Abd-ur-Razzaq

Abd-al-Razzaq Samarqandi 1: The Unwilling Envoy

Qāliqūṭ / Calicut as depicted in Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg’s atlas Civitates orbis terrarum, 1572

Qāliqūṭ / Calicut as depicted in Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg’s atlas Civitates orbis terrarum, 1572

It's 1442, and Shah Rukh, the son of Timur, is sending an ambassador to Qaliqut / Kozhikode on the Indian coast. That ambassador, Abd-al-Razzāq, sails from Hormuz and experiences delays, sickness, death, and disappointment. Making matters worse, he never actually wanted to go.

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Sources:

  • India in the Fifteenth Century: Being a Collection of Narratives of Voyages to India. Edited by Richard Henry Major. Hakluyt Society, 1857.

  • Alam, Muzaffar and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries, 1400–1800. Cambridge University Press, 2007.

  • Prange, Sebastian R. Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast. Cambridge University Press, 2018.