"In retrospect, maybe having a cargo of fabrics was God's will too," Abu'l-Hasan Ahmad murmured.
Communicating with the group of people on the beach had been impossible; they spoke a language utterly unlike anything Abu'l-Hasan Ahmad and his crew had ever heard. What they did know, however, was how to exchange - and that made things much easier for Ebrahima, the crew's resident Wangara, to peddle away some of a cargo meant for the markets of Ile-Binu in exchange for things Abu'l-Hasan Ahmad and his crew had never seen.
The first to go: The fabrics, most of them dyed in luxurious indigo and red and green. Down the beach a ways, he could see several of the locals wrapping themselves in the silks and cloths. It was a marked improvement on nudity, at least.
Admittedly it was hardly Abu'l-Hasan Ahmad's first encounter with polytheists. But there were polytheists and then there were
polytheists - and the traders in the coastal Sudan, after all, had at least heard the word of God and His Prophet.
With a last glance down the beach - where Ebrahima was in the process of showing off some fine lusterware to a group of native people in handsome fabrics he'd already peddled to them - Abu'l-Hasan Ahmad turned to take stock of what they'd received in return.
"I hope these things are not going to squawk all the way home," groused Crewman Latif as he scowled into the large cage they'd hastily pulled together, once meant to house chickens but now given over to a dozen brightly-coloured parrots. Bright yellow ones with red about the eyes and green at the tips were most well-represented - gloriously pretty, at least.
"If nothing else they will probably look good in someone's menagerie," Abu'l-Hasan Ahmad mused. "Maybe even the Caliph's, if he cares about a place like this. And I suppose there are the spears and the cotton and those feathered headdresses and the food and that monkey thing. But it just ultimately seems these people do not have much wealth. Well. Aside from the men they sold us - the women, too. They seem like they will make good servants, if we can teach them our language."[1]
"It might help. If Ebrahima doesn't trade the entire cargo away first."
Abu'l-Hasan Ahmad pushed his hand through his hair with a sober nod. "We're going to move on and see if we can find more of that cotton," he said, before the sound of footsteps drew his attention.
"They really like the pots," Ebrahima opined with a grin as he rejoined the group, a pair of huge red parrots perched on his arm.[2]
One of the birds squawked at Abu'l-Hasan Ahmad. He winced.
"They call them
maqawun!" The Wangara grinned a big crescent-moon grin. "Are they not pretty?"
"Yes, until they make a mess of my deck." Abu'l-Hasan Ahmad sighed. "Let's go back to the ships. See if we can get those men started on their Arabic."
~
ACT THE SEVENTH
"SAILING INTO A NEW WORLD"
~
A wirayubah
upon its perch.
Excerpt: Rihlat al-Mustakshif - Abu'l-Hasan Ahmad ibn Hazm ibn Gharsiya ibn al-Tayyib al-Isbili, AD 1349
We landed upon that beach and encountered a people the likes of whom we had never seen. Though they were flagrant in their nudity and spoke not a word that we could understand, they did fish the coasts for shrimp, and they watched us with some curiosity. I saw at once that though they did not even cover the 'awrah and clearly knew not God, that they seemed a most friendly people, and perceived that though they had no religion, that in this place, the message of God and His Prophet (peace be upon him) was not yet known. Seeing this, we presented to them some of the fabric we had brought with us, of scarlet and indigo, and they became delighted, and though we could not understand each other's words, we could see each other's meanings in our eyes and in our faces.
Once they are given the cloth they will gladly cover themselves with it, as all good men would. Afterwards they came to us with curious parrots, javelins, and strange foods, and exchanged it for other things we gave to them, such as cloth and nails, as well as some of the rice and the lusterware. They knew as well of cotton, and gave some to us. And indeed for the latter they traded to us two stout men and two women of prime years, whom we took aboard the ship.
The people here are of good size and stature, and handsomely formed, and their skin is of a shade which is similar to that of the Berbers. The weapons they carry are only the javelin, though I saw scars upon the bodies of some. Gharsiya the oarsman asked of them by sign and they indicated by the same that there are others who come in those lands and battle them. Though they know nothing of God, they appeared to be to be both clever and industrious, and I thought that they would be most amenable to knowing the teachings of the Prophet (peace be upon him). The language they speak is one none had heard before, but we had determined that the place was the Ard al-Wirayubah, for it is the home of the yellow parrot they call wirayubah, of which they gave us several - they call them also the nandayya, and they are quite beautiful of attribute.[3] We named it such, and gave there our prayers upon the beach. As we prayed upon the new land, some few dozen of the polytheists did come curiously to watch us as we gave thanks to God, may His glory be glorified.
