Like most legends, the Sinbad stories say at least as much about the time and place where they were told as about the places they describe. However, there was genuine continuity between the two; culturally, those stories may be a product of the later medieval Islamic world, but that world remembered earlier ages, spoke the same language, followed the same religion, and looked back to those earlier times with nostalgia and respect.
The Nights and the Sinbad cycle may have originated in Persia or even India, but the tales took something like their modern form in the coffee-houses and bazaars of the Arab world. The Nights probably arrived through Iraq in the 8th–10th centuries; the oldest surviving versions (without the Sinbad stories) come from medieval Syria, but the city most often associated with the telling of these tales is perhaps Cairo, in Egypt. Copies of the collection were circulating there by the 11th or 12th century, and European scholars acquired Arabic manuscripts and print editions there in the 18th and 19th centuries. So these are medieval stories seen through an Ottoman-period filter and probably influenced by European attempts to pin down shifting, unstable sources.
The Nights stories are set in many times and places, often just in a vague fantasy realm, but many of them, including the Sinbad stories, are supposedly set in the time of the Abbasid Caliph Haroun al-Rashid. The reason for this tradition is that Haroun’s reign (786–809 AD) was seen as a time of greatness, when wonderful things were happening in the Muslim world, particularly among the Arabs.
To start with, the Abbasid dynasty claimed the title of caliph. This means more than ‘emperor’; a caliph claims to be the ‘Successor to the Prophet Mohammed’, a religious as well as a secular leader. It is generally implied that the caliph should have authority over most or all of the Muslim world, although this wasn’t always the case in practice, especially when there were multiple claimants.
The Caliph Haroun al-Rashid, legendary ruler of Baghdad and most of the rest of the Muslim world in Sinbad’s supposed time. Haroun is mentioned in the story of Sinbad’s sixth voyage, and makes a brief appearance in the alternative version of his seventh. (Bridgeman Art Library)
After Mohammed died in 632 AD, there was disagreement over who should lead his followers, with the title of caliph being created for this leader. Although there was always dispute about the rules for selecting the caliph, most early claimants were related to the prophet by blood in some way. After four caliphs selected from among Mohammed’s close followers and family, the title fell to the Umayyad family, distant cousins of the prophet, who ruled for nearly a century until deposed (at least in the Middle East) by the Abbasids in 750 AD.
The Abbasid family, descendants of one of Mohammed’s uncles, built an efficient administration, a luxurious court, and the city of Baghdad. However, they were unable to control the vast conquests accumulated in the early years of Islamic expansion, and handed whole provinces off to semi-independent governors, even permitting some distant provinces to break away entirely.
Haroun was one of the greatest Abbasids, and Arabs have long tended to mythologize him. He fought successful wars against the Byzantines, made alliance with China, and may have exchanged ambassadors with Europe’s Charlemagne. His vizier for much of his reign was Yahya, a member of the Persian family of Barmakids; Yahya’s son Ja’far seems to have been Haroun’s personal friend. However, in 803 Haroun fell out spectacularly with the Barmakids, and had Ja’far executed and the rest of the family arrested. Ja’far too appears in some Arabian Nights tales, usually as Haroun’s loyal right-hand man, while modern Hollywood ‘Arabian fantasy’ movies usually seem to feature a duplicitous vizier or evil wizard named ‘Jafar’.
After Haroun, Abbasid power went into decline; there were revolts during his reign and a war between his sons after his death. By the 11th century, the Abbasids were unable to stop the Seljuq Turks from taking over the Abbasid heartlands in Iraq, although the dynasty later managed something of a comeback and survived in Baghdad until 1258. In that year, the Abbasid Caliph al-Musta’sim was killed by the Mongols, and the ‘Islamic Golden Age’ came to an end.
Later rulers also claimed the title of caliph; the last major claimants were the Ottoman Turks, who lasted until the beginning of the 20th century. But the Abbasids were widely respected in retrospect, and Haroun became an important historical figure.
Haroun’s capital, Baghdad, was founded on the River Tigris in 762 AD as the Abbasid capital, moving the centre of power away from the previous capital of Damascus and closer to the homelands of their Persian civil service (Baghdad is just 19 miles from the old Persian capital of Ctesiphon). The city had access to good water supplies as well as trade routes, and was carefully planned by the Caliph Mansur, grandfather of Haroun.
The core of the city was designed on a circular plan about a mile in diameter, enclosing parks and gardens as well as residential, government, and commercial buildings, with the city mosque at the centre. However, the bazaars were deliberately placed outside the walls of the Round City; Mansur didn’t want spies or assassins sneaking in among crowds of shoppers.
Haroun also made the city a centre of learning. Baghdad became a fabulously wealthy and impressive city during his reign, known officially as ‘the City of Peace’ or ‘the Abode of Peace’, and poetically as ‘the Bride of the World’.
Medieval Baghdad, at least as imagined by many lovers of the Arabian Nights.
