Page 30 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

Quseir is clearly marked, and the accompanying
text specifies that it is here that spices are taken
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on land and sent to Cairo and Alexandria. In
Arabia, between the Red Sea and the Persian
Gulf/is located the kingdom of Sheba; the
queen, who came to visit King Solomon, is
shown crowned and holding a golden disk as
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symbol of her wealth. Today, we are told, the
area "belongs to Saracen Arabs and produces
many aromatic substances, such as myrrh and
frankincense; it has much gold, silver and many
precious stones and, moreover, it is said that a
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bird called phoenix is found here/' This pas-
sage is altogether typical of the approach of late
fourteenth-century cartographers, who freely
mix biblical information with later accounts of
foreign countries, in this case based on Isidore
of Seville's Etymologiae. 34
Mecca and Medina are clearly marked,
although they are placed too close to the coast. 35
Between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea
appears the King of Tauris (Tabriz) and north of
him Jan'i-Beg, ruler of the kingdom of the
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Golden Horde, who died in 135/. The impor-
tance of Baghdad as a center of the spice trade is
emphasized; from there, precious wares from
India are sent throughout the Syrian land and
especially to Damascus. Navigational informa-
tion is also recorded: "From the mouth of the
river of Baghdad, the Indian and Persian Oceans
open out. Here they fish for pearls, which are
supplied to the town of Baghdad." We learn that
"before they dive to the bottom of the sea, pearl
fishers recite magic spells with which they
frighten away the fish" — a piece of information
that comes straight from Marco Polo, who men-
tions that the pearl fishers on the Malabar coast
are protected by the magic and spells of the
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Brahmins. Various trading stations are indi-
cated on the shore of the Indian Ocean from
Hormus, "where India begins," to Quilon in
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Kerala. There, pearl fishers are mentioned
again with reference to magic spells. So are
boats (called nichi) with a length of keel of sixty
ells (a unit of measurement that in England was
equal to 45 inches) and a draft of thirty-four,
with "at least four but sometimes as many as
and to two lay rulers of Christendom. Marco travel long distances without water, they com- ten masts, and sails made of bamboo and palm-
Polo, among many others, searched in vain for pletely transformed African trade, opening sub- leaves." One of these boats is illustrated next to
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Prester John throughout Central Asia. As a Saharan areas to Islam. The elephant, which the text and another east of the Indian penin-
result, mapmakers began to locate his kingdom inhabits the area south of the Sahara, signifies sula: with their transom bow and stern, rails on
in East Africa instead — for the first time, it the fact, as the text puts it, that Africa is the the stern galley, portholes, and as many as five
seems, in 1306 —and thereafter he was often land of ivory "on account of the large numbers masts with unmistakable mast and batten sails,
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confused with the Emperor of Ethiopia. On of elephants that live there/' 29 they are undoubtedly Chinese junks such as
the Catalan Atlas, Africa is also symbolized by In Asia the Red Sea stands out, being shown Marco Polo had described. From the Persian
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a nude black man with a camel and a turreted as red —a characteristic that derives, we are told, Gulf and the Red Sea, from the African coast to
elephant. Camels were first used for the trans- less from the color of the water than from that Sumatra and China, maritime trade developed
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Sahara trade sometime between the second and of the sea bed. It is cut in two by a land pas- considerably in the thirteenth and fourteenth
fifth century A.D., after being introduced from sage, a conventional allusion to Moses' miracu- centuries; with the improvement in maritime
Arabia. Thanks to their notorious capacity to lous crossing (Exodus, 14:21-22). The port of technology, Arab and Persian, Gujarat and

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 29