After sailing from Kilwa, Ibn Battuta arrives at Dhofar.
Item
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Title
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After sailing from Kilwa, Ibn Battuta arrives at Dhofar.
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Description
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“From Kulwa we sailed to Dhafari [Dhofar], at the extremity of Yemen. Thoroughbred horses are exported from here to India, the passage taking a month with a favouring wind. Dhafari is a month’s journey from ‘Aden across the desert, and is situated in a desolate locality without villages or dependencies. Its market is one of the dirtiest in the world and the most pestered by flies because of the quantity of fruit and fish sold there. Most of the fish are of the kind called sardines, which are extremely fat in that country. A curious fact is that these sardines are the sole food of their beasts and flocks, a thing which I have seen nowhere else. Most of the sellers [in the market] are female slaves, who wear black garments. The inhabitants cultivate millet and irrigate it from very deep wells, the water from which is raised in a large bucket drawn up by a number of ropes attached to the waists of slaves. Their principal food is rice, imported from India. Its population consists of merchants who live entirely on trade. When a vessel arrives they take the master, captain and writer in procession to the sultan’s palace and entertain the entire ship’s company for three days in order to gain the goodwill of the shipmasters. Another curious thing is that its people closely resemble the people of Northwest Africa in their customs. In the neighbourhood of the town there are orchards with many banana trees…
The coco-palm is one of the strangest of trees, and looks exactly like a date-palm...One of its peculiarities is that oil, milk and honey are extracted from it. The honey is made in this fashion. They cut a stalk on which the fruit grows, leaving two fingers’ length, and one this they tie a small bowl, into which the sap drips. If this has been done in the morning, a servant climbs up again in the evening with two bowls, one filled with water. He pours into the other the sap that has collected, then washes the stalk, cuts off a small piece, and ties on another bowl. The same thing is repeated next morning until a good deal of sap has been collected, when it is cooked until it thickens. It then makes an excellent honey, and the merchants of India, Yemen, and China buy it and take it to their own countries, where they manufacture sweetmeats from it.”
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Source
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Gibb 113-115.
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Date
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1330
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Bibliographic Citation
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Ibn Batuta, Gibb, H. A. R. S., Sanguinetti, B. R., & Defremery, C. (1958). Travels of Ibn Battuta, A.D. 1325-1354. Cambridge: Published for the Hakluyt Society at the University Press.
