Document-based question

Zhao Rugua, Chinese official in charge of foreign maritime trade at the port of Quanzhou, description of trade at Ma-i, an island in the present-day Philippines, in Records of Foreign Peoples, 1225.

When trading ships enter the anchorage, they stop in front of the officials place, for that is the place for bartering of the country. After a ship has been boarded, the natives mix freely with the ship's folk. The chiefs are in the habit of using white umbrellas, for which reason the traders offer them as gifts. The custom of the trade is for the [local] traders to assemble in crowds and carry the goods away with them in baskets; and, even if one cannot at first know them, and can but slowly distinguish the men who remove the goods, there will yet be no loss. The [local] traders will after this carry these goods on to other islands for barter, and, as a rule, it takes them as much as eight or nine months till they return, when they repay the traders on shipboard with what they have obtained (for the goods). Some, however, do not return within the proper term, for which reason vessels trading with Ma-i are the latest in reaching home.

Marco Polo, Venetian merchant who served the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan, description of the Chinese merchant ships that sailed the Indian Ocean, from his account of his travels, c. 1298; the second paragraph survives only in the Italian edition of the account published by Giovanni Battista Ramusio in 1559.

These ships, you must know, are of fir timber. They have but one deck, though each of them contains some 50 or 60 cabins, wherein the merchants abide greatly at their ease, every man having one to himself. The ship hath but one rudder, but it hath four masts. . . . Moreover the larger of their vessels have some thirteen compartments or severances in the interior, made with planking strongly framed, in case mayhap the ship should spring a leak. . . . In such case the water that enters the leak flows to the bilge, which is always kept clear; and the mariners having ascertained where the damage is, empty the cargo from that compartment into those adjoining, for the planking is so well fitted that the water cannot pass from one compartment to another. . . . Each of their great ships requires at least 200 mariners. . . . They are indeed of great size, for one ship shall carry 5000 or 6000 baskets of pepper.

Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, agent of the Bardi banking company of Florence, handbook of advice for merchants traveling overland from Tana, on the Black Sea, to China (Cathay), c. 1340.

The road you travel from Tana to Cathay is perfectly safe, whether by day or by night, according to what the merchants say who have used it. . . . And there is another danger: this is when the lord of the country dies, and before the new lord who is to have the lordship is proclaimed; during such intervals there have sometimes been irregularities practised on the Franks [Europeans], and other foreigners. . . . You may reckon also that from Tana to Sara the road is less safe than on any other part of the journey; . . . if you are some sixty men in the company you will go as safely as if you were in your own house. . . . Whatever silver the merchants may carry with them as far as Cathay the lord of Cathay will take from them and put into his treasury. And to merchants who thus bring silver they give that paper money of theirs in exchange. . . . And all the people of the country are bound to receive it.

Ibn Battuta, Moroccan traveler and Muslim legal scholar, account of his travels in China under the Mongol Yuan dynasty in the 1340s, completed 1355.

China is the safest and best regulated of countries for a traveller. A man may go by himself a nine months' journey, carrying with him large sums of money, without any fear on that account. The system by which they ensure his safety is as follows. At every post-station in their country they have a hostelry controlled by an officer, who is stationed there with a company of horsemen and footsoldiers. After sunset or later in the evening the officer visits the hostelry with his clerk, registers the names of all travellers staying there for the night, seals up the list, and locks them into the hostelry. After sunrise he returns with his clerk, calls each person by name, and writes a detailed description of them on the list. He then sends a man with them to conduct them to the next post-station and bring back a clearance certificate from the controller there to the effect that all these persons have arrived at that station. If the guide does not produce this document, he is held responsible for them.

Catalan Atlas, world map attributed to Abraham Cresques, Jewish mapmaker on the Mediterranean island of Majorca, detail showing the Sahara and West Africa, 1375.

Ma Huan, Chinese Muslim interpreter who sailed with the Ming admiral Zheng He, account of the kingdom of Malacca on the Malay Peninsula, 1416.

Formerly it was not called a kingdom . . . . There also was no king, but only a chief, the country belonging to Siam, to which they had to pay a tribute of 40 taels of gold, and if they failed to do this, they were attacked for it. In the year 1409 the imperial envoy Cheng Ho [Zheng He] brought an order from the emperor and gave to the chief of this country two silver seals, a cap, a girdle and a long robe; he erected a stone and raised the place to a city, after which the land was called the kingdom of Malacca. From this time the Siamese did not venture to molest it any more. . . . Tin is found in two places of the mountains, and the king has appointed officers to control the mines. . . . In all their trading transactions they use these pieces of tin instead of money.

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.

Security and justice are so firmly established in this city, that the most wealthy merchants bring thither from maritime countries considerable cargoes, which they unload, and unhesitatingly send into the markets and the bazaars, without thinking in the meantime of any necessity of checking the account or of keeping watch over the goods. The officers of the custom-house take upon themselves the charge of looking after the merchandise, over which they keep watch day and night. When a sale is effected, they levy a duty on the goods of one-fortieth part; if they are not sold, they make no charge on them whatsoever. In other ports a strange practice is adopted. When a vessel sets sail for a certain point, and suddenly is driven by a decree of Divine Providence into another roadstead, the inhabitants, under the pretext that the wind has driven it there, plunder the ship. But at Calicut, every ship, whatever place it may come from, or wherever it may be bound, when it puts into this port is treated like other vessels, and has no trouble of any kind to put up with.