For they had slain so many Saracens, and
so wasted and harried the land, that 'twas something to be astonished at.
And in sooth 'twas a deed well done! For it is not to be borne that the
dogs of Saracens should lord it over good Christian people! Now you have
heard the story.[NOTE 5]
I have still some particulars to tell you of the same province. It abounds
greatly in all kinds of victual; and the people live on flesh and rice and
milk and sesame. They have plenty of elephants, not that they are bred in
the country, but they are brought from the Islands of the other India.
They have however many giraffes, which are produced in the country;
besides bears, leopards, lions in abundance, and many other passing
strange beasts. They have also numerous wild asses; and cocks and hens the
most beautiful that exist, and many other kind of birds. For instance,
they have ostriches that are nearly as big as asses; and plenty of
beautiful parrots, with apes of sundry kinds, and baboons and other
monkeys that have countenances all but human.[NOTE 6]
There are numerous cities and villages in this province of Abash, and many
merchants; for there is much trade to be done there. The people also
manufacture very fine buckrams and other cloths of cotton.
There is no more to say on the subject; so now let us go forward and tell
you of the province of Aden.
NOTE 1. - Abash (Abasce) is a close enough representation of the Arabic
Habsh or Habash, i.e. Abyssinia. He gives as an alternative title
Middle India. I am not aware that the term India is applied to Abyssinia
by any Oriental (Arabic or Persian) writer, and one feels curious to know
where our Traveller got the appellation. We find nearly the same
application of the term in Benjamin of Tudela:
"Eight days from thence is Middle India, which is Aden, and in Scripture
Eden in Thelasar. This country is very mountainous, and contains many
independent Jews who are not subject to the power of the Gentiles, but
possess cities and fortresses on the summits of the mountains, from whence
they descend into the country of Maatum, with which they are at war.
Maatum, called also Nubia, is a Christian kingdom and the inhabitants are
called Nubians," etc. (p. 117). Here the Rabbi seems to transfer Aden to
the west of the Red Sea (as Polo also seems to do in this chapter); for
the Jews warring against Nubian Christians must be sought in the Falasha
strongholds among the mountains of Abyssinia. His Middle India is
therefore the same as Polo's or nearly so. In Jordanus, as already
mentioned, we have India Tertia, which combines some characters of
Abyssinia and Zanjibar, but is distinguished from the Ethiopia of Prester
John, which adjoins it.
But for the occurrence of the name in R. Benjamin I should have supposed
the use of it to have been of European origin and current at most among
Oriental Christians and Frank merchants. The European confusion of India
and Ethiopia comes down from Virgil's time, who brings the Nile from
India. And Servius (4th century) commenting on a more ambiguous passage -
- "Sola India nigrum
Fert ebenum,"
says explicitly "Indiam omnem plagam Aethiopiae accipimus." Procopius
brings the Nile into Egypt [Greek: ex Indon]; and the Ecclesiastical
Historians Sozomen and Socrates (I take these citations, like the last,
from Ludolf), in relating the conversion of the Abyssinians by Frumentius,
speak of them only as of the [Greek: Indon ton endotero], "Interior
Indians," a phrase intended to imply remoter, but which might perhaps
give rise to the term Middle India. Thus Cosmas says of China: "[Greek:
aes endotero], there is no other country"; and Nicolo Conti calls the
Chinese Interiores Indi, which Mr. Winter Jones misrenders "natives of
Central India."[1] St. Epiphanius (end of 4th century) says India was
formerly divided into nine kingdoms, viz., those of the (1) Alabastri,
(2) Homeritae, (3) Azumiti, and Dulites, (4) Bugaei, (5) Taiani,
(6) Isabeni, and so on, several of which are manifestly provinces
subject to Abyssinia.[2] Roger Bacon speaks of the "Ethiopes de Nubia et
ultimi illi qui vocantur Indi, propter approximationem ad Indiam." The
term India Minor is applied to some Ethiopic region in a letter which
Matthew Paris gives under 1237. And this confusion which prevailed more or
less till the 16th century was at the bottom of that other confusion,
whatever be its exact history, between Prester John in remote Asia, and
Prester John in Abyssinia. In fact the narrative by Damian de Goes of the
Embassy from the King of Abyssinia to Portugal in 1513, which was printed
at Antwerp in 1532, bears the title "Legatio Magni Indorum
Imperatoris," etc. (Ludolf, Comment. p. 2 and 75-76; Epiph. de
Gemmis, etc., p. 15; R. Bacon, Opus Majus, p. 148; Matt. Paris, p.
372.)
Wadding gives a letter from the Pope (Alex. II.) under date 3rd Sept.
1329, addressed to the Emperor of Ethiopia, to inform him of the
appointment of a Bishop of Diagorgan. As this place is the capital of a
district near Tabriz (Dehi-Khorkhan) the papal geography looks a little
hazy.
NOTE 2. - The allegation against the Abyssinian Christians, sometimes
extended to the whole Jacobite Church, that they accompanied the rite of
Baptism by branding with a hot iron on the face, is pretty old and
persistent.
The letter quoted from Matt. Paris in the preceding note relates of the
Jacobite Christians "who occupy the kingdoms between Nubia and India,"
that some of them brand the foreheads of their children before Baptism
with a hot iron (p. 302). A quaint Low-German account of the East, in a
MS.
