CHAPTER XXXVI.

You must know that in the province of Aden there is a Prince who is called the Soldan. The people are all Saracens and adorers of Mahommet, and have a great hatred of Christians. There are many towns and villages in the country.

This Aden is the port to which many of the ships of India come with their cargoes; and from this haven the merchants carry the goods a distance of seven days further in small vessels. At the end of those seven days they land the goods and load them on camels, and so carry them a land journey of 30 days. This brings them to the river of Alexandria, and by it they descend to the latter city. It is by this way through Aden that the Saracens of Alexandria receive all their stores of pepper and other spicery; and there is no other route equally good and convenient by which these goods could reach that place.{1}

And you must know that the Soldan of Aden receives a large amount in duties from the ships that traffic between India and his country, importing different kinds of goods; and from the exports also he gets a revenue, for there are despatched from the port of Aden to India a very large number of Arab chargers, and palfreys, and stout nags adapted for all work, which are a source of great profit to those who export them. {2} For horses fetch very high prices in India, there being none bred there, as I have told you before; insomuch that a charger will sell there for 100 marks of silver and more. On these also the Soldan of Aden receives heavy payments in port charges, so that ’tis said he is one of the richest princes in the world.{3}

And it is a fact that when the Soldan of Babylon went against the city of Acre and took it, this Soldan of Aden sent to his assistance 30,000 horsemen and full 40,000 camels, to the great help of the Saracens and the grievous injury of the Christians. He did this a great deal more for the hate he bears the Christians than for any love he bears the Soldan of Babylon; for these two do hate one another heartily.{4}

Now we will have done with the Soldan of Aden, and I will tell you of a city which is subject to Aden, called Esher.

Note 1.—This is from Pauthier’s text, which is here superior to the G. T. The latter has: “They put the goods in small vessels, which proceed on a river about seven days.” Ram. has, “in other smaller vessels, with which they make a voyage on a gulf of the sea for 20 days, more or less, as the weather may be. On reaching a certain port they load the goods on camels, and carry them a 30 days’ journey by land to the River Nile, where they embark them in small vessels called Zerms, and in these descend the current to Cairo, and thence by an artificial cut, called Calizene, to Alexandria.” The last looks as if it had been edited; Polo never uses the name Cairo. The canal, the predecessor of the Mahmúdíah, is also called Il Caligine in the journey of Simon Sigoli (Frescobaldi, p. 168). Brunetto Latini, too, discoursing of the Nile, says:—

“Così serva su’ filo,

Ed è chiamato Nilo.

D’un su’ ramo si dice,

Ch’è chiamato Calice.”

—Tesoretto, pp. 81–82.

Also in the Sfera of Dati:—

——“Chiamasi il Caligine

Egion e Nilo, e non si sa l’origine.” P. 9.

The word is (Ar.) Khalíj, applied in one of its senses specially to the canals drawn from the full Nile. The port on the Red Sea would be either Suákin or Aidháb; the 30 days’ journey seems to point to the former. Polo’s contemporary, Marino Sanudo, gives the following account of the transit, omitting entirely the Red Sea navigation, though his line correctly represented would apparently go by Kosseir: “The fourth haven is called Ahaden, and stands on a certain little island joining, as it were, to the main, in the land of the Saracens. The spices and other goods from India are landed there, loaded on camels, and so carried by a journey of nine days to a place on the River Nile, called Chus (Kús, the ancient Cos below Luqsor), where they are put into boats and conveyed in 15 days to Babylon. But in the month of October and thereabouts the river rises to such an extent that the spices, etc., continue to descend the stream from Babylon and enter a certain long canal, and so are conveyed over the 200 miles between Babylon and Alexandria.” (Bk. I. pt. i. ch. i.)

Makrizi relates that up to A.H. 725 (1325), from time immemorial the Indian ships had discharged at Aden, but in that year the exactions of the Sultan induced a shipmaster to pass on into the Red Sea, and eventually the trade came to Jidda. (See De Sacy, Chrest. Arabe, II. 556.)

