SOME THOUGHTS ON BUZURG IBN SHAHRIYAR AL-RAMHORMUZI: "THE BOOK OF THE

WONDERS OF INDIA"
Author(s): G. S. P. FREEMAN-GRENVILLE
Source: Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde, Bd. 28, FROM ZINJ TO ZANZIBAR:
Studies in History, Trade and Society on the Eastern Coast of Africa (1982), pp. 63-70
Published by: Frobenius Institute
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Paideuma 28, 1982

SOME THOUGHTS ON BUZURG IBN SHAHRIYAR AL-RAMHORMUZI :

THE BOOK OF THE WONDERS OF INDIA

G. S. P. FREEMAN-GRENVILLE

It is an honour to be associated with a Festschrift that celebrates James Kirkman's

seventy-fifth birthday and his quarter century of devoted service to archaeology in eastern
Africa. It was partly at the present writer's suggestion that in 1957 James Kirkman excavat-
ed the Islamic site at Ras Mkumbuu on Pemba Island, in the hope, alas disappointed, ol
locating the Qanbalu of al-Mas'udi. This present article arises from the writer's curiosity
about another Arabic writer who was a contemporary of al-Mas'udi, and one who makes
several interesting allusions to eastern Africa, including also Qanbalu (Kirkman 1959c, al-
Mas'udi ed. 1861).1 Like many mysteries, it is still unsolved. But as the meticulous search
for the African past proceeds, and site after site is uncovered, so no doubt one day Qanbalu
will reveal its location, and we shall understand the tenth century in eastern Africa all the
better.
Captain Buzurg ibn Shahriyar al-Ramhormuzi, as his title page describes him, was a
collector of sailors' tales, and in genre he has some similarity with Sindbad and the tales oí
the Arabian Nights. According to E. W. Lane, the origins of the genre were Persian, though
the setting of the Arabian Nights belongs more to the Cairo of the tenth and eleventh
centuries than, as they are ascribed, to the Baghdad of Harun al-Rashid (E. W. Lane, The
Arabian Nights' Entertainments, 4 vols., London, 1838-40). In the last century they could
still be heard, recited aloud by public story-tellers in the streets of Cairo - just as in the late
1930's J. W. T. Allen, so he once told me, heard Swahili poetry recited by professional bards
in Tanga and Pangani. Buzurg's Wonders of India is but a rag-tag of tales, like an English
sailor's ditty box, arranged in no semblance of logical order, nor even one of consecutive
chronology; yet it is not a collection of tales by different writers, for the work is in a
consistent style.
Though Buzurg's name proclaims him a Persian, he wrote in Arabic. His nisba, or name
indicating his origin, tells us that he or his family came from Ramhormuz, a small town in
Khuzistan some thirty-six miles from Ahwaz, the provincial capital. If Ramhormuz ever had
any historical distinction, I have been unable to discover it. Buzurg's patronym, Shahriyar, is
by no means an uncommon one. His given name, Buzurg, is simply the Persian word for
'big'. This might have referred to his stature or perhaps to his success as a merchant.
Regretably, we know nothing of his autobiography, not even the date of his birth or of his
death.
The Persian province of Khuzistan is an extension of the flat, desert land of Iraq, though
like it, broken up by many rivers and canals. Its people belong largely to the seafaring
population of the Gulf region; the Gulf that the Persians still call Persian but which modern
Arabs, unlike their ancestors, now call Arabian. In this region, especially to the north, both

1 See also my edition of The Wonders of India , 1981. This paper has been prepared while this work is
still at press, and in consequence no page references could be given. Detailed footnotes and a biblio-
graphy of relevant works have been given.

