by Phil Masters
As I said, even after the hardships of my first two voyages, my foolish soul was full of the desire to see new things and of the greed for profit. And so, in time, I once again used some of my fortune to buy trade-goods, and ventured down to Basrah. There, I found a large ship with a good crew and several other merchants already aboard, and joined that company.
We sailed for some time, trading wherever we went and admiring the wonders of Allah’s creation. But then, one day, as we were running before a strong wind which was whipping up the waves, we heard the captain, who was on deck and scanning the horizons, burst into cries of lamentation. When we crowded round him, we saw him rend his clothes and pluck his beard in despair.
‘We are lost!’ he declared. ‘This wind has driven us to the Island of the Hairy Ones! No one ever escapes from those creatures!’
SAVAGE ISLANDS
The land of savage, dwarfish apes and monstrous giants that appears in the story of Sinbad’s third voyage is not the only island with dangerous inhabitants that Sinbad visits. During his fourth voyage, he meets a cannibal island tribe; in the alternative account of his seventh voyage, he meets piratical locals on the high seas, and is sold into slavery on a nearby island. Such tales doubtless originated with Arabian voyagers on the medieval Indian Ocean, who would have met a fair number of pirates and suspicious natives.
For example, according to Arab geographers, the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, were savage cannibals given to eating captured victims alive. In fact, the Andaman Islanders, members of an isolated ethnic group, were often violently hostile to foreign visitors (and one or two surviving tribes are still very cautious), but there is no good evidence of cannibalism.
Likewise, some expeditions would have skirted the northern coasts of Sumatra, whose inhabitants included the Batak people, who definitely did engage in ritual cannibalism. The idea of those cannibals met by Sinbad who fed their victims stupefying drugs before fattening them for slaughter may have come from the fact that hashish used to be employed as a spice in cooking in that part of the world. Further south, the inhabitants of Nias Island, west of Sumatra, long retained a formidable warrior culture, and sometimes engaged in head-hunting; Arab travellers also reported cannibalism.
And indeed, we saw that we were being driven towards an island that rose steeply and stark from the sea. Bare moments later, a horde of Hairy Ones came swarming like locusts, swimming out and surrounding the ship. They were hideous creatures, more like apes than men, barely three feet tall and covered in thick black fur, with glittering yellow eyes. They chittered among themselves, but the captain said that they never had dealings with men, so no one could learn to speak with them.
They clambered aboard the ship, and we dared not fight them, because it was certain that they could tear us apart by weight of numbers if they chose. They bit through our anchor cables and ropes with their sharp teeth, so that we could not control the ship, which quickly went aground on the island. Then they lifted us all up bodily and threw us ashore, then swarmed back to the ship and somehow took control of it, sailing it away we knew not where.
We had no choice but to see what there was on the island, and at least we soon found fruit trees and edible herbs, and a fresh spring. Then, looking further, we saw a building. It was a gigantic castle of dark stone, with double gates of ebony hanging open. Venturing inside, we found a central courtyard that seemed deserted, although we never found any entrance to the rest of the building. On one side was a heap of bones, and at the far end we saw a vast stone bench and an open oven. By the side of the oven was a stack of logs, all larger than a man, and a number of huge iron roasting spits, and above it hung an array of copper cooking-pots.
Exhausted by our ordeal and knowing not what more to do, for we had seen all there seemed to be on the island, we slumped down in the courtyard, the closest available thing to shelter, and fell into unhappy sleep. As darkness fell, though, we were all awakened by a noise like thunder that shook the ground beneath us. Looking up, we saw a vast figure scrambling down the outside of the castle. It was a giant in the shape of a man, but tall as a full-grown palm tree, jet black in colour with eyes like burning red sparks. It had a mouth like a dark well with teeth like a wild boar’s tusks, flapping lips like those of a camel hanging down to its chest, ears like boats hanging down to its shoulders, and fingernails like a lion’s claws.
