Arabia Felix

by Thorkild Hansen

  While this floating caravan was making its way south, Forsskål and Niebuhr checked their course; and both of them remark in their diaries, with a shake of the head, how because of his fear of losing landmarks the captain always followed the line of the coast among the dangerous coral islands and skerries, where a European skipper would have made for the open sea as quickly as possible. Every evening at sunset they had to heave to, because the captain dared not continue this hazardous coastal journey in the dark. One afternoon Niebuhr found a partial explanation of this when, shaken to the core, he asked permission to remove two enormous lumps of iron which the helmsman had placed under the ship’s compass in the belief that its presence would strengthen the magnetic needle. Peter Forsskål, who still remembered with satisfaction Commander Fisker’s tussle with the Skagerrak in winter, shrugged his shoulders at their laggardly progress: “When the wind rises, most of the sails are furled; if the wind freshens a little more, we carry only two sails; and finally it is thought best to heave to. This tends to make anybody accustomed to bigger seas and bolder navigation rather angry.”

  After three days’ sailing at this sedate tempo the convoy reached the port of Tor, where the ships had their tanks replenished with fresh water. Forsskål took the chance to go ashore; he collected some plants and shells and found his way to the oasis referred to in the Bible as the Vale of Elim. Without his knowing, his movements had been followed by hostile Arabs, and it was only quick intervention on the part of some courageous Turks among the ship’s passengers that prevented him from being taken prisoner.

  The attitude towards the Europeans was still uncertain; and on board ship they frequently had to submit to threats and abuse. One important Mohammedan official among the passengers paid particular attention to them; when one morning he surprised Baurenfeind in the process of drawing one of Forsskål’s marine specimens, he asked sarcastically whether they could find nothing in their own land worthy of their attention, seeing that they had sent out such a costly expedition to look for this kind of useless thing. But three days after their departure from Tor, Forsskål had a splendid opportunity of regaining their lost prestige. On 17th October, 1762, there was an eclipse of the sun, which was clearly visible over the Red Sea. Thanks to this occurrence, Forsskål at once became the man of the hour on board the Arab ship. He does not mention a word of this episode in his diary, but it struck Niebuhr’s sense of humour: “Herr Forsskål had mentioned in advance to the captain that there would be an eclipse of the sun to-day. To try to make him well-disposed towards us, and also so that I also should be able to observe in peace, I had smoked a number of pieces of glass to let Forsskål show off this phenomenon to the captain and to some of the other more important traders. All of them were extremely pleased. A man who could predict an eclipse of the sun was regarded among the Mohammedans not only as being a very learned person in spiritual as well as in material matters, but also as being a good doctor. When, therefore, the eclipse which Herr Forsskål had announced actually occurred, all the Mohammedans felt that he must surely also be a great doctor. Suddenly they all seemed to fall ill. Every single one of them came across to ask him for medicines for their ailments, and the new doctor gave his opinion as to how the various illnesses could best be cured. Most of them he advised to sleep or to eat rather more or rather less. Finally one pilgrim came along complaining that he could not see at night. Herr Forsskål advised him to light a lamp. This advice provoked loud laughter; and all the people standing around who had been so sick shortly before now seemed to have become healthy and well again.”

  On the voyage down the Red Sea. Above, Suez; below, the Arab ship in which the party travelled, anchored near Tor

  While all this was going on, the ship had moved south of the Sinai peninsula and out into wider waters. For the first time since their departure from Suez they had to give up the idea of heaving to at sunset; for four days and three nights the little flotilla sailed south-east without any land in sight. When at last on the afternoon of the fourth day the Arabian coast appeared ahead there was wild jubilation on board. The dangers had been survived; the pilgrims put on their pilgrim dress, the ships’ guns were fired, and the drummers went into action. In the evening, coloured lanterns were hoisted among the rigging, while the passengers hung their lanterns along the rail. On the fore and after decks the traders could be heard firing their pistols into the air for sheer delight; and an earthenware vessel was passed round among the passengers and crew to take a collection for the pilot responsible for this miraculous achievement. The merriment continued on board far into the night. A short distance away the other ships were lying at anchor, but now there were six of them in all; three of the illuminated ships floating on the black water and the other three lying reflected in it.