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64 G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville

Arabic and Persian tend to be used indiscrimin

Khurramshahr as Persians call it, is as much Arab
nationality. On the southern side, Arabic has the
colonies in Bahrein and elsewhere. It was in a cos
that Buzurg lived and with whom he doubtless s
terms for ships' parts and other nautical matter
and so later found their way, like nakhodha (
Zawawi 1979).
There is only one manuscript of any antiquit
Book of the Wonders of India'). It is numbered
Mosque in Istanbul. In the later nineteenth centu
French orientalist Charles Schefer, for many
Embassy to the Sublime Porte. L.-M. Devic used t
Merveilles de l'Inde , Paris, 1878. It contained palp
back to Istanbul, and collated with the original by
A. van der Lith to establish the Arabic text publ
Leiden, 1883, with a revised translation by L.-M.
published in the Mémorial Jean Sauvaget , vol. I,
all) errors in Devic's translation, but its florid sty
tory matter or footnotes were printed and unlik
historical and geographical setting was left in th
cably omitted. Altogether, this was regrettable, f
tion and originality. We cannot tell what form i
work published. Only one English translation of
Quennell as The Book of the Marvels of India
background is passed over. In style the work reca
scholarship or wonted accuracy.
There are some small problems about the date o
anecdotes and apophthegms. Twenty-nine of these
date because they refer to persons known (from
time. Eighteen 'sections' fall within the reign of t
908-932). There are only three tales of earlier da
al-Rashid (A. D. 786-809); another to the reign
the third is dated A. D. 900. Apart from these, o
span A. D. 900 to 953: its date is given in the ma
so far removed in date from the remainder that
309/ A. D. 921. This view is in accord with the co
span 900 to 953 seems a very reasonable life sp
collected tales from his contemporaries. The work
porary al-Mas'udi, and to several later writers. T
gap for dating the final redaction of the work as
(the date of the latest section) and the death of al
No perceptible plan can be discovered in Buzu
anecdotes. He collected them like a magpie collecti
any regard for length or for chronological order.
to stories which cover several pages. Perhaps this

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 The Book of the Wonders of India 65

of the work. I have many times sat in the majlis , the men's reception room
called a selamlik , in different Arab houses on the southern Yemeni seabo
calls the Land of Incense, and in the Wadi Hadramawt, when tales were be
the company. They could range from a sentence or two to a discourse of fiv
(in al-Shihr, one of the most popular amusements was an imitation of spe
Sir John Boustead, a former British Resident at Mukalla: these involved wh
describe as an Oxford accent in Arabic, and the mis-pronunciation of certai
give them a frank, if not earthy sense.) By the very nature of things, th
spontaneously as the narrators remembered them or capped one another.
with some assurance, simply reproduced what he had heard in the majlis
and ready way that his 'wonders' had been told him. Spontaneous and wit
it never occured to him that a book should have some kind of arrangement
Whatever he may not have possessed in art, Buzurg makes up for in int
brief excursion to Spain in the west, his world ranges from Cairo to as far
Japan. He has detailed knowledge of Indonesia and Malaysia, and of the w
India and Ceylon. Today, all these are a host of independent countries: mu
known to Buzurg still appeared as one kingdom. From A. D. 660 to A.
Muslim world from Spain to Sind was under the single rule of the Um
Damascus. From 750 their Abbasid successors at Baghdad held dominio
area, excepting only Spain and North Africa. In December 861, the murde
al-Mutawakkil by his Turkish mercenary guard spelt the beginning of that s
of the Caliphate that ended dramatically with Hulagu Khan's sack of Bagh
867 the Saffarids made themselves independent in Persia and Sijistan; the
ibn Tulun, a Turk from Farghana, made Egypt and Syria independent. Ye
Caliph was still mentioned in the Friday prayers.
It was al-Mutasim, a son of Harun al-Rashid by a Turkish slave, who as
Caliph (833-842) was the first to recruit for himself a Turkish bodyg
oxiana. These newcomers soon behaved with all the oppressiveness of idle so
than face a local rebellion, al-Mutasim moved his capital to Samarra, sixty m
from Baghdad. This was in 836, and seven of his descendants ruled there un
the eighth century the building of Baghdad had been an exercise in impe
Samarra prestige demanded the erection of costly palaces, mosques and ot
dings, chiefly during the reigns of al-Mutasim and his son, al-Mutawakk
sons, al-Mutamid, restored the capital to Baghdad. The ninth century was
building activity in Mesopotamia. To the desert capitals of Samarra and B
could be brought down-river from the north, or up-river from Basra. The
the earliest Caliphs had long given way to luxury in Umayyad times. Up-ri
costly goods such as spices and silks from the east and from Africa, gold
wood. The principal riverain port was Basra, but it could not be used by s
Each year the Tigris floods choked it with silt brought down from the m
north. This is why Siraf, on the northern shore of the Gulf, grew up.
A settlement and a small fort had existed there in Sassanian times, but
important only in the ninth century. It seems that it sprang into being qu
were new defensive works, for piracy was always a problem in the Gulf an
robbers inland. A great mosque housed the assembly for Friday Prayers.
for the governor besides other mosques, public baths, houses for the wealt

