IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
| 468 TRAVELS OF IBN BATUTA IN BENGAL, CHINA, 6,01 It was verdant and beautiful ; most of its trees being coco-palms, areca-palms, clove-trees, Indian aloes, jack-trees,' Mangoes, Jamtin,2 sweet orange trees, and camphor-canes. The port which they entered was called SARHA, four miles from the city of SUMATRA or Sumutra, the capital of the king called Malik Al-Dhahir, a zealous disciple of Islam, who showed the traveller much hospitality and attention. Ibn Batuta remained at the Court of Sumatra, where he appears i5 After sailing, he says, for one and twenty days along the coasts of the country belonging to Malik-Al-Dhahir, they arrived at MUL-JAwA,4 a region inhabited by Pagans, which had an extent of some two months' journey, and produced excellent aromatics, Shaki and Barki. For details on which see Fr. Jord., p. 13, and supra, p. 362. 2 The French editors render this Jambu, but the Jâmun which is meant here is quite another thing. On two former occasions (ii, 191 ; iii, 128) our traveller describes the fruit as being like an olive ; which would be as like the Jambu or Rose-apple as a hawk is like a handsaw. The Jâmun, which is common in Upper India and many other parts of the east, is really very much like an olive in size, colour and form, whilst the Jambu is at least as large as a duck's egg, in the different varieties exhibiting various shades of brilliant pink and crimson softening into white. Erskine, in a note to Baber, notices the same confusion by a former commentator, and the source of it appears to be that the Jâmun is called by botanists Eugenia Jambolana, the Rose-apple Eugenia Jambu, from which one must conclude them to be akin, though neither fruits nor trees have any superficial likeness (Baber's Memoirs, p. 325). 3 Respecting Malik-al-Dhahir, son of Malik-al-Salah, first Mahômedan King of Sumatra, see Dulaurier. The port of Sarha is identified by this scholar with Jambu Air, a village of the Batta coast between Pasei and Diamond Point. In that case the city of Sumutra or Samudra, which has given a name to the great Island, cannot have been so far west as Samarlanga (see supra, p. 86 ; Journ. Indian Archip., ii, 610; Journ. As., ser. iv, tom. ix, p. 124; Id., tom. xi, p. 94). 4 See in note F at the end of the narrative, the editor's reasons for supposing Mul-Jawa to be a continental country on the Gulf of Siam. | |||
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