Amitav Ghosh - In an Antique Land

T HE SLAVE OF MS H.6 first stepped upon the stage of modern history in 1942. His was a brief debut, in the obscurest of theatres, and he was scarcely out of the wings before he was gone againmore a prompters whisper than a recognizable face in the cast.

The slaves first appearance occurred in a short article by the scholar E. Strauss, in the 1942 issue of a Hebrew journal, Zion, published in Jerusalem. The article bore the title New Sources for the History of Middle Eastern Jews and it contained transcriptions of several medieval documents. Among them was a letter written by a merchant living in Adenthat port which sits, like a fly on a funnel, on the precise point where the narrow spout of the Red Sea opens into the Indian Ocean. The letter, which now bears the catalogue number MS H.6, of the National and University Library in Jerusalem, was written by a merchant called Khalaf ibn Iaq, and it was intended for a friend of his, who bore the name Abraham Ben Yij. The address, written on the back of the letter, shows that Ben Yiju was then living in Mangalorea port on the south-western coast of India. In Strausss estimation, the letter was written in the summer of 1483 AD .

In the summer of its writing, Palestine was a thoroughfare for European armies. A German army had arrived in April, led by the ageing King Conrad III of Hohenstaufen, known as Almn to the Arabs. Accompanying the king was his nephew, the young and charismatic Frederick of Swabia. The Germans struck fear into the local population. That year the German Franks arrived, wrote an Arab historian, a particularly fearsome kind of Frank. Soon afterwards, King Louis VII of France visited Jerusalem with his army and a retinue of nobles. Travelling with him was his wife, the captivating Eleanor of Aquitaine, the greatest heiress in Europe, and destined to be successively Queen of France and England.

It was a busy season in Palestine. On 24 June a great concourse of the crowned heads of Europe gathered near Acre, in Galilee. They were received by King Baldwin and Queen Melisende of Jerusalem, with their leading barons and prelates, as well as the Grand Masters of the Orders of the Temple and the Hospital. King Conrad was accompanied by his kinsmen, Henry Jasimirgott of Austria, Otto of Freisingen, Frederick of Swabia, Duke Welf of Bavaria, and by the margraves of Verona and Montferrat. Among the nobles accompanying the King and Queen of France were Robert of Dreux, Henry of Champagne, and Thierry, Count of Flanders.

Between festivities, the leaders of the crusading armies held meetings to deliberate on their strategy for the immediate future. There was a divergence of views amongst them, their enemies noted, but at length they came to an agreed decision to attack the city of Damascus For the Muslim rulers of Jordan and Syria, who had only just begun to recover from the first hundred years of the Crusades, this was a stroke of unexpected good fortune because Damascus was at that time the only Muslim state in the region that had friendly relations with the Crusader kingdoms.

On 24 July 1148 AD the greatest Crusader army ever assembled camped in the orchards around Damascus. Its leaders had some successes over the next couple of days, but the Damascenes fought back with fierce determination and soon enough the Crusaders were forced to pack up camp. But Turcoman horsemen hung upon their flanks as they withdrew, raining down arrows, and the retreat rapidly turned into a rout. After this battle the German Franks returned wrote the Arab historian who had so dreaded their arrival, to their country which lies over yonder and God rid the faithful of this calamity.