Mapping the world in medieval and early modern Western and Arabic Travel Accounts

This dissertation explores the construction of cultural knowledge of the world in both medieval and early modern Western and Arabic travel accounts, which have been until this present study largely examined separately. It argues that each culture conceptualizes the world according to a foundational metaphor that organizes its perception and determines its travel experiences. Western travelers adopt the metaphor of water to structure the world, whereas Arab travelers adopt the metaphor of land to structure the world. Both metaphors organize all aspects of life for the traveler, from travel paradigms to maps, marvels, rituals and values. The main theoretical approach adopted to undertake the comparison is the metaphor theory advanced by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their study Metaphors We Live By, which argues for the pervasiveness of conceptual metaphors in our daily life. Hence, this dissertation fills in a scholarly gap in the study of medieval and early modern Western and Arab travel accounts by examining them comparatively. Importantly, it places Western and Arab travel accounts and maps into conversation for the first time, thus revealing the dynamics of the cultural construction and borrowing of knowledge. The comparison demonstrates moments when both sets of travelers come into proximity in their reconfiguration of the world, particularly in early modern times. The dissertation also investigates questions of mental mapping by comparing travel texts to maps in the two cultures, to which end I use Bakhtin's notion of dialogism. Consequently, the study highlights influential ways of world making that constantly converge and diverge across time and space, as shown in the nexus between travel accounts, maps, and marvels. Importantly, it allows for the comparative study of knowledge construction in other areas pertaining to Western and Arab cultures to reveal their rich interaction. John Mandeville's The Travels (c.1357) and Sir Walter Ralegh's The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana (1596) comprise the Western cluster. Risalat Ibn Fadlan (Ibn Fadlan's Epistle) (tenth-century) and Leo Africanus' Description of Africa (1526) comprise the Arab cluster.

MAPPING THE WORLD IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN WESTERN AND ARABIC TRAVEL ACCOUNTS by Sally Abed A dissertation submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Languages and Literature Department of World Languages and Cultures The University of Utah May 2017 Copyright © Sally Abed 2017 All Rights Reserved The University of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF DISSERTATION APPROVAL The dissertation of Sally Abed has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: , Chair 12/13/2016 Margaret Toscano , Member 12/13/2016 Vincent Cheng , Member 12/13/2016 Therese de Raedt , Member 12/13/2016 Gema Rosa Guevara , Member 12/13/2016 Peter von Sivers , Member 12/13/2016 Maria Dobozy and by Katharina Gerstenberger the Department/College/School of Date Approved Date Approved Date Approved Date Approved Date Approved Date Approved , Chair/Dean of World Languages and Cultures and by David B. Kieda, Dean of The Graduate School. ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the construction of cultural knowledge of the world in both medieval and early modern Western and Arabic travel accounts, which have been until this present study largely examined separately. It argues that each culture conceptualizes the world according to a foundational metaphor that organizes its perception and determines its travel experiences. Western travelers adopt the metaphor of water to structure the world, whereas Arab travelers adopt the metaphor of land to structure the world. Both metaphors organize all aspects of life for the traveler, from travel paradigms to maps, marvels, rituals and values. The main theoretical approach adopted to undertake the comparison is the metaphor theory advanced by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their study Metaphors We Live By, which argues for the pervasiveness of conceptual metaphors in our daily life. Hence, this dissertation fills in a scholarly gap in the study of medieval and early modern Western and Arab travel accounts by examining them comparatively. Importantly, it places Western and Arab travel accounts and maps into conversation for the first time, thus revealing the dynamics of the cultural construction and borrowing of knowledge. The comparison demonstrates moments when both sets of travelers come into proximity in their reconfiguration of the world, particularly in early modern times. The dissertation also investigates questions of mental mapping by comparing travel texts to maps in the two cultures, to which end I use Bakhtin's notion of dialogism. Consequently, the study highlights influential ways of world making that constantly converge and diverge across time and space, as shown in the nexus between travel accounts, maps, and marvels. Importantly, it allows for the comparative study of knowledge construction in other areas pertaining to Western and Arab cultures to reveal their rich interaction. John Mandeville's The Travels (c.1357) and Sir Walter Ralegh's The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana (1596) comprise the Western cluster. Risalat Ibn Fadlan (Ibn Fadlan's Epistle) (tenthcentury) and Leo Africanus' Description of Africa (1526) comprise the Arab cluster. iv To my parents Hany & Mona & my sister Sara TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................... viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... ix INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 Chapters ONE: THE WATERY WORLD OF THE TRAVELS OF SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE ......23 Mandeville's Identity, Sources, and Text ..............................................................29 Voice, Audience, and Itinerary ..............................................................................32 Water in Medieval Thought ...................................................................................36 Mirabiles elaciones maris ......................................................................................44 Circumnavigating the World..................................................................................54 Mandeville's Water-bound Mirabilia ....................................................................60 The Map and the Globe in The Travels .................................................................69 Conclusion .............................................................................................................83 TWO: GILDED WATER AND UNCHARTED LAND IN SIR WALTER RALEGH'S THE DISCOVERIE OF THE LARGE, RICH, AND BEWTIFUL EMPYRE OF GUIANA.......................................................................................................................85 Ralegh and The Discoverie ....................................................................................91 The World Picture in Western Renaissance Cartography....................................100 The Discoverie, Maps and the Globe Portraits ....................................................109 A "laborinth of rivers" and The Emergence of Land ...........................................120 Water and Gold ....................................................................................................129 Monsters and Wonders in The Discoverie ...........................................................139 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................148 THREE: THE INVERTED WORLD OF IBN FADLAN'S RISALA .............................151 The Author, the Mission, and the Text ................................................................158 Structure, Audience, and Itinerary .......................................................................163 The Metaphor of Land in Medieval Arab Thought .............................................167 On the Road to Almish ........................................................................................186 Inverted Attachment in the Risala .......................................................................191 Uncounted ‘Aja'ib (Marvels) ..............................................................................204 The Ship Burial and the Inverted Worldview ......................................................217 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................224 FOUR: BETWEEN EAST AND WEST: THE PERSISTENCE OF LAND IN LEO AFRICANUS' DESCRIPTION OF AFRICA ..................................................................226 Author, Audience, and the Description ...............................................................232 Structure, Voice, and Sources ..............................................................................238 Arab versus European Knowledge of Africa .......................................................243 Mapping the World for Europeans and Arabs .....................................................253 Between East and West: Leo's Description of Africa .........................................258 Two Dominant Worldviews .................................................................................265 Double Attachment in the Description ................................................................270 The Parable Reinterpreted....................................................................................279 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................282 GENERAL CONCLUSION ............................................................................................285 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................289 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figures 1. Isidore's Tripartite World Map ......................................................................................39 2. Beatus Map, Osma Copy ...............................................................................................42 3. The Ebstorf Map ............................................................................................................73 4. Fifteenth-Century Dutch Map of Mandeville's The Travels .........................................81 5. Ralegh's Map of Guiana, El Dorado, and the Orinoco Coast ......................................112 6. Crispin Van De Passes's Engraving of Queen Elizabeth.............................................115 7. Map of Guiana by Theodore De Bry ...........................................................................118 8. Al-Istakhri Map ............................................................................................................176 9. Al-Kashgari Map .........................................................................................................178 10. Ramusio's Map of Africa...........................................................................................255 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A dissertation on travel narratives is a double journey with various stages. In the first stage, my mother, Mona, was the first storyteller in my life, who opened up new worlds for me, and my dad, Hany, generously brought me books. My aunt Hala had a fascinating library that made up my little world. My very precious sister, Sara, is always the rainbow, who makes me see light at the end of the tunnel, and whose belief in me rendered this dissertation possible. My great aunt Nabila Ibrahim, Professor of Arabic Literature and Folklore, was my role model for perseverance. My gratitude to my immediate and extended family is simply boundless. At Sacred Heart School, I am grateful to my Irish teacher, Sister Barbara Molloy for nourishing my love for literature. At the English department, in Alexandria University, I was extremely fortunate to be taught by many unforgettable professors who offered me solid education and priceless support to pursue my graduate studies. At the University of Arizona, I am indebted to Professor Adel Gamal and Professor Yaseen Noorani for their support and generosity as I was applying for the PhD program in Utah. My gratitude is boundless for my Chair and role model, Professor Dobozy, for her continuous encouragement, the space she offered me to be creative, and for showing me the way. I cannot even list all instances of her endless support and generosity, but she will always have a very special place in my heart. Each one of my committee members was helpful in guiding me throughout this journey. Professor Toscano and Professor Cheng offered me ample support and valuable advice, especially during applying for the Steffenson Canon Fellowship that enabled me to work on my project. Professor Guevara always urged me to attend conferences and Professor de Raedt was always encouaging. Professor von Sivers contributed to nuancing the dissertation in its final stage. All of them gave me insightful and encouraging feedback on my work, which will enable me to take it a step further in the future. I am also indebted to Professor Gerstenberger, the department chair, for smoothing all obstacles, and creating a productive academic atmosphere. I extend my sincere thanks also to Professor Randall Stewart, who provided me with the time and support I needed to work on my disseratation when I was his teaching assistant. Lifetime friends are the beacons of any journey. In addition to my large cirle of Alexandrian friends, I would like to thank Marwa Omar, Sara Tosson, Nadia Hamrouni, Linn Hedrick, Maha Maddar, Doaa Omran, Toni Richardson, Katie Montenegro, and Fateme Esmailie for their indescribable support, both on the academic and the emotional level. Each one of them contributed in a unique and loving way to this journey and offered me guidance. I am also thankful to my very dear friend Leonard Chiarelli at the Mariott Library for his generous help and support. The Fulbright Chapter in Utah, especially Helen Mulder and Nan and Dave McEntire, were a blessing to me and always stood by my side. Although away from home, the Guet family I have known here was, indeed, my second family, and no words can fulfill my gratitude to them. Last, but not least, I sincerely thank Professor Raymond Baker at Trent University, the precious friend I met while traveling back to Cairo one winter break, for giving me the positive support and advice needed to finish the last stretch of my long, exciting journey. x INTRODUCTION This dissertation delves into the world of medieval and early modern travelers and their narratives across Western and Arab cultures. It aims to surpass the imaginary binaries between East and West so as to explore the multiple varieties of the cultural construction of knowledge that determines making and re-making worlds. Scholarship tends to examine Western and Arab travel narratives and the contingent mapping discourses and genres separately. To date, there is no in-depth comparative study of the conceptual representation of the world as apparent in the two sets of travel writing. The novelty of the project, therefore, lies in bringing Western and Arab travelers into conversation to reveal the alternating moments of cultural divergence and convergence that cut across their works and worlds, and offer new insights into the discursive process of knowledge construction. To this end, I look at a set of medieval and early modern travel texts along with the inextricably intertwining mapping traditions pertaining to each culture, a relationship as yet understudied that adds to the novelty of the project, and underscores the governing processes of mental mapping, which produce what Edward Said calls "imaginative geography" (Orientalism 71-73). The conceptual and imaginative mappings both cultures engage in materialize in actual space through travel writing.1 "Travel writing" is a modern term in the European tradition that designates a branch of literature. However, I concur with Kim Philips on the need to consider the suitability of the term to medieval travel texts. I, therefore, use the term while acknowledging its modern dimension for European literature (Before Orientalism 50). See the same source for further discussion of the term, pp. 50-69. Conversely, the term is 1 2 As such, the project triggers the following sets of questions that I investigate. How do travelers in Western and Arab cultures construct their knowledge of the world? What informs their mindset? What type of discursive strategies do they adopt on their travels to foreign places? At a time when knowledge was not yet compartmentalized, how did the intertwining areas of inquiry of travel and cartography inform the traveler's worldview? What are the shifts in perspective between medieval and early modern conceptions of the world? What significance do these worldviews, medieval and early modern, ultimately have and how do they contribute to a better understanding of the cultures that adopt them? This study begins with the preliminary argument that medieval Western travel narratives conceive knowledge of the world in terms of water. As such, they foreground a water-bound worldview. Early modern Western texts preserve the water-based medieval legacy as they simultaneously begin to adopt a land-bound picture. On the other hand, medieval Arab travel accounts foreground a land-bound knowledge of the world that the early modern Arab texts preserve. This fine distinction between worldviews informs the preferred paradigms of travel each culture adopts - traveling by water versus traveling by land. The comparison between the two conceptual mindsets, and the manner they construct knowledge of the world, forms the inquiry of this dissertation that I undertake through investigating four travel texts. John Mandeville's The Travels (c.1357) and Sir Walter Ralegh's The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana (1596) - thereafter The Discoverie - comprise the Western cluster. Risalat Ibn Fadlan applicable to the medieval Arab travelers, who were fully conscious of the genre of travel writing. Ibn Hawqal and al-Muqaddasi's discussion of the concept in their works is a case in point. For a discussion of adab al-rihalat (The Literature of Travel) in the Arabic tradition, see Naser Abd el-Razek al-Muwafi, alrihla fi al-adab al-‘Arabi (The Journey in Arabic Literature), pp. 38-47. 3 (Ibn Fadlan's Epistle) (tenth-century) and Leo Africanus' Description of Africa (1526) - thereafter Description - comprise the Arab cluster. My argument for water versus land knowledge of the world that influences travel paradigms and narratives is starkly simple if not seemingly banal, but has profound cultural implications. Nevertheless, it takes into account the various exceptions, as it does not aim to establish rigid binaries between East and West. In both Western and Arab cultures, travelers naturally knew overland and sea routes alike. Marco Polo and Friar William of Rubruck's thirteenth-century travels to China and the Far East are undertaken, for example, via land routes. The first Crusaders, also, marched east to the Balkans and Anatolia overland (1095-1099). Similarly, in the Arabic tradition, al-Tajir al-Sirafi travels in the ninth century by sea to India and China, and Ibn Jubayr goes on pilgrimage to Mecca in the twelfth century by sea. However, these counter examples are rare exceptions to the norm. It is helpful to bear in mind that despite taking the overland route, Western travelers like Polo and William of Rubruck must have relied on local guides, since they both came from a culture more accustomed to water travel. Likewise, Arab travelers on the sea had to rely on local guides, since they were more prone to caravans crossing the deserts. Additionally, in subsequent years to the First Crusade the romance term ‘Outremer', or overseas, became common, and soon thereafter, the conceptual framework of the Crusades had to do with crossing the water, rather than the land, in all the vernaculars.2 As my research shows throughout its various stages, despite the exceptions, the Outremer, which means overseas, was a general name used for the Crusader States in the aftermath of the victories of Westerners in the First Crusade. The French used the term to mean any land overseas. In the twelfth-century epic Chanson de Roland, Outremer refers to a fictional Muslim country. 