CHAPTER V

TO INDIA BY WAY OF CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE STEPPES

Batûta joined the Persian Caravan to Mecca, and once again journeyed across the territory of the Wahabi in Central Arabia. This, his third pilgrimage, over, he resolved to see India. But the wretched ship in which he put forth was storm-tossed, and finally driven into a little port on the Egyptian coast. So he made across the desert, seeing, now and again, the tents of a few wandering Arabs or an ostrich or gazelle. After much hardship, he reached Syene and travelled once more along the banks of the Nile to Cairo. And now the fancy seized him to revisit Asia Minor, see Southern Russia and Turkestan, and get to India over the Hindu Kûsh. He retraced his old route through Palestine and Syria as far as Latakia. There he embarked on a Genoese vessel for Alâia, on the south coast of Asia Minor, which he calls “Rûm, because it belonged of yore to the Romans; and, to this day many of them dwell here under the protection of the Moslems.” He was now farther north than he had been before. One of the petty Sultans gave him and those who were with him the usual gracious greeting of the East, and furnished them with provisions. On reaching Anatolia, he found the country broken up into a multitude of contending States, many of these being held by Turkomans. The secular efforts of the keepers of wandering herds on the Steppes of Asia to settle in the rich, civilized countries of Europe and Asia had established the nomad in Persia and Asia Minor. Successive waves of conquest had swept over the fair lands south of the Oxus and Caspian, and, one by one, the victorious tribes settled down and received a higher civilization than their own from the subjugated tillers of the soil. But now the Empire of the Seljuk Turks was broken into fragments. Among the new rulers the Ottoman Turks, a small class of the tribe of Oghuz, were gradually and with difficulty gaining territory and power in Asia Minor. But there was as yet no hint that they were destined to inherit the Roman Empire of the East and to rule from the Danube to the Euphrates. Some of these little States were ancient provinces, with splendid and busy cities that rivalled Cairo in wealth and beauty. Some were carved out of the mouldering Byzantine Empire; some had been torn from Persia. There were also solitary fortresses and towns held by Turkomans who lived by rapine and piracy; and some States only preserved their precarious existence by the aid of a force of slaves who had been purchased or torn from their Christian parents in childhood and rigidly trained to military life. These Mamelukes were sent by their overlord, the Sultan of Egypt.

Yet the tradition of good government was far from being lost. The new rulers were vigorous and prudent. It would seem that one of the secrets of Ottoman success lay in that close supervision of subordinates which recent conquest requires. Consequently, on the whole, the country was prosperous. Batûta found that the ruler of one province never remained more than a month in one place. He moved about to inspect fortresses and see the condition of various districts. This man had besieged a city for twelve years. It is not without precedent in Moslem history for a siege to last longer than that of Troy; a fact which shows how little the husbandman was interfered with in these local wars. Even in France at the close of the Dark Ages, the tiller of the soil was safe from the invader of his field if he laid his hand on the plough. Batûta wandered at large, and was received in all places with warm hospitality. On landing, he took up his abode in the college of a sheik; and, on the second day, a poorly-clad man came to invite him and those who were with him to a feast. He wondered “how so poor a man could bear the charges of feasting us, who were many.” The sheik explained that the man was one of a society of silk-merchants who had a “cell” of their own. The guests were received with much courtesy and hospitality, and were liberally, supplied with money to cover their travelling expenses. Batûta learned that, in every town of the Turkomans, there was constituted a brotherhood of young men to supply strangers with food and other necessaries. A president, styled The Brother, was elected by those of the same trade, and even a foreigner might occupy the post. Each guild built a “cell” for itself in which food, a saddled steed, and all that might be wanted by travellers was stored. One of the duties of a President was to call daily on the members of his guild or brotherhood, and assist them in their diverse needs. Every evening the brotherhood returned his call; and whatsoever had not been needed was sold to support the “cell.” Should any traveller have arrived during the day, he was entertained. Otherwise “the brotherhood of youths” spent the evening in song, dance, and feast. On one occasion, directly Batûta’s party arrived at the gate of a city, two knots of men rushed to seize the bridles of their horses, and there was a struggle between them. This proceeding greatly alarmed the travellers, the more so that none of them was able to speak the language. But a man who knew Arabic came forward to assure them that there was no cause for fear. The rival parties were two brotherhoods disputing as to which should entertain the travellers. The antagonists cast lots, and the travellers went to the cell of one guild on the first day and to that of the other guild the next day. At another time, Batûta put up at the “cell” of one who was a member of a society of youths and who had a great number of disciples distinguished by their coarse ragged mantles and closely fitting hose. The petty Sultans, too, would provide horses or provisions.