We stayed two days in the Ard al-Wirayubah before we continued on towards the west, and some of the men took to trying to speak with the slaves in Arabic. The people of this land must be quite different from us in their ways, for when we fed the slaves with honey and cakes, they spat them out and seemed most shocked by them, and were amazed when we gave them coloured cloth. We would soon begin to teach one of the women - we called her Hadil, for her voice was soft like that of a pigeon, though we could understand nothing of the words she spoke. I thought that in a very short time, she was beginning to understand the simple things we said. We found some cloth for her to wear, and covered her hair.
As we continued on, it became clear to us that this could not be some island. Indeed we sailed for many days and did not see the land’s ending. I consulted with Ibn Rustam the navigator and we determined that this must be a very large land, with a coast easily as long as the Zanj Coast, and perhaps more. As we sailed, we saw many places much like the first one, and most of the people would come to meet us, and would trade many things for even the smallest and most trifling items, such as nails and beads. We could understand none of them, and none had much more to trade than what we received at Ard al-Wirayubah, though we were heartened to receive gifts of cotton from some of them. We did not see cities, and the people lived a very simple way, such that they seemed to be no threat to us, and would present no obstacle to a saqin’s worth of good men, for our weapons were beyond anything we saw among them.
A few days later, we did stop at a place called Banayib. There we saw some of the polytheists in a small canoe. Some did jump into the water and flee, and another hurled his javelin, striking the side of the boat. He shouted at us, but he was easily slain by an arrow fired by Ayshun al-Tanji. We encaptured the two men remaining in the canoe with little struggle and gave them cloth to cover their shame, and continued onward.
Within two weeks of our arrival, we arrived at the mouth of a river. By now we could exchange a few words with Hadil, and when we signed towards the great prominence there at the estuary, she told us that it was called Bawnashu, and the river itself, Miyri.[4] We could not land there the first day for the foulness of the weather. We laid anchor that eve and stayed at sea, and in the morning we set out for the shore, but when we did come upon a village, the natives ran away and left everything in their huts. I told the men not to enter them, and to leave even the smallest thing where it lay. We returned to the ships, but found that Mahbub had taken a feather headdress from one of the huts. But he repented and returned it to where he lay, and we tasked him with cleaning the hold.
Soon we continued onward, and we found that we could dip into the water by the shore and find that it was not salty.[5] We thought this a miracle, and we gave praise to God, may His name be glorified, and sought out the source of where this water came from. We traveled some few days along that coast, and soon came to a place where all the waters were sweet, and they flowed from the mouth of a river so vast and grand that it was unlike any which had ever been known. Again we praised God the Greatest, so awed were we at what He had created. When we asked Hadil what this place was called, she called it Baraa in the words of the natives, and so we have named this water the Wadi al-Baraa.[6]
At the mouth of the Wadi al-Baraa is a great mass of land, but Hadil could tell us little of it. We went to the land and searched it, and we came in time upon the first settlement we had seen. The people here of this place buld their houses atop earthworks, and farm the land. They came to us cautiously at first, but we were able to sign our good intentions and give them gifts. When they received from the Wangara a fine cloth of indigo, they became animated, and draped themselves in it, as though they had seen nothing like it before. One among them appeared to be a leader, a chief of sorts. He came to us with peace, and gave us a gift of an axe carved from a strange greenish rock of a kind we had never seen before, and we gave him in turn some of our cloth to cover himself with.[7] We stayed in that place for a time, and bartered more goods with them, and traded some of our lusterware for some of their wares. The people craft peculiar and beautiful ceramics, with ingenious patterns upon them. And we traded some of the rice for some strange fruits and fish, which were unknown to us, but sweet.
We did not stay in their village itself, but in the ships, though we could see some of them going out to fish. They do this in a most curious way, by stunning their fish with a type of plant which grows in the forest, and causing them to come up to the surface, where they simply collect them. And though we spoke to them again, Hadil could not speak their language, though from the words they spoke, we believe that the place was called Marayu, or Tambil.[8]
At that time, I decided that we would turn to the north and perform the qus al-bahr, for we had come out a long way and seen much as it was, and our food stores would only last for so long, even with the replenishment. As well, one of the male slaves had become very ill. I ordered the ships to turn away from the new land, to seek a current that might take us back to the Juzur al-Maghurin, and from there to Isbili.
~
A map of the Farthest West as it is known to Al-Andalus.[9]
~
“Where did
those come from?” Hajib Husayn asked intently, crossing one leg over the other as he gazed on the display before him.
