in search of sindbad

The lives of former generations are a lesson to posterity; that a man may review the remarkable events which have happened to others, and be admonished; and may consider the history of people of preceding ages, and of all that hath befallen them, and be restrained. Extolled be the perfection of Him who hath thus ordained the history of former generations to be a lesson to those which follow. Such are the Tales of a Thousand and One Nights, with their romantic stories and their fables
From the introduction to the Thousand and One Nights

June 2004

I was in search of the allegorical Sindbad, that sailor of the Thousand and One Nights who captured the imagination of generations and helped create a fairy tale of the Arabian world. Indeed, the stories are wrought into the language and literature of modern peoples, their mark felt in music and painting, phrases and common speech. This eventually led me to Qalhat, once one of the most brilliant cities in Oman that came to exemplify a culture in which such tales blossomed. Its ruins now form the oldest archaeological site in the sultanate and are being examined by Tom Vosmer, an Australian archaeologist.

Remnants of the ages crackle underfoot as we tread softly over the ancient city. Every couple of yards, Tom stoops to pick up shards of pottery that date back centuries and come from distant lands that shone bright in days of yore. “Islamic… Persian… Indian… Ming,” he sniffs nonchalantly under his beard and an outback hat from Down Under. These empires, all connected by an umbilical cord of seaways to Qalhat, made it one of the most fantastic cities of its time. Ibn Battuta, that great Moroccan explorer, had walked the same streets as we were on now, marvelling at the city in the 14th century. “Were the world a ring,” he wrote, “this would be a jewel in it.” Qalhat grew fabulously rich on trade, with Arabian horses being its highest-value export. Marco Polo wondered at their sure numbers in the late 13th century, when they were shipped to the Sultans of Delhi, the Rajputs in Rajasthan and the kings of south India.

Now, 800 years later, we stand under a sparkling sky, surveying all that’s left of the city: its crumbling outer walls, stubs of a hammam (the only one ever discovered in the country) and a mausoleum. The tomb is, quite fantastically, the only standing structure in the city, and juts out of tons of rubble and the weight of centuries. Bibi Mariyam, a former Turkish slave who later became governor of the city, built it for her husband. It was made with coral, rock and plaster and finished with glazed tiles, the chipped remnants of which can still be found on the interior arch.

We had driven three hours from Muscat in a little bubble of an off-roader, with barely enough room to bounce about over mountain range, tightly wedged in with equipment, bottles of water and the occasional tin can. It was a wild, beautiful ride through the foothills of the Eastern Hajar range that started with jagged points peeking out of the ground and developing into immense, bald, flowing rock hours down the way. The road dipped down to the sea for a while, into the wilayat of Quriyat, with its pristine beaches and beautiful one-road towns of Tiwi and Fins, before working its way up into the mountains again. Our journey ended at Qalhat, sandwiched between steep mountain rock and a sea so lush blue our eyes ached. Although the port reached its zenith between the 13th and 16th centuries, its story goes back much further. On a bank that dips gently into the sea, Neolithic flints hint at human habitation 7000 years ago. These settlements of Ichthyophagi, or fish eaters of the Indian Ocean, probably developed into the early maritime communities that were the crucial link between the Indus Valley and Mesopotamian civilisations. What is fascinating is that Stone Age man chose this spot for the same reasons that made Qalhat prime real estate thousands of years later: access to fresh mountain water, nearby fertile valleys, a natural wall of mountain and that legendary deep sheltered harbour.

Of course, at the heart of it all was Sindbad’s vessel, the humble Arabian dhow, the proud first and last of the romantic East. As pure sailing craft carrying on in unspoiled ways, the dhow reigns supreme. Generations would make their voyage in this wind-driven vessel, sailing without the benefit of engines, continuing a way of life that started before the West discovered the ocean. Tom helped build and sail one such vessel, the Sohar, on a journey in 1980 nicknamed the Sindbad Voyage. The crew attempted, and succeeded, in retracing the old Arabian sea route 6000 miles to China in a boat made of wood bound together with coconut husk, just as sailors from the region had done for centuries. The planks were placed side by side, drilled at intervals and rope made from the husk went through these. The holes were then covered with cloth soaked in oil to seal them, while the bottom of the boat was waterproofed with a paint of oil, glue, lime and mutton fat. It took 165 days, 140 tons of wood, the husks of 75000 coconuts and 4 tons of coconut fibre to build the boat.

The mariners of Arabia fasted, prayed and washed in the sea, surviving on a diet of dates and what fish they could catch, borne by the winds that Allah gave them. The simplicity of their hard lives gave them a quality most enviable, and missing too often from our own. Such character can still be found in present day Qalhat, located a few minutes walk from its older ruins. It’s lone GSM tower is weeks old, and until recently the village didn’t have electricity. It still has no clinics, with the nearest medical help almost an hour away in Sur. Life hasn’t changed all that much over the centuries, and people are among the friendliest one can encounter. We were woken up at 04:30 AM by morning prayers, and the girls of the village got out soon after, taking their goats out to graze. In the evenings the men would play cards outside while the women might visit each other, exchanging gossip and stories. It is at times like these that the incredible tales from the Nights seem not so far away.

Although the Thousand and One Nights were introduced to European readers by the French scholar Galland, who translated them from Arabic in the early 18th century, their origins, like those of Qalhat, go back much further, obscured by centuries of Persian, Indian and Arabian influences and sources. Of course, Sindbad probably never existed, but his character is based upon a certain way of life and imagination, on a culture of seaborne adventure, a simple existence where God was everywhere and everything. Oman in particular (and Arabia in general) has always had difficulty establishing land connections over mountain and desert while the hinterland has never been able to sustain its population with enough food. So, driven by necessity and the promise of more, the people turned to the sea. Omani sailors became ocean pioneers: they were the first people to develop the mast and sail as boat propulsion, and navigated the seas to the Persian Gulf, East Africa, India, Malaysia and China. Proof of their trade with Mesopotamia is found in inscriptions on Sumerian and Akkadian tablets dating back to 3000 BC. By the 3rd century BC, the Omani naval fleet was one of the largest, most powerful in the world.

Now, to see just how the heritage of Qalhat lives on, I walked over to the decade-old school in the village. It is a low, sparse, open building, with lots of light streaming in and bouncing off the inner courtyard across which children in dishdashas and football gear raced. The kids were delighted at the sight of a strange face – everybody knows everybody in Qalhat – and they ran amok after class, with the friendliest smiles and the most open, truthful faces. I spoke to Mr. Karthikeyan, who teaches them English. He marvels at the way they’ve been brought up here. At the core of their contentment and openness, he says, is a philosophy that makes them live for the moment. Although all of them know where they come from and what the ruins in their backyard stand for, they are still the embodiment of cherished values that live on. And that, perhaps, is the greatest legacy of Qalhat.

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