  But other threats apart from gales and high seas lay in wait for those who had made the journey. Fire broke out on board. It was caused by one of the many women of the harem who lived just under the expedition’s cabin and who daily disturbed its members with their noisy squabbles. While ironing some linen with a charcoal iron one of them had set fire to it. Niebuhr relates: “The fire would very soon have endangered the whole ship if the women’s voices when shouting for help had not been just as powerful as when they were squabbling. As there was yet another fire in their cabin a few days later, however, the Arabs appeared to become rather anxious. The skipper now sent one of his junior officers into the harem with a heavy whip. To begin with this evoked a fearsome music. But thereafter there followed the most blissful silence; and for the next twenty-four hours one could hardly hear any sound from the women.”

  Carsten Niebuhr not only had an ear sensitive to the women’s noise but also a keen eye for their charms. This emerges from a number of other secret observations the young astronomer made during this same voyage—not this time with his astrolabe. It is best to let the sinner himself make his confession: “The women’s washing room was situated adjacent to our own, and both were spacious enough to allow four or five people to be there simultaneously; the only thing was that in our case we had to go down a few steps. I was not a little surprised in the beginning that when down there I could clearly hear women’s voices in the immediate proximity. I was curious enough to look for a crack in the dividing wall, and in fact I did find a little chink. Up to the moment of our departure from Suez I had scarcely ever seen the face of a Mohammedan woman unveiled. On this journey I saw much more. In the early mornings there were often three or four naked women in there, washing and bathing themselves.”

  This edifying picture of the young harem women completes the journey from Suez just as the voyage from Constantinople finished with the description of the slave girls, and the sojourn in Cairo ended with the dancing girls. It almost seems as if the same girls are reappearing, entering upon the scene like a Greek chorus to mark an entr’acte.

  2

  On 29th October, 1762, the four ships anchored in the roads off Djidda. Here the Europeans parted company with the other passengers. The Mohammedan pilgrims turned eastwards overland to Mecca. The Danish pilgrims continued south over the sea towards Arabia Felix.

  First the expedition had to make a short pause in Djidda. They rented a stone house by the harbour, and their stay there eventually lasted over six weeks, rather longer than they had anticipated. The reason was the constant northerly wind; the coffee ships, which were to take them the last stretch southwards along the coast, had been delayed by head-winds on their way up from Mocha to Djidda. None of the members complained, however, about this enforced stay in the port of Mecca. After their wearing time among the hostile Arabs in Egypt, they encountered here to their astonishment a population disposed to be friendly to them. For the first time they were able to walk about the streets and visit the coffee houses as they felt inclined, without being in any way molested. The Arabs did not regard the presence of the Europeans in Djidda as an insult, as they had done in Egypt. Nor did they know them so well.

  Highborn and lowly were equ
ally courteous, equally curious. Niebuhr had to set up his astrolabe in the palace of the pasha; this distinguished gentleman had in his youth gone in a little for astronomy himself, and he studied the European’s instruments enviously. Thanks to their mysterious equipment, they soon acquired a reputation for being able to foretell the future. One afternoon in the pasha’s house a sheik who was present related how one of his servants had stolen two hundred ducats from him; he now demanded that Niebuhr tell him who the thief was. Alarmed, Niebuhr refused; this was indeed more than his astrolabe could manage. Then one of the older men, who was also present at the pasha’s reception, offered to look into the matter; he summoned the servants of the robbed man and asked them to line up in the courtyard. The old man now walked along in front of them, put a little piece of paper in each of their mouths, said a long prayer, and then commanded them to swallow the paper, assuring them that the innocent ones would take no harm. The punishment of Allah would only strike the thief. To his amazement, Niebuhr now witnessed how the old man went along the line of servants, asking them one after the other to open their mouths until he found one who had not dared swallow the paper, and who then confessed with sweating brow that he was the guilty one.