2 4 dominant trend between both sets of travelers is the following: an inclination towards a water-bound worldview in the Western tradition that reflects in most travel narratives, and an inclination towards a land-bound worldview in the Arabic tradition that reflects in most travel accounts. Drawing on a variety of sources in the Western and Arab tradition, I aim to complicate the initial simple argument in order to shed light on the significant cultural implications that are overlooked in medieval scholarship. The benefit of the model I propose and pursue throughout the dissertation offers a productive framework on various levels. It wields the genres of travel literature and maps so as to investigate their relationship. Consequently, the dialogue between the seemingly disparate genres accentuates how cultures interact. More prominently, it reveals a particular way of seeing the world that encompasses various intertwining aspects, such as travel, mental and geographic mapping, describing the marvelous, and negotiating otherness. In the process, water and land become crucial identity markers for the cultures in question. The chronological and spatial parameter of this project is the loose period of the tenth through the sixteenth century in Western and Arab cultures. The period in question covers both the medieval and the early modern worlds with the advantage of tracing the construction of knowledge, borders, and identity in terms of water and land in travel accounts across this time span. However, one of the challenges posed by these spatial and chronological parameters is the use of terms, such as East, West, Arab, and European. The discussion of these terms and their implication is outside the scope of this study, which is undertaken with due acknowledgement of the complexity of these labels. Edward Said's study of Orientalism, with its implications of a homogenous West that Orientalizes and feminizes the East, does not apply to the medieval and early modern 5 worlds of travel writing where East and West were coextensive and relatively on equal footing. Yet, I borrow from him the notion that "words such as ‘Orient' and ‘Occident' correspond to no stable reality that exists as a natural fact…all such geographical designations are an odd combination of the empirical and imaginative" ("East isn't east" 3). It follows that east and west are by no means stable categories, despite the attempt to pin them down. Moreover, there was no firm line of demarcation between east and west in the medieval and early modern world.3 In Trading Territories, Jerry Brotton suggests that the post-Enlightenment discourses of Orientalism later engender this binary (97). Leo Africanus' The Description is a case in point. Born in Granada, raised in Fez, and living in Rome where he writes his account for a primarily Western audience renders him neither eastern nor western. Like the other three travelers, he never attempts to place East and West in opposition, he only implies contrast. The term "Arab" implies an ethnicity, though a geographic root in the land of Arabia can be claimed too.4 It includes Muslims as well as non-Muslims equally and refers to a whole culture that predates Islam. The term "Europe," on the other hand, is primarily geographic. It gradually becomes more common after the thirteenth century and supplants the term ‘Christendom' because of the appeal it had "for its classical resonances, and the development of portolani (maps charting shorelines) [that] gave the On this historically later development of the East West division and perceptions of the East, see Abou-el-Haj, "The formal closure of the Ottoman frontier in Europe, 1699-1703," Journal of the American Oriental Society 89 (1969), pp. 467-75, and Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe (Stanford, 1994). 3 For a recent discussion of Arab identity, see Peter Webb, Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam, where the author explores the term pre- and post-Islam (Edinburgh University Press, 2016). 4 6 geographic outline of Europe clearer visual expression" (K.Phillips 61).5 The relationship between the portolan charts and the adoption of Europe as an alternative term further supports my argument for the West's adoption of water as an identity marker. It is apparent that an ethnic term cannot be equated with a geographic term. However, for lack of better terms, I employ them throughout my project. For medieval Western texts, I reserve the term "Western" rather than ‘Christendom' to steer away from religious binaries. For early modern texts, I use the word European, which by that time is common usage. For the Arab cluster, medieval and early modern, I prefer the term Arab to Islamic to designate the culture in question, once more in order to avoid religious binaries. The imaginary line of demarcation can well be one reason for scholarship examining the travel narratives pertaining to both cultures separately. Together with this, scholarship is oblivious to the predominant worldviews that direct each culture. Hence, the significance of my project, which takes into account "the idea of rethinking and reformulating historical [and cultural] experiences which had once been based on the geographical separation of peoples and cultures" that Said suggests critical works adopt, and which I, too, adopt in my study of travel texts and mapping traditions ("East isn't east" 6). The nexus between the two genres of travel and maps in medieval and early modern times is inevitable. To travel is to rely on some sort of map that conditions, in J.B. Harley's words "a distinct mode of visual representation," which, I suggest, informs the traveler's mental mapping of the world ("Deconstructing the Map" 233). It follows The term Europe is already there at the time of the Battle of Tours and Poitiers, 732/733. However, back then, even though the term was floating around, Europe did not exist as a coherent entity. The term had no single specific meaning yet, but had rather different meanings attached to it. 5 7 that the two influential worldviews - land and water - are represented on the most resonant visual and material object at the time - the map. The concept that best embodies the nexus between both is dialogism. Michael Bakhtin's notion of the dialogic, which entails the dialogue and interaction between two worlds, and by extension discourses, is helpful in examining the reciprocal relationship and dialogue between medieval and early modern travel texts, on the one hand, and maps on the other (The Dialogic Imagination 279). The medieval Western mappae mundi (world maps) I consult are the Ebstorf (1240), and the Hereford (1290) that the Mandeville author possibly refers to, as well as Sir Walter Ralegh's early modern map of Guiana (1596) that he incorporates in The Discoverie, among others. Together with these, I consult the following Arabic maps: AlIstakhri's map (tenth-century) and Al-Kashgari's map (eleventh-century), among others. Juxtaposing travel texts and maps is fruitful in terms of studying the unity and pervasiveness of land and water on a large scale. The juxtaposition also highlights other contingent discourses that form an integral part of the travel accounts of the period, such as the formation of borders and identity, the depiction of marvels, the discovery of new lands, and the dialectic between classical learning and new knowledge. The argument and attendant questions that the project raises can be rewardingly approached through the theory of conceptual metaphors advanced by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By, which I employ as the principal analytic tool throughout the dissertation. According to their study, metaphors are "pervasive in everyday life" and they "structure our everyday concepts" (4, 47). In this sense, they also inform cultural values and rituals, organizing the way we understand and experience reality (23, 235). Based on this conceptual view of metaphor, which becomes literal when 8 applied to various experiences of travel and culture, I treat water and land spaces in travel texts and on maps as foundational metaphors that Western and Arab cultures, respectively, use to structure, represent, and experience their world, and different aspects of their culture, in travel writing. It is outside the scope of this dissertation to discuss the complex history of metaphor and its types. Suffice it to say, however, that metaphor as a figure of speech, which means to transfer or carry over, goes all the way back to the classical writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. In the middle ages, it continued in the writings of St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and later in Dante's poetry. Likewise, medieval Arab philosophers, like Avicenna, nuanced the rhetorical use of metaphor in his translations of Aristotle.6 The rhetorical use of metaphor developed into other types, such as cognitive metaphor and conceptual metaphor. I draw on the latter type in my work, since conceptual metaphors of land and water recur in travel accounts and set up various cultural relations. In addition, the theory entails a systematic association between language and thought, as apparent in travel accounts. The use of the conceptual metaphor theory to examine medieval and early modern issues is, in my view, valuable. On the one hand, it has strong medieval ties, and it is part of both cultures, which renders it fit to medieval studies. On the other, it is flexible enough to be applied to different timeframes and contexts, especially the past. In this sense, it is more liberating and convenient than some other modern theories, such as postcolonialism, that cannot be always foisted on earlier periods. Unlike other theories, the conceptual metaphor theory opens up the door for studying the underlying complexity of medieval thought and culture, and shedding For more background on the history of metaphor in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, see Harry Berger, Figures of a Changing World, especially pp. 75-125. 6 9 light on the connections inherent in a number of seemingly unrelated issues. Along with this, the metaphor theory helps trace the changes that water and land undertake from a metaphorical concept to a literal one in the travel texts in question. The flirtatious interplay between metaphorical and literal meaning or reality is at the heart of the travelers' accounts. The concepts of ‘world making' and ‘the principle of attachment' complement and lend depth to my use of Lakoff and Johnson's theoretical approach, since they describe the discursive strategies travelers employ to create and sustain the metaphors of water and land. Concerning the first strategy, the mental and experiential organization determined by the metaphor theory is crucial to the ongoing process of "world making," a term I borrow from Nelson Goodman's Ways of World Making, which indicates how "worlds … may be built in many ways" and entails that "the making" of a world involves a process of "remaking" it (6). For the Mandeville author and Ralegh, making and re-making the world produces the metaphor of water in their travel texts, while for Ibn Fadlan and Leo Africanus making and re-making the world create the metaphor of land in their travel texts. Concomitantly, on their travels to foreign places the four travel texts in question use what Anthony Pagden calls "the principle of attachment" in European Encounters with the New World. According to this principle, travelers attach the strange things they encounter to the familiar aspects of their culture, to create a link between their world and the foreign world, and largely graft one onto the other (21, 24). In other words, they sustain their conceptual views through the framework of attachment where aspects of one culture reflect another. As will become apparent, the four texts employ the concept 10 differently. Ralegh, for example, relates the warring female Amazons of the New World to the Amazons of the Old World. However, there are also moments when the process of attachment appears to break down. Similarly, Ibn Fadlan relates the condemnation of adultery among the tribes he encounters to his culture. Yet, at times, he inverts the process of attachment altogether. As such, both ‘world making' and ‘the principle of attachment' are instrumental theoretical tools to my reading since they are ways of creating, sustaining, and sometimes changing the metaphors travelers navigate by. The use of the metaphor theory, along with the concepts of ‘world making' and attachment, illuminate a set of relationships and ensuing discoveries that underscore the significance of the project. They demonstrate the manner in which metaphors of water and land direct issues of world knowledge, identity fashioning, exploration, and the construction of borders. They also incorporate along one continuum the different cultural values and rituals, since they organize all aspects of life. For example, part of the Western and Arab value system is the depiction of marvels. Since water is the dominant metaphor for the west, it determines the depiction of water-bound marvels and monsters in Mandeville's The Travels and Ralegh's The Discoverie. Conversely, the metaphor of land determines the depiction of land-bound marvels in Ibn Fadlan's Epistle and Leo Africanus' The Description. This general trend overcomes the exceptions in both traditions where marvels are occasionally tied to land in the Western tradition and to water in the Arab tradition. The outcome of the dominant conceptual framework is two significant, yet complementary, ways of ‘world making' and exploration. Furthermore, my interpretation of the travel texts within the context of metaphor theory is revelatory in relation to the captivating nexus between texts and maps. The 11 complex relationships they enjoy produce a particular conceptual and imaginative perspective. Maps contribute to "dialogue in a socially constructed world" (Harley, "Maps, Knowledge and Power" 278). This socially constructed world here is the world of travelers and their texts. Like metaphors, maps are "never value-free …. Both in the selectivity of their content and in their signs and styles of representation [they] are a way of conceiving, articulating, and structuring the human world…" (Harley, "Maps, Knowledge and Power" 278). As such, they act as metaphors of ‘world making' that speak to the manipulation of knowledge and power that water and land create, as evidenced by the Western and Arab expansionary ambition. Unlike modern travel accounts, their medieval and early modern counterparts are inextricably entwined with the mapping tradition of the time.7 To consider one without the other is to tell half the story because maps were sometimes incorporated in the travel manuscripts and knowledge was encyclopedic and interdisciplinary. Regardless of any differences, both Arab and Western maps present the foundational metaphors of land and water that the travel texts foreground as well. The notion of water in medieval and early modern Western thought and literary works justifies, as well as substantiates, my reading of Mandeville's The Travels and Ralegh's The Discoverie in terms of the water metaphor. The water-bound discourse dates back to the Greco-Roman legacy that the West inherits from Macrobius and Crates of Mallos - an issue I discuss at length in Chapter One. It is predicated on featuring waterways and islands during traveling, rather than lands. The fascination with water The link between historical-based travel accounts and geography "was no invention of the Middle Ages. Ancient authors such as Strabo, Herodotus, Polybius and Sallust had already blended geography and history…. Medieval Christianity's awareness of the interrelationship of time and space was inherited from both classical and Judaic traditions" (Scafi, Mapping Paradise 94). 7 12 borders and islands has always been part of the way in which the west imagined, as well as constructed, its identity and the surrounding world, despite the Europeans' knowledge and use of overland routes at times. In Europe and the Sea, Michel du Jourdin Mollat maintains that for the West the sea was "a useful means, a dynamo, towards an awareness of its personality in the face of other continents" (30). Importantly, Europe's tendency towards navigational exploration, water traffic, and conquest enhances its attachment to water, especially in early modern times with the rise of maritime power, which ushers in the discovery of the New World from the late fifteenth century onwards. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that attachment to water promotes the paradigm of traveling by waterways, accentuating in the process a mindset that reveals a broader set of values and contingent discourses attached to imagining a water-bound conception of the world and its inhabitants. Concern with waterways comes from different interweaving genres and disciplines in the Western tradition that resist the classification and compartmentalization typical of modern knowledge. These disciplines range from the Bible that emphasizes Noah's Flood and the ensuing tripartite division of the world among Noah's three sons, coupled with the emphasis on the rivers of Paradise, which play a significant role in travel texts, such as Mandeville's. Even though the Promised Land is mentioned in many biblical verses, it does not play the same major role that Noah's flood and the rivers of paradise play in travel texts and maps. Medieval world maps, such as the Beatus, the Hereford, and the Ebstorf that dominate the scene well into the fourteenth century enhance the water-bound biblical view rather than the concept of a Promised Land. They portray "the inhabited earth surrounded by an ocean full of islands and linked to paradise 13 by the meanderings of the four rivers" as Alessandro Scafi notes in his comprehensive study Mapping Paradise (207). To the Western mind, Paradise, whether biblical or pagan like the Fortunate Islands, has always been an isolated island defined by an abundance of water as portrayed on the Hereford map.8 The writings of Pliny the Elder, Cicero, Crates of Mallos, and Macrobius, among others, constitute such a water-bound tradition, as well as the adoption by medieval culture of the three popular mapping traditions at the time: the mappa mundi, the zonal map, and the T-O map.9 The same water-bound mindset is apparent in literary works. Chet Van Duzer notes in "From Odysseus to Robinson Crusoe" that "the romance of islands has been part of Western literature since its origins … Homer's Odyssey begins not only in mediis res, in the middle of the action, but also in medio oceano, with Odysseus on the isle of Ogygia in the middle of the sea" (143-144). Works such as the anonymous German epic King Rother (1160), The Legend of Duke Ernst (c.1190), and Wolfram von Eschenbach's romance Parzival (c.1210) display a traveling paradigm determined by crossing waterways to various destinations. King Rother, for instance, opens with water: "Upon the shore of the Western Sea/There lived a lord of high degree" (Lichtenstein 1). The plot revolves around King Rother's quest for a bride, the daughter of King Constantine of Constantinople, where he sails, wins her heart then returns with her to his home in Bari. Embarking ships and crossing waterways is central to the quest. Similarly, The Legend of Duke Ernst, because of its crusade theme, stresses the paradigm of traveling by water, or 8 For more on the depiction of Paradise as an island in European medieval thought and on maps, see Alessandro Scafi, Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth, pp. 50, 102, 157, 162-163. For a survey of the mapping tradition and kinds of maps, see chapter 5 "Mapping Paradise on Space and Time" in Scaffi, Mapping Paradise, pp. 84-94. 