Readers get to the Vasco Da Gama story by sheer curiosity; desire to read about adventure, interest in Malabar or Portuguese history or a need to study in the academic course. Vasco or Gama as he is called is indeed an interesting person and there is so much of text out there praising him, ridiculing him and lauding him for his sheer tenacity. Well, the explorer did set out in search of the spice route and found it for his King. ‘He set out with 170 men in July 1497 on three ships (plus a 4th supply ship that was lost early). By Feb 1498, he had reached Malindi, and here was where his fortunes were to change.
For here he met and contracted the services of a person who was to direct the ships to the coast of Malabar. For the first time, the Portuguese had to cross a large expanse of water. Today we have navigational aids and propulsion that makes it easy, but in the days of winds, sailing and the non availability of precise charts, it was a hit and miss. They needed some person who knew how to navigate the monsoon winds. They found such a person, and sources argue over the identity of the pilot, identifying him variously a Christian, a Muslim, and a Gujarati Hindu. Some stories, text books and novels describe the pilot as the famous Arab navigator Ibn Majid, but historians and contemporaneous accounts disagree. The Portuguese historians of the time also fail to connect the person to Ibn Majid or mention the August name. So who could this pilot have been, the person who changed the course of history, both for the west and the east? People who have read about the age of history will agree that the impact of this Portuguese landing indeed changed the course of trade and history.
Calicut heritage forum covered the contents of the book Pepper & Christ, where the fictional account introduces you to young Taufiq, a disciple of Ibn Majid who guides the Gama to Calicut. Was Keki Daruwalla right in his train of thought?
The time lines were right and much interest could be brought about in the subject by bringing the two people together, one in relentless quest of scientific discoveries and the other a rapacious trader. How did this happen? To figure it all out, we have to read the masterly book on the Gama by Sanjay Subrahmanyam, the heavily bearded Professor and Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair of Indian History at UCLA, a person who not only is ‘the expert on these matters’ but also one who loves to demonstrate such diverse aspects like South Indian cooking. A very interesting man (no! I have not had the honor of meeting him, but have read about him and his books) Subrahmanyam has written books in Tamil, Hindi, Portuguese and Italian, English and French, to name a few. In all, he knows ten languages and reads in two more.
Sanjay explains in very interesting fashion how Ibn Majid was brought into the picture, by a writer of Gujarati extract in Mecca.
Barros and Castaneda termed the pilot a Malemo Cana or Malemo Canaca a moor, Barros clarified it as Moor from Guzerate whereas Castaneda called him a Gujarati. The person who connected this to Ibn majid was French orientalist Gabriel Ferrand writing on Ibn majid. He borrowed text from the book written by Qutb Al-din Muhammed Al Nahrawali. Al makki. Nahrawali, a Gujaratai living in Mecca, wrote a book to celebrate Ottoman achievements over the Yemeni Arabs. He mentioned the name Ahmad Ibn Majid as the name of the pilot, wrote that he was given much wine to drink by the Portuguese and the pilot in a state of drunkenness explained the methods of sailing the oceans to the Admiral. Interestingly, the text does not state that Ibn Majid accompanied the Gama, but only states that he explained the way. I will not recount the text, but all he said was ‘do not follow the coast, make for the open sea without fearing it and well, follow the winds’. Now that is not expert advice, in my mind but plain common sense in rough and uncharted waters. Anyway Ferrand connected this Ahmad Ibn Majid to the expert Ibn Majid and set the tongues wagging. However it is still not clear why and how Nahrawali mentioned the name and where and how he obtained it. Was it another Ibn Majid of Gujarati extract?
The clinching reasoning behind Ahmad Ibn Majid’s involvement was his supposed regret over helping Gama as evidenced in a poem written by him. These arjuzas were discovered by Russian orientalist Kratchkovsky and translated. The devil is in the detail and the detail provided in the rather clumsy translations (and substantial additions by the translators in the process) made it an even bigger mess. Ibrahim Khoury a Syrian historian pointed out later the corruption of the translated text and the fact that Ibn Majid was already too old to navigate by the 1490’s and that this poem by Ibn Majid where he expressed regret over helping the Portuguese, was actually composed in the 1470’s, much before 1498 when all this happened.
Anyway the fable and legend continued to grow. The most interesting part is that according to Gama’s letters, the pilot accompanied him back to Lisbon for interrogation. So as you can see, Ibn majid, dons the guise of a Gujarati, gets drunk and guides the Gama and after wretchedly showing him the way to Calicut returns to Lisbon with him and settled down there, for there are no records of him returning.
So who was the pilot? Was he one of the Gujrai Nakhuda’s in Malindi? There was a sizable Indian population there according to Portuguese records. The sailors were not all Arabs, as I wrote in my previous blog. Was it just another chap who succumbed to threats or avarice and well, finally went back to settle down in Lisbon as a Fidalgo? Perhaps, but then we get to know that he really knew his business and to be called a Mualim in an Arab world required you to be one. To get to the details you have to read what Barros wrote
Let us see what Barros had to say – Quoting the footnote in ‘3 voyages of Gama’ based on Correas Lendas, translated by the Hakluyt society.
