Detail from the Tabula Rogeriana (Note that south is up!) - Wikimedia
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One of the clear themes of this series has been its protagonist’s clearly apparent desire to be no such thing. It was no desire for glory that motivated his travels, no thirst for adventure or greed for plunder. He did not set out to spread his religious beliefs or to plant his people’s flag. He went as he was ordered to, pushed on by the tongues of his rivals, and he took no great pleasure in it. It’s an element of the story which I actually really enjoy.
This is not so much “great man history” as it is the consequences of the whims of those men, a scholar and administrator cast away from his home for a period of years under orders which he could not resist, an unwilling envoy flung by sea to the Indian subcontinent who, when it came time to write of his experiences, did not exactly hide his unhappiness. Life is short, and it had been willed that he was not to spend these years of his where he wanted. Sickness struck him. Death took those around him. The heat, at times, was beyond his comprehension. Perhaps most frustratingly, he could never quite escape the scheming, tongue-wagging ways of the court. He simply traded those of Timurid Herat for the city and empire of Vijayanagara.
Fortunately for Abd-al-Razzāq Samarqandī, his time there in that city far from home was at least coming to an end. This episode is the story of that coming to an end.
Hello and welcome. My name is Devon, and this Human Circus: Journeys in the Medieval World, the podcast that covers medieval history through the stories of its most interesting travellers. And the podcast is supported by a Patreon, a Patreon where, for 1, 3, or 5 dollars a month, you can enjoy early, ad-free, and extra listening, and you can help keep the podcast and its host happy, healthy, and otherwise well. You can do that at patreon.com/humancircus or via my website at humancircuspodcast.com. Thank you very much to everyone who has done so. I absolutely appreciate it.
And now, back to the story.
It will, as you might have noticed from the run-time, be a shorter episode today than usual. I generally aim to balance things out so that a series is going to be a run of full-length episodes of very roughly the same length, but sometimes it just doesn’t quite work out that way.
Last episode, we travelled with Abd-al-Razzāq to the heart of the Vijayanagara Empire, and the man who had come from Herat was impressed, something about imperial capitals maybe. Through him, we had his impressions of the city, a festival, the elephants, and we witnessed, third hand, an attempted usurpation and, at even more of a distance, a war. I talked about how Abd-al-Razzāq’s benefactor was drawn away by that war and how without him, Abd-al-Razzāq was further exposed to the malicious tongues of envious men, how that threatened his position there and deprived him of his allowance. That’s very much the mood as we rejoin the story.
Abd-al-Razzāq felt embattled, beset by those who spoke ill of him in the city and uncertain of what that might mean for him, but on the other hand there were reasons for optimism. There was the kindness he received from the emperor, Deva Raya II, who continued to ask after his health and show him favour as if nothing had changed. And then there was the return of that benefactor.
He came back fresh from the war and apparently very apologetic at having left our protagonist unattended to. The unpleasant fellow who had taken things over in his absence, and taken Abd-al-Razzāq’s allowance from him, was chastised. That funding was restored and a further lump sum immediately supplied to make up for what had been missed. Ambassadors were arranged who might make the trip to visit Shah Rukh and gifts were allotted to be taken on that trip. All was made well again, maybe.
And then the ambassador was called in for his audience of dismissal.
It’s hard to tell if this came as any kind of surprise to him. Had some kind of prearranged or earlier understood period simply come to its natural conclusion? Was it that Deva Raya now wanted to send those ambassadors of his own? Or had Abd-al-Razzāq’s presence in the city come to displease the emperor? From the text, it is not at all easy to tell. However, there seems to be at least a little ambivalence on Deva Raya’s part, and you can see that those rumours about the ambassador had reached his ears and had some effect on his thinking.
“It has been asserted that you were not really sent here by Shah Rukh,” he said to Abd-al-Razzāq, “or else we would have shown you greater attentions. If you come back on a future occasion into my territories you shall meet with a worthy reception.” Except that he didn’t exactly say this. Abd-al-Razzāq prefaces this apparent bit of dialogue by writing that the emperor “might as well have said,” leaving open the question of what he actually said.
Had Abd-al-Razzāq read too much into something that was said, or perhaps left unsaid, a certain coldness in his host’s mannerisms? He was perhaps by this point a little paranoid about what damage was being done to his reputation and had since the start seen the machinations of his enemies in placing him on this journey to begin with. But it was not all entirely in his own head in this case. There was also a letter, a letter from Deva Raya to Shah Rukh which we get a little of in the text and which also mentions those suspicions as to Abd-al-Razzāq’s position.
“Certain persons,” it reads, “have assured us that Abd-al-Razzāq was not in any way attached to the court of your majesty.” Clearly the words of those “certain persons” had made some impact upon him. It was not all in the ambassador’s head at all.
