It is a problem how Varthema contrived to cover such vast distances on what was probably a lean purse. He is silent as to his financial resources; as we have said it is unlikely that his private means were considerable, and it would seem that he did not trade. As a Mameluke he would receive payment which carried him to Aden; and the money which the enamoured Sultana furnished him with would partly, if not wholly, give him the means to reach Persia. But he employed his infinite power to charm; he was burthened with no weak scruple as to blinding a newly-captured friend and using him, with wise moderation, in the service of that central purpose which was the heart of all his being. And thus, as we shall presently see, like Iago, he made his fool his purse. But he is capable of appreciating the good qualities of the generous friend whom he made his dupe; and is careful to pay tribute to him. If he must deceive in order to use him, it is to realize his purpose of seeing the world at first-hand and recording its wonders.
After remarking on the tricks of Persian traders, he adds: “Yet I must also say they are the best companions and the most generous among men. I speak thus with knowledge; having had experience of a Persian merchant of Herat in Khôrasân, whom I met in this city of Shiraz. He had known me at Mecca two years before, and spoke to me thus: ‘Jonah, what is your business here? Are you not the same man who went to Mecca some time back?’ I replied that I was, and that to find out about the world was the quest I was on. Then said he: ‘Allah be praised! for I shall have a companion to make discovery with me. Do not leave me.’ We stayed on fifteen days in this same city of Shiraz.” Varthema’s magnetic charm was at work; and luck stood his friend in bringing him across this old acquaintance.
The twain set off together from Shiraz, bound for Samarkand in Turkestan; for the merchant, whose name Was Cazazionor, insisted on keeping Varthema with him, and presumably payed all expenses. But they travelled through a land in turmoil. The struggle between the Ottoman Turks established in Europe and the Turcoman dynasty of the White Sheep established in Persia was happy indeed for the Christian world, since it diverted the forces of Constantinople to the East at a time when Europe lay divided and helpless, but it was disastrous for Persia and ended by throwing her into confusion. Just now Ismail-es-Sufi, a descendant from the Prophet, who had overthrown the forces of Bayazid, and laid the foundations of a great Persian dynasty, which endured more than two centuries, was consolidating a country which had been torn by internecine strife. As is so often the case, religious differences afforded the trumpet-call to the struggles of peoples. As in the days of Ibn Batûta the Sunnites of the West fought the Shiites of the East for domination; but they fought in the name of Allah and under the banners of sectarian difference. In order to seat himself firmly on the throne, the Great Sofi, for so Europeans called the monarch of the new, able and powerful dynasty roused the enthusiasm of the native Shiites, and converted the less numerous native Sunnites to his own true faith by blood and iron. Varthema tells us that the Sofi was passing through the land with flame and slaughter.
Cazazionor, finding the country so disturbed, thought it wise to return towards Herat. So delighted was he with the personality and society of “Jonah” that he offered to give him his niece to wife. She was a beautiful girl named Sharus, a feminine noun in Persian as in other languages, although it signifies The Sun. Cazazionor took Varthema with him to his own home; which was probably at Shiraz; and presented the young lady to him. She could not have attained womanhood; for he was allowed to see her. He feigned delight at her beauty; but he says that his mind was “bent to other things”—probably less on wife and children at home than on his still insatiate desire for travel. After enjoying Cazazionor’s hospitality for eight days, he returned with his host to Ormuz, and took ship for Sind. They were landed at Joah, a port on the delta of the Indus, and proceeded to Cambay, an important harbour in Gujarat, whence fifty ships, laden with cotton, sailed yearly to different lands.
CHAPTER VII.
THE PAGANS OF NARSINGA.
Before Batûta reached India, and therefore long before Varthema’s time, Afghan chiefs had swooped down on the fertile plains of India with the war cry of “Allah and the Prophet,” and Northern India, with the exception of its southern and western districts, where the Rajpoots maintained their independence, was now under the rule of various Moslem despots. The Deccan was under the sway of a powerful Moslem dynasty—the Brahmany Sultans; but what is now the presidency of Madras and Mysore was divided into a number of petty kingdoms, subject to the Hindu Râja of Narsinga. A full century of conflict had resulted in a partial triumph of the Moslem: the sovereigns of Narsinga paid a certain tribute to be left at peace, although the western coast was, in a measure, protected by a wall of mountains. But Portuguese traders had just sailed into the Arabian Sea and had established themselves here and there at trading stations on the Malabar coast; and these they had fortified. On his outward journey, Varthema, for obvious reasons, showed no disposition to cultivate the acquaintance of these Christian Europeans.
Gujarat was under the rule of Fath Khân, whom Varthema calls Sultan Machamuth. “You shall now hear of the manner of his life. He and all his people are Mohammedans; and he keeps twenty thousand horsemen always with him. When he arises in the morning, fifty elephants, each with a man atop, come to the palace and do him reverence; and this is all the labour they are put to.... When he eats, fifty or sixty different kinds of music discourse; such as trumpets, different sorts of drums, recorders and fifes, and many others; and the elephants again do him reverence.... The Sultan’s moustachios are so long that he ties them up over his head, as a woman doth tie her tresses; and his beard, which is white, comes down to his girdle.” Fath Khân was greatly dreaded by his subjects; and they believed strange things concerning him; stories which are worthy of the Arabian Nights. These Varthema heard and set down, as did Barbosa, who travelled in the East a few years after the Sultan’s death. Machamuth was reputed to eat poison daily, so that, while he himself had become poison-proof, he had only to spit at a foe and death followed within half an hour. “Every night that he shall sleep with one of his three or four thousand women, they shall take her up dead in the morning.”
The Sultan was continually at war with a neighbouring Hindu Râja; and his Kingdom of Gujarat had been taken from the Jains—“a race which eats of nothing wherein courseth blood, and will kill nothing that hath life. They are neither Moors nor heathens; and I believe that, if they should be baptised, they would all be saved by their good works; for they never do unto others what they would not that others should do unto them. For dress, some wear a shirt; some, only a cloth round their middle and a large red cloth on their head; and their colour is tawny. And the aforesaid Sultan took their kingdom from them because of their goodness.”