Abu Zayd al-Sirafi - Accounts of China and India

ACCOUNTS OF CHINA AND INDIA

LIBRARY OF ARABIC LITERATURE

EDITORIAL BOARD

GENERAL EDITOR

Philip F. Kennedy, New York University

EXECUTIVE EDITORS

James E. Montgomery, University of Cambridge

Shawkat M. Toorawa, Yale University

EDITORS

Sean Anthony, The Ohio State University

Julia Bray, University of Oxford

Michael Cooperson, University of California, Los Angeles

Joseph E. Lowry, University of Pennsylvania

Maurice Pomerantz, New York University Abu Dhabi

Tahera Qutbuddin, University of Chicago

Devin J. Stewart, Emory University

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Chip Rossetti

DIGITAL PRODUCTION MANAGER

Stuart Brown

ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR

Gemma Juan-Sim

FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM COORDINATOR

Amani Al-Zoubi

LETTER FROM THE GENERAL EDITOR

The Library of Arabic Literature series offers Arabic editions and English translations of significant works of Arabic literature, with an emphasis on the seventh to nineteenth centuries. The Library of Arabic Literature thus includes texts from the pre-Islamic era to the cusp of the modern period, and encompasses a wide range of genres, including poetry, poetics, fiction, religion, philosophy, law, science, history, and historiography.

Books in the series are edited and translated by internationally recognized scholars and are published in parallel-text format with Arabic and English on facing pages, and are also made available as English-only paperbacks.

The Library encourages scholars to produce authoritative, though not necessarily critical, Arabic editions, accompanied by modern, lucid English translations. Its ultimate goal is to introduce the rich, largely untapped Arabic literary heritage to both a general audience of readers as well as to scholars and students.

The Library of Arabic Literature is supported by a grant from the New York University Abu Dhabi Institute and is published by NYU Press.

Philip F. Kennedy

General Editor, Library of Arabic Literature

ABOUT THIS PAPERBACK

This paperback edition differs in a few respects from its dual-language hardcover predecessor. Because of the compact trim size the pagination has changed, but paragraph numbering has been retained to facilitate cross-referencing with the hardcover. Material that referred to the Arabic edition has been updated to reflect the English-only format, and other material has been corrected and updated where appropriate. For information about the Arabic edition on which this English translation is based and about how the LAL Arabic text was established, readers are referred to the hardcover.

ACCOUNTS OF CHINA AND INDIA

BY

AB ZAYD AL-SRF

TRANSLATED BY

TIM MACKINTOSH-SMITH

FOREWORD BY

ZVI BEN-DOR BENITE

VOLUME EDITOR

PHILIP F. KENNEDY

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

Copyright 2017 by New York University

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sirafi, Abu Zayd Hasan ibn Yazid, active 10th century author. | Mackintosh-Smith, Tim, 1961 translator. | Ben-Dor Benite, Zvi author of introduction.

Title: Accounts of China and India / by Abu Zayd Al-Sirafi ; translated by Tim Macintosh-Smith ; foreword by Zvi Ben-Dor Benite.

Other titles: Silsilat al-tawarikh. English.

Description: New York : New York University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016040524 (print) | LCCN 2016042538 (ebook) | ISBN 9781479830596 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781479862054 (e-book) | ISBN 9781479814428 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: ChinaDescription and travelEarly works to 1800. | IndiaDescription and travelEarly works to 1800.

Classification: LCC DS409 .S5713 2017 (print) | LCC DS409 (ebook) | DDC 915.104dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040524

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.

Series design and composition by Nicole Hayward

Typeset in Adobe Text

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In memory of my aunt, Elsie Florence Harrison, who showed me the way that led to Arabia, India, and China

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

ZVI BEN-DOR BENITE

The Indian Ocean has been the site of travel, trade, war, and above all, transregional human history for several millennia. Written and literary evidence for it can be found even in early biblical narratives about King Solomon bringing ivory from India. But only with the appearance of the Accounts of China and India (Akhbr al-n wa-l-Hind) in the 9th and 10th centuries do we find a comprehensive account of the Indian Ocean. Accounts purports to be accounts about China and India, but in fact, it tells the story of the entire Indian Oceanits shape, its geography, its shores, and the countries and cultures behind them. It is very evident that the compilers of this work conceived of it in this more expansive way since in several places the narrative presents thoughtful discussions about the different civilizations flourishing on the oceans shores. Readers will find these discussions in various places throughout the work. In this respect Accounts of China and India is not merely a travelogue describing the regions between the Arab lands of the Eastern Gulf and the kingdoms of China and India. It is, rather, a world history, recounting the story of a nexus of human cultures in the 10th century.

That Accounts of China and India is a world history should come as no surprise. It draws on the accounts and practical experiences of Arab merchants that sailed to China and back, and is therefore one of the best examples of medieval Arab geography. Indeed, in the three centuries that followed the Arabs inheritance and practical unification of most of the Mediterranean and West Asian worldsfrom Andalusia in the west to the borders of China in the eastthey engaged in many ambitious geographical projects. The aim was to write and map the geography (and the history, since the two were inseparable)of the world as they knew it. Accounts can be seen as one the epitomes of this grand project. And China (al-n in Arabic), located beyond the eastern boundaries of the world, occupied a special place in the geographical imagination of the Arabs. By virtue of being a place where different lawsnatural, cultural, politicalprevailed, narratives about travel to China challenged, almost by necessity, notions about the world the Arabs themselves inhabited and about the inhabited world generally.

But Accounts of China and India is not only a geographically informed meditation about the world. Based on actual stories by real merchants and travelers, it gives us vivid detailed descriptions. Accounts is in fact one of the earliest foreign accounts of China during the Tang dynasty and indeed the fullest and the most detailed of its time. Its importance is invaluable, not only because it mentions events such as the Huang Chao rebellion (835884), but also, and principally, because of its detailed description of daily life in Canton, the main port city in Southern China during the Tang. We know much about the economic and commercial transformation that China underwent during the Tang dynasty, but we know much less about how foreign merchants, who played a vital role in it, experienced it.