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66 G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville

appropriate hovels for the poor. A great bazaar wa

was at a peak of prosperity until 977 when much
After this, the city declined, and by the thirteent
site was excavated in the 1960's under the auspice
David Whitehouse as director (Whitehouse and W
1968-1974).
It is essential to appreciate this background to B
especially Siraf, and Suhar in the Gulf of Oman. I
tales are said to have been gathered. From Sir
directions, all of them described in Buzurg's p
explanation. His interest is in the stories he told
knowledge of the international sea trade that he
somewhat over-reticent, it is perhaps because he r
call 'business-confidential' - things that are more
The palaces, mosques, fortifications and houses
all Arabia, depended upon imported wood for bui
desert. For roofing, as Whitehouse has convincingl
wood from the shallow swamps of the shores of e
earliest levels at Manda, a site on an island off th
tions were carried out by Neville Chittick (1967),
imported ceramics. This was the period of the com
of the Indian Ocean, and it is plausible that Siraf
for its intensive building programme from the Ke
reasonable that the site on Manda Island had a co
Sirafi traders just in the same way that modern p
and trading agents. For, no doubt, the site on Man
one, as we shall see.
Section XXXII, A Slaving Adventure, has alr
African Coast : Select Documents , henceforth ref
certain Ismailawayh who set out in A. D. 922 fro
by the wind towards Sofala, in Mozambique. Afte
he arrived at a stable and organised African kingd
friendly and to trade with his party. We are not
exchange on shore. As they left, they kidnapped
had come on board to bid them farewell. Next
stowed below with about 200 slaves they had alre
in Oman, and again in Baghdad, the king made his
which he returned home. There, once more insta
to Islam! In recounting this, the king makes an i
other eastern African ruler had obtained the pri
supported by what we learn from other Arab sour
Islam in eastern Africa.
Unfortunately Buzurg does not identify for us w
beyond saying that it was towards Sofala. He is e
the same Ismailawayh reports on the cleverness o
he himself had visited in A. D. 943. " 'Of sixteen s

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 The Book of the Wonders of India 67

them, 'fifteen will return home safely, but the other will be wrecked', an
Section XXXVI also mentions the land of Zanj, telling of huge birds that c
beasts in their claws, and of another that attacks turtles, carrying them up
dashing them down on rocks. We may connect this with the giant rukh of A
Aepyornis maximus , a giant bird similar to the ostrich, of which the only
have been found in Madagascar. Probably it became extinct some 800 years a
may rely upon carbon dating for the remains of its bones and legs. Reconst
display a height of eight to ten feet, with vestigial wings only. It could not
about it are certainly exaggerated (Brown 1979: 4). Perhaps the importance
that trade with Madagascar was by now an established fact. Certainly no ske
giant birds have yet been found at Sofala where Buzurg states these birds to
but archaeology in Mozambique is still in its infancy and we cannot tell wha
reveal.
The same Ismailawayh reports of gold mines in the land of Zanj (Section
mines in which men "excavate in galleries like ants". This is an interesting re
a pity that Buzurg assumes in us a knowledge of commerce then, that
possess. Section LXIII reports that the Sea of Berbera, on the way to the L
one of the most dangerous for its currents and the likelihood of shipwreck.
ship is wrecked on the Berbera coast (in the present Somalia), the inhabita
crew. Merchants who come here take escorts with them, for fear of being ca

"The natives collect the testicles of foreigners. They preserve them, and make a show
envy. Among them a man's bravery is measured by the number of foreigners he has c
1935: 10).