Sinbad’s tale of the man-eating giant is obviously derived from the Greek legend of Odysseus and the one-eyed Cyclops. Hence, some illustrations, such as this one, show the giant with one eye, although the story doesn’t support this.
When this monster cast its gaze on us, we were paralysed with terror. It reached the ground, entered the courtyard, closed the double gates behind it, and sat for a few moments on the bench, contemplating us. Then it rose to its feet and came over to us. Suddenly, it reached out and grabbed my hand, and lifted me off the ground. It prodded and poked me all over with its fingers, and I felt that I was being examined as if by a butcher. But I had been left thin and wiry by travel and physical work, and it cast me aside. It did the same to several of my companions, until it came to the captain. He was a broad-shouldered stocky man, and the giant gave a horrible smile as it examined him.
It threw him on the ground and put its foot on his neck, breaking it. Then it took up one of the iron spits and thrust it through the poor man from mouth to backside. After that, it lit a fire in the oven and proceeded to roast the captain whole. When he was cooked, it took his body, tore it apart, and ate it as a man might eat a roast chicken. Then it lay down on the bench and went to sleep, snorting and snoring as we cowered in terror.
The next morning, the giant rose and departed, leaving us shivering in fear. ‘By Allah,’ we cried to each other, ‘better to have drowned, or to have been killed by the apes, than to be cooked and eaten!’ Once we were sure that the giant was gone for the time being, we ventured out of the ebony gates and spent the whole day searching the island for somewhere to hide. But there was nowhere.
The giant met by Sinbad and his companions during his third voyage is an enthusiastic man-eater, although the story suggests that it prefers its food cooked.
So it was that when night began to fall, and the cold winds began to beat on us, we wandered back to the poor shelter of the castle, wondering if the giant would return. Terror made us feeble, and we feared what it would do if it had to chase us. But our fears were realized; at sunset, we heard the sound like thunder, and the giant descended on us once again. It snatched up one of the merchants and killed and roasted and ate him, then fell asleep again on the bench.
The next morning, when the giant was gone, we gathered our wits and talked of our plight. ‘Better to throw ourselves in the sea and drown than to suffer this ghastly death,’ said one of my companions. ‘Listen!’ said another, ‘We must kill this monster! Such evil does not belong in the world!’
All agreed with this, and then I spoke. ‘Then let us build a raft,’ I said, ‘so that we may escape this island once we have done our best to stop this evil. If we are lucky, we may reach another island. If we are unlucky, we will drown, but at least we will die struggling against evil.’
The others approved of this, and so we spent the day dragging some of the logs from the giant’s firewood stack down to the shore. We lashed them together into a raft, which we loaded with such food and drink as we could muster. Then we retreated back to the shelter of the courtyard.
When night fell, all went as before; the giant descended on us, snatched up the stoutest of my companions, killed, cooked, and ate him, and fell asleep. Then, when we were sure that it was unconscious, we crept out from the corner of the courtyard and set to work. We took up two of the iron spits, and pushed them deep into the fire that was still burning in the oven. When they were glowing red, we formed two groups, pulled both spits from the fire, and moved as quietly as we could over to the monster.
On his third voyage, a shipwrecked Sinbad and his c
ompanions are exploring a huge palace when they are captured by a hideous giant – a man-eating monster which roasts its victims on great iron spits. After several of them have been killed and eaten, the travellers escape after blinding the giant with a pair of its own spits, which they first make red hot in the cooking fire.
By his own account, Sinbad, now an experienced adventurer, takes charge during this incident. Stealth is essential; only by attacking unexpectedly and simultaneously are the humans able to blind the giant and make any kind of escape from the island.
This depiction of The Man-Eating Giant by aRu-Mor is much more faithful to the story.
Then, on a signal, we stabbed the spits as hard as we could, deep into the giant’s two eyes, putting all our weight behind them.