9 14 Outremer, repeatedly, as I mention above. Duke Ernst's stepfather forces him out of his kingdom. After a fruitless war, the duke decides to repent, and undertakes a journey to Jerusalem. Duke Ernst's preparation for the "journey across the sea" and the effort to find "the right ship for the voyage" receive attention in the narrative (83-85). Throughout the legend, the reader continuously sees Duke Ernst "summoning his knights and journeying by ship" (114). The legend also depicts wonders on the sea and on the huge river, and monsters taken home as trophies, which are common tropes in travel literature and romances. Parzival is also embedded in waterways. Huge water trips take Gahmuret, the hero's father, to places and back home. The list of European works that abound in examples of seaborne voyages is countless.10 Old English elegiac poems of the tenth century, such as The Wanderer and The Seafarer, deal with the theme of exile on the sea and the search for God. The sea is the setting with which they both open.11 Likewise, the oldest surviving Old English epic Beowulf, composed between the eighth and the early eleventh century, outlines a watery world.12 It begins and ends with sea-bound funerals. The corpse of the Danish warlord Scyld Scefing is placed on a ship (Beo 26-52). Beowulf's wish is that a barrow constructed "on the headland of whales" and "visible to seafarers from afar" commemorates his death (Beo 2805b, 3158). Throughout the epic, he fights Grendel's mother in water and later, when he fights and kills the dragon, the monster is given a sea burial as he rolls off the cliffs, and is carried off by the waves (Beo For a comprehensive study on the symbolism of the sea in various Anglo-Saxons works, see Stacy Klein, The Maritime World of the Anglo-Saxons. 10 11 pp. 48-55. For the English translation of both poems, see Michael Alexander, The Earliest English Poems, See Heide Estes, "Beowulf and the Sea: An Ecofeminist Reading" in Stacy Klein, The Maritime World of the Anglo-Saxons, pp. 209-227. 12 15 3131b-3133). The ship burial scene in Beowulf that pertains to Western culture becomes integral to Ibn Fadlan's Risala when he journeys north to the land of the Rus. Likewise, the notion of land in medieval and early modern Arab thought and literary works justifies and supports my reading of Ibn Fadlan's Epistle and Leo Africanus' Description along the metaphor of land. In Arab thought, the discourse of land flourishes from the ninth to the twelfth century and culminates in the fourteenth. It enhances charting the lands, cities, routes, and realms that the traveler passes through. The discourse of land informs Arab knowledge of the world, identity making, and acts as a route to far-flung destinations. In addition, land space entails Arab expansion, commerce, and empire building. Even though the Arabs take the notion of an encircling ocean surrounding the earth from the Hellenistic tradition and Ptolemy's works and depict it on their maps, the focus of maps remains the land. This is different from the Western tradition, which also shares the classical notion of an all-encircling ocean, but focuses rather on waterways and water spaces within the world.13 Metaphorically, in the Arabic tradition, land-bound knowledge gives the appearance of being the best way of imagining the world. Literally, it promotes the paradigm of overland travel that gives birth to, and later interweaves with, the complex traditions of rihla (journey) and almasālik w-al-mamālik (Routes and Kingdoms). As such, land in Arab travel texts also underscore a mindset that reveals a broader set of values and contingent discourses attached to imagining a land-bound conception of the world and its inhabitants. Similar to the medieval Western tradition, the shared concern with land comes See E. Edson and E. Savage-Smith, "The Geographical Inheritance from Antiquity" in Medieval Views of the Cosmos, pp. 49-58, for an overview of the classical influence on both Christian and Islamic cosmographical traditions and where they converge and diverge. 13 16 from different intertwined genres and disciplines. These disciplines include the homiletic force of the Qur'an urging people to explore the lands and travel extensively. Notably, the land discourse is more powerful than water in the Qur'an, even though it shares the biblical stories of Noah's flood and the rivers of Paradise. Yet, just as the Promised Land is mentioned in the Bible, but has no place in Western travel texts and maps, the Flood and rivers of Paradise have no place in Arab travel accounts and maps, a point I explore further in Chapter Three. In addition to the Qur'an, the traditional Arabic ode known as nasib included among its salient elements, "the evocation of place where the poet had once been" at its beginning, usually "an evocation of a lost love" that ties the beloved to a specific "abode" (A.Hourani 13). We see this in the eighth-century poetry of Bashar Ibn Burd and the ninth-century poetry of Abu-Tammam, to mention a select few.14 There is also the long-standing genre of poetry known as elegies for cities: or ritha' al-mudun, such as the ninth-century elegy for Baghdad composed by Abu Ya‘qub Ishaq alKhuraymi. In fact, the poetry of the Arabs, as Abdurrahmane Hmeida rightly notes in A‘lam al-Jughrafiyyin al- ‘Arab (Masters of Arab Geographers), "included many facts concerning their natural environment, and in this way … [it] became one of the important sources of preliminary geography..." (40). The intersection between land representations and description of places is clear in the eighth-century fada'il ("merits") treatises that praise a city "by bringing together quotations, poetry, and anecdotes from a variety of sources," and topographical histories, which "represent cities through historical reports … documenting changes in their built environments, administration, and residence patterns over time" (Antrim 33). Ibn al-Kindi's tenth-century Fada'il Misr (Merits of For an English translation of these verses, see Zayde Antrim, Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic World, p. 21. 14 17 Egypt) and al-Khatib al Baghdadi's eleventh-century Tarikh Baghdad (The History of Baghdad) are examples of this genre. Importantly, in the ninth century Ibn Khurdādihbih composed the earliest surviving Arabic book of administrative geography Kitāb al Masālik w'al Mamālik (The Book of Roads and Kingdoms). His near contemporary Abu Zayd Ahmad b. Sahl al-Balkhi contributed to the rise of al-masālik w-al-mamālik tradition that depicts routes and realms or regions. The tradition, sometimes known as the ‘Balkhi School', sets a precedent for subsequent travelers, who were also geographers, such as the three tenth-century travelers: al-Istakhri, Ibn Hawqal, and al-Muqaddasi, among others. Their travel texts include regional maps of territories that manifest the meanderings of routes and realms, rather than the meanderings of the rivers of Paradise on Western maps. All these interweaving disciplines, combined, inform the genre of rihla or journey characteristic of the Arabs and feed into travel texts, such as Ibn Fadlan's and Leo Africanus'. Therefore, I claim that travel texts and maps participating in the discourse of land resonate with established religious and literary precedents in the same way those participating in the discourse of water resonate with established Western traditions. Travel narratives, literary works, and maps accentuate either land or water. They illustrate the manner the conceptual systems of cultures depend on their physical environments (Lakoff and Johnson 147). The jagged and fragmented peninsulas of the Western edge of Europe and the water interstices versus the abundance of desert that characterizes Arab lands, determine their worldview and certainly the preferred method of travel. The geographic differences are self-evident, if not banal; nevertheless, they had far-reaching cultural implications. As Norbert Ohler suggests in The Medieval Traveler 18 "Europe is richly endowed with islands and peninsulas" and "until comparatively recent times it was possible to travel faster, and more comfortably, by sea than on land …" (3). Fear of the sea voyage is not central to Western works, such as Beowulf, The Legend of Duke Ernst, Mandeville's The Travels or Ralegh's The Discoverie. Conversely, for the Arabs land routes were more comfortable and safer. Traveling on water, one infers from the texts, is somewhat a source of anxiety to Ibn Fadlan and Leo Africanus, both of whom prefer traveling by caravans. As I show in the course of the chapters, the poetry of the Arab-Sicilian Abu Al-‘Arab reveals fear of the sea, which is also a common leitmotif among travelers, such as the ninth-century Andalusian poet al-Ghazzal who travels by sea to the Vikings, and Ibn Jubayr's twelfth-century pilgrimage to Mecca. Importantly, the physical environment does not eliminate the fact that travelers in both cultures traveled by water and land. However, preference for one foundational metaphor for knowing the world directed each group and determined an overall predominant worldview. Likewise, the legacy of marvels in both cultures supports my argument of the two metaphors of ‘world making'. The discourse of marvels in Western and Arab travel texts, I contend, follows the water-bound versus the land-bound mental conceptualization of knowledge. Notably, Umberto Eco's work Legendary Lands offers an account of the lands of marvels throughout European history, and not surprisingly, most places are indeed water spaces and islands, like Taprobane and the Isles of the Blessed. The discourse of monsters is less common in medieval and early modern Arabic texts for reasons discussed in the following chapters. Yet turning to literature once more, out of the numerous stories that comprise The Arabian Nights, the most popular medieval Arab work, only two take place on water - "Sindbad the Sailor" and "The Story of Jullanar of 19 the Sea" - while the rest take place on land. The last two are a later addition to the collection that display that the original land-bound stories reflect a particular mindset. The difference between the two cultures in their perception of marvels speaks to the way foundational metaphors of land and water organize cultural values and reality. They shape the experience of marvels deeply embedded in medieval and early modern travel texts of exploration, and determine their location in the environment most familiar to each culture. This dissertation is comprised of two parts. The first part centers on the medieval and early modern Western travel accounts of John Mandeville and Sir Walter Ralegh. In Chapter One, I choose Mandeville's fourteenth-century The Travels as one of the most popular medieval travel accounts that promotes the possibility of (circum)navigating the world, which, in turn, impacts explorers of the New World who read Mandeville, such as Sir Walter Ralegh. Therefore, the chapter examines Mandeville's use of the pre-existing classical legacy of a water-bound worldview. I explore how Mandeville employs the metaphor of water to embed his text and world in waterways and how he brings the discursive strategy of mirroring to bear upon it. In the process, the chapter argues for Mandeville's contribution to the water-bound Western identity through reintroducing the classical concept of circumnavigation to his audience and his insistence on its feasibility. Both the metaphor of water and water-bound marvels become apparent in my reading of the dialogic relationship between travel texts and maps at the time since the Mandeville author refers in one version of The Travels to a mappa mundi, and in another to a globe. Chapter Two explores Sir Walter Ralegh's sixteenth-century The Discoverie, a text that serves my purpose since it forms the threshold between the medieval world and 20 the Renaissance. In addition, it speaks dialogically to The Travels as Ralegh cites the Mandeville author in name and adumbrates a water-bound world to and in Guiana. I argue here that while early modern accounts preserve the inherited water-bound knowledge of the world, they also underscore a gradual shift to overland exploration, especially in view of the rise in prominence of the globe, apparent in the globe portraits of Queen Elizabeth I that I discuss. Eventually, while a water-bound way of understanding reality persists and translates the metaphor of water into a literal existence, a new way of charting and conquering the (New) world in the Renaissance infiltrates. Lakoff and Johnson's proposition that "new metaphors have the power to create a new reality" is helpful in examining the way the metaphor of land gradually replaces the metaphor of water in Western thought and travel accounts (146). The intermingling between old and new ways of knowledge and ‘world making' carries over to the location of marvels and gold in the travel text and Ralegh's map of Guiana. To complement part one, the second part of the dissertation focuses on the medieval and early modern Arabic travel texts. Chapter Three examines Ibn Fadlan's tenth-century Risala since it is coterminous with the beginning of the mapping traditions of Ibn Khurdādibih and the Balkhi School of geography in the ninth and tenth centuries, as well as the genre of rihla that culminates in the fourteenth century in the Arab world. This chapter outlines the pre-existing tradition of depicting a land-based worldview in Arab culture and the land-bound view in the text. In the process, I argue that Ibn Fadlan uses what I call inverted attachment as the strategy to preserve the metaphor of land on his travels. However, I contend that the strategy becomes dysfunctional at times, due to the varying riverine topography, a point that brings his text close to Ralegh's The 21 Dicoverie where attachment fails Ralegh at times too. To substantiate my claim of a landbound knowledge of the ecumene that incorporates land-bound marvels, I turn to maps. Importantly, I also compare Ohthere of Hålogaland and Wulfstan of Hedeby's near contemporary ninth-century brief accounts of their voyages north to Ibn Fadlan's. Both accounts, written around the time when Beowulf was under composition, bring into focus the two conceptions of the world and travel paradigms adopted by each culture. The brevity of these two contemporaneous and seemingly rudimentary accounts, in comparison to Ibn Fadlan's Epistle, renders the Mandeville author's fourteenth-century account a better counterpart to Ibn Fadlan, especially with the objectivity that both travelers share towards the cultures they encounter. The development of the genre of rihla or journey in Arab culture, which coincides with the flourishing of Arab learning, results in travel accounts more nuanced and complex than their Western counterpart in the same era. The last chapter examines Leo Africanus' early modern account The Description of Africa (1526). The text substantiates my argument of the persistence of the metaphor of land for early modern Arabic travelers, since it is steeped in the traditions of the rihla and al-masālik. It was popular in European culture because of its land description of areas that the Europeans had never ventured into before, which earned it the praise of the Geographic Royal Society of London in the eighteenth century. As such, the text contributes, in my view, to the adoption of the metaphor of land in early modern Europe in such a fascinating way that ultimately influences Ralegh. The chapter investigates Leo's subtle juxtaposition of the Western and Arab conception of the world through what I call double attachment. His obsessive mention of the Roman, and later, the Portuguese 22 and Spanish maritime powers at his time, along with the Arabs' territorial power, brings them into conversation, and demonstrates the various ways they construct world knowledge. Although the four texts share seminal notions and aspects, it is worth remarking that they are not exactly analogous. Each traveler writes his account for somewhat different purposes and goals. In addition, each one engages attachment differently to construct his world and text. More important, the Mandeville author, Ralegh, and Ibn Fadlan return home from their travels even if the manuscript that contains the return journey is lost, as in Ibn Fadlan's case. Concerning Leo, there is no unanimous consensus among scholars as to whether he returned to Africa or not. The disagreement is enlightening since it allows us to follow better Leo's mental mapping and re-mapping of Africa. It also offers an insight into his process of delineating a dual world for his readership and coming to terms with it. The travel texts I choose are representative of the development of the Arab and Western attachment to knowledge construction through the foundational metaphors of water and land. In the process, they reveal fascinating ways of ‘world making' that entail the depiction of land and water as ways of exploration and identity formation. At the same time, they underscore moments of cultural convergence, communication, and the ability to maintain objectivity in a world characterized by expansion as much as it is characterized by dialogue and exchange. CHAPTER ONE THE WATERY WORLD OF THE TRAVELS OF SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE Through this we can perceive that the earth and the sea are of round form, for the part of the firmament that appears in one country does not appear in another. And it can be easily discovered by experience and by clever research that, if a man found passage by ship and people who wanted to go explore the world, he could sail all around the world, both above and below. (Mandeville loc 2427) The first chapter addresses the pervasiveness of the foundational metaphor of water and the way it informs medieval Western world knowledge in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Composed in the mid-1350s and attributed to a certain John Mandeville, the text had an immense influence on the medieval audience. Around three hundred copies survived, in different translations, ranging from English, French, and German to Latin, Czech, and Spanish, among others (Higgins, "Introduction" xii-xiii). The tradition of enhancing water space rather than land space is characteristic of numerous medieval and, to a large extent, early modern Western travel texts and world maps. My choice for the text rests on the noticeable abundance of waterways as a means of world making. The author's desire to promote sea-borne travel as the preferred paradigm of world exploration paves the way to the full-blown Western maritime power in the early modern era, which will be explored in Sir Walter Ralegh's The Discoverie. 24 Significantly, the Mandeville author's text forms the nexus between inherited early medieval notions of a water-bound world, and early modern notions of maritime power and empire building. The Travels reconfigures the metaphor of water from a navigable medium to a (circum)navigable one. It expands upon the already existent aquatic view of the ecumene through picking up the classical notion of circumnavigation. In addition, the text greatly influenced Ralegh's The Dicoverie. It manifests the persistence of the metaphor of water well into early modern times. The Travels elicited a wide spectrum of modern responses. On one end of the spectrum, contemporary critical opinion looks disfavorably at the work in question. For A.C. Baugh the author set out "to write a mere guidebook, but continued it with an account of his travels in Asia" (267). Mary Campbell calls Mandeville "a literary hoax" in The Witness and the Other despite praising the text for its "encyclopedic" nature (126, 151). Likewise, in Marvelous Possessions Stephen Greenblatt calls the author "an unredeemable fraud" and draws attention to the fictitious nature of the work (31).15 On the other end of the spectrum, The Travels has enjoyed significant critical interest. In The Rediscovery of Sir John Mandeville, Josephine Bennett praises the text as "scholarly" and "moral," and calls its author "the creator of the romance of travel" (74, 53). Within the context of pilgrimage, Christian Zacher explores the intersection between pilgrimage and curiosity suggesting, "In the linear narrative of the book, the devout pilgrim metamorphoses into the wide-eyed curious wanderer" (131). Donald Howard defends 15 Among the scholars who discuss the possible purpose of The Travels are Leonardo Olschki, who in Marco Polo's Precursors, maintains that the purpose of the work was entertainment, Malcolm Letts for whom the Mandeville author was "concerned only with the needs of pilgrims and the preservation of the Holy Places" (9-15; 41-42). Along the same line, Aziz Atiya suggests that the purpose of The Travels was to promote a crusade the same way other pilgrim travels do (The Crusade of Nicopolis 25; The Crusades 163). 