Basrah is essentially the primary sea port for Iraq (although it doesn’t have deep enough water for large modern ships), and hence for Baghdad. Founded in the early days of Islamic power, it lies 280 miles as the crow flies down-river from the capital, where the Tigris and the Euphrates join to form the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which then flows down to the sea. Like Baghdad, it gained a reputation as an intellectual centre under the Abbasids, but most of all, it has always been a port.
Sailors had been operating in the Indian Ocean region since long before recorded history. The ancient Egyptians sent fleets down the Red Sea, and there is evidence of sea trade between Bronze Age Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. Early sailors would have hugged the coasts, but it is thought that Greek sailors in the Hellenistic period worked out how to use the summer monsoon winds to sail direct from Arabia and the Horn of Africa to India, returning with the winter monsoon. By the time of the Roman Empire, traders were travelling from Roman-controlled territory to Ceylon, the Ganges Delta, the Malay Peninsula, and even China.
Political instability sometimes disrupted such trade, but the rise of Islam at the western end of the trade routes and the T’ang dynasty in China brought centuries of stability, and Persian and then Arab sailors not only reached China, but settled there. There was, apparently, a healthy Muslim community near the city of Guangzhou (Canton) by the 8th century, though unfortunately its members were not above dubious behaviour, looting warehouses during a period of political chaos in 758 AD and being banned from the city for some years as a result. But they were allowed back in eventually, and Guangzhou was known in Arabia as an important if distant trade city. Sinbad’s seventh tale, in which he visits the ‘City of China’, is blown to the ‘furthest ocean of the world’, and ends up in a remote city whose citizens follow strange and uncanny customs, but which still has Muslim residents, recalls this era of difficult but enduring trade between Iraq and coastal China.
But China was a long way away, and many of the stops on the way – India, Sri Lanka, Malaya – offered profits in their own right. Equally, Arab traders ventured down the east coast of Africa as far as Madagascar. The China trade probably went into decline after 878 AD, when Chinese rebels massacred the foreign merchant community in Guangzhou; both the T’ang dynasty and the Abbasids were fading by then. Still, Indian Ocean trade continued for centuries. However, it was never entirely safe; even in the early 20th century, it is said, one in ten voyages across the Indian Ocean did not reach its destination. And Sinbad’s stories reflect more than relatively routine journeys from Arabia to India; they look like fantasy versions of expeditions to Sumatra or China, one-off ventures to make a captain’s reputation and a merchant’s fortune.
In any case, by the 14th century, the Chinese end of the route seems to have been controlled by Chinese ships. Then, in 1498, the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama arrived in East Africa and hired an Arab navigator to get him to India. From then on, the big, sophisticated new European ships arrived in the region in ever-growing numbers, and long-range Arab navigation went into long-term decline.
But it never entirely vanished, even if Arab sailors largely reverted to being coast-hugging local traders. Trade fleets were sailing out of Arabia more or less in living memory, and Arab dhows still operate in the region, although motors largely replaced sails in the second half of the 20th century.
The dhow is certainly the type of ship traditionally associated with Arab sailing and the Sinbad stories. Despite the widespread introduction of engines, it is usually defined as a wooden sailing vessel with one or two masts; the size can vary a fair amount, and there is a large range of sub-types.
A modern Arab sailor aboard a dhow. The vessels on which Sinbad travelled would have been similar – but without the metal fixtures or the modern cargo. (© Marion Kaplan / Alamy)
Although it is thought of as an Arab vessel, the dhow may have partly evolved in India, and a lot of Arab dhows were certainly built there, or constructed of Indian wood, usually teak or coconut; Arabia is notoriously short of trees. Wood used in shipbuilding in Oman could come from the Malabar coast, nearly 1,300 miles away. Coconut trees were also important because these ships were built without nails; the planks were sewn together with coconut-fibre cords. Iron nails only came into use in the 15th century. Sewn ships may not be as robust in general, but they may have been more flexible and able to withstand being run ashore, and they were almost certainly significantly cheaper to build.
Dhows are generally assumed to have triangular lateen sails, especially these days, and the Arabs have traditionally been credited with inventing that type of rigging, but some modern scholars now dispute this, suggesting that lateen sails originated in the Mediterranean. Whatever the details, though, the lateen rig certainly became the standard. It makes ships efficient and manoeuvrable, but a basic lateen is not very good at tacking, and can be dangerous to handle in a storm; hence, dhow sailors depended on the reliability of the monsoon system. By timing their voyages correctly, they could be sure that the wind would be blowing the way they wanted to go, and could usually avoid storms.
The medieval Islamic world extended from Spain to Sumatra and East Africa, and while it was not always at peace, it was culturally fairly unified. Hence, travellers could seriously contemplate travelling from one end of it to the other, and stories such as those of Sinbad, of journeys to lands far beyond the horizon, would not have sounded totally incredible.
The greatest real-life traveller of that world – perhaps the nearest thing to a real-life Sinbad – was Ibn Battuta, a native of Morocco. Unlike Sinbad, Ibn Battuta travelled by land as well as sea, often with a retinue of servants and even a harem, but he too suffered shipwrecks and pirates.