But honestly, even if the scheming of others had ushered him out the door a little ahead of schedule, I don’t think that he would have minded all that much. He’d been more taken with this location than Qaliqut, true enough, had found there more which he thought worthy to report. But that did not mean that he wanted to stay. Abd-al-Razzāq had written of what was in his head at that moment as the emperor had spoken of the possibility of his departure, of the thought that if he were ever to be able to reach his own country, then he would never leave it again, “not even in the company of a king,” not for all the imperial trappings that he might possibly find on such a voyage.
Whatever the circumstances of his departure, whatever the reasons, the timing, Abd-al-Razzāq was going home and feeling pretty powerfully okay with it, and just in case the reader is left in any doubt as to how he was feeling, he makes it very, very clear.
Quote:
“The sun of the divine mercy displayed itself above the horizon of happiness. The star of fortune arose to the east of my hopes. The bright glimmer of joy and satisfaction showed itself in the midst of the darkness of night… .
Those nights of affliction and weariness, passed in the sad abode of idolatry and error, were succeeded by the breaking of the dawn of happiness, and the brilliant out-shining of the sun of prosperity; and the evening, which was full of the anxieties of weakness, became changed into days of gladness and confidence.”
Abd-al-Razzāq evidently did not feel at all bad about leaving the splendour of imperial Vijayanagara. In fact, he was absolutely giddy with anticipation.
On the 5th of November, in the year 1443, he left Vijayanagara, and on the 23rd of that same month he was back on the coast. Back for a visit with a much-renowned man of wisdom who was apparently 120 years old. Back for the unfortunate death of one of Deva Raya's ambassadors, for as one translation of the text puts it, “Under this vault, the dwelling of evil, who knows in what spot our head will rest beneath the brink of the tomb!”
Abd-al Razzāq and the remains of the party were in the port of Honnavar arranging for a vessel and for provisions enough for 20 on a 40 day voyage, and he was entering into yet another quite emotionally expressive portion of what was, as you’ll have noticed, a pretty expressive text.
He had been nervous to again put to sea for all that he wished to leave, but then a bit of reading put his mind at ease. As he opened a work written by Ja'far al-Sadiq, his eyes fell upon a passage that seemed to speak directly to him and his situation.
“Fear nothing,” it told him, “for you have been preserved from the hand of unjust men.”
It said nothing of being preserved from the ocean storms, but it was enough to reassure him. He felt his anxieties about the trip ahead lift from his heart, and on a late January day in the year 1444, he departed. He had no idea then that all those anxieties were soon going to be rushing back, bringing with them with every reason to succumb.
The crossing started well enough, or so it seems from the text. There is mention of pleasant conversation among the company and a general sense of contentment and optimism, but then they hit the open sea.
The winds surged about as if having drunk too much wine, and it seemed that same wine was also having an effect on their boat itself, the way its planks threatened to drift apart in every direction. The sailors who were best able to swim wished to hurl themselves into the sea. The captain cried bitter tears and forgot all his skills of sailing and navigation. The merchants cast off their worldly riches into the water. And yes, I do think there’s some dramatic exaggeration going on here. The captain surely was concerned, but I doubt there were that many sailors who were keen to toss themselves to the waves, no matter how good they were at swimming.
But though Abd-al-Razzāq may have been milking the tale for everything it was worth in the telling, it’s not hard to believe that he was genuinely very frightened. He saw before him all of the horrors which the ocean had to offer, and with dry lips and tears in his eyes, he gave himself up to what might come. The waves heaved him up to a great towering height, into the very skies, then sent him diving down into the depths below, and then back up again, over and over. However historically well established this crossing may have been by this point, it was still very new to him, indeed absolutely terrifying to him, and he did not conserve his words in saying so.
His body melted like salt dissolving in the water. The sea, in his anxieties, became a flaming sword. His own breath was like a sharp weapon that tore at his soul.
Abd-al-Razzāq prayed. He implored god not to put him upon too heavy a burden for him to bear. He pondered his situation, “unable to snatch [his] precious life from the fury of the waves of death.” It was an unhappy moment out there on the ocean, a moment that stretched for days, and he had time to think on his work, on his mission there on behalf of Timur’s son, Shah Rukh, work in which he could not, quote, “bring to the surface of the water the pearl of [his] exertions.”
“If the man of sincerity casts [his loyalty to] his king into the fire of events,” he mused, “his nature, like that of a gem, must show no alteration in the smallest atom; or rather the gold of his loyalty, after the manner of pure gold, becomes still more refined."
How did he feel he had measured up? How did he evaluate his own efforts? He’d never wanted to come in the first place, but what was he thinking of the whole journey now that he thought he might die in carrying it out? Or, to ask a different question, was he thinking about such things at all as the world appeared and disappeared behind walls of water, or were there more pressing matters on his mind then? Did this extended meditation on what a man owes to his benefactor only enter the narrative when Abd-al-Razzāq sat down to report what had befallen him on this journey?
He was in the midst of these reflections, he says, when the hurricane became a favourable wind and the sea then became calm. The trial had passed. He and his fellow passengers celebrated at sea and in mid-March, 1444, saw land. The new moon looked down upon them like a friendly spirit as the damaged ship reached the port of Muscat in present-day Oman.