The ruler of Bigni, a man proud of the possession of “a stone which had fallen from heaven,” gave Batûta gold, clothes, two horses and a slave. Although a severe Sunnite, our traveller shows no great religious hatred to Shiites, Jews, or Christians; but he liked to keep heretics and infidels in their place. He tells a story which is instructive as to the medical attainments of the Jew and the relations between Jew and Moslem. At Bigni an old man came and saluted the Sultan. All rose to do him honour. “He sat himself on the daïs, opposite the Sultan, and the readers of the Koran were below him. I asked the sage, ‘who is this sheik?’ He smiled and kept silent; but when I asked again, he replied: ‘he is a Jewish physician of whom we all have need. That is why we rose when he came in.’ Whereat I fumed, and said to him: ‘thou dog, son of a dog, how darest thou, a mere Jew, to seat thyself above the readers of the Koran?’ I had raised my voice, and this astonished the Sultan, who asked why I had done so. The sage told him, and the Jew was humbled, and went away very much cast down. When we returned, the sage said to me: ‘well have you done! Allah bestow his blessing on thee! None other but thou had dared to speak thus to the Jew. Thou hast taught him to know his place.’”

Language-difficulty caused some embarassment during this long journey through Asia Minor; so an interpreter, who had done the pilgrimage to Mecca and who spoke Arabic, was engaged by Batûta’s party. But the Hadji cheated them abominably; so one day they asked him what he had stolen from them that day. The thief, quite unabashed told them the precise amount; “whereat we could but laugh and put up with it.”

Batûta embarked from Sinope, on the southern shore of the Euxine, for Sodaia, in the Crimea. Sodaia was one of the great ports of the world. Venice had established a factory there a century back, but had been ejected. The Crimea was chiefly in the hands of the Genoese, who were established at Caffa; but the Italian cities were in pressing danger of ejection and of losing their Levantine and Euxine trade. After suffering much distress on the voyage and “only just escaping from being drowned,” we find Batûta at Caffa; and for the first time suffering from the annoyance of those Christian bells which have been a nuisance, not merely to Moslems, but to the more sensitive among European ears from the days when they were perhaps necessary, yet when Rabelais objurgated them in his chapter on the “Island of bells,” to these modern times of clocks and watches. In all these cosmopolitan towns, each nation occupied a separate fortified quarter. The trade of Southern Russia was great; and one is surprised to find that horses were exported to India.

Batûta made across a land where the quiet air was no longer annoyed by the insistent clang which was an insult at once to his faith and his ears. He found Southern Russia a plain without hill or tree. Waggons might travel for six months through a green desert, the silence broken only by lowing of cattle, hoarse voice of an occasional herdsman, or languid stir of some collection of huts which passed for a town. Cattle were protected by severe laws severely enforced. “Should a beast be stolen, the thief must return it with nine more. If unable to furnish these, his children are taken into slavery; and, if he have no children, he is slaughtered like a sheep.... The only fuel is dung.”

Batûta was bent on visiting Uzbek Khân, the powerful Tartar who now represented the dynasty founded by Chinghiz Khân, the blacksmith. Uzbek was one of the seven mightiest monarchs of the world, the others being the Sultan of the West; the Sultan of Egypt and Syria, the Sultan of the two Iraks (Persia and Mesopotamia), the Khân of Turkestan, the Sultan of India, and the Emperor of China. Our traveller hired a waggon, and, after many monotonous days, arrived at the camp of the Khân. He was amazed to behold “a city in motion; complete in its streets, mosques, and cooking houses.” Nor was he less bewildered at the consideration given to women by all men, from the Khân downwards, and at seeing them going about unveiled, yet “religious, charitable, and given to good works.” The wife of an Emir would ride, magnificently attired, in a coach. “Often she is accompanied by her husband; but one would take him for a mere attendant.” Uzbek Khân was “wont to give audience on Friday, his four wives, unveiled, sitting enthroned to right and left of him, a son on either side, and a daughter in front. Princes and Emirs are gathered around. People enter into the presence in order of rank. When a wife comes in, he takes her by the hand and leads her to her throne. Each wife has a separate abode; and not to visit these ladies is looked upon as a breach of good manners.” It is evident that the ancestral habits of a nomadic people were carefully preserved under conditions which were rapidly changing. The Sultan sent his visitor a horse, a sheep, and koumiss in a leathern bottle.