Ibn Battuta, the medieval traveller whose journeys perhaps resembled Sinbad’s as closely as could anything in reality. (© Classic Image / Alamy)
He was born in 1304 into a family of legal scholars, and at the age of 21 he set out on the traditional Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, by way of Egypt. Somewhere along the way he developed an overwhelming wanderlust, and also decided to study under as many Islamic scholars and mystics as he could. This in turn gave him unique qualifications as a judge, allowing him to find employment in every city and court.
According to his book, Rihla (‘The Journey’), he took some detours after arriving in Egypt, eventually reaching Mecca via Damascus. Then, he travelled on through Persia, Basrah, and Baghdad to Mongol-controlled central Asia, returned to Mecca for a while, took a trip to East Africa, doubled back to Mecca, then decided to visit India by joining a caravan from Turkey. However, he ended up visiting the court of the Mongol Golden Horde, and claimed to have visited the Crimea and what is now Russia. Then, after joining a court visit to Constantinople, he finally headed back through Asia to Afghanistan and India.
In India, he spent a few years working for the sultan of Delhi, who turned out to be dangerously unstable; Ibn Battuta escaped his court by being sent on a diplomatic mission to China. Unfortunately, he ran into bandits and was delayed for a while in southern India, but he was determined not to report failure, so he travelled on, detouring to the Maldives, where he spent a while as a courtier and chief judge. Still aiming for China, he sailed on via Sri Lanka, only to suffer shipwrecks and pirate attacks. Reaching Sumatra by a tortuous route, he took ship again and reached China via Malaya, Vietnam, and the Philippines. After a stint there, including (he claimed) a visit to Beijing, he finally decided to head home, via India, Basrah, Baghdad, Damascus (where he witnessed the Black Death), Mecca, and Sardinia, coming home after 24 years.
However, he was not quite done with travel; the next year, he volunteered to help defend Muslim Granada from a threatened Christian invasion, then when that proved unnecessary, he turned tourist. A year or two after that, he made a trip to Mali and Timbuktu in West Africa, before finally settling down in Morocco.
Only then did he write his book, or rather dictate it from memory to a professional writer. Not everyone believes every word of it; some descriptions are clearly lifted from older sources, and there are serious discrepancies, especially concerning his supposed visit to Russia; some scholars also doubt that he actually reached China. However, the mere fact that it would have been possible to patch such a tale together, and that people at the time were prepared to treat it as fact, says a lot about the Muslim world of the 14th century.
Lastly, the earliest dhows were almost certainly all ‘double-ended’, coming to a point at bow and stern, but later large designs had square sterns, sometimes highly decorated.
Arab seamen recognized three grades of navigators. The first grade simply knew a set of coastlines and their landmarks, and so could be trusted to sail along them, avoiding dangers but not venturing out of sight of land. The second grade could handle journeys across open water, but only by following standard routes direct from one point to another. As the Arabs knew how to determine latitude by observation of the stars, this may often have been a matter of staying on the right line of latitude for a given destination. The third and highest grade, the mu’allim, was trusted to operate freely out of sight of land, using those stellar navigation techniques and a lot of experience to determine the ship’s position.
The Arabs seem to have acquired the magnetic compass from China at some point, and perhaps passed it to Europe during the Crusades. However, it was never used very much in the Indian Ocean.
The captains of the ships on which Sinbad sails seem to be mu’allim, as they use mysterious techniques, incomprehensible to everyone else, to determine positions even when well off any known route. However, if they are mu’allim, they are often very unlucky; they keep ending up in places where they know they do not want to be.
Perhaps the biggest reason for all this seafaring was the spice trade. Spices have long been a valuable commodity, and many of them originated in India or points east of there. Growing them elsewhere is often difficult, so they usually had to be transported – by sea, the most efficient means, when possible. In fact, it was a desire to break the Venetian monopoly on the European end of the spice trade that sent the Portuguese into the Indian Ocean in the 15th century. Pepper (from Indonesia) may be the oldest trade-spice, while cloves (from the same area) and cinnamon (from India and Sri Lanka) were also known from ancient times, and show up in the stories. Sinbad could have dealt profitably in nutmeg and mace, too; they originate from a few remote islands in Indonesia.
But spices were not the only valuable product available. For example, the original texts mention diamonds and other precious stones, camphor, coconuts, aloes (a family of plants, actually native to Africa, with medical uses), ambergris, and ivory. Fragrant woods, used in perfumes and incense, were greatly valued in China; agarwood, featured in the story of Sinbad’s sixth voyage, is actually a dark, resinous, highly aromatic wood which forms in the trunks of certain tree species when they suffer a mould infection, and comes mostly from southeast Asia, while in Sinbad’s time, sandalwood would have come from an Indian species.
Unloading cargo in Oman. To this day, trade on the Indian Ocean sometimes seems little changed from the ‘Age of Sinbad’. (© Marion Kaplan / Alamy)
For that matter, the relatively ordinary wood from which Arab ships were built was itself quite a valuable resource, as discussed above. Other local trade items included amber, iron and other metals, and palm wine, along of course with supplies of food for the ships’ crews and materials used in maintaining their vessels.