✛Aden is mentioned (A-dan) in ch. cccxxxvi. of the Ming History as having sent an embassy to China in 1427. These embassies were subsequently often repeated. The country, which lay 22 days’ voyage west of Kuli (supposed Calicut, but perhaps Káyal), was devoid of grass or trees. (Bretschneider, Med. Res., II. pp. 305–306.)

[Ma-huan (transl. by Phillips) writes (J. R. A. S., April 1896): “In the nineteenth year of Yung-lo (1422) an Imperial Envoy, the eunuch Li, was sent from China to this country with a letter and presents to the King. On his arrival he was most honourably received, and was met by the king on landing and conducted by him to his palace.”—H. C.]

Note 2.—The words describing the horses are (P.’s text): “de bons destriers Arrabins et chevaux et grans roncins à ij selles.” The meaning seems to be what I have expressed in the text, fit either for saddle or pack-saddle.

[Roncins à deux selles. Littré’s great Dictionary supplies an apt illustration of this phrase. A contemporary Eloge de Charles VII. says: “Jamais il chevauchoit mule ne haquenée, mais un bas cheval trotier entre deux selles” (a cob?).]

In one application the Deux selles of the old riding-schools were the two styles of riding, called in Spanish Montar á la Gineta and Montar á la Brida. The latter stands for the old French style, with heavy bit and saddle, and long stirrups just reached by the toes; the former the Moorish style, with short stirrups and lighter bit. But the phrase would also seem to have meant saddle and pack-saddle. Thus Cobarruvias explains the phrase Hombre de dos sillas, “Conviene saber de la gineta y brida, ser de silla y albarda (pack-saddle), servir de todo,” and we find the converse expression, No ser para silla ni para albarda, good for nothing.

But for an example of the exact phrase of the French text I am indebted to P. della Valle. Speaking of the Persian horses, he says: “Few of them are of any great height, and you seldom see thoroughbreds among them; probably because here they have no liking for such and don’t seek to breed them. For the most part they are of that very useful style that we call horses for both saddles (che noi chiamiamo da due selle),” etc. (See Cobarruvias, under Silla and Brida; Dicc. de la Lengua Castellana por la Real Academia Española, under Silla, Gineta, Brida; P. della Valle, Let. XV. da Sciraz, § 3, vol. ii, p. 240.)

Note 3.—The supposed confusion between Adel and Aden does not affect this chapter.

The “Soldan of Aden” was the Sultan of Yemen, whose chief residence was at Ta’izz, North-East of Mokha. The prince reigning in Polo’s day was Malik Muzaffar Shamsuddín Abu’l Mahasen Yusuf. His father, Malik Mansúr, a retainer of the Ayubite Dynasty, had been sent by Saladin as Wazir to Yemen, with his brother Malik Muazzam Turan Shah. After the death of the latter, and of his successor, the Wazir assumed the government and became the founder of a dynasty. Aden was the chief port of his dominions. It had been a seat of direct trade with China in the early centuries of Islam.

Ibn Batuta speaks of it thus correctly: “It is enclosed by mountains, and you can enter by one side only. It is a large town, but has neither corn nor trees, nor fresh water, except from reservoirs made to catch the rain-water; for other drinking water is at a great distance from the town. The Arabs often prevent the townspeople coming to fetch it until the latter have come to terms with them, and paid them a bribe in money or cloths. The heat at Aden is great. It is the port frequented by the people from India, and great ships come thither from Kunbáyat, Tána, Kaulam, Ḳaliḳúṭ, Fandaráina, Sháliát, Manjarúr, Fákanúr, Hinaur, Sindábúr,[1] etc. There are Indian merchants residing in the city, and Egyptian merchants as well.”

The tanks of which the Moor speaks had been buried by débris; of late years they have been cleared and repaired. They are grand works. They are said to have been formerly 50 in number, with a capacity of 30 million gallons.