Batûta wished to see for himself the great change in the length of day and night which takes place as one travels northward. So Uzbek sent him to far-distant Bulgar, on the Volga, a place in the latitude of Newcastle. Here he was told of a “Land of Darkness,” which lay forty days’ journey to the North. “Traders alone go there; and only in big companies. Dogs draw them over the ice in sledges; and the travellers must take all food and wood for fuel with them. The dogs are fed before anyone, and experienced dogs, who have done the journey several times, are chosen to lead the pack. On arriving at the proper place, each trader puts down his goods and retires. Next day, he finds furs put down as barter. Should he be content with these, he carries them off; but should he not be satisfied, he leaves them where they are, and more are added. But sometimes the natives will take back their own goods, and leave those of the traders. The traders never see anyone, and know not whether they deal with human beings or with demons.” Strange as this practice seems, there is other evidence that exchange of goods was made in this way in very high latitudes. Sledge-dogs were used very much farther south than they are to-day. Batûta speaks of the Russians as being “Christians with red hair, blue eyes, ugly, faithless, and rich in silver shrines.”

When Batûta returned to Uzbek, he went on to Astrakhan with him. “Here the Sultan dwells in very cold weather.... The city is on one of the great rivers of the world (the Volga), which is crossed by laying thousands of bundles of hay on the ice.”

Now, the third of Uzbek’s four wives was a daughter of the Christian Emperor of Constantinople. History makes no mention of this lady; but there is no reason to doubt the fact, however surprising; for, since 1265 A.D. the Byzantine Emperor had more than once given a natural daughter or legitimate sister in marriage to powerful Mongolian Sovereigns, in order to get their support against the encroaching Turks of Asia Minor.

This particular lady was expecting her confinement and desired to return home for the event. She had requested the Khân to allow her to do so, and he had sanctioned the journey. Batûta saw an opportunity of seeing the famous Christian metropolis, if the Khân would allow him to join the escort. Such a petition from a foreign stranger naturally aroused suspicion as to his motives; but Batûta was skilful in allaying this; and we find him setting forth with a parting gift from the Khân of a fine dress, several horses, and cash. Even the Khân’s ladies and his sons and daughters gave him presents. The princess was escorted by 500 horse and 4,500 foot. The Khân, accompanied by his head-wife and heir-apparent rode with her the first stage; the heir-apparent and his suite went on the next stage of a journey that took two months. For some reason or other a very round-about route was chosen; first a waterless, uninhabited waste was crossed; then the Caucasus approached to within a day’s march. When a border-fortress was reached, the escort returned; and now the real motive of the lady becomes discernable. The unhappy woman had been the victim of state-craft, a puppet danced off to a semi-barbarian husband in the interests of Constantinople. In spite of the respect paid to women in her new abode, she was heartily sick of Tartar discomfort and Moslem ways. Accustomed to the luxurious ease and refinements of the Byzantine Court, she loathed the uncouth manners of a half-tamed people and their rough life. She sighed for the amenities of her father’s palace and the high civilization of his city. She left her travelling mosque at the fortress, drank wine, and is said to have eaten swine’s flesh. From Batûta’s point of view, she relapsed into infidelity; yet he has no bitter word to cast at her. When a day’s journey from her native city, a younger brother came to meet her with 5,000 cavalry, all in shining armour. Next day the heir-apparent arrived with 10,000 cavalry, and when quite near to Constantinople, the greater part of the population turned out, decked in their best, and shouting so that it was difficult to decide whether they or the drums made most noise. The parents came forth from the gate in full royal state, and the poor released princess threw herself on the ground before them, kissed it, and even kissed the hooves of their horses. All the bells of Constantinople were a-ringing, and the royal party entered the city with glittering pomp.

Batûta was unwilling to enter “Istambûl” without the Emperor’s special sanction; it was not too safe a place for a Moslem. Andronicus Palæologus the Younger gave him a safe-conduct; but he was searched for concealed arms at the fifth gate—a practice which, afterwards, he found to obtain in India. As he passed through the gateways the guards muttered: “Saracens! Saracens!” And Saracens they had indeed occasion to hold in mortal horror and dread.