What Buzurg reported in the tenth century has been noted again in the twentieth. Wilfred
Thesiger, when he travelled among the Ethiopian Danakils in 1934, found that a man's
standing in his tribe depended on the number of human trophies he could display.2 Section
CXXVI tells of a different kind of danger. Near Sofala in the Zanj country are lizards whose
bites are said to be incurable. If this is the monitor lizard, its appearance is certainly
fearsome, but in fact it is far too shy to attack.
Section CXXIX presents the greatest difficulties in interpretation. It describes how some
people named Waqwaq, after a voyage that lasted a year, came to Qanbalu and attacked the
town. In common with the Arab geographers, Buzurg speaks of two quite different peoples
as Waqwaq; those who live beyond Sofala and are presumably click-speakers if the word is to
be regarded as onomatopoeic, and the eastern Waqwaq who are almost certainly the Japan-
ese. These eastern people, he relates, came to obtain goods for their homeland and for trade
in China: ivory, tortoise-shell, panther skins and ambergris as well as Zanj slaves, "because
they were strong and endured slavery easily". Before these people reached Qanbalu, they
had pillaged some islands some six days sail away (perhaps the Kerimba or the Comoro
Islands), and then several villages and towns near Sofala. Qanbalu is described as being a
town surrounded by a strong wall and an estuary, "in the middle of which Qanbalu is like a

2 Nesbitt (1935: 98) also noted one man "who was particularly anxious to increase his collection of
these trophies. It is the custom among these bloodthirsty slayers to dry, and display in their huts or
on their persons, those organs taken from the body of their victim."

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68 G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville

castle". No site in eastern Africa so far identified co

widely believed, Mkumbuu on Pemba Island is Qanb
change, there is no trace yet found of any remains
narrow peninsular which, as Kirkman has observ
thickly covered with scrubby bush and even if this
necessarily reveal anything after centuries of natura
to be mentioned in Section CXXXIII and can plau
Mtambwe, also on Pemba Island, though there is no k
Qanbalu is also mentioned in Section CXXXI as b
cannibal Zanj dwell. Apart from the problem of loc
built this strong walled town "in the middle of wh
with a knowledge of stone-building is implied, a
attacked because they had a quantity of goods and s
The word madina (town) in Arabic, used to describe Q
need imply neither large in size nor in populatio
present context than a fortified settlement, such a
last, of eleventh/twelfth century origin, certainly
pointed out to me that the famous inscription that
kazi could only have been carved by a Sirafì sculptor
their tradition.3 It is with eager interest that we aw
which might reveal a settlement of similar character
'mother city' for Qanbalu would be Suhar (now c
eastern side of Ras Musandam, which in the tenth c
strong commercial competitor of Siraf. Several of Bu
merchant houses and its wealth.
Qanbalu, Thabia and later, Kizimkazi, would see
intricate network of western Indian Ocean trade tha
which Siraf and Suhar were pivots. There was regula
Basra, one route following the southern Yemeni coas
the Red Sea to Ghalifiqa on the coast of highland Ye
off it. The route continued as far north as al-Ayla, t
which was once the Ezion-Geber of King Solomon.
Any reading of Buzurg, however, makes it plain tha
and Suhar looked eastward. From the Gulf, India wa
monsoon. The Mihran River, that is the Indus, p
Kashmir. Farther south lay Cambay, and a group of
Subara, Tana and Saymur. Yet farther down were th
Kulam, and then the Maldive Islands. Curiously, Buz
ports, never of those on the eastern side that he calls
By the end of the ninth century A. D. there were
mouth of the River Indus and higher up the river wh
At this time the greatest part of northern India was

3 I know of no reason to justify the extraordinary rem

inscription, if genuine, most likely came from another site

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 The Book of the Wonders of India 69