25 Mandeville, maintaining that he is not so much a liar or an artist as a "scholar" and one attempting "to write a new kind of work, a summa of travel lore," which combines "the authority of learned books," "the pilgrimage to the Holy Land," and "the curious and vicarious intentions of some such works with the thoughtful and devotional intentions of others" ("The World" 2). More recently, Ian Higgins looks at the differences among the extant versions in Writing East, explaining that the text "represents a new kind of work that attempts to entertain, instruct, persuade, chastise, challenge, and console its imagined audience" (13). My approach departs from the dominant critical opinion as it explores the text's portrayal of water space and its significance, especially in relation to maps and the first Western globe. Within this view, I contend that the Mandeville author, thereafter referred to as Mandeville, draws upon the pre-existing tradition of constructing knowledge of the world in water terms to promote circumnavigation. To this end, the author organizes his narrative according to waterways. The water metaphor forces the elaborate use of the antipodes as an attachment strategy. The antipodes initially denoted a hypothetical people living in the extreme South with their feet opposite. Later, the term was applied to the whole Southern region as well. In Legendary Lands, Umberto Eco explains that the antipodes was also called the ‘counter-Earth,' and functioned as a "continent symmetrical to the known world (ecumene), indispensable for keeping the planet in equilibrium and preventing it from turning upside down" (326). The nature of the antipodes forces what Anthony Pagden calls the ‘principle of attachment' in European Encounters, which refers to the traveler's attempt to assimilate the unknown to the known in order to redefine it according to familiar concepts (21, 24). 26 Mandeville resorts to the antipodal theory as an attendant organizing principle to accentuate the attachment between the earth and the counter-earth he travels to. It is worth remarking at this point that even though he travels east not south, he presents the eastern part as an antipodal zone and a counter-earth that mirrors his known world. The attachment that takes place in both sides of the world, "above and below," suggests a complementary relationship that grows out of the abundance of water spaces, water marvels, and unusual practices that Mandeville recounts to uphold a balanced perspective. He embeds both parts in water spaces to connect them and bind their respective inhabitants. His emphasis on their symmetrical aspect and, thus, complementarity is crucial since it advances his view of a round circumnavigable world. To maintain the symmetry, he foregrounds the water-bound mirabilia (marvels) in both the earth and the counter-earth, which remarkably contrasts with the dearth of land-bound mirabilia.16 Mandeville's innovation, thus, lies in the reconfiguration of water space as a smooth passage that ultimately facilitates circumnavigation. My argument, hence, leads through and beyond the immediate context of The Travels to the author's world. The questions the text raises are: How does the legacy of water in medieval thought shape Mandeville's narrative and worldview? What kind of mental mapping influences his travels and description of the world? What strategy does Mandeville use to maintain a water-bound picture when he is away from home? How does the water metaphor determine his depiction of mirabilia? How does he promote circumnavigation? And how does the text engage in a dialogue with maps and globes to enhance water space? In The Medieval Imagination, Jacques Le Goff clarifies that "The root of mirabilia is mir (as in mirror, mirart), which implies something visual. It is a question of looking," pp. 27-28. 16 27 The theoretical framework I employ to read The Travels and answer these queries is Lakoff and Johnson's study of metaphors in Metaphors We Live By, in which they argue that "our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we … think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature" (4). It structures our conceptualization of the world and organizes our experiential knowledge. The foundational metaphor of water in The Travels organizes Mandeville's conceptual system and experiences. As such, he travels mainly via water routes and casts his eye on water-related topography, phenomena, and wonders. In addition, sketching the world in terms of water spaces in the text reveals the power it wields over conceptualizing reality. It becomes the dominant way of "world making," a term I borrow from Nelson Goodman's Ways of World Making that indicates making, and remaking the world in various ways (3, 6). Traveling to foreign spaces unmakes the familiar world of the traveler, who continuously engages in remaking it according to familiar norms. This process helps him to create and sustain his foundational conceptual metaphor. ‘World making' in The Travels underscores the multivalent significance of the metaphor of water. It informs knowledge formation, identity making, and acts as a passage to faraway places, such as the antipodal region. On the metaphorical level, the water-based focus gives the appearance of being the best possible way of imagining the world and Western identity. On the literal level, it promotes the paradigm of travel via (circum)navigation. Consequently, the metaphor of water in The Travels implies a set of power relations and values that exist along a single continuum, which incorporates travel, topography, and the depiction of mirabilia. Concomitantly, I read The Travels against the backdrop of the medieval mappae 28 mundi, available to the author at the time of the composition. I aim to underscore the water-based tradition out of which The Travels emerges, along with its significance beyond the immediate context of the text, and to trace the gradual shift to a circumnavigable world. Juxtaposing both text and image accentuates the systematic representation of the water metaphor. Medieval ‘world making', in travel texts and maps, reveals moments of "crystallization," in David Harvey's sense, when the process of mapping brings an entity into apparent being (81). Mappae mundi, like the Ebstorf (c.1240), and the Hereford (c.1290) bring the metaphor of water into being. They embody the text's depiction of water spaces and water-bound mirabilia, such as monstrous races. Remarkably, several versions of The Travels portray the author obtaining authentication for his account through having it compared to a book whose contents form the basis of a world map and/or a globe. Critical opinion viewed The Travels' narrative organization as "compartmentalized" and implied the difficulty of "discern[ing] any familiar structure" (Verner 125; Moseley, The Travels 16). In this respect, my argument of a water-bound worldview in text and map/globe discloses a consistent narrative structure that unifies The Travels from beginning to end and clears away the seeming disunity of the text. This chapter begins with examining the background of The Travels, the author, and his sources, before it turns to give a brief overview of the pre-existing tradition of imagining a water-based world and the antipodal theory, along with their significance. I move then to my argument regarding Mandeville's application of the water metaphor. The examined water topography includes rivers of Paradise, islands, routes to destinations, circumnavigation, wells, and lakes. Next, I investigate how Mandeville employs this watery topography to advance the notion of circumnavigation. The 29 following section discusses how the metaphor of water translates into a compelling emphasis on water mirabilia rather than ones on land. I turn, then, to the dialogue between text and maps/globe that the author fully employs. The chapter concludes with the influence that The Travels had on early modern travelers, such as Sir Walter Ralegh, and the history of early modern exploration. All quotations and citations of The Travels in this chapter come from Ian Higgins's most influential first English translation of the text from Anglo-Norman French, which I choose since it "tries to steer between the poles represented by the Middle English Cotton and Egerton versions" and remains faithful to the original (Higgins, "Introduction" xxiii). Mandeville's Identity, Sources, and Text The identity of the Mandeville author remains in doubt, in spite of identifying himself in the prologue as "I John Mandeville, knight … born and raised in England … who from there have crossed the sea in the year 1322," and reiterating his claim in the final chapter as "… I John Mandeville above said, - who left our countries and crossed the sea in the year of grace 1322 ... now have come to rest despite myself" (loc 574, 5338). The original French of the text directed scholars, like M. C. Seymour, to the possibility of a French, rather than an English, author from Liège. Contradicting this view, Malcolm Letts and Josephine Bennett think the author was English (J. Phillips 198). Bennett further adds that the author's learning implies he was the younger son of a noble family.17 Scholarship on The Travels suggested substitutes for John Mandeville only to dismiss them later on. The three prominent surrogates were John of Bourgogne, On the author's possible identity and nationality, see Josephine Bennett, The Discovery of Sir John Mandeville, pp. 181-204. 17 30 John of Outremeuse, and the Benedictine translator Long John of Ypres (Higgins, "Introduction" xviii). The shadowy identity of Mandeville earned him the reputation of "a trickster and an artist" (Higgins, Writing East 13). His in-between status as French/English and the in-between status of The Travels as truth/fiction engendered such ambiguity. The provenance of the text is complex in part because of the obscure authorship. Critical opinion was by no means unanimous on the oldest version of The Travels. The available extant versions fall in two major variants: ""Original" and "Ogier," "the latter characterized especially by a series of interpolations about the Carolingian hero Ogier the Dane…" (Higgins, Writing East 20). These two major variants were most widely known in the form of "some six individual renderings - the Continental, Insular, Defective, and Velser Versions, on the "Original" hand, and the von Diemeringen and Vulgate Latin Versions, on the "Ogier" - of which the Continental and Insular Versions best represent the Mandeville-author's own work" (20,24).18 Concerning the original language of the text, there is consensus among scholars that it is Anglo-Norman French ("Introduction" xvi).19 The prologue provides the basis for this assumption: Know that I should have put this writing into Latin so as to explain things more briefly, because more [people] understand French better than Latin, I have put it into French so that everyone can understand, and the knights and the Lords and the other noble men who know no Latin, or a little, and who have been beyond the sea know and understand whether I speak the truth or not. (Mandeville loc 248) For more details on the manuscript tradition of The Travels and for a helpful stemma of the different isotopes, see Higgins, Writing East, pp. 21-26. 18 The text was written at a time that tied England to France through a linguistic shift and through the One Hundred Years' War (Higgins, "Introduction" xvi). For this reason, the language was described by the French as barbarous, because it kept the cadence and word order of the English language that was foreign to French ears (Bennett 10, 179). 19 31 The possibly fictitious nature of the author and the complex manuscript tradition, insinuate a possibly fictitious travel account. Mandeville becomes known as an armchair traveler who might have not traveled anywhere beyond his home, but who had access to a rich library full of books and maps (Eco103; Classen, "Marco Polo and John Mandeville" 229-249). This assumption gains currency in view of the multiple sources out of which The Travels was written. The two works providing the structural itinerary of the account are William of Boldensele's Liber de quibusdam ultramarinis partibus (Book of Certain Regions beyond the Mediterranean) and Odoric of Pordenone's Relatio (Account), that Mandeville prefers to Marco Polo's Description of the World.20 Among other medieval works and encyclopedias that the author consults are Legenda aurea, Otia imperialia, Livres dou tresor, Speculum naturale, Historia Orientalis, and the Alexander Romances.21 As such, The Travels is a work of omnivorous character, or "a hybrid" as Higgins rightly notes ("Introduction" xi). On the other end of the spectrum, Josephine Bennett proposes, "The author has done much more than collect materials from the reports of genuine travelers. He has selected and pruned and arranged. More important still, he has imagined" (4). In the same vein, Higgins suggests that the author "overwrites his sources by dilating on almost 20 "William was a Dominican who in 1332 made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land ... and then in 1337 in Avignon set down in Latin a first-person record, while Odoric was a Franciscan who in the early 1320s made a missionary journey to India and China and in 1330 in Padua dictated a first-person Latin account of his adventures" (Higgins, "Introduction" xiv). Marco Polo's Description of the World is not one of Mandeville's sources, although, according to Bennett, Mandeville certainly knew of Polo's book. He preferred Odoric's work since it was shorter and full of marvels. However, the history of these two books is tied together by virtue of their inclusion in the same manuscript at times, as in the Livre des Merveilles (38, 229-230). The Romance of Alexander is any of multiple collections of legends on the mythical adventures of Alexander the Great. The earliest version is in Greek, and dates to the third century. In medieval England, the legends were popular. The extant versions around Mandeville's time are King Alisaunder (c. 1275) and The Romance of Alisaunder (1340-1370). 21 32 everything" (Writing East 69). I align myself with both Bennett and Higgins, while simultaneously underscoring the crucial distinction between plagiarism and compilation. Neil Hathaway remarks in "Compilatio: From Plagiarism to Compiling," that "the Middle Ages can rightly be called the age of the compilation" in a gesture that describes the literary activity that entails the "collecting and arrangement of authoritative material" (19, 38).22 In The Book of Medieval Memory, Mary Carruthers largely seconds this view, while relating compilation to memoria (220). Viewed from this angle, the medieval author - Mandeville - is neither a mere plagiarizer nor a compilator, but rather a person with a voice, as well as, an imagination. Voice, Audience, and Itinerary Self-integration into the narrative constitutes one feature of The Travels. The "I" in "I John Mandeville" dominates the account to a certain extent.23 Mandeville varies his authorial stance from the individual first person at the onset of the account to "a generic third-person" in "the perpetual present" (‘one goes')" (Higgins, "Introduction" xiii). While the simultaneous use of the third person shows that the tour or itinerary "can be taken by anyone at any time," the individual first-person voice helps Mandeville to authenticate his account, and confirm his experiences (Higgins xiv). For example, he describes the spearhead used in Christ's crucifixion: "I have seen it, and it is quite a bit Neil Hathaway traces the gradual shift of the terms compilo and compilatio from a negative view to a positive one in the eleventh century. See pp. 21-32. Along the same lines, Paul Lehmann states that the history of medieval literature "is the history of the appropriation, reworking and imitation of someone else's property" (qtd. in Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination 69). 22 On an emerging sense of selfhood in the Middle Ages, see Kathryn A. Smith's The Taymouth Hours:Stories and the Construction of the Self in Late Medieval England, and Caroline Walker Bynum's "Did the twelfth Century Discover the Individual?" in Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages, pp. 82-109. 23 33 larger than that which is in Paris" (loc 700). Other instances refer to the adulterated balm Saracens sell to Christians, and the diamonds in India, which he sees and tests (loc 1058, 2232)24. In these and other instances, he claims systematic study of places and objects. The autoptic principle (eyewitness) and "I" voice Mandeville invokes around twenty times in total, later becomes a salient feature of early modern travel accounts, like Ralegh's, with the rise in prominence of the value of empirical knowledge.25 In European Encounters, Anthony Pagden defines the principle of autopsy common among early modern travelers as "the appeal to the authority of the eye witness, to the privileged understanding which those present at an event have over all those who have only read or been told about it" (51). Audition, by contrast, refers to the reliance on hearsay for obtaining knowledge rather than reliance on eyewitness. Early on in The Travels, we see this distinction between autopsy and audition and the emerging preference for eyewitness. Therefore, the self-assured "I" seeps into the unmediated third-person voice, and into the humility topos Mandeville adopts at the end of The Travels when he seeks validation for his work from the Pope. The alternation between the use of the first person, the third person, and the humility topos, underlines the various ways in which Mandeville invokes himself. It marks a shift in stance towards his intended Latin Christian audience. Furthermore, Mandeville emphasizes his reliance on memory. In the prologue, he says he will "describe some part of the things that are there when there is room to speak of them according to what I can remember" (loc 579). He proceeds: "And if I err in 24 For more examples of the first person "I," see loc 2297, 2430, 2441, 2442, 2443, 2446, 2543, 3469, 3676, 5267, 5269, 5342, 5693, 6125, and 6413. The change from "audition" (hearsay) to "autopsia" (eyewitness) came about at a later stage (thirteenth century) in the European culture when "travel narratives enhanced the possibility of the eyewitness account, something that constituted a new development …" (Hiatt 102). 25 34 describing through not remembering or otherwise, they can amend and correct it, for things long since passed out of view get forgotten and human memory cannot retain or contain everything" (loc 579). Towards the end, Mandeville raises the question of memory again: "I have compiled these things and put them into writing, such as I can remember..." (loc 3798). The emphasis on memory, both individual and communal, is, according to Carruthers, a sign of how "memoria can be considered as one of the modalities of medieval culture" that she defines as "a memorial culture" (260). Through the subtle use of memoria, Mandeville integrates his audience into the narrative by humbly asking them to "amend and correct it." Thus, memoria places Mandeville squarely in the medieval frame of thinking and renders his account credible and popular. Mandeville's self-integration strategies include inserting himself into the action (Howard, "The World" 3). He announces to his audience that he served under the Sultan of Egypt and under the Great Khan. In a lengthy quote, after Mandeville goes to Cathay, he challenges his readers to discredit him: Those who want to may believe me if they please, and those who do not may ignore it, for I well know that if anyone had been in that country over there, even if he had not been as far as the place where the Great Chan dwells, he would have heard so much said about him and his estate that he would readily believe me…. I will not leave off describing something about him and the retinue that he leads … just because of those who know nothing and believe nothing unless they see it. (loc 2815) Much of Mandeville's audience was probably willing to suspend their disbelief and give him credit, because he claims eye witness knowledge and claims to satisfy the needs of both "the pilgrim and the expectant armchair reader" (Zacher 134). More significantly, he places himself in the narrative and describes an area that became inaccessible for Western 35 travelers due to political changes.26 The first half of the text recounts the pilgrimage to Jerusalem as Mandeville journeys through Constantinople, Egypt, Cyprus, Sicily and Mount Sinai. Beginning with Chapter 16, his itinerary shifts to a wide-ranging tour of the lands, or rather the islands, lying to the east of Jerusalem, declaring, "Now is time…to speak to you about the neighboring lands, the islands, and the diverse animals and diverse peoples beyond these boundaries" (Mandeville loc 2053). The areas beyond Jerusalem are Cathay and India, realms of the Great Chan and the legendary Prester John, respectively.27 Whereas critics like Greenblatt read this declaration as a "peculiar" and "unexplained move" that marks a turning away from Jerusalem, Higgins suggests that "The Book's move beyond the Holy Land is anything but a turning away from Jerusalem, whose centrality is strongly emphasized not only in the exordium and the account of the city itself, but in the Far East as well…" (29; Writing East 51). I take on Higgins' approach and regard Jerusalem as part of Mandeville's journey even after he leaves the Holy Land. However, to my mind, what unifies both sections of the book, the pilgrim and the traveler, is not only the hovering shadow of Jerusalem. Rather, it is Mandeville's use of the metaphor of water. That said, I turn now to the pre-existing tradition of imagining the world in water terms to unfold the legacy that shapes The Travels. 