While the travellers rested at Muscat, they waited as the ship underwent repairs. And it was hot, brutally so and beyond Abd-al-Razzāq’s experience, at least since the last time he’d passed through the region. It was hot enough one night that they thought the daybreak would set the Earth on fire, hot enough to scorch the birds in the sky and the fish in the depths. Pretty hot.
By late April, the party had reached port in Hormuz, and that very day, the ambassador’s brother in Herat heard from a holy man of his arrival there. Abd-al-Razzāq was coming home. The heat was bad, and he was sick again, at times unable to leave a litter, but he was making his somewhat overwrought way toward Herat.
They went north, overland, and then northeast to Kerman in the company of a powerful man and his retinue, staying with them all the way to Herat, and reaching that city in January of 1445. Three years had passed since their departure. Three years, and some might have considered the whole thing something of a failure or at least not an overwhelming success. Some even told our traveller exactly that, like an official they’d encountered in Kerman.
“What a good trade,” that official is reported to have snidely remarked on the embassy to India. “Giving fifty thousand dinars and getting back ten thousand.”
Clearly, not everyone saw the diplomatic mission as money well spent, but fortunately for Abd-al-Razzāq, that view appears to have been in the minority. The very next day after his arrival, he and the surviving envoys from Vijayanagara made an appearance at the Timurid court. He sat before his lord, and he told of his travels and all he’d seen, of “the rulers of those realms, and [his] adventures on the sea and in the ship.” Having been dispatched on this journey at the urging of his enemies, he now presented himself before Shah Rukh as the centre of attention, spinning tales of near-sinkings, dreadful heat, and all the strange sights of distant lands. He could talk of the deeds and doings he had witnessed abroad, the “novelties of the kingdoms of the infidels,”and he could soak up the praise, both there in his presence and then later, reported to him.
Shah Rukh would often summon Abd-al-Razzāq to hear these stories. He was a diplomatically enthusiastic ruler, his envoys active out in the world, and this was surely something he enjoyed, hearing tell of all that this world contained, its places, their peoples and customs. And you might remember that in the Clavijo series, while Timur was still alive and in power, Shah Rukh had invited the Castilian traveller to come visit him in Herat. That man in Kerman had not been a fan of Abd-al-Razzāq’s mission, but Shah Rukh seems not to have been disappointed by what he heard and that, surely, was what really mattered against that critic in Kerman, the scheming of his rivals at court, and the jealous slander of those men from Hormuz.
As for those men, there too Abd-al-Razzāq would now receive satisfaction. Shah Rukh was very likely quite annoyed at his representative being so troubled and inconvenienced, and a demand was sent out to the vizier in Hormuz to provide an explanation. It was eventually agreed that Abd-al-Razzāq would receive five slaves and a quantity of cloth for what he’d suffered, compensation and also no small amount of vindication.
The diplomats who had accompanied him from Vijayanagara remained in Herat for three months, during which they were received at court twice a week. They had brought gifts with them, gems and aromatics, and they returned with horses, money, and other presents. They also returned with another of Shah Rukh’s men, not Abd-al-Razzāq this time, carrying a letter.
One of the two envoys was there not on the behalf of Deva Raya but that of a sultan in exile at Deva Raya’s court. In his letter, Shah Rukh urged Deva Raya to restore this exile to power in his homeland or else, quote, “send him to our court that we may equip him with soldiers of the world, and God’s destiny willing, return him to the land of his fathers and forefathers, and seat him on the throne of the sultanate,” in Delhi.
That diplomatic conversation, begun by Abd-al-Razzāq’s unplanned visit to Vijayanagara, would continue, but it would do so without our main character, and it will do so without us. That is not our story.
Abd-al-Razzāq had a long life still to live. After Shah Rukh’s death, just a few years after these events, he would serve other Timurid rulers in various capacities at Samarkand and then back again at Herat. He would travel again, though on military campaign, and not again to India. He would write, among other texts, his work of history, his chronicle, “The rise of the two auspicious constellations and the junction of the two seas.” And he would continue his studies. This was a well rounded character, by no means a diplomat first and foremost but an accredited scholar of Islam who would come to occupy a position that reflected this aspect of his life, in the city of Herat, at a Ḵānaqāh and Madrasa. He would still be there when he died in 1482.
As for his account of the trip to India, for his part, Abd-al-Razzāq concluded in the following way.
“It is hoped that the intelligent readers, ‘May they be happy and achieve excellence,’ would not look with an overly critical eye at the account of the voyage to Hindustan even if it has dragged on too long. These details that I have given, and that have been accumulated, result from the dictum, ‘Those who receive orders are helpless.’”
I do not speak, even if it is I who speak.”
I think that’s an intriguing note to end on. And that is where we’ll end this little series on Abd-al-Razzāq Samarqandī. I do hope that you’ve enjoyed it.
If you are listening on the Patreon feed, then please do keep listening, for a little something on medieval cheats and charlatans. Either way, thank you for listening. I’ll talk to you soon.