  During the following weeks Niebuhr busied himself with routine observations. He investigated the customs tariffs of the town, made lists of imports and exports, discovered how the town’s drinking-water was stored in large earthenware vessels near the springs up in the hills and then brought the long way down to the houses by camel. His biggest task, however, was to draw up a map of the town; and to help him in this, he also did some surveying outside the town walls. On these trips he preferred to be accompanied by a native Arab, who then helped him with his instruments and told him the names of the different localities. One morning they passed a little chapel in the desert, and Niebuhr asked his guide why a chapel should be situated here. The Arab looked at him gravely. “It is Eve’s grave,” he said, and paused a little to allow the full significance of his words to sink in. Then he looked across at the building and continued in the same grave tones: “The little chapel has been built there so that the altar at its centre stands exactly over her navel.”

  Niebuhr conscientiously surveyed the place for inclusion on his map, and added a further note in his diary, also based on an Arab belief. It briefly explains that Adam is supposed to be buried in Ceylon.

  What the other members were doing during the six weeks the expedition stayed in Djidda we do not know. Baurenfeind made a few drawings: a woman sitting in the shade of an elaborate parasol and selling bread; a fisherman down by the shore who looks as if he has stepped straight out of the Academy of Fine Art and is now making his way with his eight fish straight for the finish of the Sermon on the Mount. So much for Baurenfeind. The rest is obscure. Von Haven gives no sign of his activities during this period; Kramer, as usual, is as silent as the grave; and even Forsskål’s diary does not contain a single line from Djidda. Was the energetic professor suffering from fatigue? Was von Haven’s company getting on his nerves in spite of all? At the beginning of December he wrote to von Gähler and asked him to try to arrange in Copenhagen to get the king’s permission for him to travel the shortest way home after they had visited Sana, the capital of Arabia Felix: “In the end one grows weary of this wandering around, far from one’s native land and far from all correspondence, particularly when this has to be in the daily company of a person one would rather be as far away from as possible.”

  Forsskål also sent off a collection of seed and some parcels of natural specimens from Djidda. Apart from this, we must be content to suppose that he accompanied Niebuhr when, every day as evening fell, the latter left the stone house by the harbour for a trip to the quayside to complete his lists of wares—something which Forsskål also liked doing. We can imagine them walking about pricing silks from India, honey, syrup and ale from Egypt, tin, quicksilver and sealing wax from Europe, and around them the throng of the Arab port (which has probably not altered much since those days) with its rancid smells and dusty colours, ochre and yellow and an occasional flash of silver, the coolies with their eyes on the ground, a merchant on his donkey, and along the quayside the long row of dhows carrying their masts obliquely like lances to spear the setting sun.

  Baurenfeind’s drawing of a fisherman at Djidda. (After an etching by Clemens)

  Then one evening, after a period of southerly winds, the strange ship appeared which was to carry them on the last stretch of the journey to the Yemen—Arabia Felix.

  It did not exactly inspire confidence. It was what was called a tarrád, an open vessel shaped almost like a barrel cut in two, pointed a little at its ends, and only seven fathoms in length and a little over a couple of fathoms in breadth, or approximately forty-two feet by twelve. There was hardly an honest nail in the entire hull, and the individual planks were sewn together as they were in the ancient Danish ships; the vessel had but one mast with a single sail, and there was neither deck nor cabins. The ship was not intended for the transport of passengers; it was a coffee ship from the coast of Muscat on the other side of the Arabian peninsula; it had come to Djidda with a cargo of coffee beans from Mocha in Arabia Felix, and was now to return to collect a new consignment, which this time was to be taken home to Muscat. To complete the terrifying impression, the ship was manned by a crowd of bloodthirsty-looking savages. The skipper was an Arab, almost naked, with only a loincloth held round his hips by an end of rope, in which he kept a large curved knife. His crew consisted of no less than nine sailors, black slaves of whom some were Negroes from Africa with thick lips and flat noses, and some from the Malabar coast of India, the latter having a rather more golden-brown sheen to their skin than the Africans. Like the skipper, they were all clad only in turban and loincloth.