Attempted Escalade of ADEN, by the Portuguese under ALBOQUERQUE, in 1513.
(Reduced Facsimile of a large Contemporary Wood-Engraving, in the Map Department of the BRITISH MUSEUM, supposed to have been executed at Antwerp).
Size of the Original (in 6 Sheets) 42½ Inches by 19⅛ Inches.

View of Aden in 1840.

This cut, from a sketch by Dr. Kirk, gives an excellent idea of Aden as seen by a ship approaching from India. The large plate again, reduced from a grand and probably unique contemporary wood-engraving of great size, shows the impression that the city made upon European eyes in the beginning of the 16th century. It will seem absurd, especially to those who knew Aden in the early days of our occupation, and no doubt some of the details are extravagant, but the general impression is quite consonant with that derived from the description of De Barros and Andrea Corsali: “In site and aspect from the seaward,” says the former, “the city forms a beautiful object, for besides the part which lies along the shore with its fine walls and towers, its many public buildings and rows of houses rising aloft in many stories, with terraced roofs, you have all that ridge of mountain facing the sea and presenting to its very summit a striking picture of the operations of Nature, and still more of the industry of man.” This historian says that the prosperity of Aden increased on the arrival of the Portuguese in those seas, for the Mussulman traders from Jidda and the Red Sea ports now dreaded these western corsairs, and made Aden an entrepôt, instead of passing it by as they used to do in days of unobstructed navigation. This prosperity, however, must have been of very brief duration. Corsali’s account of Aden (in 1517) is excellent, but too long for extract. (Makrizi, IV. 26–27; Playfair, H. of Yemen, p. 7; Ibn Batuta, II. 177; De Barros, II. vii. 8; Ram. I. f. 182.)

Note 4.—I have not been able to trace any other special notice of the part taken by the Sultan of Yemen in the capture of Acre by the Mameluke Sultan, Malik Ashraf Khalil, in 1291. Ibn Ferat, quoted by Reinaud, says that the Sultan sent into all the provinces the most urgent orders for the supply of troops and machines; and there gathered from all sides the warriors of Damascus, of Hamath, and the rest of Syria, of Egypt, and of Arabia. (Michaud, Bibl. des Croisades, 1829, IV. 569.)

“I once” (says Joinville) “rehearsed to the Legate two cases of sin that a priest of mine had been telling me of, and he answered me thus: ‘No man knows as much of the heinous sins that are done in Acre as I do; and it cannot be but God will take vengeance on them, in such a way that the city of Acre shall be washed in the blood of its inhabitants, and that another people shall come to occupy after them.’ The good man’s prophecy hath come true in part, for of a truth the city hath been washed in the blood of its inhabitants, but those to replace them are not yet come: may God send them good when it pleases Him!” (p. 192).

CHAPTER XXXVII.

Esher is a great city lying in a north-westerly direction from the last, and 400 miles distant from the Port of Aden. It has a king, who is subject to the Soldan of Aden. He has a number of towns and villages under him, and administers his territory well and justly.

The people are Saracens. The place has a very good haven, wherefore many ships from India come thither with various cargoes; and they export many good chargers thence to India.{1}

A great deal of white incense grows in this country, and brings in a great revenue to the Prince; for no one dares sell it to any one else; and whilst he takes it from the people at 10 livres of gold for the hundredweight, he sells it to the merchants at 60 livres, so his profit is immense.{2}

Dates also grow very abundantly here. The people have no corn but rice, and very little of that; but plenty is brought from abroad, for it sells here at a good profit. They have fish in great profusion, and notably plenty of tunny of large size; so plentiful indeed that you may buy two big ones for a Venice groat of silver. The natives live on meat and rice and fish. They have no wine of the vine, but they make good wine from sugar, from rice, and from dates also.