Their empire extended from the Gulf of Cambay as far east as the present Bih
frontier was contested with the Palas of Bengal. Southward from Cambay lay t
kuta Kingdom of the Deccan extending to the extreme south of India and which
between the Cheras, the Pandyas and the Cholas. This was a gold-bearing region
number of ports visited by Buzurg's acquaintances attests to its importance for t
trade.
Beyond India lay Ceylon. Buzurg refers frequently to the Gulf of Ceylon, me
present Palk Strait and the Gulf of Manaar. He appears to speak of Ceylon as if it
of India, but at this time it was independent, under Tamil rulers. The Indian Cho
did not conquer it until later in the tenth century, under Rajaraja I (985-1014),
Buzurg was writing. Ceylon's principal trade was in textiles and precious stones. N
Maldives, under a local dynasty, were already recognised as an important source o
which were to provide the petty currency of many countries, as far apart as wes
and the Celebes Archipelago.
From Malaya, Sumatra, Java and the lesser East Indian Islands, came spices for
purposes and for cooking, aloes, camphor, ivory, ebony and other scented wood
above all, gold (to Buzurg, this was the land of gold par excellence). We do not
the Arabs first began to visit them, though for Buzurg the Arab presence was an
fact, as was the presence of cannibals (whom Ptolemny also mentions in the re
his Geography around 400 A. D.). India had probably begun trading with the Ea
Islands by the sixth century B.C., and together with trade, she brought religion
At first Brahminism, then Buddhism. In Java the mighty temple of Borobodur w
Buzurg's time, all the eastern Indian states were Hinduized and he speaks of
naturally as a part of the Indian cultural zone. Their Islamization belongs to the
and following centuries.
Of the many small states in this region, the most important was Sri Vijaya. It
at Palembang in eastern Sumatra. By the end of the eighth century it controlled
of the straits of Malacca. The Sailendra dynasty, which had established itself in C
during the eighth century, now took control of Sri Vijaya, and grew steadily i
wealth. Primarily a merchant state, like those (as Gervase Mathew percipiently n
arose somewhat later on the shores of eastern Africa, Sri Vijaya endured for fou
until 1270.
Away to the north were the Khmer people, whom Buzurg speaks of as Shampa and who
likewise had trade relations with the Gulf. They had been Hinduised at the latest by the fifth
century A. D. These people, whose country is now spoken of as Kampuchea, and until
recently as Cambodia, derive their name from Kambu, the mythical founder of the Khmer
race. In the seventh century, a Hindu ruler united the whole region, including the present
Vietnam. In the eighth century the kingdom split into two, only to be re-united in the ninth.
About 900 A. D., at the beginning of the period of which Buzurg is concerned, the giant
palace of Angkor-Thom and the temple of Bayon were completed. (The temple of Angkor-
Vat, one mile away, belongs to the twelfth century.) These monuments attest to the splen-
dour and wealth of the ancient Khmer culture, a wealth derived from commerce. None of
them are mentioned by Buzurg, and this is intelligible, for what sailor when he comes into
port is interested in public monuments? Buzurg's witness is to the extensive trade activity
between the Caliphate and the Khmers, the people of the eastern Indian Islands and further
to the north, the Chinese.

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70 G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville

During the later ninth century, the Tang dynasty

860 onwards, there were popular uprisings. That of
chih, and a salt merchant, Huang Ch'ao. Eighteen ye
Aided by the troops of the Turkish Sha-ťo, the T
beheaded him in 878. Huang Ch'ao, however, marche
Canton. According to Abu Zayd al-Hasan b. al-Yazid
were killed apart from Chinese. He says that the figu
register of foreigners for taxation purposes. We nee
Arabs. Some no doubt were Indians, others Malays, ye
still suggests a very extensive trade between China an
The war went on until Huang Ch'ao was killed. Afte
his capital of Chang-an, but in fact the empire lay in
the emperor and his entourage were killed in 907, fiv
China, with ten independent regimes in the south u
from 906 until 960, coincides roughly with Buzurg's
rians as the period of the Five Dynasties. It was, even
trade expansion, especially in the export of porcelain,
the Caliphate.
Here then is a brief geographical and historical bac
Shahriyar al-Ramhormuzi, a man most probably mu
the trade of the sea and the talk of the sea-traders.
collection of intriguing stories rather than a set of fa
he wrote down those things that were memorable in
numerous events, different peoples and places. He w
simple way, yet his outlook was wide and he was lik
natural that, in a gale that threatened shipwreck
Muslims, should join in prayer together, each after
accept 'wonders', events beyond what he saw as ra
never over-credulous. Let the words of his own prefa
"Praise be to God, to whom belongs power and majesty, t
created different kinds of people and nations. He, by his
character and appearance. He, by his almighty power, mak
He, in his wisdom, teaches them to perform wonderful work

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