26 "Shortly after the fall of Acre in 1291, the Persian Khan Oljaitu converted to Islam. The Mongols in Persia, Russia, and Turkestan were quickly absorbed into the Moslem cultures around them, and relations with the West broke down. A Christian mission remained in China, but fell with the fall of the Mongols there: the last Western missionary, John of Marignolli, left China in 1337, and the Christians were expelled in 1369 by Chinese nationalists" (Campbell 126). 27 Prester John is a legendary Christian king popular in Western chronicles from the twelfth through the seventeenth century. He was said to rule over a Nestorian Christian nation lost amid the Muslims and pagans of the Orient. Copies of a certainly forged letter from Prester John to Western monarchs calling for alliance circulated the West and fed their imagination of the mythical riches in his kingdom. For an abridged version of the letter, see Umberto Eco's Legendary Lands, pp. 132-135. 36 Water in Medieval Thought To the medieval Western mind, water constitutes a means of constructing knowledge of the world. It appears in travel narratives and on maps. I look at both in order to explore the way Mandeville ultimately applies the inherited water and antipodal legacy to his travels. I also observe what the literary use of water reveals about the medieval way of making sense of the world. What follows is a brief survey of water, its symbolic value, and the increasing variety of didactic meaning it accumulates throughout the middle ages. The fascination with water borders and islands designates medieval Western imaginative and actual mapping. As Lakoff and Johnson remark, "the conceptual systems of various cultures partly depend on the physical environments they have developed in" (147). The physical environment that characterizes the West is water rather than desert. It delineates the worldview apparent, for example, in Saint Bede's, known as the Venerable Bede (672/673 - 735), Historia Ecclesiastica of the English people. The work begins with the words Brittania Oceani insula (Britain, an island in the ocean), to which he later adds, Oceano infinito patet (lies open to the boundless ocean) (Klein 1; Mullins 69). His words sum up the West's awareness of its position and sea-bound identity in the world. It reflects the widespread ancient and medieval belief that the ecumene, which comprises Europe, Asia, and Africa, is surrounded by an insurmountable expanse of ocean. The interdependence between the watery physical environment and the metaphor of water is apparent in the manner Western monks turn the topos of the desert, found in the writings of the eastern Christian Desert Fathers, into sea and islands. This happens, as Julliet Mullins explains in "Herimum In Mari," because in the West "the desert had no 37 geographical, historical, or cultural reality and was for the majority … an abstract concept. New images thus emerged to replace the desert as the site and expression of the saint's desire to withdraw from society … most notably the island and the sea" (59). Moreover, the Vikings contribute to the maritime image of the West through their maritime activities and ship burial rituals, noted in Ibn Fadlan's Risala. Not surprisingly, water borders define Western maps, such as the Beatus of Burgo d'Osma (c.1086) and the Ebstorf map, partly because the West exhibits tendency towards navigational exploration, water traffic, and conquest during the medieval era, and this focus determines the construction of water borders surrounding its realm.28 The prevalence of the metaphor of water in Western medieval travel texts and maps, I suggest, originates from the inherited Greco-Roman classical legacy. In Terra Incognita, Alfred Hiatt demonstrates that in classical geography, "the outermost limits of the ecumene were usually defined by the presence of the vast Ocean, encircling all three continents as a river around an island," which is apparent on the T-O and zonal maps (4). The classical texts of Cicero, Cratos of Mallos, and Pliny the Elder, among others, constitute, as well as promote, such a tradition. Crates of Mallos (150 BC), a Stoic commentator on Homer, takes the notion of a sphere-shaped earth a step further, suggesting that the earth is divided into four separate segments "irrevocably isolated from each other due to two encircling bands of ocean, one vertical, the other horizontal" (17). Cicero (106 BC) in the Somnium Scipionis (Dream of Scipio), a popular work in the 28 According to John Block Friedman in The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, the Beatus maps are incorporated into manuscripts commenting on the Apocalypse of the Spanish Bendectine, Beatus of Liebana (730-798), hence their name. They also represent the earliest surviving example of maps that show monstrous races. There are fourteen examples extant of the Beatus map, and one of these from Burgo d'Osma, made in 1086, "shows the Noachid structure covering three-quarters of the earth's surface. The remainder is an austral continent in which a Sciopod reclines" (40). 38 Middle Ages, has the elder Scipio describe the known world as a "‘small island' (parva insula) surrounded by the Atlantic, itself a ‘small' sea in spite of its grand name" (Hiatt, 22). Around the same time, Pliny the Elder stresses in his Naturalis Historia that the size of the ocean and other waters reduces the extent of land. "The theory of zonal division" with its emphasis on uninhabitable regions, and the vast size of oceans, lends itself to "this simultaneous display of the world and diminution of the size and significance of territory within the world" (30). This view, as I argue later, contrasts sharply with the gradual diminution of the size of water that accompanies the gradual expansion of the size of land in the early modern worldview apparent in Ralegh's travel account. Isidore of Seville's concept of a tripartite T-O world in his Etymologiae (seventh century) builds on the Greco-Roman tradition and informs Mandeville's mental and verbal world mapping (see Figure 1). According to such notion, the ecumene is portrayed as a circular disk surrounded at the periphery by the ocean and divided by T-shaped interior rivers, like the Nile and the Don, and seas, like the Mediterranean, into the three continents; namely Asia, Africa, and Europe. Jerusalem was commonly located at the center of the "T" and Paradise was located to the east in Asia, at the top portion of the map. Biblically oriented, this division mirrors the resettlement of Noah's three sons after the Flood - Sem in Asia, Japheth in Europe, and Cham in Africa. Hence, the T-O map is sometimes called the Noachid map. Isidore's map emphasizes waterways, which surround and cut through the world in consonance with the water-based perspective that travelers like Mandeville adopt. Owing to the classical legacy, water becomes a prominent feature of medieval Western culture and plays a symbolic role for nascent Christianity. It is through the sea 39 Figure 1. Isidore's Tripartite World Map voyages, for example, that Paul brought Christianity into Italy (du Jourdin 129). The biblical tradition enhances the attachment to water in the story of Noah and the Flood, which raises valid questions regarding the place of the people beyond the ocean in Christian history, and their genealogical lineage. For the Middle Ages, there are many waters. The ocean, the sources of the Nile, and Paradise are all located in the southern and eastern parts, and capture the imagination of the medieval man.29 See Alessandro Scafi's seminal study Mapping Paradise for an overview of the history of mapping paradise and rivers of paradise on Western maps. 29 40 At the same time, water acquires a didactic meaning as it becomes somewhat symbolic of the folly of political expansion as exemplified sometimes by the depiction of Alexander the Great in literature. The final book of Lucan's De bello civili (third quarter of the first century A.D.) contains an unflattering portrait of Alexander the Great's hubris and destructive expansionism that inevitably pushes him to cross the outermost ocean and drink from the Nile at its source - considered a mystery at the time (Hiatt 29). Crossing beyond the water space, represented by both the ocean and the Nile, is a prerequisite to heading into the unknown. It is an act of hubristic expansion carried out through navigation. Water is also the pathway to the locus of the antipodes, which designates both the inhabitants of the counter-earth, as well as the southern region.30 The medieval world inherits the notion of the antipodes, which Mandeville applies to his eastward travels from the Greco-Roman tradition, particularly from the zonal map, also known as the Macrobian map. Originally invented by Parmenides (fifth century B.C.), the map was later adopted by writers, such as Aristotle and Macrobius in his Comentarii.31 Because the antipodes, as a people, represent a race that differs from the Christian norm, they were The Greek word "antipodes" is first mentioned in Plato's Timaeus in relation to the relativity of the terms "above" and "below": "For if there were any solid body in equipoise at the center of the universe, there would be nothing to draw it to this extreme rather than to that, for they are all perfectly similar; and if a person were to go round the world in a circle, he would often, when standing at the antipodes of his former position, speak of the same point as above and below; for, as I was saying just now, to speak of the whole which is in the form of a globe as having one part above and another below is not like a sensible man" (Hiatt 15). The term is taken up later on by Aristotle in De caelo, Strabo, Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius, and was adopted into Latin as antipodes. The Latin word changed its sense from the original "under the feet, opposite side" to "those with the feet opposite." 30 31 Macrobian maps, as Alfred Hiatt suggests in Terra Incognita, "represented a theory of classical geometry that posited the division of the earth into five latitudinal zones: two zones of extreme cold in the far south and north; an equatorial ocean within a central band of extreme heat; and two temperate zones, one in the northern hemisphere, and one in the southern" (4). However, according to Friedman, the five divisions expanded into seven as people realized that "more subtle distinctions in degrees of extremity were necessary to account for the variety of peoples in the world" (53). 41 relegated to an extreme region in medieval thought and cartography. As John Friedman maintains in The Monstrous Races: "Extremes of all sorts could be imagined as ‘marks of vice,' and geographic extremes could be ‘marks of vice' as well" (35). Therefore, both the Beatus Osma Copy and the Ebstorf map show water as a simultaneous pathway to the antipodes. The former shows a Sciopod (shadow-footed)and the latter displays a gamut of monstrous races. On the two maps, both Sciopod and monstrous races recline in the southern part beyond the ocean. The two branches of the Beatus maps (Osma and Gerona copies) accentuate the metaphor of water, and the configuration of unknown land in relation to known land prompted by Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae.32 The Osma copy shows the T-O division with the circumfluent ocean and Mediterranean in the west (see Figure 2). To the south, there is an ocean dividing the known world, the abode of Christianity, from the unknown world, the abode of monsters. The map bears the statement of Isidore that this fourth part of the world "lies across Ocean deeper in the south (‘trans Oceanum interior est in meridie')" (Hiatt 85). To the east, there are a number of rivers, including the Nile. The medieval relationship to water is also evident in another version, the Gerona Beatus mappae mundi (975), where water space is marked by the presence of various sea monsters and fish that somewhat limit navigation to the known part of the world in the north.33 Again, the ocean divides the strip of land to the south, left empty except for The maps have been divided into two branches based on the two branches of the text of commentary: Branch I displays the presence of apostles in different parts of the world where they spread the word of God; Branch II consists of maps in manuscripts emanating from "a revival of interest in Beatus' commentary in the tenth century" (Hiatt 84). 32 In Mapping Paradise, Scafi suggests that the fish on maps is "a possible allusion to the apostolic task of fishing men (Matthew 4.19; Mark 1.17; Luke 5.10) intended to emphasize the dissemination of Christianity …. The fish was from earliest times a symbol of Christian baptism and thus of Christian 33 42 Figure 2. Beatus Map, Osma Copy (1186) showing a Sciopod reclining in the south Isidore's statement "desert near to the sun, unknown to us due to heat (Deserta terra uicina soli ab ardore incognita nobis)" (Hiatt 85). Later medieval maps, as the Ebsorf (1240), indicate an abundance of water surrounding and cutting through the known land. Both versions of the Beatus map, along with the Ebstorf, demonstrate that the land that comprises the known world resembles an island in the middle of a vast water space. Despite the fact that the antipodes were expressed in visual terms in the Middle Ages, the antipodal notion was accepted and rejected simultaneously. Among the believers. Those who followed Christ … (fish) - were thus called pisciculi, the ‘little fishes'" (111-112). 43 prominent opponents of the theory was Saint Augustine (c.354-430), who in The City of God affirms that the "immensity of Ocean" renders knowledge of and contact with the antipodal region impossible (Hiatt 58). The proponents of the theory are Iranaeus of Lyon (c. 130-202) and Origen (c. 185-255), both of whom use the antipodes in their writings as a sign of omniscient divine knowledge that supersedes limited human knowledge. The abundance of water on medieval maps and the obvious attachment to it is embodied in literary travel narratives, such as Mandeville's. The notion of traversing waters and facing the unknown is not unique to the Middle Ages. It finds precedent in Homers's Odyssey, as well as in the voyage of Saint Brendan.34 Other examples are Beowulf, King Rother, The Legend of Duke Ernst, and Parzival, discussed briefly in the introduction. These works reveal how water borders concurrently separate and connect distinct geographic places. Embarking ships and crossing water is central to the quest, regardless of its nature. The multilayered significance of water to the medieval mind that Mandeville inherits and reconfigures encompasses identity formation: pathways to places, borders constructed between the self and the monstrous other, the threat of hubris, religious values, adventure, and expansionism. The Travels that I turn to now draws, then, on the water-bound legacy that the maps foreground to construct a circumnavigable world. Saint Brendan (c. 484 - c. 577), called "the Navigator" or "the Voyager," is one of the early Irish monastic saints. He is chiefly renowned for his legendary quest to the "Isle of the Blessed," also called Saint Brendan's Island. The Voyage of Saint Brendan could be called an immram (Irish navigational story). 34 44 Mirabiles elaciones maris (loc 2620) This section explores the different forms of the metaphor of water in the text within the larger context of medieval world knowledge to demonstrate how Mandeville employs it to promote circumnavigability. His adoption of the classical heritage is evidence of the difficulty of changing or giving up our foundational metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 146). He, therefore, foregrounds the complex legacy of a water-based worldview and an antipodal region that maintains the equilibrium of the ecumene. Mandeville's innovation, I contend, lies in rendering both parts of the ecumene and the antipodes balanced and complementary through a) upholding a largely symmetrical water-focused topography, b) securing a safe passage between both regions, and c) emphasizing the circumnavigability of the Earth. Susan Conklin Akbari rightly notes the abundance of water in "Currents and Currency." She grounds water spaces "in the process by means of which disparate elements in the world are drawn together in the process of flow, dispersal, and reintegration" as they return to their ultimate source in Paradise (110-111). I expand her metaphor by emphasizing the multilayered significance of the construction of a medieval water-based worldview that encompasses maps and travel accounts, and reveals levels of meaning in The Travels when examined against it. The metaphor of water organizes The Travels, which is embedded within a passage of waterways right from the start of the itinerary: "I John Mandeville, knight ... have crossed the sea in the year 1322 … and who have since been beyond the sea for a long time, and have seen and gone around many countries … and different islands" (loc 574). He continues: "of which lands and islands I will speak more fully …" (loc 574). Water spaces encompass routes to destinations, paradigms of travel, numerous islands, an 45 abundance of wells and lakes, and the rivers of Paradise. They illustrate how thoroughly the water frame guides the narrative. Remarkably, the equal stress that Mandeville places on land routes at the beginning, and the seeming tension between the two paradigms of travel, and hence two worldviews, is abandoned afterwards when he priviledges waterways. They outweigh the land routes and take precedence. The water routes Mandeville recommends to vicarious travelers exist on the earth and the counter-earth. In Chapter One, sea and land seem to be equivalents here and there is no apparent priviledging of water. Mandeville advises his readers "whoever wants to go beyond the sea along many routes can go by sea and by land according to the regions he sets out from" (loc 574). Mandeville's renunciation of the overland route early on demonstrates his preference for the water metaphor and reluctance to adopt a land-based view. This attitude brings Mandeville close to Ibn Fadlan, who is likewise reluctant to accept a water-bound view that contrasts with his foundational metaphor. Therefore, throughout his travels Mandeville continues promoting water routes. In the ecumene, from Constantinople to Turkey, for example, he says, "anyone who wants to go by water goes by way of Saint George's Arm and by sea towards the place where Saint Nicholas lies and towards many other places" (loc 772). He repeats his advice when speaking of other sea routes, like the route from Ephesus to the city of Pateran and the islands of Cohos and Langho (loc 785).35 Here, as elsewhere, he prioritizes water routes 35 Mandeville recommends the sea route on other occasion in the text, such as going to Jerusalem by sea from Cyprus by way of Jaffa (loc 851). He describes the way to Babylon through a series of islands like Sicily, and warns other travelers that there is another way by land to Jerusalem from Flanders or France, but it is long, hard, dangerous, and full of hardships, frequented by few people" (loc 1891). See also loc 2072 for recommending more sea routes and islands to reach Tartary, Persia, Chaldea, and India. 