More than seven months had passed since our simple-minded, whole-hearted pilgrim landed at Joppa, and now he turns his steps towards home. “Having seen every one of the Holy Places of Jerusalem and its territory, so far as we were able; and our devotions done, we took ship at Joppa on the day of Pentecost” (May 17th, 1903). Each pilgrim would take on board with him a palm branch as ensign of his success, and a few portable souvenirs.
Just as war with the Caliph of Cairo prevented our pilgrim from reaching the Holy Land by way of Egypt (which was the ordinary route from Western Lands), so its continuance compelled him to return by an unusual journey. The ship turned from Joppa to the North. Saracen ships were scouring the sea; and the returning pilgrims found themselves hugging the shore, although they must pass by that one fortified seaport which the Crusaders had not yet overcome. Four days out from Joppa, and when a little to the south of Acre, “behold twenty-six Saracen ships hove into sight. They were the squadron of the Admiral of Tyre and Sidon, sailing for Babylonia with an army to aid the Chaldeans in waging war with the King of Jerusalem” (! sic). This statement is an example of how hearsay may germinate in the uninstructed mind. It may not, however, be quite so wild as it seems. Cairo is called Babylon in all Mediæval writings, but, as a matter of fact, Arabs were, about this time, trying to turn Tancred out of his fief at Edessa; and Edessa may, perhaps, be regarded as lying towards the Babylon of Scripture. And a Saracen army was at sea, sent by the Caliph of Cairo, the new “Babylon,” to raise the siege of Ascalon, which Baldwin I. was conducting. Probably it was this expedition from Cairo which Sæwulf came across. “Two vessels from Joppa, which were with us, laden with pilgrims, left our ship to itself; for they were lighter craft; and, by hard rowing, fled to Cæsarea. The Saracens sailed all round our ship, and kept an arrow’s flight off, rejoicing over so much plunder. However our men were ready to die for Christ; they laid hold of their arms, and used up each moment in fortifying the castle (at the stern) of our ship; for we had in our dromond 200 fighting men. After the space of about an hour, the chief of the expedition, having held a council-of-war, ordered one of his sailors to climb up to the mast-head, so as to find out what it was exactly that we were at. And, when he learned from this man how strong was our defence, he hoisted his high yards and made for the main. Thus did Our Lord, of His Grace, rescue us from the foe that day. Afterwards our folk from Joppa took three of these same ships and made themselves rich men with the spoil thereof.”
Sæwulf’s dromond hugged the coast for eight days, and then crossed the open sea to St. Andrews’, at the eastern extremity of Cyprus; thence it made for Antiochetta on the mainland. “During this voyage pirates often attacked us; but, under the protection of Divine Grace, we suffered naught, whether from hostile attack or from tempestuous tossing.” Rhodes was reached on June 23rd; and Sæwulf and some others, who were weary of tacking east and west and of the slow progress made by the heavy vessel, agreed to go a certain distance together, and hired a smaller but swifter craft. Embarked in this, they returned towards the Asian Coast. A contrary wind detained them a few days at a place which Sæwulf calls Stromlo (Astypalæa), “once a fair city, wholly made waste by the Turks.” At Scio, “we took leave of our (last) ship and fellow-travellers, and began our journey to Constantinople, in order that we might pray there.” While passing Tenedos, he heard of the ruins of Troy, and “how many miles of ground they covered.” He tells us of two fortresses facing one another from opposite sides of the “Arm of St. George” (the Dardanelles), “which are so near as to be only two or three bowshots apart, and which thus make the taking of Constantinople an impossibility.” We have another reference to the Trojan war: “The Greeks say that Helen was carried off (from Eregli) by Paris Alexander.” And now the fragment ends, leaving our pilgrim landed at Rodosto on the Sea of Marmora, Sept. 10th, 1103. It has taken him more than four months’ voyage from Joppa to reach within fifty miles of New Rome. Doubtless he found at St. Sophia, as Benjamin of Tudela did towards the end of the same century, “a quantity of wealth beyond all telling ... and the like of these riches is not to be seen in any other Church in the world.”
A long, weary journey, full of the excitement of peril, still lay before him, whatever route he might take. All we know is that, arrived at his native town (Worcester?), a procession would receive and accompany him to his parish church. There he would render thanks to God for his safe return, and deliver his palm branch into the hands of the priest, who would lay it on the altar.
Some chance has rescued this broken record of an obscure, unlettered palmer from oblivion. He is as the hollow voice of a shade which has burst its sepulture in the silences of oblivion. We catch but a glimpse of some tenuous wraith; once warm and breathing flesh. It tells us of a few months in the brief adventure of Life. Yet we recognize, as in Hiuen-Tsiang, one who, having beheld “a gleam on the mountain,” must “arise and go seek it.” Sæwulf the Englishman may be but “a poor thing,” yet he is our own. There lies the excuse for “a poor humour of mine, sir, to take that that no man else will.”
[MOHAMMED IBN ABD ALLAH]
Better known as Ibn Batûta,
The Greatest of Moslem Travellers, A.D. 1304–77.