And I must tell you another very strange thing. You must know that their sheep have no ears, but where the ear ought to be they have a little horn! They are pretty little beasts.{3}

And I must not omit to tell you that all their cattle, including horses, oxen, and camels, live upon small fish and nought besides, for ’tis all they get to eat. You see in all this country there is no grass or forage of any kind; it is the driest country on the face of the earth. The fish which are given to the cattle are very small, and during March, April, and May, are caught in such quantities as would astonish you. They are then dried and stored, and the beasts are fed on them from year’s end to year’s end. The cattle will also readily eat these fish all alive and just out of the water.{4}

The people here have likewise many other kinds of fish of large size and good quality, exceedingly cheap; these they cut in pieces of about a pound each, and dry them in the sun, and then store them, and eat them all the year through, like so much biscuit.{5}

Note 1.—Shiḥr or Sheḥr, with the article, ES-SHEḤR, still exists on the Arabian coast, as a town and district about 330 m. east of Aden. In 1839 Captain Haines described the modern town as extending in a scattered manner for a mile along the shore, the population about 6000, and the trade considerable, producing duties to the amount of 5000l. a year. It was then the residence of the Sultan of the Hamúm tribe of Arabs. There is only an open roadstead for anchorage. Perhaps, however, the old city is to be looked for about ten miles to the westward, where there is another place bearing the same name, “once a thriving town, but now a desolate group of houses with an old fort, formerly the residence of the chief of the Kaṣaidi tribe.” (J. R. G. S. IX. 151–152.) Sheḥr is spoken of by Barbosa (Xaer in Lisbon ed.; Pecher in Ramusio; Xeher in Stanley; in the two last misplaced to the east of Dhofar): “It is a very large place, and there is a great traffic in goods imported by the Moors of Cambaia, Chaul, Dabul, Batticala, and the cities of Malabar, such as cotton-stuffs ... strings of garnets, and many other stones of inferior value; also much rice and sugar, and spices of all sorts, with coco-nuts; ... their money they invest in horses for India, which are here very large and good. Every one of them is worth in India 500 or 600 ducats.” (Ram. f. 292.) The name Sheḥr in some of the Oriental geographies, includes the whole coast up to Omán.

Note 2.—The hills of the Sheḥr and Dhafár districts were the great source of produce of the Arabian frankincense. Barbosa says of Sheḥr: “They carry away much incense, which is produced at this place and in the interior; ... it is exported hence all over the world, and here it is used to pay ships with, for on the spot it is worth only 150 farthings the hundredweight.” See note 2, ch. xxvii. supra; and next chapter, note 2.

Note 3.—This was no doubt a breed of four-horned sheep, and Polo, or his informant, took the lower pair of horns for abnormal ears. Probably the breed exists, but we have little information on details in reference to this coast. The Rev. G. P. Badger, D.C.L., writes: “There are sheep on the eastern coast of Arabia, and as high up as Mohammerah on the Shatt-al-Arab, with very small ears indeed; so small as to be almost imperceptible at first sight near the projecting horns. I saw one at Mohammerah having six horns.” And another friend, Mr. Arthur Grote, tells me he had for some time at Calcutta a 4-horned sheep from Aden.

Note 4.—This custom holds more or less on all the Arabian coast from Sheḥr to the Persian Gulf, and on the coast east of the Gulf also. Edrisi mentions it at Sheḥr (printed Shajr, I. 152), and the Admiral Sidi ’Ali says: “On the coast of Shehr, men and animals all live on fish” (J. A. S. B. V. 461). Ibn Batuta tells the same of Dhafár, the subject of next chapter: “The fish consist for the most part of sardines, which are here of the fattest. The surprising thing is that all kinds of cattle are fed on these sardines, and sheep likewise. I have never seen anything like that elsewhere” (II. 197). Compare Strabo’s account of the Ichthyophagi on the coast of Mekran (XV. 11), and the like account in the life of Apollonius of Tyana (III. 56).

[Burton, quoted by Yule, says (Sind Revisited, 1877, I. p. 33): “The whole of the coast, including that of Mekrán, the land of the Máhi Khárán or Ichthyophagi.” Yule adds: “I have seen this suggested also elsewhere. It seems a highly probable etymology.” See note, p. 402.—H. C.]