Barros says that some gentiles from Cambay, whom they call Banians, came to see the ships, and that seeing a picture of Our Lady in Da Gama's cabin, and that the Portuguese reverenced it, they made adoration to it with much more ceremony; and next day they returned to it. The Banians and Portuguese were mutually pleased, and the Portuguese imagined that these people were samples of some Christian community in India from the times of St. Thomas.
About the l5th July. Barros says that among the people who came to visit the ships was a Moor of Guzarat, named Malemo (malemo – Muallim or instructor in Arabic and Cana – kanaka – Astrologer in Sanskrit) Cana, who, both from the satisfaction which he felt at the intercourse with the Portuguese, and to please the King of Melinde who was looking for a pilot for them, accepted to go with them. Vasco da Gama, after talking to him, was very well satisfied with his knowledge, especially after he had shown him a map of all the coast of India, with the bearings laid down after the manner of the Moors, which was with meridians and parallels very small (or close together), without other bearings of the compass ; because, as the squares of those meridians and parallels were very small, the coast was laid down by those two bearings of north and south, and east and west, with great certainty, without that multiplication of bearings of the points of the compass usual in our maps, which serves as the root of the others. When Vasco da Gama showed him the great wooden astrolabe which he had brought and others of metal with which he took the sun's altitude, the Moor was not surprised, and said that some pilots of the lied Sea used brass instruments of a triangular shape, and quadrants with which they took the sun's altitude, and chiefly that of a star which they most made use of for their navigation. But that he and the Cambay mariners and those of all India made their navigation by certain stars both in the north and in the south, and also by other notable stars which traversed the middle of the heavens from east to west, and they did not take their distance with instruments like those, but with another which he used; which he brought at once to show, which was of three tables (or plates). Since we have treated of its shape and use in our geography in the chapter of instruments of navigation, it is sufficient to say here that in that operation they use an instrument which we now use, and which mariners call balhestilla the cross staff (or Jacob's staff), and in that chapter an account of it and its inventors will be given. Osorio, in speaking of Gama's arrival at Mozambique, describes the compasses used by the Arab mariners at great length; he also says they used quadrants for observing the sun's distance from the equinoctial line; and says: "Finally, they were instructed in so many of the arts of navigation, that they did not yield much to the Portuguese mariners in the science and practice of maritime matters."
Where did the Melinda Sheikh find the pilot or pilots? It appears that they belonged to the Gujarati ships docked at Melinda. How come they left their ships and accompanied the Gama? For monetary compensation of course, considering the fact that the pilot demanded his reward as soon as he sighted Calicut. Could this have been Ahmad Ibn majid? Doubtful, for he had already retired and was living in peace, I suppose.
Would Ibn Majid be an ordinary pilot for a Gujarati ship? Doubtful again and considering that those Indian ships would have also been waiting to sail back to Cambay with the monsoon winds, it is doubtful that he left his own ship in the lurch had he been a honorable pilot. A Melinda King would not be able to overrule that, I presume.
The St Gabriel sailed out on April 26th 1498, as we know reached Kappad around 20th May 1498. The pilot demanded his reward which was apparently provided immediately as soon as the hills behind the city of Calicut were sighted. The Gama and his sailors made history and small fortunes though Vasco vanished for the next few years, however not before heralding the Century of discovery and the start of the ruin of Malabar. Vasco returned twice and eventually fell sick and died during the third of his voyages in the lands he discovered for the West, in pain of an unknown disease. The Kamal or the Rapalagai (Malayalam) - The Gujarati pilot used a kamal to guide the San Gabriel to Calicut. In using the kamal, the knots are counted by keeping the string between one’s teeth; hence the name kau (=teeth) for the pole star. Vasco da Gama’s men actually thought that the pilot (Malemo Cana) was telling the distance by his teeth! Vasco da Gama later carried back a copy of the instrument “to have it graduated in inches”, suggesting that he did not understand the difference between a linear scale and a harmonic scale. In fact, Europeans seem never to have quite understood the principle of harmonic interpolation used in the kamal.
Notes:
1. The sheikh of Melinda actually provided two pilots to the Gama, though mentions are made often to one and him being Ibn majid in history books. Who was the second? Food for thought.
References
The career & legend of Vasco D agama – Sanjay Subrahmanyam
E.J. Brill's first encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913-1936, Volume 1 - M. Th. Houtsma, page 362
Indo-Portuguese Encounters - Lotika Varadarajan
The Navigator Ahmad bin Majid – Paul Lunde - Saudi Aramco World
Arabs and the sea – Saudi Aramco World
Ancient sailing and navigation – Nabateae.net
Pic of Arab with kamal- Nabateae
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