonders.
After remarking on the tricks of Persian traders, he adds: “Yet I must
also say they are the best companions and the most generous among
men. I speak thus with knowledge; having had experience of a Persian
merchant of Herat in Khôrasân, whom I met in this city of Shiraz. He
had known me at Mecca two years before, and spoke to me thus: ‘Jonah,
what is your business here? Are you not the same man who went to Mecca
some time back?’ I replied that I was, and that to find out about the
world was the quest I was on. Then said he: ‘Allah be praised! for I
shall have a companion to make discovery with me. Do not leave me.’
We stayed on fifteen days in this same city of Shiraz.” Varthema’s
magnetic charm was at work; and luck stood his friend in bringing him
across this old acquaintance.
The twain set off together from Shiraz, bound for Samarkand in
Turkestan; for the merchant, whose name Was Cazazionor, insisted on
keeping Varthema with him, and presumably payed all expenses. But they
travelled through a land in turmoil. The struggle between the Ottoman
Turks established in Europe and the Turcoman dynasty of the White
Sheep established in Persia was happy indeed for the Christian world,
since it diverted the forces of Constantinople to the East at a time
when Europe lay divided and helpless, but it was disastrous for Persia
and ended by throwing her into confusion. Just now Ismail-es-Sufi, a
descendant from the Prophet, who had overthrown the forces of Bayazid,
and laid the foundations of a great Persian dynasty, which endured more
than two centuries, was consolidating a country which had been torn
by internecine strife. As is so often the case, religious differences
afforded the trumpet-call to the struggles of peoples. As in the days
of Ibn Batûta the Sunnites of the West fought the Shiites of the East
for domination; but they fought in the name of Allah and under the
banners of sectarian difference. In order to seat himself firmly on the
throne, the Great Sofi, for so Europeans called the monarch of the new,
able and powerful dynasty roused the enthusiasm of the native Shiites,
and converted the less numerous native Sunnites to his own true faith
by blood and iron. Varthema tells us that the Sofi was passing through
the land with flame and slaughter.
Cazazionor, finding the country so disturbed, thought it wise to return
towards Herat. So delighted was he with the personality and society
of “Jonah” that he offered to give him his niece to wife. She was a
beautiful girl named Sharus, a feminine noun in Persian as in other
languages, although it signifies The Sun. Cazazionor took Varthema with
him to his own home; which was probably at Shiraz; and presented the
young lady to him. She could not have attained womanhood; for he was
allowed to see her. He feigned delight at her beauty; but he says that
his mind was “bent to other things”—probably less on wife and children
at home than on his still insatiate desire for travel. After enjoying
Cazazionor’s hospitality for eight days, he returned with his host to
Ormuz, and took ship for Sind. They were landed at Joah, a port on
the delta of the Indus, and proceeded to Cambay, an important harbour
in Gujarat, whence fifty ships, laden with cotton, sailed yearly to
different lands.