Note 5.—At Hásik, east of Dhafár, Ibn Batuta says: “The people here live on a kind of fish called Al-Lukham, resembling that called the sea-dog. They cut it in slices and strips, dry it in the sun, salt it, and feed on it. Their houses are made with fish-bones, and their roofs with camel-hides” (II. 214).

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Dufar is a great and noble and fine city, and lies 500 miles to the north-west of Esher. The people are Saracens, and have a Count for their chief, who is subject to the Soldan of Aden; for this city still belongs to the Province of Aden. It stands upon the sea and has a very good haven, so that there is a great traffic of shipping between this and India; and the merchants take hence great numbers of Arab horses to that market, making great profits thereby. This city has under it many other towns and villages.{1}

Much white incense is produced here, and I will tell you how it grows. The trees are like small fir-trees; these are notched with a knife in several places, and from these notches the incense is exuded. Sometimes also it flows from the tree without any notch; this is by reason of the great heat of the sun there.{2}

Note 1.—Dufar. The name ظفار is variously pronounced Dhafár, Dhofar, Zhafár, and survives attached to a well-watered and fertile plain district opening on the sea, nearly 400 miles east of Sheḥr, though according to Haines there is now no town of the name. Ibn Batuta speaks of the city as situated at the extremity of Yemen (“the province of Aden”), and mentions its horse-trade, its unequalled dirt, stench, and flies, and consequent diseases. (See II. 196 seqq.) What he says of the desert character of the tract round the town is not in accordance with modern descriptions of the plain of Dhafár, nor seemingly with his own statements of the splendid bananas grown there, as well as other Indian products, betel, and coco-nut. His account of the Sultan of Zhafár in his time corroborates Polo’s, for he says that prince was the son of a cousin of the King of Yemen, who had been chief of Zhafár under the suzeraineté of that King and tributary to him. The only ruins mentioned by Haines are extensive ones near Haffer, towards the western part of the plain; and this Fresnel considers to be the site of the former city. A lake which exists here, on the landward side of the ruins, was, he says, formerly a gulf, and formed the port, “the very good haven,” of which our author speaks.

A quotation in the next note however indicates Merbát, which is at the eastern extremity of the plain, as having been the port of Dhafár in the Middle Ages. Professor Sprenger is of opinion that the city itself was in the eastern part of the plain. The matter evidently needs further examination.

This Dhafár, or the bold mountain above it, is supposed to be the Sephar of Genesis (x. 30). But it does not seem to be the Sapphara metropolis of Ptolemy, which is rather an inland city of the same name: “Dhafár was the name of two cities of Yemen, one of which was near Sana’á ... it was the residence of the Himyarite Princes; some authors allege that it is identical with Sana’á” (Maráṣid-al-Ittila’, in Reinaud’s Abulfeda, I. p. 124).

Dofar is noted by Camoens for its fragrant incense. It was believed in Malabar that the famous King Cheram Perumal, converted to Islám, died on the pilgrimage to Mecca and was buried at Dhafár, where his tomb was much visited for its sanctity.

The place is mentioned (Tsafarh) in the Ming Annals of China as a Mahomedan country lying, with a fair wind, 10 days N.W. of Kuli (supra, p. 440). Ostriches were found there, and among the products are named drugs which Dr. Bretschneider renders as Olibanum, Storax liquida, Myrrh, Catechu (?), Dragon’s blood. This state sent an embassy (so-called) to China in 1422. (Haines in J. R. G. S. XV. 116 seqq.; Playfair’s Yemen, p. 31; Fresnel in J. As. sér. 3, tom. V. 517 seqq.; Tohfut-ul-Mujahideen, p. 56; Bretschneider, p. 19.)

Note 2.—Frankincense presents a remarkable example of the obscurity which so often attends the history of familiar drugs; though in this case the darkness has been, like that of which Marco spoke in his account of the Caraonas (vol. i. p. 98), much of man’s making.