  After taking all this in the members of the expedition felt a little dubious; none of them had a great desire to entrust his life to this vessel for the long journey of nearly 400 nautical miles to Mocha. But they had no choice. Everybody in Djidda told them they could not expect many more and certainly no better ships to leave for the Yemen in the course of the winter than this tarrád from Muscat; and after having acquired letters of recommendation to the dola or governor of Loheia, the first port in Arabia Felix, they decided, on 18th December, 1762, to go aboard. With them on this trip they took a well-to-do merchant’s son from Mocha, by the name of Ismael Salech; he was a rather sociable and lively young man, who spoke a little Dutch and was not unfamiliar with European conditions. Believing that Ismael Salech might be useful to them during their stay in Mocha, and not wholly unreceptive to the discreet but effective flattery of this educated Arab, they invited him in full confidence to accompany the expedition.

  On the morning of the following day, 19th December, the curious vessel put out from the port of Djidda, an odd and amusing sight with its strange assortment of goods and passengers; in all, along with the crew and other servants, there were about twenty people. The sun shone, and there was not a cloud in the sky; down over the bay a gentle and mild northerly wind was blowing, which represented Arabia’s winter. It soon became obvious that the odd-looking “patchwork boat,” as Forsskål called the tarrád, moved briskly along even in a light breeze. The mood of the expedition’s members began to rise, for the last stage of their long journey had finally begun. Only Kramer was a little sour; he had lost his watch under the flooring and could not get at it because of all the chests piled up all around. Now he realised that it would be ruined in the water that must surely be seeping through the hopelessly leaky bottom of the vessel. The open ship was packed full and all the passengers had secured camp beds in among the packages and chests; there they remained in the daylight hours, and there they slept, always under the open sky; in daytime with their backs to the sun, and at night with their faces to the stars. Right forward in the ship a clay oven had been set up; it was cylindrical in form, perhaps a little narrower nearer the top, where it had an opening. There two of the Malabars in the
crew prepared the passengers’ meals, consisting mainly of dates and durra bread, the latter baked fresh every day. The method was for one of the Indians to grind millet seed between two suitably shaped red granite stones, from which he then made a dough which was left until the following day to turn sour. He then lit a fire in the stove, and when the flames had burnt down to a glowing ash, he put the dough in through the opening on the top and inside smacked it against the sides of the stove, after which the aperture was closed with a clay pot—a procedure which can be observed even to-day in Arab bakeries. When the dough was baked to a kind of flat-bread with a consistency almost that of a thick pancake, it was taken out, smeared with sesame oil, and eaten while still warm. We do not know what von Haven’s reactions were to this primitive cuisine, but Forsskål, who had now resumed his diary, was in any case not wholly enthusiastic. “I was not accustomed to this bread,” he says, “and I did not take to its taste; but the people on board, who lived on practically nothing else, were nevertheless strong and vigorous lads and in spite of being slaves were happier and more contented than I had so far ever seen Arabs or Turks, even those with their full liberty.”

  Baurenfeind’s sketch of Djidda. The ship with the lateen sail in the foreground is the vessel that was to take the expedition to the shores of Arabia Felix

  How happy and contented they were Forsskål discovered within a few days of their departure, when one of them complained to the skipper that he had a pain somewhere near his heart: “The skipper was immediately prepared; he put the point of an iron bar in the fire till it was red hot and burned two holes in the skin of the slave’s breast. That helped. But the remedy looked to be worse than the disease.”