Accounts of China and India: merchants’ reports on the sea route to Guangzhou
In the year 237 of the Hijra (851/852) an unknown author, drawing on the reports of merchants and sailors such as a certain Sulayman, compiled in Arabic an account of the sea route from Siraf in the Persian Gulf through southern India and the Malay Peninsula to Khanfu (Guangzhou), with notes on the kingdoms and customs of India and China. One of the earliest Arabic accounts of China, it describes a Muslim community at Guangzhou with its own judge appointed by the Chinese authorities.
- Date
- between 851 and 852exact date unknown: an interval is given
- Place
- Siraftoday: Bandar Siraf, Bushehr Province, Iran · Middle East and Egypt
- Route
- Siraf → Kulam Mali (Kollam) → Ceylon → Nicobar Islands → Kalah (Kalah Bar), Malay Peninsula → Khanfu (Guangzhou)
- Participants
- Tang dynasty, Abbasid Caliphate
- Threads
- Middle East and Egypt (6th–10th c.)
- Also known as
- Akhbar al-Sin wa al-Hind; Relation de la Chine et de l'Inde; Voyages of Sulayman the Merchant; Sulayman al-Tajir; Ахбар ас-Син ва-ль-Хинд; Путешествие купца Сулеймана; Сулейман ат-Таджир
The book survives in a single manuscript, now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, together with a sequel by Abu Zayd al-Sirafi, a man of Siraf who settled in Basra around 916 and who states that the first part was composed in the year 237 of the Hijra. It is often called the ‘Voyages of the merchant Sulayman’, but Sulayman is named only once, as the source of a report about Guangzhou. Reinaud already denied that Sulayman wrote it himself, and Jean Sauvaget concluded that he was only one of the informants of an anonymous compiler who gathered the accounts of several travellers.
The text follows the sea route from Siraf, where cargoes were transshipped, to Kulam Mali on the south-west coast of India, past Ceylon and the Nicobar Islands to Kalah Bar on the Malay Peninsula, and through the straits to Khanfu, as Arab and Persian writers called Guangzhou. It describes the kingdoms and customs of India and of China under the Tang — among other things tea and fine pottery — and the Muslim of Khanfu appointed by the Chinese authorities to judge disputes among the Muslims there and to lead their prayers at festivals.
Later geographers such as al-Mas'udi drew on the book, and Sauvaget, who edited its first part in 1948, called it the oldest surviving record of travel to China, four and a half centuries before Marco Polo. Abu Zayd’s sequel tells how the trade was cut short when the rebels of Huang Chao sacked Khanfu in 878 or 879 and killed, according to the ‘experts on Chinese affairs’ he cites, 120,000 Muslims, Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians — a figure that cannot be checked.
Connections
Related events
- The Kavirajamarga, the earliest Kannada work on poeticsc. 850 · South Asiathe Accounts report that Indians and Chinese count four great kings in the world — the caliph, the emperors of China and Byzantium and, last, the Balhara, the Rashtrakuta king (then Amoghavarsha I)
- Mihira Bhoja and the Pratihara empire of Kannaujc. 836 – c. 885 · South Asiathe Accounts say that the king of the Gurjaras (Jurz) has the finest cavalry in India and that no Indian king is a greater enemy of Islam
- Huang Chao rebellionbetween 874 and 875 – 13 July 884 · East Asiacontinuing the Accounts, Abu Zayd al-Sirafi wrote that when Huang Chao took Khanfu, usually identified with Guangzhou, his men massacred 120,000 foreigners — a figure he attributes to ‘experts on Chinese affairs’
Same participants
- Zhang Yichao drives the Tibetans out of Dunhuang848 · Central and Northern Asiavia Tang dynasty
- The House of Wisdom and the translation movement in Baghdadc. 800 – c. 900 · Middle East and Egyptvia Abbasid Caliphate
- Ifriqiya under the Aghlabids800 – March 909 · Africavia Abbasid Caliphate
- Nanzhao takes Songping and holds Annam863–866 · Southeast Asia and Oceaniavia Tang dynasty
Adjacent events in the thread
- Ahmad ibn Tulun rules Egypt: al-Qata'i and the Mosque of Ibn Tulun15 September 868 – 10 May 884 · Middle East and Egypt
Meanwhile in the world
Other regions, within a year of this event
Western and Central Europe
- Aghlabid conquest of SicilyJune 827 – 1 August 902
Eastern Europe
- Saltovo-Mayaki culturec. 750 – between 900 and 950
- The Khazar rulers adopt Judaismbetween 740 and 861
Balkans and Anatolia
- Leo the Mathematician heads the school of the Magnaurabetween 843 and 866
Africa
- Ifriqiya under the Aghlabids800 – March 909
- Igbo-Ukwu: bronze casting in the West African forest800–899 – 1100–1199
Central and Northern Asia
South Asia
- The tripartite struggle for Kannaujbetween 783 and 790 – between 915 and 918
- Devapala’s Nalanda charter for the monastery of Balaputrabetween 844 and 860
- The Kavirajamarga, the earliest Kannada work on poeticsc. 850
- Mahavira writes the Ganitasarasangrahac. 850
- Vijayalaya takes Thanjavur: the rise of the Cholasc. 850
+ 1 event
North America
Latin America
- Classic Maya collapse in the southern lowlandsc. 800 – c. 950
- Rise of Chichén Itzá in northern Yucatánc. 800 – between 900 and 1000
- Wari culture and the Middle Horizon state in the Central Andesc. 600 – c. 1000
- Tiwanaku culture at its height by Lake Titicacac. 600 – c. 1000
- Cacaxtla and Xochicalco: the Epiclassic cities of central Mexicoc. 650 – c. 900
The same period
Sources
- Wikipedia (English): Sulaiman al-Tajir
- Wikipedia (English): Abu Zayd al-Sirafi
- Wikipedia (English): Guangzhou massacre
- Wikipedia (French): Relation de la Chine et de l'Inde
- Abū Zayd al-Sīrāfī. Accounts of China and India / trans. T. Mackintosh-Smith. — New York: New York University Press, 2017. — (Library of Arabic Literature).
- Sauvaget J. (ed., trans.) Aḫbār aṣ-Ṣīn wa l-Hind: Relation de la Chine et de l’Inde, rédigée en 851. — Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1948.
- Chaffee J. W. The Muslim Merchants of Premodern China: The History of a Maritime Asian Trade Diaspora, 750–1400. — Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
- Wikidata: Q12213210