Document-based question

Zhao Rugua, Chinese official in charge of foreign maritime trade at the port of Quanzhou, description of the Zanzibar coast of East Africa, in Records of Foreign Peoples, 1225.

The Ts'ong-pa [Zanzibar] country is on an island of the sea south of Hu-ch'a-la [Gujarat, in western India]. To the west it reaches to a great mountain. The inhabitants are of Ta-shi [Arab] stock and follow the Ta-shi religion. They wrap themselves in blue foreign cotton stuffs and wear red leather shoes. Their daily food consists of meal, baked cakes and mutton. There are many villages, and a succession of wooded hills and terraced rocks. The climate is warm, and there is no cold season. The products of the country consist of elephants' tusks, native gold, ambergris and yellow sandal-wood. Every year Hu-ch'a-la and the Ta-shi localities along the sea-coast send ships to this country with white cotton cloth, porcelain, copper, and red cotton to trade.

Marco Polo, Venetian merchant who served the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan, account of the kingdom of Ferlec (Perlak) in northern Sumatra, an island he visited in 1292 on his voyage home from China, c. 1298.

When you leave the Island of Pentam and sail about 100 miles, you reach the Island of Java the Less [Sumatra]. . . . You see there are upon it eight kingdoms and eight crowned kings. The people are all Idolaters, and every kingdom has a language of its own. The Island hath great abundance of treasure, with costly spices, lign-aloes and spikenard and many others that never come into our parts. . . . This kingdom [Ferlec], you must know, is so much frequented by the Saracen [Muslim] merchants that they have converted the natives to the Law of Mahommet—I mean the townspeople only, for the hill-people live for all the world like beasts. . . . And they worship this, that, and the other thing; for in fact the first thing that they see on rising in the morning, that they do worship for the rest of the day.

Ibn Battuta, Moroccan traveler and Muslim legal scholar who served as a qadi (Islamic judge) in the Maldive Islands in 1343 and 1344, account completed 1355.

The inhabitants of the Maldives are all Muslims, pious and upright. . . . In each island of theirs there are beautiful mosques, and most of their buildings are made of wood. . . . Their womenfolk . . . comb their hair and gather it at one side. Most of them wear only an apron from their waists to the ground, the rest of their bodies being uncovered. When I held the qadiship there, I tried to put an end to this practice and ordered them to wear clothes, but I met with no success. . . . It is easy to get married in these islands on account of the smallness of the dowries and the pleasure of their women's society. When ships arrive, the crew marry wives, and when they are about to sail they divorce them. It is really a sort of temporary marriage. The women never leave their country. It is a strange thing about these islands that their ruler is a woman, Khadija.

Great Mosque of Kilwa Kisiwani, an island city-state on the Swahili coast of East Africa (present-day Tanzania), begun in the eleventh century and enlarged and roofed with domes and vaults in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; photograph taken 2016.

Yongle emperor of Ming China, inscription dated 1409 on a stone tablet in Chinese, Tamil, and Persian that the admiral Zheng He set up at Galle, Sri Lanka. The Chinese text is shown.

His Majesty the Emperor of the Great Ming dynasty has despatched the eunuchs Ching-Ho [Zheng He], Wang Ch'ing-Lien, and others to set forth his utterance before Buddha, the World Honoured One, as follows: . . . "Whereas Ceylon's mountainous isle lies in the south of the ocean, and its Buddhist temples are sanctuaries of your gospel, where your miraculous responsive power imbues and enlightens. Of late, We have despatched missions to announce our mandates to foreign nations, and during their journey over the ocean they have been favoured with the blessing of your beneficent protection. They escaped disaster or misfortune, and journeyed in safety to and fro. In everlasting recognition of your supreme virtue, We, therefore, bestow offerings in recompense, and do now reverently present before Buddha, the Honoured One, oblations of gold and silver, gold embroidered jewelled banners of variegated silk, incense burners, and flower vases, silks of many colours in lining and exterior, lamps and candles with other gifts, in order to manifest the high honour of our worship. Do you, Lord Buddha, bestow on them your regard!"

Ma Huan, Chinese Muslim interpreter who sailed with the Ming admiral Zheng He, account of Java, 1416.

In this country there are three kinds of people: the Mahomedans, who have come from the west and have established themselves here; their dress and food is clean and proper; the Chinese, being all people from Canton, Chang-chou and Ch'üan-chou (the latter two places situated in Fukien, not far from Amoy), who have run away and settled here; what they eat and use is also very fine and many of them have adopted the Mahomedan religion and observe its precepts. The third kind are the natives, who are very ugly and uncouth; they go about with uncombed heads and naked feet and believe devoutly in devils . . . .

Abd al-Razzaq Samarqandi, Persian ambassador sent to India by the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh, account of the port of Calicut, on India's southwestern coast, which he visited in 1442.

Calicut is a perfectly secure harbour, which, like that of Ormuz [Hormuz], brings together merchants from every city and from every country; in it are to be found abundance of precious articles brought thither from maritime countries, and especially from Abyssinia, Zirbad, and Zanguebar [the East African coast]; from time to time ships arrive there from the shores of the House of God [Mecca] and other parts of the Hedjaz, and abide at will, for a greater or longer space, in this harbour; the town is inhabited by Infidels, and situated on a hostile shore. It contains a considerable number of Mussulmauns, who are constant residents, and have built two mosques, in which they meet every Friday to offer up prayer. They have one Kadi, a priest, and for the most part they belong to the sect of Schafei.