The Chinese through Abbasid
eyes
A recent translation of a 1100-year-old report by
an Arab adventurer allows us to see Tang Dynasty China through 9th century Arab
eyes
Merchants and adventurers from Iraq and the Gulf
explored Asia and reported on foreign customs and societies. Above, the
massacre of Guangzhou in 878 when rebels attacked Arab and Persian merchants in
China. (histoireislamique.wordpress.com)
Tuesday 9 June 2015 16:20 BST
They were keen and curious observers. More than a
millennium ago merchant-informants and officials at the service of the Abbasid
caliph, from Baghdad or Basra, put to paper eyewitness accounts of North
Europeans (Vikings), Indians, Chinese and people from today’s Cambodia,
Indonesia and Sri Lanka. The Abbasid Caliphate ruled all of West Asia and North
Africa from 750 AD until about 1000, when it began to weaken.
“Baghdad was one of the biggest cities in the
world,” says Dr Maaike van Berkel, associate professor in Medieval History at
Amsterdam University. Van Berkel, a specialist in the Abbasids’ empire, recalls
that the City of Peace, as it was called, had probably around half
a million inhabitants. “But that’s still gigantic and beyond compared to the
towns and cities at the time in Europe. Baghdad was an important economic and
trade centre. There were commercial contacts with Charlemagne’s empire in
Europe but even more with China, India and Central Asia.”
The recently translated Accounts of
China and India by Abu Zayd al-Sirafi and other
chroniclers gives a fascinating insight into the interconnectedness and
mobility of the Abbasid era. For today’s readers, removed in time and place,
some of the writers’ observations may seem bizarre and implausible. But in most
of their akhbār - credible reports of what they saw and
heard - one can easily recognise modern Indians and Chinese.
Journalism of its day
Tim Mackintosh-Smith, who translated Accounts
of China and India into English and who himself is an accomplished travel book writer, compares akhbār with
today’s journalism and its style reminds him of an “online, interactive travel
website”.
Abu Zayd wants to drive home that the Accounts do
not describe a fantasy world, merely a portrayal of the truth as they percieved
it. He claims to have “avoided relating any of the sort of accounts in which
sailors exercise their powers of invention but whose credibility would not
stand up to scrutiny in other men’s minds”. His motto is "the shorter the
better", reminding us of today’s journalism’s slogan KISS: "keep it
short and simple".
Abu Zayd’s travel accounts reflect the Arab-Islamic
drive under the early Abbasid dynasty to explore eastward and especially to
connect to China. In the Accounts’ introduction the second
Abbasid caliph and builder of Baghdad, Al-Mansour, standing at the bank of the
river, is quoted as saying: “Here is the Tigris, and nothing bars the way
between it and China!” Arab ships would sail eastward one season, when the
winds blew that way, and back west when the mawsim – the
Arabic word that in English became “monsoon” - caused winds to take the Arab
vessels back home.
The main Abbasid terminal of the monsoon trade was
Siraf in the Gulf, birthplace of Abu Zayd al-Sirafi, in what is now Iran. From
Siraf ships crossed the Gulf to call at the Omani ports of Suhar or Muscat and
continue to India, China, the Malay Peninsula, Java or even further. The main
Chinese port was Khanfu, nowadays the megapolis of Guangzhou. While the Abbasid
explorers discovered China, the Chinese were discovering the “West”, and their
chroniclers described the maritime route to Iraq and to Bangda, as
they called Baghdad.
Tang Dynasty 'socialism'
The apogee of the Abbasid caliphate coincides with
the heydays of the Tang Dynasty in China (619-907). In the Accounts imperial
China is painted as a highly organised and regulated society. The government
cares for the wellbeing of its citizens. If a sick person is poor, “he is given
the cost of his medicine from the public treasury”.
The citizens pay a fair poll tax when they reach
the age of 18. Old people do not have to pay taxes but receive a pension. Every
city has a school and a teacher and the children of the poor are fed from the
public treasury. “The Chinese, whether poor or rich, young or old, all learn to
form letters and to write.” It sounds like socialism avant la lettre.