46 rather than land routes despite recommending the latter at times. His attitude is consonant with Lakoff and Johnson's notion that "no metaphor can ever be comprehended or even adequately represented independently of its experiential basis" (20). Mandeville comprehends and recommends the metaphor of water via his enactment of water travels. Because conceptual metaphors depend on the physical environment, The Travels seeks out various water-bound topographies, such as wells. Their number in Jerusalem exceeds those in the antipodes because of their devotional significance. Mandeville informs his readers that in Jerusalem, close to Solomon's Temple there is Our Lord's bath where "used to come the water of Paradise and it still trickles there" (loc 1433). Later, he describes a well in one of the churches "in the form of a cistern that is called Probatica Piscina that had five entries (1438).36 Other places, too, have their share of wells like Egypt where Mandeville observes that in one field are "seven wells, one of which was made by the feet of Our Lord Jesus Christ" (loc 1044). As Akbari suggests, "a whole series of wells appear which are imbued with profound significance, owing to their sacred origin" ("Currents and Currency" 114). Journeying towards the antipodal region, Mandeville maintains the symmetry as he offers an account of the famous well in Polombe: At the foot of this mountain there is a large and beautiful well that has the scent and taste of all spices, and at each hour of the day it changes scent and taste variously. Whoever drinks three times from this well while fasting is cured of whatever illness he might have, and those who stay and drink often are never sick Other examples include Sichem where "There is the well where Our Lord spoke to the Samaritan woman..." (loc 1626). Present in the same place is a color-changing well: "Between the mountains of this country there is a well that changes its color four times a year- sometimes it changes into green, sometimes red, one time clear, another time murky- and that well is called the fountain of Joel" (loc 1655). There is also "Gabriel's Well where Our Lord used to bathe when He was little. From that well He often carried water to His mother, and in this well she often washed the clothes of her child Jesus Christ" (loc 1698). There are also wells on the way to Mount Sinai, on the way to Elim Valley, and inside, as well as outside, Damascus (loc 1118; 1806). 36 47 and always seem to be young. I drank from it three or four times, and it still seems to me that I feel better. Some call it the Fountain of Youth, because whoever drinks often from it seems to be always young and lively without any illness, and they say that this spring comes from Paradise and that is why it is so powerful. (loc 2327) In this passage, the significance of wells surpasses their sacred quality and offers an example of attachment. Mandeville employs the account of wells to uphold the attachment between the eumene and the counter-earth the same way he does with water routes. The wells in Jerusalem are sites of miracles, have religious overtones, and their water originates from Paradise. Similarly, the Fountain of Youth combines the qualities of the wells in Jerusalem. In addition to its rejuvenating capacity, it has healing powers like the Probatica Pisicina, and emerges from Paradise. The scent and smell-changing qualities of the Fountain of Youth reflect the color-changing quality of the well Mandeville sees in Sichem (65).37 The second level displays Mandeville's conceptual geography that he ultimately maps on actual space through traveling. Harley calls this the "hierarchicalization of space" on maps, and can be applied to travel accounts, which like maps reconstruct the contours of an imaginative geography ("Deconstructing the Map," 237). The Travels continues hierarchizing the metaphor of water as his report of wells interweaves with islands in the earth and the counter-earth. In the ecumene, he lists the islands surrounding Greece, such as "Calistres [Thera]," "Calcas [Colcos]" and "Lempne [Lemnos]," among many others (loc 712). Other Mediterranean islands Mandeville describes before he reaches the antipodes include Lango, "the island of Rhodes, which the Hospitallers hold and govern," Cyprus "a very beautiful island and very large" and "this island of Sicily 37 See note n.36 48 [where] there is a kind of garden in which there are many different fruits" (loc 785, 807, 822, 1091). His catalogue of islands is in keeping with the fascination with island literature in the Western tradition, and with Bede's emphasis on the position of England as an island amid the watery space.38 Importantly, the abundance of islands reflect Mandeville's water-bound itinerary as they signal ports where he pauses. They are the counterpart to caravans that stop in the desert and mark a land-bound itinerary. The account of islands gains momentum in the antipodal zone after Chapter 16. The more Mandeville journeys east, the more islands there are, to ensure a balanced water-based world. The metaphor of water that the islands promote creates his reality as a traveler. The labyrinthine account of islands becomes too dizzying at times to recount. In India, there are "more than five thousand habitable islands, fine and large, without counting those that are uninhabitable and without counting other small islands…" (Mandeville loc 2249). There is also a series of islands after Lamary, like Sumobor, Betingna, Java, and Thalamassy (loc 2404, 2525). Mandeville hardly gives his reader a break for in the following chapter he cites another plethora of islands, such as the island of Dondia, whose lord "has under him fifty-four large islands that all answer to him" (loc 2625). In one of these islands, he compares Cassaie to Venice: it "sits on a lagoon just as Venice does…. On one side of the city a large river flows the whole length of the city" (loc 2688). The relationship Mandeville maintains between the two parts of the world underscores the role of the principle of attachment in "the creation of an initial … familiarity. It also [allows] the discoverer to make some measure of classification" (Pagden 36). Assimilating the unfamiliar counterFor more on the legacy of islands in the Western tradition, including the examples of mythical ones, such as Taprobane and the lands of Prester John, see Umberto Eco, Legendary Lands. 38 49 earth to the familiar ecumene lends the account truth-value. Moreover, it replicates both home and worldview, so as not to lose sight of them while traveling. Together with this, it introduces the habitability of the antipodes. The assimilation is more apparent in the island of Cathay where the palace of the Great Chan is located and where there are "large ponds on one side" (Mandeville loc 2754). The water-bound real world of Cathay continues in the legendary kingdom of Prester John. This underscores that Mandeville continues mentally and imaginatively his real water-bound travel. In the realm of Prester John, who possesses "many diverse islands," we get another sketch of islands that are "large and wide" (Mandeville loc 3297). These islands range from the island of Bragmey, where "flows a large river that has the name Thebe" to Oxidrate and Gynosophe (loc 3537, 3557).39 Beyond them is Pytan whose people survive on the smell of apples (loc 3587). Towards the eastern part of Prester John's Land there is Taprobane, which is "noble" and "fertile" (loc 3620). Close to it, there are the two islands of Orille and Argite, located at a place where the Red Sea separates from the Ocean Sea" (loc 3620). The realms of the Great Khan and Prester John are both unfamiliar and exotic. Therefore, it is incumbent to dive into a frantic catalogue of islands to render the two realms familiar. This way, Mandeville and his readers remain connected to home. In keeping with the romance and adventure tradition that require parallel stages on the return journey, Mandeville's journey home involves journeying through a series of even more islands. He maintains, "Therefore one returns from the above-mentioned islands by way of other islands near Prester John's Land, and on returning one comes to Mandeville obtains the name and details of the islands in India and their inhabitants from The Alexander Romances that were popular in his time. 39 50 an island that has the name Casson...," and another called Byboth (loc 3685-3692). Mandeville's words create the impression of a watery world dotted with an endless series of islands, and consonant with the worldview on the mappaemundi. His return journey implies a two-way travel between the earth and the counter-earth. Consequently, he underscores safe navigation between both realms. Mandeville later builds on the knowledge of safe passage between the two realms by maintaining the possibility of communicating with the inhabitants. Therefore, the water metaphor structures his entire journey and informs his mental mapping. Such water-bound mapping is further apparent in the list of lakes and seas. Once more, they appear in a balanced way between both realms in The Travels to maintain the strategy of attachment. Significantly, on one occasion the sand is described in water terms. Of the seas, there is the Dead Sea and the unusual natural phenomena associated with it (Mandeville loc 1561-1595). The fascinating counterpart to the Dead Sea in the antipodal region is the Sandy Sea in the land of Prester John: "which is all sand and gravel without a drop of water, and it comes and goes in larger waves just as the other sea does," and it has fish lying on its banks (Mandeville loc 3325). Mandeville's description of the sea as sandy is unusual since both sand and sea are an oxymoron. The sand is wavy and contains fish in keeping with real seas. I read this description as Mandeville's attempt to familiarize the unfamiliar sandy topography according to the foundational water metaphor. This prevents his attachment from becoming dysfunctional in the face of unfamiliar topography that does not fit his watery worldview. His strategy recalls that of the Western Christian fathers who turn the image of deserts in the writings of Eastern Christians into seas and islands in their own Western texts. Likewise, some Arab poets 51 adopt the same strategy of attaching the unusual sea to land-bound images when they compare ships to camels and waves to sand dunes, as will become apparent later. Throughout the account of lakes and sea, Mandeville interweaves religious and secular descriptions, varying his tone accordingly. Lakes contribute to the water-based landscape. The Caspian Sea is "the largest in the world" (loc 3262). To the east in the land of the Great Khan, "there is a dead sea [in Thalamassy], which is a lake where there is no bottom" (loc 2536). Curiously, the dead sea in Thalamassy mirrors the Dead Sea in Jordan. Mandeville even bestows on it the same name and ascribes to it an equally singular nature to emphasize the attachment between both parts of the world. His attitude prefigures the process of naming places in the New World in relation to places in the Old, which Ralegh manifests. The religious description of the lake in Ceylon, allegedly formed out of Adam and Eve's tears, harks back to the pilgrimage aspect of the text, whereas the rest of the lakes and some seas reveal the exploration aspect (Mandeville loc 2609). Like lakes and wells, the rivers in The Travels combine the secular and the religious. More important, they foreground a connected water-bound topography between the earth, the counter-earth, and paradise that reveals an all-encompassing way of ‘world making'. At the same time, rivers foreground boundaries in a manner akin to the way mountains and deserts foreground boundaries in Arab travel accounts. They depict Mandeville's itinerary along waterways. The description of rivers falls into two categories: either rivers are secular geographical markers of the landscape, some of which are sites of wonders, or they are associated with the rivers of Paradise.40 40 See Scafi, Mapping Paradise for an account of the rivers of Paradise and their portrayal on 52 Examples of the first category include the Danube River and the River Marroe [Marrok] (Mandeville loc 635). There is also "a small river with the name Beleoon [Belus]" in Acre, which is "full of bright sand from which they make beautiful and clear glass" (loc 866). Similar to this river, there are rivers associated with wonders: "out of this land of darkness comes a large river that indeed shows through signs that people dwell there, but no one dares enter" (loc 3216). In Sardenak, Mandeville mentions "beautiful rivers," "beautiful wells," and a river that freezes (loc 1813-1823). In almost all these cities, rivers are an integral part of the description. They demarcate borders between places in keeping with the way water spaces form borders on medieval maps.41 Notably, Mandeville's interest in circumnavigation explicitly stated in the text, as I will show, directs his attention to the large fleet on rivers in some cities and the flow of people between places on rivers. "In this city [of Menke] there is a very large fleet of ships and all the ships are white as snow from the nature of the wood itself, and they are very fine ships and large and well kept- just as well as if they had been houses on land with clean rooms and other conveniences" (loc 2733). Significantly, this attention to ships speaks to the dialogue between travel accounts and maps since, according to Richard Unger in Ships on Maps, "ships virtually never appeared on maps before 1375" (1).42 The appearance of ships on maps, such as the Catalan Atlas (1375), almost coincides with Mandeville's date of composition of The Travels in the mid-1350s. Being medieval maps. Another example is in the city of Lacorni on the island of Mancy where there is a "large river," in addition to the rivers in Menke and Lanteryn in the realm of the Great Chan (Mandeville loc 2678, 27322736). 41 See Unger, Ships on Maps, especially chapters two and three "Mapping before the Renaissance" and "Portolans and the Late Medieval Transition" for a discussion of the appearance of ships on maps, pp. 17-62. 42 53 the popular text it was in medieval times, perhaps The Travels influenced the portrayal of ships on maps. In contrast, the depiction in the second category of the rivers of Paradise demonstrates how rivers connect and mirror parts of the world. Babylon "situated on the River Gyon [Gihon], otherwise called the Nile, which comes from the Earthly Paradise," and which contains "many precious stones … and much lignum aloes … a kind of wood that comes from the Earthly Paradise" connects Paradise to the earth and its wonders (Mandeville loc 1113). In Artiton, "there are many good waters and good wells that come underground from the river of Paradise that has the name Euphrates" (Mandeville loc 1113; loc 2094).43 Near the dry Sandy Sea, there is a waterless river in the mountains "out of which flows a river that comes from Paradise, and it is entirely of precious stones" (loc 2094; loc 3323). Even the Great Chan's chariot is connected to the rivers of Paradise for it is made of wood that comes from there (loc 1113). Mandeville ultimately pulls together the mirroring between the rivers of Paradise and the earthly rivers when he describes the spring in Paradise that "casts out the four rivers that flow through diverse lands" - the origin "of all the fresh waters in the world" (loc 3656). He further adds, "And no one may go by the rivers, for the water flows so violently because it comes from high up..." (loc 3656). Other than emphasizing the attachment that takes place between both parts of the world to demonstrate that there are as many rivers in the antipodes as there are in the ecumene, the purpose of Mandeville's focus on rivers is to emphasize the ease of travel and passage between them. This helps him advance the notion of circumavigability. 43 For more examples on the rivers and places related to the rivers of Paradise, see pp. 89 and 153. 54 Rivers, whether secular or religious, unite places and are a navigable pathway to the antipodes. The countless accounts of rivers are echoed in Ralegh's The Discoverie. The only exception to the fluidity of rivers in The Travels is the four rivers gushing out of the spring in Paradise. Here the river is a barrier, and becomes unnavigable due to the violence of water coming "from high up." In this regard, it contrasts remarkably with the description of the previous rivers that are usually large, carry ships, and flow with great speed like the River Ferue in Maresth and the river in Mancy (Mandeville loc 1871, 2710). The shift is justifiable because the rivers of Paradise are distinct from the Earthly Rivers. Even though some of them partake of Paradise's qualities, they must remain unattainable. The frequent description of watercourses throughout Mandeville's The Travels accentuates the influence of the physical environment on the foundational organizing metaphor employed to construct knowledge of the world. The way the metaphor of water informs actions and shapes the experience of travel is apparent also in earlier medieval travel narratives, such as Marco Polo's The Description of the World.44 Mandeville gears this outlined extensive water-bound topography to shape his discourse of circumnavigation that I presently explore. Circumnavigating the World Mandeville's elaborate account of the various forms of the metaphor of water as an influential way of ‘world making' is a prelude to the notion of circumnavigation that Polo's Description was not as popular as Mandeville's The Travels. Ironically, while Polo's account had greater basis in fact, he was dubbed a liar unlike Mandeville whose account was fictitious yet more believable. This is one reason why Polo "survived in about half as many copies and several fewer languages" (Higgins xiii, "Introduction," The Travels). 44 55 presents a practical paradigm of travel. The concept of circumnavigation is not new for the medieval man. Mandeville's story of the man who sailed around the world comes from Strabo and Cornelius Nepos. Nevertheless, Mandeville's version, as Bennett maintains, was "fresher and more graphic and was appended to an argument for the practicability of circumnavigation" (235). His argument becomes more persuasive as he embeds his narrative within an abundance of waterways, and demonstrates that the antipodes are inhabited by humanized beings. By foregrounding the pathways between the ecumene and the counter-earth, through the discursive principle of attachment, Mandeville elaborates travel across, as well as, around both parts - "above and below" (loc 2416). He introduces the concept in Chapter 20, long after inscribing both text and world within water spaces, which brings us to the quote at the start of this chapter that ascertains that a man can "sail around the world" (loc 2416). He ties the notion of circumnavigation with the sphericity of the Earth - a concept already known to the medieval audience.45 Moreover, he mentions the Antarctic Star to show an equally balanced world, and he supports his claim by providing calculations using the astrolabe.46 Mandeville unfolds his argument gradually using topographic aspects and notions he had been accentuating throughout the account. After mentioning the sphericity of the The Greco-Roman tradition informs the Western medieval view of the sphericity of the earth, the schematic T-O, and the zonal division of the world. In "Cartography in Europe and Islam in the Middle Ages," Norman Thrower suggests "The most common shape [of the world] was circular … a descendent of Greco-Roman cartography, of which two distinct types can be recognized: the T-O and the climatic zonal forms" (273-4). These notions derive mainly from Parmenides (fifth century B.C.), Macrobius (ca. A.D. 400), Orosius (early fifth century A.D.), and Isidore of Seville (ca. A.D. 600), all of whose works provide links between antiquity and the Middle Ages. 45 Of the Antarctic Star, Mandeville says, "Now you ought to know that opposite this Tramontane is the other star that is called Antarctic, as I have said above. And these two stars are not very mobile, and the whole firmament turns on them as a wheel turns on its axle, such that these stars divide the firmament into two equal parts so that there is as much below as above" (loc 2447). 