But so huge was the monster that we did not pierce its brain, and so full of unholy vitality that even this did not kill it. It gave a horrifying cry and leapt to its feet, casting the spits aside as we were thrown back. We had completely blinded it, though, and it began to blunder around, waving its hands as we ducked and dodged. Then, groaning in agony, it felt its way to the ebony gates, pushed them open, and lurched away into the night.
We took our opportunity, and followed it through the gates. We ran down to the beach, pushed the raft out onto the waves, clambered aboard, and began paddling as best we could.
But behind us we heard a bestial roar, and looking back, we saw the giant returning. It was being guided by another of its own kind, a she-giant hideous as itself. She saw us, and howling curses in their monstrous language, she brought the male down to the shore. We were out to sea by then, and the giants had no taste for swimming. But instead, the giantess helped the male as they both picked up huge rocks, and then guided his arm as both of them began to hurl the boulders at us.
Fortunately, with the darkness and the distance, neither of them hit our raft square on. But the rocks were so huge that any which landed in the sea nearby swamped us, and one swept over us, killing several of my companions in one blow. By the time that we had paddled out of their range, all but three of us were dead.
SINBAD AND ODYSSEUS
Anyone who knows their classics will find the man-eating giant encountered by Sinbad during his third voyage, and the means by which it is escaped, more than a little familiar. In Homer’s Odyssey, a tale of a legendary voyager from Bronze Age Greece, Odysseus and his men meet a cyclops, a one-eyed giant named Polyphemus, who traps them in his cave and eats several of them. Odysseus offers Polyphemus some strong wine, and Polyphemus promises him a gift in exchange for his name. Odysseus says that his name is ‘Nobody’, and Polyphemus says that his gift will be that Odysseus will be eaten last. But Polyphemus then falls into a drunken sleep, and Odysseus and his men fire-harden a sharp stake in the fire and plunge it into the monster’s eye. When Polyphemus calls for help, his fellow cyclopes ask who has hurt him, and laugh when Polyphemus says ‘Nobody’.
The next morning, Polyphemus lets his sheep out to graze, sitting in the cave-mouth and feeling their backs to make sure that the humans aren’t slipping out with them. But Odysseus and his men tie themselves under the sheep, and so escape to their ship. However, Odysseus cannot resist taunting the giant, who hurls huge rocks towards the sound of his voice, nearly sinking the ship.
Other, fainter echoes of Homer, and of other classical tales, also appear in Sinbad’s stories; for example, the crewmen drugged by cannibals might recall Odysseus’s encounter with the lotus-eaters, while a predecessor of the roc appears in the Roman writer Lucian’s True History. But this doesn’t prove systematic borrowing; some story ideas just occur to more than one writer.
The medieval Arabs certainly knew about Homer; they had libraries full of classical literature. However, nobody translated the Odyssey into Arabic until the 20th century, and academic scholars of Greek were very different people from the storytellers who shaped the Sinbad cycle. It’s just as likely that Homer’s story survived in the oral tradition of the eastern Mediterranean, merging with Arab folk-tales. A similar tale of a one-eyed man-eating giant who is blinded and then slain by a hero certainly also appears in Turkish legends.
Unfortunately, it is very hard to guess exactly how the oral tradition worked across thousands of years and multiple languages, so the relationship between these stories may remain forever a mystery. Still, Sinbad and Odysseus, lost sailors facing monsters and the whims of fate, are definitely both part of a grand tradition.
The Greek legend of Odysseus and the Cyclops, as depicted here, is clearly the inspiration for events in the tale of Sinbad’s third voyage. (© The Art Archive / Alamy)
In this depiction of Sinbad’s escape from the island of the man-eating giants, there are more than two of the monsters, and none of them appear to have been blinded.
We three were now safe from the giants, but adrift on the ocean. We drifted for a full day and a night, until fortune brought us to another island and cast us up on the shore. There, exhausted by our ordeal, my two companions and I staggered up the beach and then fell and slept where we lay.
Barely had night come, however, when we awoke again. We were aghast to see that as we slept, a gigantic snake had coiled its body around us. Before we could act, it saw us move and reacted by snatching one of my companions with its jaws. It swallowed him, first up to the shoulders and then entirely, and we heard his bones crack in its belly. Then it slithered away into the lush undergrowth nearby.