Our pilgrim-traveller gets sadly muddled about names and dates just here. Evidently, he derived the information he gives us from a Jew, who acted as interpreter, and who either spoke Arabic imperfectly or heartily enjoyed “pulling his leg.” And as to dates, just here, Batûta’s memory fails him a little. He was told that the Pope of Rome paid an annual visit to Santa Sophia, and was received with the greatest veneration and ceremonial. And he calls the Emperor Andronicus, “George.” Andronicus plied him with eager questions as to Jerusalem and the Holy Places of Palestine. He only saw the outside of Santa Sophia.

Now, the Princess made open objection to return to her husband, and had her will. She gave Batûta a money-present for his services; but the Byzantine Empire was in decay, and, to his loss in exchange, the coins debased. He returned Eastward with a small escort, and met Uzbek Khân at Sara. We read in Dan Chaucer how

“At Sarray, in the land of Tartarye Ther dwelt a king that werreyed Russye.”

Nothing will content him but to see those famous cities beyond the Oxus, and Balk, with its great mosque of the precious pillars, before he proceeds to India. He travels 40 days through a desert. The whole district is one vast desolation; and he tells us how Chinghiz Khân, the blood-stained blacksmith, a conquering hero, a strict Moslem, and therefore “a man of liberal mind,” subdued district after district until he was lord of China and the Middle East; how he carried off the youth of Bokhâra and Samarkand, Khôrasân and Irak, and slaughtered and pillaged so that he left nothing but ruin behind him. Batûta visited the Great Khân of Turkestan and more than one camp of petty rulers.

“The purple robe makes Emperors, not priests,” said Ambrose the Bishop of Milan to the Emperor Theodosius; and the Emperor remarked how hard it was for a ruler to meet with an outspoken and unfearing man. Batûta tells us of an amusing incident which indicates, not merely how an imam could be outspoken to a king, but also that, if Mohammedanism had admitted of a sacerdotal hierarchy, the same exercise of priestly authority which cast Theodosius prostrate and weeping before the Altar at Milan and kept Heinrich shivering in the snows of Canossa, while awaiting the condescension of Hildebrand, would have obtained in the Moslem as in the Christian world. When Tirim Siri Khân wished prayers to be delayed until he should come to the mosque, the imam bade the messenger return to the Khân and ask him whether prayers were ordered of God or of him, and commanded the muezzin to summon the faithful as usual. After the second prostration the Khân arrived, meekly remained at the doorway, and joined in the prayers. When worship was over, he grasped the hand of the imam, who laughed heartily, and the twain sat together afterwards, Batûta being with them. The Khân told the traveller to declare to his countrymen how the Ruler of the Turkomans had sat with a poor man of the poorest Persians. This worthy imam lived by the labour of his hands, and refused all the gifts his sovereign offered him. No wonder that warm friendship sprang up between these two men, and that both were respected and obeyed. But greater regard was paid to the statutes than to this monarch even; for, after Batûta left, Tirim Siri broke a law laid down by his grandfather and therefore was deposed.

In one province he found “a laudable practice. A whip is hung up in every mosque, and whoever stays away from worship is beaten by the imam before all the congregation, and fined to boot, the fine going towards the upkeep of the mosque.” The time came when Batûta, clothed with authority, itched to exercise it in the same praiseworthy way.

Batûta now visits Herat, turns north-westward to Meshed, the capital of Khôrasân and holy city of the Shiites, thence travels to Jam, the birthplace of Jami, the Persian poet, and at Tus finds the tomb of the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid, who died there when on a military expedition. Now, Haroun-al-Raschid was a Sunnite; so the orthodox “place lighted candles on his grave, but the followers of Ali (Shiites) are wont to give it a kick.” One recalls the story of how, when the Indian Emperor had his attention drawn to a dog defiling the grave of a heretic, he remarked that “the beast resembles orthodoxy.” Heterodox or orthodox, according to point of view, here were flourishing colleges filled with students, and saintly men dwelling in secluded cells. To work miracles has always been a distinction of the saint; but the Eastern saint was also permitted to live on to an age incredibly ripe. Batûta is always running across some man of the age attained by old Parr, and upwards. A century and a half is a moderate number of years for these holy beings, and Batûta accepts it as veridical; especially when corroborative evidence is given. But three and a half centuries claimed by a man who is no Struldbrug, but looks not more than fifty, staggers even him. The impostor assures his visitor that every century he grows a fresh crop of hair and cuts a new set of teeth, and that he had been a Râja who was buried at Multân in the Punjâb. “I very much doubted as to what he might really be; and I do so to this day.”