With two yellow parrots on each arm, the grinning mariner - Abu’l-Hasan Ahmad from Isbili - inclined his head in as deep a bow as he could manage. “These are called
wirayubah, O Right Hand of the Caliph! They come from beyond the Ocean Sea, from the Farthest West. All of this comes from the Farthest West, really.”
“From beyond the Ocean Sea?” While his handlers had told him this merchantman had found something over the ocean, seeing evidence of it was still a surprise, and the Hajib found himself surveying all that the man had brought - not only the birds, but ceramic pots of a type he’d never seen before, an axe made from an odd greenish stone, and even two men and a young woman with features as sun-kissed as those of the Berbers, yet with a facial structure unlike any people he’d ever seen, even in a cosmopolitan city like Isbili.
Two of the men with Abu’l-Hasan Ahmed approached the throne and set the pair of pots down; Husayn could see that they were full of wads of what looked like cotton. “We were carried there by a great wind,” the merchantman explained with a broad gesture. “The land we found was no island! We sailed for days along its coast and it did not end. We even found a city of men!”
“A city?” the Hajib asked. “Who lives there?”
“We have brought back some of them,” the merchant explained with an effusive smile. “I regret that they are polytheists, but we have begun to teach them our language, and to show them God.” Here he gestured to the three, and the woman was led forward.
Her dark eyes were wide and darting, but she nevertheless folded her hands and bowed. “Peace be… upon you,” she managed haltingly, her voice light and with a heavy accent Husayn couldn’t recognize.
“And peace be upon you too.” Husayn inclined his head shallowly before looking towards the merchant again. “Do they all speak so?”
“She has learned the fastest,” Abu’l-Hasan Ahmad indicated. “We have conversed with her and read the Holy Quran to her, and she listens quite intently. She was very helpful in guiding us through the Farthest West.” His eyebrows came up. “But I believe that there is much more to that place, if I may present that to you.”
“More?” Sinking back in his seat, Husayn stroked his long beard with one hand. “Go on.”
“We could see the coastline stretching away from us as we sailed away, and islands strung out like pearls in the sea beyond. The further west we went, the more civilized the people became, until we reached the mound city.” The merchantman’s eyes gleamed. “If a return voyage could be funded, one even greater than this, we could seek to better know this world, that we may bring the word of God farther than it has ever gone!”
Farther than it has ever gone. Husayn’s eyes twinkled as he toyed with the thought - and he couldn’t deny the spark of excitement in his heart at the very idea.
"It's actually very good cotton," the merchant noted slyly.
“...What would you need to seek more of this new world of yours,” Husayn asked.
[1] One of the first things Al-Mustakshif does is trade some fancy pots for a couple Tupi slaves. In that respect he is more of a jerk than Columbus.
[2] And lo, the scarlet macaws came male and female, thus obliging Al-Mustakshif to feed a hold full of parrots on his way home.
[3] OTL Fortaleza. The people they encountered are the Potiguara tribe of Tupi-speaking peoples, who took their OTL exonym for their tendency to fish for shrimp. The names used here are derived from Tupi names for the sun parakeet.
[4] Ilha Upaon-Acu, the site of Sao Luis. It literally just means "big island." The river is the Mearim.
[5] The Amazon River pushes a huge plume of fresh water out into the ocean. Some of that fresh water bleeds along the coast east of the river, though most goes to the north.
[6] As you might expect, the mighty Amazon. It is named after the Tupi word
pa’ra - “River the size of the sea.” Also worth noting that the Andalusians preferentially use
wadi to describe a river - this seems to be peculiar to their culture. While Andalusian Arabic does have “p,” “g” and “ch,” these mostly appear in borrowed words they got from Hispano-Romans and Goths; in the New World, though, they’re trying to feel out what their native guide is saying and parse it in Arabic. Hence “Baraa,” with the stress on the second syllable, rather than “Paraa.”
[7] The Marajoara culture. Also, Al-Mustakshif's gimmick appears to be handing out clothes to naked people.
[8] Tambil comes from Marinatambal, a name used for the island by the natives.
[9] Expect to see more of this map as we proceed; there'll be many, many more micro-map updates and even some mega-map updates going forward as new discoveries are made.
SUMMARY:
August 24, 1337: The explorer Al-Mustakshif makes landfall in the Gharb al-Aqsa. Over the next few weeks, he makes contact with several groups of indigenous people, trading for and capturing six slaves, and visiting a mound-town settlement at the mouth of the Wadi al-Barra before returning home, where he gifts most of his take to Hajib Husayn of Andalusia. The Hajib authorizes the funding of a larger second voyage, instructing the explorer to learn more about the New World.