This coast of Hadhramaut is the true and ancient χώρα λιβανοφόρος or λιβανωτοφόρος, indicated or described under those names by Theophrastus, Ptolemy, Pliny, Pseudo-Arrian, and other classical writers; i.e. the country producing the fragrant gum-resin called by the Hebrews Lebonah, by the Brahmans apparently Kundu and Kunduru, by the Arabs Lubán and Kundur, by the Greeks Libanos, by the Romans Thus, in mediæval Latin Olibanum, and in English Frankincense, i.e. I apprehend, “Genuine incense,” or “Incense Proper.”[1] It is still produced in this region and exported from it: but the larger part of that which enters the markets of the world is exported from the roadsteads of the opposite Sumálí coast. In ancient times also an important quantity was exported from the latter coast, immediately west of Cape Gardafui (Aromatum Prom.), and in the Periplus this frankincense is distinguished by the title Peratic, “from over the water.”

The Maráṣid-al-Ittila’, a Geog. Dictionary of the end of the 14th century, in a passage of which we have quoted the commencement in the preceding note, proceeds as follows: “The other Dhafár, which still subsists, is on the shore of the Indian Sea, distant 5 parasangs from Mérbáth in the province of Shehr. Mérbáth lies below Dhafár, and serves as its port. Olibanum is found nowhere except in the mountains of Dhafár, in the territory of Shehr; in a tract which extends 3 days in length and the same in breadth. The natives make incisions in the trees with a knife, and the incense flows down. This incense is carefully watched, and can be taken only to Dhafár, where the Sultan keeps the best part for himself; the rest is made over to the people. But any one who should carry it elsewhere than to Dhafár would be put to death.”

The elder Niebuhr seems to have been the first to disparage the Arabian produce of olibanum. He recognises indeed its ancient celebrity, and the fact that it was still to some extent exported from Dhafár and other places on this coast, but he says that the Arabs preferred foreign kinds of incense, especially benzoin; and also repeatedly speaks of the superiority of that from India (des Indes and de l’Inde), by which it is probable that he meant the same thing—viz., benzoin from the Indian Archipelago. Niebuhr did not himself visit Hadhramaut.

Thus the fame of Arabian olibanum was dying away, and so was our knowledge of that and the opposite African coast, when Colebrooke (1807) published his Essay on Olibanum, in which he showed that a gum-resin, identical as he considered with frankincense, and so named (Kundur), was used in India, and was the produce of an indigenous tree, Boswellia serrata of Roxburgh, but thereafter known as B. thurifera. This discovery, connecting itself, it may be supposed, with Niebuhr’s statements about Indian olibanum (though probably misunderstood), and with the older tradition coming down from Dioscorides of a so-called Indian libanos (supra p. 396), seems to have induced a hasty and general assumption that the Indian resin was the olibanum of commerce; insomuch that the very existence of Arabian olibanum came to be treated as a matter of doubt in some respectable books, and that down to a very recent date.

In the Atlas to Bruce’s Travels is figured a plant under the name of Angoua, which the Abyssinians believed to produce true olibanum, and which Bruce says did really produce a gum resembling it.

In 1837 Lieut. Cruttenden of the Indian Navy saw the frankincense tree of Arabia on a journey inland from Merbát, and during the ensuing year the trees of the Sumálí country were seen, and partially described by Kempthorne, and Vaughan of the same service, and by Cruttenden himself. Captain Haines also in his report of the Survey of the Hadhramaut coast in 1843–1844,[2] speaks, apparently as an eye-witness, of the frankincense trees about Dhafár as extremely numerous, and adds that from 3000 to 10,000 maunds were annually exported “from Merbát and Dhafár.” “3 to 10” is vague enough; but as the kind of maund is not specified it is vaguer still. Maunds differ as much as livres Français and livres sterling. In 1844 and 1846 Dr. Carter also had opportunities of examining olibanum trees on this coast, which he turned to good account, sending to Government cuttings, specimens, and drawings, and publishing a paper on the subject in the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the R. As. Society (1847).