My surviving companion and I looked at each other in horror, and bemoaned the fate that carried us from one terrible death to another. But the snake was gone, and it was dark. Thus, we had no choice but to sleep where we lay again. When dawn came, we lived still, and we set out to explore the island.
We found fruit to eat and a spring from which to drink. We guessed that the snake would return, and so, as the day came to an end, we sought out the tallest tree on the island, hoping that this might give us safety.
We scrambled up it and settled as best we could among the highest branches. But come nightfall, our worst fears came true. The snake came slithering, tracking us we knew not how, and when it came to the tree, it coiled round the trunk and climbed up with ease.
I had reached a higher branch than my companion, and so it reached him first. It plucked him from the tree and swallowed him whole, and again I heard his bones break. Then it slipped down the tree and vanished away.
The next day I descended once more to the ground, despairing of my fate. I considered casting myself into the sea, to put an end to this tale of horrors, but I could not do so. Life is terribly precious to us, even at such times.
Then, looking at the remnants of the raft that had brought us to the island, lashed together with improvised ropes, I formed a desperate plan. After I had eaten and drunk, as the sun sank in the west, I gathered together five strong pieces of wood, and whatever cords and ropes I could locate. I lashed one wooden beam crosswise to my ankles, so that it projected to either side of me. Then I took three more pieces, and tied them against me, one on my left side, one on my right, and one against my chest. Then, finally, I took the last wooden beam and tied it crosswise over my shoulders, projecting outwards there. Then I drew my hands and head within this improvised wooden cage as best I could, and lay shivering.
I did not have long to wait. Again, with darkness came the snake. It slithered up to me and attempted to devour me as it had my companions. But it could not! The wooden bars were long and strong enough, and I had tied them so that they braced each other. The monster’s throat was not large enough for it to swallow the crosswise beams, and when it tried to batter or crush me, the bars around me held.
The snake was enraged. It thrashed and hissed in frustration, but at length, it slithered away in search of other prey.
And so I lay for the night in my cage, giving thanks to Allah. When the sun rose, I carefully untied the beams, put them aside, and once more set out to look for fruit and water.
Then, as I wandered along the beach, I saw some
thing far out to sea. It was a ship! Instantly, I gathered up the largest branch that I could find, and began to wave it, and shouted myself hoarse.
Again, I was fortunate. The crew of the ship saw the movement, and turned to find out more. When they saw that I was a man, they sent a boat ashore and brought me to their vessel. Once aboard, I found that this was a large trading ship, carrying many merchants.
They were good folk, and they gave me food and drink, and clothes to replace the rags that were all that I had left now. I thanked them, and gave thanks to Allah for my salvation. Not long afterwards, the ship came to an inhabited land called Salahita Island, where it dropped anchor, and the merchants went ashore to trade. Then, the captain turned to me.
‘Listen, my friend,’ he said, ‘you say that you are a merchant who has lost everything. Would you perform a task for us, for fair pay, so you can afford to travel back to your home?’
‘Gladly,’ I said.
‘There was a merchant travelling with us before who was lost,’ the captain explained. ‘We still have his goods. We know not whether he lives or is dead, but it would surely be fairest if we sold those goods and returned the money to him, or to his family – whatever we find when we seek him in Baghdad, his home. His stock should fetch good prices here. I ask you to deal with this, in return for a broker’s commission.’
‘That is fair,’ I said.
And so I went with the captain to move the lost merchant’s goods from the hold to the dock. When they were being carried ashore, a clerk asked in whose name they should be registered.
‘Write that they are the property of Sinbad the Sailor, being sold on his behalf,’ said the captain. I gasped as the clerk nodded, but restrained myself from saying anything immediately. But I looked about me, and saw that much about the ship was familiar, now that I looked with rested eyes and disregarded recent repairs and new sails.