46 56 earth and advancing his calculations, he sets out to assure his readers that the world is divided into two equal and habitable parts: For this reason I say for certain that a man could travel around all the land in the world, both below and above, and return to his own country, if he had company and shipping and always found men, lands, and islands just as in this country. For you know that those who are in the place of the Antarctic are exactly foot against foot with those who live beneath the Tramontane, just as we and those who live under us are foot against foot: for all the parts of sea and land have their habitable and navigable opposites, and islands here as well as there. Know that according to what I can perceive and understand, the lands of Prester John, emperor of India, are under us. (loc 2431-2447) The passage offers a fine example of the manner Mandeville constructs knowledge of the world and his understanding of it. It succinctly delineates his water-bound itinerary formed of a multitude of islands whose ports trace Mandeville's travels as he stops frequently before he pursues his journey. Moreover, he mentions sailing as the preferred paradigm of travel that connects the world. His emphasis on the antipodal zone, where each part mirrors the ecumene, substantiates the line of argument he advances for a circumnavigabile world. It becomes a reassuring organizing principle that maintains the metaphor of water and familiarizes foreign spaces. More important, it guarantees that the traveler can return to his country by following the same water-bound route home, just as Mandeville does on his way back from Prester John's realm.47 Prominently, the passage also highlights the way Mandeville mentally maps a globe-like world picture, which unites real and imaginary water-bound topography. The globe is on his mind as he compares his text to it in the Pope's presence in one version. Interestingly, Mandeville steers away from the religious notion of an uninhabited Scholars like Greenblatt commented on the concept of the antipodes in The Travels through the angle of balance and structure: "Each point in the world is balanced by an antipodean point to which it is at once structurally linked and structurally disjoined" (43). 47 57 antipodal zone to advance further a circumnavigable globe-like world inhabited by human-like beings. In asserting that the earth is habitable or tresspassable in all parts, Bennett proposes that the author "was directly contradicting a whole galaxy of the Church Fathers such as Jerome, Augustine, Lactantius, Procopius and others," all of whom were against the habitability of the antipodal region whose inhabitants live outside the sign of Christianity (233). The different perspective of the antipodes that the Church entertains reveals the extent of Mandeville's subtle innovation as he promotes circumnavigation through the concept of the symmetrical antipodes. To substantiate his view further, Mandeville resorts to the process of mental mapping again as he underscores the centrality of Jerusalem: 48 For in going from Scotland or England towards Jerusalem one is always climbing; for our land is in the low part of the earth to the west, and Prester John's Land is the low part of the earth to the east, and they have day there when we have night, and just the opposite: they have night when we have day. For the earth and the sea are of round form, as I told you above, and as one climbs on one side one descends on the other. (loc 2452) The passage is illustrative of the pervasiveness of Mandeville's worldview on maps as well that act as a visual manifestation for the process of ‘world making'. It accentuates the dialogue between travel texts and maps. He mentally imagines a T-O world map with a central Jerusalem as its highest point, Prester John's land to the east, and England to the west as the lowest equidistant points.49 Isidore of Seville's concept of a tripartite world in He reiterates Jerusalem's centrality two more times in the narrative. The first time is in the prologue (loc 551). The other time is right after the quotation, where he repeats: "Now you have heard said before that Jerusalem is in the middle of the world, and this can be shown over there by a spear- fixed in the ground at the hour of noon at the equinox- that casts no shadow on any side" (loc 2455). 48 On some thirteenth-century, and later, maps Jerusalem was in the exact center. "Three famous maps (Ebstorf, Herefeord, and Psalter) are Jerusalem-centered, but this mode of geo-Christianization was not very common, and the Mandeville author makes more of it than most" (Higgins, "Appendix 263). For more on this issue and the biblical reasons behind this assumption, see Higgins, "Jerusalem in The Book of 49 58 his Etymologiae informs his world mapping (See Figure 1). Along with this, Mandeville's worldview reflects the "universal feature of early world maps" that centers on the ‘navel of the world'" or the ‘omphalos syndrome', where a people "believe themselves to be divinely appointed to the centre of the universe" (Harley "Maps, Knowledge, and Power," 290). The effect of such ‘positional enhancing', as Harley calls it, in Mandeville's case is to emphasize the antipodal region suggestive of the symmetricality of both parts of the world and, hence, advance the concept of circumnavigation even more. Mandeville reiterates the possibility of man sailing around the world as he further grounds his wish for circumnavigation within the account of the young man who allegedly sails around the world. The story echoes The Travels largely and embodies Mandeville's itinerary: …a brave man once left from our regions to go explore the world. He passed India and the islands beyond India, where there are more than five thousand islands, and he went so far by sea and by land, and he went round so much of the world through many seasons that he found an island where he heard his own language spoken and the oxen called with the same words as in his own country. This amazed him very much…. But I say that he had gone so far by land and by sea that he had gone around the whole earth, that he came back having gone right round to his own borderlands- and if he had gone forward he would have found his own country and his own knowledge. But he went back by the way he had come and lost much effort…. For it happened afterwards that he was in Norway, and a storm on the sea caught him and he came to an island, and when he was on that island he recognized it as the island where he had heard his own language spoken in guiding the oxen pulling the plow. (loc 2465-2469) On the surface, the story is about a man who goes around the globe twice only to find himself in his homeland passing through islands, and traveling by sea rather than land. John Mandeville" in Text and Territory, pp. 29-53. In the crusading years between 1099 and 1185, there was also much reference to a central Jerusalem (Higgins, Text and Territory 35). 59 Not surprisingly, his homeland is an island too.50 The foundational metaphor of water shapes the story just like The Travels. It remarkably echoes Mandeville's account in the final chapter: "From these islands about which I spoke to you before in Prester John's Land … and from other islands farther forward, those who want to do so can return to the regions they came from and thus go all the way around the earth" (loc 3677). Mandeville obviously identifies himself with the young man as the two sail to India and Prester John's land. He embodies Mandeville's desire to circumnavigate the earth if he had "company and shipping."51 The narrator's final statement at the end of Chapter 21 is a culmination of his water-bound view. It echoes the dominance of water spaces on medieval maps. "Know that in this country and other islands around there the sea is so high that it seems to hang from the clouds and should cover all the earth. It is a great wonder how it can be held up thus, except by the will of God who holds up the air, and therefore David says in the Psalter: "Mirabiles elaciones maris"" (loc 2620). Mandeville reveals a world in a state of flux and fluidity where water prevails in keeping with medieval maps. This offers another instance of his mental mapping and of the dialogic between texts and maps. All waterways signify the shift Mandeville proposes to feasible (circum)navigation, which ushers in the impending transition in the early modern era of European maritime exploration. Hence, wonderful are the surges of the sea (mirabiles elaciones maris), but 50 232. Bennett identifies the young man with Christopher Columbus' voyage to the New World, p. 51 In the Arabic tradition, the travel account of Al-fetya al-Moghararoon (The Proud or Gullible Young Men) who allegedly try to sail around the world is a counterpart to Mandeville's young man. For more on this, see Shamsuddine al-kilany's Surat Uruba Inda al-‘Arab fi-l-‘Asr al-Wasit (The Picture of Europe for the Arabs in the Middle Ages), pp. 420-422. The Greco-Roman tradition might have been the source of the Arab travel account too. 60 equally wonderful are the mirabilia Mandeville embeds in the sea. Mandeville's Water-bound Mirabilia The metaphor of water, so pervasive in Mandeville's account, defines his reality and his catalogue of water-bound wonders. Mirabilia originates from the same conceptual mindset that constructs knowledge of a watery world. It is in tune with it. Therefore, I explore the continuous association in The Travels of the compelling account of water mirabilia rather than land mirabilia in the ecumene and the antipodes that Mandeville recounts to further his notion of circumnavigation.52 To borrow from Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, journeying to the antipodes in Chapter 16, Mandeville moves from "the Threshold of the Known" - Jerusalem - to mirabilia and the unfamiliar, thus entering "a dream landscape of curiously fluid and ambiguous forms" (81). The metaphor of water maintains this fluidity and familiarizes the counter-earth as it connects the mirabilia in both parts of the world and grants the traveler access to them. Counting the mirabilia in the text, those associated with water almost triple their land-associated counterpart.53 It follows that water instead of land frames marvels in Mandeville's text and world. Scholars, like J. Phillips, note, "the author tended to locate the most extravagant of his wondrous and monstrous races on islands, where they would be safe from closer inspection" (196). Similarly, in Eco's Legendary Lands, most of the In Legendary Lands, Eco gives a succinct definition of mirabilia and its origin: "Through the various tales about Alexander, there thus developed a subgenre of Oriental mirabilia, which was the list of the description of the monsters that could be encountered there, and we also find descriptions of this kind in Augustine, Isidore of Seville, and Mandeville" (99). The Alexander Romances were popular in the Middle Ages and they were passed down from Greek sources. 52 When I counted both types of mirabilia in the text, the number of water-related ones was around twenty-six while the land-based ones added up to around 6 only. 53 61 legendary spaces are, in fact, either islands or water-bound places. I argue, therefore, that this tendency of locating exotic races on islands is an extension of the fascination with a water-bound world picture that informs Mandeville's process of ‘world making'. Mandeville justifies including marvels in his account because "many people enjoy and take pleasure in hearing foreign things spoken about" (loc 768).54 The promised sense of diversion reveals an author susceptible to the underpinnings of his age and to his audience's expectations. His justification can be read in light of Kim Philips' assertion that "where Christian perspectives on closer peoples were formed out of religious confrontation, late medieval Europeans' reactions to the peoples of India, Mongolia, and l'extrême orient were more often dominated by pleasure, pragmatic fears, and curiosity" that become markers of a later orientalist discourse(3). The shift from a religious rhetoric to interest in the exotic is easily discerned in The Travels, as Mandeville starts with a crusading discourse in the prologue then fuses it with wonders. The outcome is a text shaped by the audience's horizon of expectations, whether religious or secular. An integral part of the metaphor of water Mandeville inherits and enacts in The Travels is locating wonders in or near waterways rather than on land. Odysseus' seafaring travels and The Legend of Duke Ernst substantiate my claim for most of the marvels and monsters the heroes meet are on islands. The tradition persists in medieval times underscoring the difficulty of forgoing these foundational metaphors. Works such as Giovanni Boccaccio's (1313-1375) De montibus, sylvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis seu paludibus, et de nominibus maris - a collection of information from classical Richard Hakluyt "includes a Latin text of Mandeville in the first edition of The Principal Navigations" but by the second edition, Mandeville is dropped when his status as a hoaxer overcomes that of a great traveler (Greenblatt 30-31). 54 62 authors about the mountains, woods, fountains, lakes, rivers, swamps of the world, and the names of the seas is a case in point. Boccaccio's friend, Domenico Silvestri, notes that "more interesting things generally happen on islands than elsewhere; and so, sometime between 1385 and 1410, he wrote a volume titled De insulis et earum proprietatibus (On Islands and Their Properties) to accompany Boccaccio's book" (Van Duzer, "From Odysseus to Robinson Crusoe" 149). Mandeville, too, carries on this tradition of water-bound mirabilia familiar to his audience in The Travels. The multitude of mirabilia exists in both parts of the world, but more so in the antipodes, in part due to the existence of more water spaces there. In the ecumene, shapeshifters form one category of marvels. On the island of Lango, Mandeville recounts that Hippocrates' daughter lives in the form of a dragon awaiting the kiss of a brave knight to be transformed into a beautiful woman (loc 764). He continues that "near the gulf of Cathalie [Sathalie] … there used to be a great land and a beautiful city that had the name Cathalie" where upon the death of a certain damsel, her lover "went at night to her tomb … and lay with her and then left" (loc 815). Out of this necrophiliac union is born a flying adder that encircles the destroyed city. He adds that "The crossing there [of the sea] is most dangerous and bottomless" (loc 815).55 Both stories take place on islands in the ecumene before Mandeville journeys further. The horror of the second story confers danger on the surrounding seascape that becomes "dangerous and bottomless."56 The antipodes host the entertaining category of the monstrous races that are 55 In "The World of Mandeville's Travels," Donald Howard analyzes the structural contrasts in the organization of stories in The Travels, an example of which are these two stories, p. 6. The castle of the Sparrow hawk and the Fairy that looks after it in the port of Trapezond is another example that, though it does not involve physical metamorphosis, involves a transformation in social status (Mandeville loc 2082). 56 63 "ubiquitous and various" in The Travels (Verner 143). Excess of monsters and wonders in the counter-earth matches the excess of islands and rivers there, and reflects the desire to assimilate the foreign space to the familiar. Added to the desire to keep the image of the wonder-bound ecumene, Friedman clarifies that monsters had a sustained appeal for medieval man, chiefly because of fear of the unknown (24).57 Instances of water-bound mirabilia that echo the earth include the island of Amazonia where a warring race of women live without men, and the island of Tracoda where "animal-like people … dwell in caves" (Mandeville loc 2187,129). Mandeville also incorporates the Cynocephali, or dog-head people, on the island of Nacumera and the Apple-Smellers who live off the scent of apples in Pytan (loc 2587, 3587). Close to the Apple-Smellers, "there is another island where the people are all hairy except for the face and the hands. This people move as well under the sea as they do on dry land …. On this island there is a large river that is a good two and a half leagues wide that is called Buemar" (3593).58 All these races are surrounded by water. Curiously, the last group does not only live on an island, but they also have an amphibious nature that renders them akin to sea monsters. Mandeville further recounts that many of the races and water mirabilia are located in close proximity to Prester John's legendary realm to portray it as a special place: "There are many other islands in Prester John's Land and many wonders that it would be too long to recount" (loc 3602). He implies the symbiotic relationship between the many islands and the "many wonders" there, and their interdependence. The association he The audience expected an account of these races because they acquired a status of reality. As Friedman suggests "Many of the fabulous races did in fact exist" and they became monstrous because of "errors in perception," such as the Blemmayae, pp. 24-25. 57 For more examples on the monstrous races, see Ch.31 for an account of the giants, and Ch.22 for a list of different monstrous races, such as dwarves, people with huge lips that shade them from the sun, creatures with long ears down to their knees, Blemmayae, and androgynous creatures. 58 64 fosters between water and wonders underscores the significance of the metaphor of water as a medium that ushers in the accessible counter-earth. Furthermore, Mandeville continues dwelling on the symmetric aspect of the world that advances circumnavigation by humanizing the otherwise monstrous inhabitants of the counter-earth. This way he persuades his readers even more of the habitability of the antipodes by similar beings and the possibility of sailing safely to their realm. The gamut of monstrous races was passed down to the medieval era through Solinus and Pliny the Elder and they became "immutable" (Campbell 140). Mandeville's portrayal of these races counters the common medieval knowledge that others them because it is flattering. The Cynocephali exemplify "reason and good understanding," and the Apple-Smellers are "of good color and beautiful shape" (Mandeville loc 2587, 3587). Even the unusual customs of various island-dwellers that count as mirabilia are sometimes, if not praiseworthy, justifiable in an attempt to familiarize the inhabitants and depict them as a rightful extension to the ecumene. In Dondia, there are "people of diverse natures, such that the father eats the son, and the son the father, and the husband the wife, and the wife her husband" (loc 2625). On another island, "the women mourn a great deal when their children are born..." (3483). Upon encountering difference, Mandeville attempts to resolve it and rationalize it the same way Ibn Fadlan does. For example, children eat their parents' dead bodies to spare them the pain of being devoured by worms, while mothers rejoice in their children's death because they go to a better place, and mourn their life because they come to a world of pain and sorrow. His attitude, Bennett remarks, reveals, "The sympathetic imagination to credit the remote people dwelling on the other side of the earth with the 65 feelings, desires, and human failings which he had observed at home" (5). As such, he attaches remote people with the normal people at home. Both groups mirror each other across waterways even if they behave in different contexts that mark cultural difference. Mandeville's use of attachment indicates a level of "perspectivalism," "a reaction of a particular "us" to an "other"" that Caroline Bynum Walker associates with wonder in medieval literary accounts (55-56).59 For instance, Mandeville assimilates the worship of simulacra by a certain people to the Christian worship of images (loc 2270). On the island of Nacumera where the Cynocephali live, their king "devoutly says three hundred prayers" in "the way that we say Pater Noster and Ave Maria while counting the paternosters (loc 2590).60 In Byboth dwells the pope of this people's law called Lobassy, whom Mandeville likens to the pope in the Roman Church. He sustains the comparison by maintaining that on this island when a son wishes to honor the death of his father, he invites everyone, and they carry the body to the mountains, cut it and feed it to the vultures, and "just as the chaplains over here chant Subvenite sancti Dei etc. for the dead, so these priests there at this point chant aloud in their language" (loc 3705). Mandeville uses these instances as a mirror that he holds up to his society in which it could see its possible resemblance to the other, as well as its faults pointed out at times, as for example in the conversation with the Sultan of Egypt in Chapter 15, but also how equally strange their practices might seem to the other. He creates an overall complementary other to the Bynum explains the term saying that "In such tales and accounts, wonder is, moreover, deeply perspectival. It is a reaction of a particular "us" to an "other" that is "other" only relative to the particular "us."" Examples of authors whose statements reveal that the other could as much be surprised at us are James of Vitry, John Mandeville, and William of Rubruck ("Wonder," Metamorphosis and Identity 55-56). 