The Harvest of Frankincense in Arabia. Facsimile of an engraving in Thevet’s Cosmographie Universelle (1575), reproduced from the Bible Educator.[3]

But neither Dr. Carter’s paper and specimens, nor the previous looser notices of the naval officers, seemed to attract any attention, and men of no small repute went on repeating in their manuals the old story about Indian olibanum. Dr. G. Birdwood however, at Bombay, in the years following 1859, took up the subject with great zeal and intelligence, procuring numerous specimens of the Sumálí trees and products; and his monograph of the genus Boswellia in the Linnaean Transactions (read April 1869), to which this note is very greatly indebted, is a most interesting paper, and may be looked on, I believe, as embodying the most correct knowledge as yet attainable. The species as ranked in his table are the following:

J.D. COOPER. SC

Boswellia Frereana (Birdw.).

1. Boswellia Carterii (Birdw.), including the Arabian tree of Dhafár, and the larger variety called Mohr Madau by the Sumálís.

2. B. Bhau-dajiana (Birdw.), Mohr A’d of the Sumálís.

3. B. papyrifera (Richard). Abyssinian species.

4. B. thurifera (Colebr.), see p. 396 supra.

5. B. Frereana (Birdw.), Yegár of the Sumálís—named after Mr. William Frere, Member of Council at Bombay. No. 2 was named from Bhau Dáji, a very eminent Hindu scholar and physician at Bombay (Birdw.).

No. 1 produces the Arabian olibanum, and Nos. 1 and 2 together the bulk of the olibanum exported from the Sumálí coast under the name Lubán-Shehri. Both are said to give an inferior kind besides, called L. Bedawi. No. 3 is, according to Birdwood, the same as Bruce’s Angoua. No. 5 is distinctly a new species, and affords a highly fragrant resin sold under the name of Lubán Méti.

Bombay is now the great mart of frankincense. The quantity exported thence in 1872–1873 was 25,000 cwt., of which nearly one quarter went to China.

Frankincense when it first exudes is milky white; whence the name “White Incense” by which Polo speaks of it. And the Arabic name lúbán apparently refers to milk. The Chinese have so translated, calling it Ju-siang or Milk-perfume.

Polo, we see, says the tree was like a fir tree; and it is remarkable that a Chinese Pharmacology quoted by Bretschneider says the like, which looks as if their information came from a common source. And yet I think Polo’s must have been oral. One of the meanings of Lubán, from the Kámús, is Pinus (Freytag). This may have to do with the error. Dr. Birdwood, in a paper in Cassell’s Bible Educator, has given a copy of a remarkable wood engraving from Thevet’s Cosmographie Universelle (1575), representing the collection of Arabian olibanum, and this through his kind intervention I am able to reproduce here. The text (probably after Polo) speaks of the tree as resembling a fir, but in the cut the firs are in the background; the incense trees have some real suggestion of Boswellia, and the whole design has singular spirit and verisimilitude.

Dr. Birdwood thus speaks of the B. Frereana, the only species that he has seen in flower: “As I saw the plant in Playfair’s garden at Aden ... in young leaf and covered with bloom, I was much struck by its elegant singularity. The long racemes of green star-like flowers, tipped with the red anthers of the stamens (like aigrettes of little stars of emerald set with minute rubies), droop gracefully over the clusters of glossy, glaucous leaves; and every part of the plant (bark, leaves, and flowers) gives out the most refreshing lemon-like fragrance.” (Birdwood in Linnaean Transactions for 1869, pp. 109 seqq.; Hanbury and Flückiger’s Pharmacographia, pp. 120 seqq.; Ritter, xii. 356 seqq.; Niebuhr, Desc. de l’Arabie, I. p. 202, II. pp. 125–132.)

CHAPTER XXXIX.