Abu Zayd lauds the “admirable governance” of the
Chinese. They have rule of law. Right is done “wherever it is due” and
no blind eye is turned to “the misdeeds of those of high status”. A eunuch
chief of finance controls the state finances. The state’s income consists of
the poll tax and the exclusive rights of the ruler to sell salt and tea. The
Arabs didn’t know tea before travelling to China. In the Accounts Abu
Zayd describes tea as “a plant that they drink with hot water and that is sold
in every city for large sums of money. To prepare it, water is boiled, then the
leaves are sprinkled on it, and it serves them as an antidote to all ailments.”
The Arab travellers were amazed by how industrious
the Chinese were. “Of all God’s creation, the Chinese are among the most
dexterous at engraving and manufacturing and at every kind of craft. Indeed, no
one from any nation has the edge on them in this respect.”
Clash of hygiene habits
But not everything was admirable in Arab eyes. They
were horrified by the lack of hygiene of the Chinese. The Chinese use “only
paper, not water, to clean their backsides after defecating” and do not clean
their teeth and hands before eating. The Arab chroniclers were disgusted by
some of the sexual practices of the non-Muslims. They couldn’t approve of the
Chinese habit to have sexual intercourse with their women even when they were
menstruating and of their highly organised prostitution. “The Chinese sodomise
boys who are provided for that purpose and are of the same order as temple
prostitutes.”
In some ways the Arab explorers lived in a better
world than ours. While nowadays the rhinoceros is considered in India as a
vulnerable species due to excessive hunting; the Arab chronicler reports that
they are found “in large numbers in all Indian kingdoms”. He reports having
eaten the flesh of the rhinoceros because “it is permissible for Muslims.” He
is impressed by the strength of the rhinoceros. “No other animal equals it in
strength. An elephant will run away in fear from a rhinoceros.”
Like in our times, political stability and trade
never last forever. In the last quarter of the 9th century a rebellion weakened the Tang
dynasty. Thousands of the foreign merchants in Khanfu/Guangzhou were massacred
and direct Arab-Chinese trade came to a halt. However, indirect trade continued
with Arab merchants buying, for example, Chinese porcelain in India.
A few decades after the Chinese rebellion and the
massacre of Khanfu, the grip of the Abbasid caliph on the empire loosened. Van
Berkel explains that the outer regions recognised the caliph only formally.
It was exactly in this period of decline that a fellow traveller from
Iraq, Abu Fadlan, undertook his voyage to the land of the Volga-Bulghars. He
wrote about his encounters with new cultures, among them the Vikings, in his
Mission to the Volga.
People like us
The akhbar arouse our fantasies
and dreams about people in a bygone era who show an uncanny resemblance with
humans in the 21st century.
Ibn Fadlan’s Mission to the Volga inspired Michael Crichton’s
novel Eaters of the Dead and the film The Thirteenth
Warrior.
Viking-expert Nelleke Ijssennagger finds it ironic
that some in Europe compare the Vikings to the fighters of the Islamic State or
vice versa: the cruelty, the medieval savagery… “I think this is because they
have no real idea about the Vikings, or about the Islamic State. Originally the
Vikings had a very bad press. They raided some regions in Northern Europe,
destroyed everything, and burned villages. Their bad reputation hides the fact
that they were a well-organised people, in many ways very sophisticated.”
“Trade contacts in the early Middle Ages are still
very much underestimated,” says historian Dr Karl Heidecker of Groningen
University. “Numerous objects from the Middle East, Africa and even Afghanistan
were encountered in Viking sites. Things circulated.” Heidecker stresses that
this does not mean that North Europeans were in direct contact with the Afghans
or the Chinese. Often things ended up in a certain place after a long journey,
having passed through many hands
One of the biggest surprises of the Arab travel
accounts is the sophistication of Vikings, Turks, Chinese, Indians and the
Abbasids, more than a millennium ago. The Accounts paint an
interconnected world, but also the transience of political might and relativity
of human progress.
[1] Abu Zayd al-Sirafi,
Accounts of China and India and Ahmed Ibn Fadlan, Mission to the Volga, in Two
Arabic Travel Books (New York/London: New York University Press), 2014
- See more
at:
http://www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/features/1000-years-ago-chinese-through-abbasid-eyes-1745528673#sthash.pk8cnuNL.UV5q71fm.dpuf
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