Calatu is a great city, within a gulf which bears the name of the Gulf of Calatu. It is a noble city, and lies 600 miles from Dufar towards the north-west, upon the sea-shore. The people are Saracens, and are subject to Hormos. And whenever the Melic of Hormos is at war with some prince more potent than himself, he betakes himself to this city of Calatu, because it is very strong, both from its position and its fortifications.{1}

They grow no corn here, but get it from abroad; for every merchant-vessel that comes brings some. The haven is very large and good, and is frequented by numerous ships with goods from India, and from this city the spices and other merchandize are distributed among the cities and towns of the interior. They also export many good Arab horses from this to India.{2} For, as I have told you before, the number of horses exported from this and the other cities to India yearly is something astonishing. One reason is that no horses are bred there, and another that they die as soon as they get there, through ignorant handling; for the people there do not know how to take care of them, and they feed their horses with cooked victuals and all sorts of trash, as I have told you fully heretofore; and besides all that they have no farriers.

This City of Calatu stands at the mouth of the Gulf, so that no ship can enter or go forth without the will of the chief. And when the Melic of Hormos, who is Melic of Calatu also, and is vassal to the Soldan of Kerman, fears anything at the hand of the latter, he gets on board his ships and comes from Hormos to Calatu. And then he prevents any ship from entering the Gulf. This causes great injury to the Soldan of Kerman; for he thus loses all the duties that he is wont to receive from merchants frequenting his territories from India or elsewhere; for ships with cargoes of merchandize come in great numbers, and a very large revenue is derived from them. In this way he is constrained to give way to the demands of the Melic of Hormos.

This Melic has also a castle which is still stronger than the city, and has a better command of the entry to the Gulf.{3}

The people of this country live on dates and salt fish, which they have in great abundance; the nobles, however, have better fare.

There is no more to say on this subject. So now let us go on and speak of the city of Hormos, of which we told you before.

Note 1.—Ḳalhát, the Calaiate of the old Portuguese writers, is about 500 m. by shortest sea-line north-east of Dhafár. “The city of Kalhát,” says Ibn Batuta, “stands on the shore; it has fine bazaars, and one of the most beautiful mosques that you could see anywhere, the walls of which are covered with enamelled tiles of Káshán.... The city is inhabited by merchants, who draw their support from Indian import trade.... Although they are Arabs, they don’t speak correctly. After every phrase they have a habit of adding the particle no. Thus they will say ‘You are eating,— no?’ ‘You are walking,—no?’ ‘You are doing this or that,—no?’ Most of them are schismatics, but they cannot openly practise their tenets, for they are under the rule of Sultan Kutbuddin Tehemten Malik, of Hormuz, who is orthodox” (II. 226).

Calaiate, when visited by d’Alboquerque, showed by its buildings and ruins that it had been a noble city. Its destruction was ascribed to an earthquake. (De Barros, II. ii. 1.) It seems to exist no longer. Wellsted says its remains cover a wide space; but only one building, an old mosque, has escaped destruction. Near the ruins is a small fishing village, the people of which also dig for gold coins. (J. R. G. S. VII. 104.)

What is said about the Prince of Hormuz betaking himself to Kalhát in times of trouble is quite in accordance with what we read in Teixeira’s abstract of the Hormuz history. When expelled by revolution at Hormuz or the like, we find the princes taking refuge at Kalhát.

Note 2.—“Of the interior.” Here the phrase of the G. T. is again “en fra tere a mainte cité et castiaus.” (See supra, Bk. I. ch. i. note 2.)

There was still a large horse-trade from Kalhát in 1517, but the Portuguese compelled all to enter the port of Goa, where according to Andrea Corsali they had to pay a duty of 40 saraffi per head. If these ashrafis were pagodas, this would be about 15l. a head; if they were dinárs, it would be more than 20l. The term is now commonly applied in Hindustan to the gold mohr.

Note 3.—This no doubt is Maskat.

CHAPTER XL.