59 Another example is the island of Oxidrate and Gynosophe where "there is also a good and trustworthy people and full of faith" of whom he says that God loves them the way he loved Job, a pagan (Mandeville loc 3557). 60 66 Western audience the same way he creates a complementary antipodal region for the ecumene to maintain the symmetrical thinking that runs throughout The Travels. Taken together, these moments of cultural encounter possibly intimate more a relationship of attachment and perspectivalism rather than cultural superiority. Importantly, Mandeville counters the sea monsters in waterways by eliminating them altogether from his account to confirm the prospect of smooth and safe navigation. There are only gigantic eels in the river Indus, which are not monstrous (Mandeville loc 2248). The lack of sea monsters stands in contradistinction to earlier medieval maps, which show an abundance of sea monsters in the waterways to the antipodes, but no ships. The Gerona Beatus map displays a range of sea monsters in the circumfluent ocean. To the right, in the south, there is a hybrid creature with a dog head and a fish-like body. In the northeast, there is a hybrid sea-chicken. To the southeast, there is a sawfish: a "traditional sea monster mentioned by Isidore and other authors which is said to cut ships open when swimming under them" (Van Duzer, Sea Monsters 18). At the bottom of the map, to the west there is a man, probably Jonah, inside the whale. Monsters on Western medieval maps might have presented a threat to "enterprises of exploration and mapmaking, for the presence of sea monsters on maps would … discourage the exploration that would be needed to improve maps" (Van Duzer, Sea Monsters 12). However, I suggest that their imaginary presence neither detracted from a water-bound view, nor hindered navigation and continuous exploration, as the Western corpus of travel narratives demonstrates. Mandeville reverses this pattern by citing ships and the concept of shipping, which become standard features on early modern maps. The reversal is clear on later 67 maps like the Catalan Atlas, among other Renaissance maps, which show more ships and fewer sea monsters. What this means to both The Travels and later medieval maps is that more navigational exploration and world discovery are under way. This points to the exploration aspect of Mandeville's account and supports his notion of circumnavigation through rendering water spaces tamable, traversable, and devoid of monsters. Yet water spaces are still sites of peculiar natural phenomena. The Fosse of Mennon is a round pit near the river Beleoon that changes metal into glass (Mandeville loc 866). This pit in the land of Prester John, we are reminded, is "a vent for the Sandy Sea" (loc 871). There is also the river that overflows with precious stones (loc 871). Fantastic geographical features, if not located in water, are still in close proximity in keeping with the manner the metaphor of water organizes Mandeville's text and world. The plain beyond the river overflowing with stones is an illustrative example. Here "at sunrise small shrubs begin to grow … until noon and they bear fruit. But no one dares take this fruit, for it is like something bewitched. After midday they shrink and go back into the ground, such that at sunset they are no longer visible, and they do this every day and it is a great wonder" (Mandeville loc 3333). In the same area, there are wild men who grumble like pigs. The Enchanted Valley, also called the Perilous Valley that Mandeville and his companions pass through, is located "beside this isle of Milstorak on the left beside the River Phison" (loc 3400). Taken together, these occurrences of water mirabilia substantiate my argument. Whenever Mandeville reaches water spaces or goes beyond them, fantastic worlds greet him. In contrast, land mirabilia are scanty in both parts of the world compared to their water counterpart. In the deserts of Egypt, Mandeville recounts that "a holy worthy 68 hermit encountered a monster just like a man with two large sharp horns on his forehead, and he had a man's body to the navel and beneath he had a body like a goat's" (loc 1017). Egypt, too, is abode of the mythical phoenix that burns itself on the altar of the temple in Heliopolis, which Mandeville compares to Christ (loc 1021).61 Moving to Ethiopia and the antipodes, he describes the Sciapod, a fast people with a single foot that is "so large that it shades the whole body from the sun when they are lying down" (loc 2199).62 Last, there is a kind of tree in Cadilhe that yields something like "a little lamb without wool" (loc 3243). To maintain the principle of attachment, Mandeville likens this phenomenon to the trees "in our country that bear fruit which become flying birds" known as the barnacle fruit (loc 3243). He adds that upon hearing this, his listeners in Cadilhe "were greatly astonished" (loc 3243). Here as elsewhere, Mandeville maintains a balance between both parts of the world, home and not home. As Higgins perceives: "Sir John addresses the local people with the claim, obviously meant for The Book's audience, that the earth's western ends should be seen to be as marvelous as its eastern, each mirroring the other" (138).63 Throughout the account, he compares the strange to the familiar in a way that harmoniously unifies the world and posits entities in a complementary relationship within an antipodal framework. This suits a circumnavigable spherical world where each point has its mirroring opposite, and is equidistant from the other in a way akin to the medieval mappae mundi. 61 The phoenix is a Christian allegory that goes back to the early Church Fathers and to Isidore. Other examples are the Tree of the Sun and the Moon that once spoke to Alexander the Great, and unicorns (Mandeville loc 1052). 62 In addition to Higgins' perceptive remark, Greenblatt also suggests that "From antiquity, these marvels served as one of the principal signs of otherness and hence functioned not only as a source of fascination but of authentication" (30). Obviously, Mandeville probably had more than one reason in mind to include all these marvels. 63 69 The Map and the Globe in The Travels So far, we have seen the influence of maps on Mandeville's mental mapping. Here I seek to examine further the relationship between The Travels and medieval world maps, in order to reveal a communicative connection that goes beyond mere copying. In the process, I aim to reveal the dominance of the water metaphor in the Western conceptualization of the world. Higgins observes the theological similarities between The Travels and mappae mundi, the "system of organizing space ideologically and temporally is analogous to the Mandeville author's scheme" ("Appendix" 263). In this section I turn to the way medieval maps contribute to "dialogue in [the] socially constructed world" of Mandeville's The Travels (Harley, "Maps, Knowledge, and Power" 278). The maps that the text invokes, Harley reminds us, are not "value-free images" as their content and style of representation "are a way of conceiving, articulating, and structuring the human world" (278). In this sense, they act as metaphors that conceptualize and organize reality. An exploration of the metaphor of water on maps forms my point of departure. Besides echoing Isidore's tripartite mapping of the world, Mandeville's mental mapping in The Travels echoes the following three mappae mundi: the Ebstorf (ca.1234), the Hereford (ca.1285), and the Catalan Atlas (1375). The first two were made well before The Travels and the last afterwards. The interdependence between both text and maps, including the Beatus maps, demonstrates a particular way of ‘world making' and knowing the ecumene through the foundational metaphor of water that includes within its folds the various mirabilia. Mandeville, or his redactors, refers to maps and globes.64 There are two manuscripts of The Travels that include maps. One is the "15th century manuscript of Mandeville, namely Cape Town, National Library of South Africa, MS 4.b.17, includes a map of the world at f. 2v." The other is a "small schematic world map in the Mandeville manuscript 64 70 Concerning maps, in the Cotton Version, the knight recounts that on his way back to England, he passes by Rome And oure holy fader of his special grace remytted my boke to ben examyned and preued be the Avys of his seyd conseill, Be the whiche my boke was preeued for trewe jn so moche pat pei schewed me a boke pat my boke was examynde by, pat comprehended full moche more be an hundred part, be the whiche the Mappa Mundi was made after. And so my boke, all be it pat many men ne list not to 3eue credence to no ping but to pat pat pei seen with hire eye, ne be the Auctour ne the persone neuer so trewe, is affermed and preued be oure holy fader in maner and forme as I haue seyd. (Higgins, Writing East 256) In a circuitous process, he submits his book for papal approval, which he attains by having his account verified against a larger book that serves as the source for a world map. Mandeville offers his eyewitness testimony to the presence of a written authority that validates what he saw and wrote about in his text (Higgins, Writing East 256).65 The larger book that authenticates The Travels informs the medieval mappa mundi familiar to the audience. In this way, Mandeville appeals to both textual and pictorial authority to confirm The Travels. This incident is reiterated in the Egerton and Defective (the dominant form of the book in England) versions. This time various people at the Pope's court, in addition to the pope and his council, examine the book. Mandeville consciously places his text in dialogue with former knowledge of medieval texts and images. At the same time, he resorts to the humility topos that differs from the "I" voice with the aim of authenticating his book by submitting it to the pope. He gives his intended audience a voice the same way he calls on them to amend his account. All three maps mentioned above echo The Travels. They hierarchicalize an London, British Library MS Royal 17. C. XXXVIII, f. 41v" (Van Duzer 148, "From Odysseus to Robinson Crusoe"). Higgins further suggests that it might be the case that "it was from this larger book that the (Hereford?) mappa mundi was made" (Text and Territory, 45-46). 65 71 abundance of water spaces and water boundaries between lands that frame knowledge of the world in the same way their predecessors do. Hence, they offer a precursor to travel, which argues that Mandeville is actually drawing on the long-established foundational metaphor of water. The maps also depict rivers of Paradise and waterways that Mandeville employs to organize his worldview in accordance to the T-O schema. Therefore, he situates the lands and islands in relation to the earth's major bodies of water: "many different countries and many great regions … are divided by the four rivers that come from [the] Earthly Paradise (loc 2052). Just as Mandeville offers a holistic, unifying structure of the world through waterways that are traced to one ultimate source - the rivers of Paradise - medieval maps, use these rivers to unify the world too. The Ebstorf and the Hereford are oriented toward the East, in keeping with medieval Western maps, with a schematic representation of Eden at the top. Spreading outward from Eden, the four rivers meander throughout the world, re-emerging to form the rivers that divide the land mass into the three continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Mandeville refers to these rivers when he talks about the Nile, for instance, in Chapter 6. He also refers to Joseph's Granaries "across the Nile," which are depicted on the Hereford map (loc 1068). Maps also reflect the concepts of circumnavigation and the antipodes presented in The Travels. The notion of circumnavigation that Mandeville advocates is apparent on The Ebstorf and Hereford T-O maps that represent the earth as round. The circumfluent ocean, forming the "O" of T-O, rings the world and supports this view. Yet, unlike The Travels, the notion is rendered somewhat perilous on these two maps due to the existence of sea monsters. Together with these two maps, the Catalan Atlas supports Mandeville's notion of circumnavigation since it evidently combines the more modern navigator's 72 chart of the Mediterranean region (portolan) with the circular world map (mappa mundi). The sphericity and circumnavigability Mandeville proposes informs his use of attachment and the antipodal theory as an organizational framework for his work and world. The same view is posed by the various mappae mundi, which insist that the classical ecumene did not occupy the entire surface of the earth. Therefore, the assumption arose that, beyond the end of the earth, in the antipodes, there must exist places and peoples "analogous to those of the known world either an inverse identity with the unknown or multiple versions of the known world" (Hiatt 54). The difference between Mandeville's antipodal view and its counterpart on maps is that the inhabitants in his antipodes are human-like, while those on the maps are monstrous-like. The Ebstorf map displays twenty-four monstrous races occupying the antipodes, some of which are mentioned in The Travels (see Figure 3). For example, the Sciopod appears in both travel text and map. Mandeville also mentions the place where the Cynocephali (dog-head) lives, which is a prominent feature of both the Ebstorf map, and later the Hereford. This race figures on the map below Paradise in the east, in reference to the story of the "fallen angels copulating with the ‘daughters of men' and producing a race of [monsters]" (Friedman 84). Right below the Cynocephali, there is a unicorn figure, also mentioned in Mandeville's account. Among the races in the ring beyond the ocean on the map are the Troglodytes (hole-creepers), Garamantes (an Ethiopian race that does not practice marriage), and the Straw-Drinkers that Mandeville meets on an unnamed island (loc 2647). The parent-eating races called the Issedones that derive from Solinus appear on the Hereford world map too. The text on the map says, "The Essedones of Scythia live 73 Figure 3.The Ebstorf Map (c.1240) 74 here, whose custom is to accompany their parents' funerals with songs and having assembled a group of friends, to tear into their parents' bodies with their teeth and to make a solemn feast of animal meat mixed with human flesh, believing it more honourable to be consumed by each other than by worms" (K. Philips 95).66 Mandeville mentions this race and cites the legend almost verbatim, as mentioned above. Both the Ebstorf and the Hereford also portray the savage races shut up by Alexander, Gog and Magog, who "feed on human flesh and blood and will erupt from their stronghold at the coming of the Antichrist" (95). He renders the biblical story anti-Semitic by tying this race to the Jews, whom he depicts negatively (loc 3249). His shift from the depiction of the monstrous races on the maps lies in humanizing some of them and explaining away their seemingly inhuman practices. Remarkably, Mandeville does not register the problem of verbal communication with the different races he meets, as Greenblatt notes (91). The water element on the aforementioned maps and in The Travels demarcates the ecumene from the antipodal region. The representation of the circumfluent ocean and monsters on maps divide the habitable space from the space of monsters. Furthermore, the depiction of mythical creatures and events, such as Alexander the Great's journey to the Iron Gate, the legend of Prester John, the dog-headed people, and unicorns on the Ebstorf map, stresses the attachment to past events and ancient lore, thus underscoring the aspect of "epochal zones" (different ages or different historical themes) on medieval For a translation of the legends on the Hereford map, see Scott D. Westrem's The Hereford Map: A Transcription and Translation of the Legends with Commentary. Turnhout: Brepols, 2001. 66 75 maps (Scafi 290).67 Mandeville's text, too, demonstrates the notion of epochal zones as he cites the legends pertaining to Alexander the Great and Prester John. These parallels render The Travels multitextual as much as the mappa mundi (Higgins, Text and Territory 33). To this, I add that Mandeville's account is characterized by heterogeneity that points to the disparate sources he resorts to and changes in the process of composition. For a depiction of the antipodes, the region of Cathay and India in Mandeville and Polo's accounts, we need to turn to the Catalan Atlas (1375), attributed to Abraham Cresques - a Jewish Majorcan cartographer. The first two leaves, forming the oriental portion, illustrate numerous religious references that synthesize the medieval mappae mundi and the more modern portolan chart that serves as a practical navigational guide. More important is the synthesis of map and text it reflects between the mappae mundi and the travel literature of the time. Many Indian and Chinese cities that Mandeville and Polo visit can be identified. The explanatory texts report verbatim customs described by Polo.68 In addition, his account of the island of Lesser Java appears on the Catalan map. The Catalan Atlas is the "closest formal analogue" to The Travels as they both include an eastward description of the world beyond the [ecumene] (Higgins, "Introduction" xi). Both the Catalan Atlas and The Travels share other aspects, prominently the metaphor of water. The two portray a plenitude of the five thousand Woodward refers to this phenomenon as "a many-layered accumulation of historical events as well as objects in geographical space" ("Reality, Symbolism, Time, and Space" 511). 67 68 The reason Cathay and its neighboring regions figure on the Catalan rather than the encyclopedic Ebstorf and Hereford map is that they were made too early to include these areas. In addition, they were more religiously oriented and so they exemplified the lagging behind of earlier medieval cartographic discourse. 76 islands in India that Mandeville visits (Higgins, Writing East 138).69 On one hand, they redefine the speculative Asian portion, depicted on the previous mappae mundi as the realm of monsters, more realistically through portraying several cities like Chambaleth, the Great Khan's capital. On the other hand, they retain the fantastic elements. The Catalan Atlas shows "men using eagles to hunt for diamonds, a battle between pygmies and cranes, and a sword-wielding [Amazon] queen. Taprobana features a splendid elephant and a mermaid swims in the waters of the East Indies, while to the east of Cathay dwell the ichthyophagi" (K. Philips 149). The main difference between The Travels and the Atlas is that the latter starts rather than ends in the Far East. This move accentuates the shift that the Far East undergoes in Western consciousness from an unknown and fanciful land to the "somewhat" known, yet fanciful. Another striking difference is that The Travels upholds the theological discourse of the mappae mundi that portrays a centered Jerusalem and the Earthly Paradise. Conversely, the Catalan Atlas does not "place its world under the sign of Christian history; in particular it neither depicts the Earthly paradise nor retains the … central placement of Jerusalem" (Higgins, "Appendix" 264). Nevertheless, travel text and map share many similarities, and allude dialogically to previous works that they draw upon, while pointing forward to further discovery of the ecumene. The shared worldview between travel text and map carries over to the globe. The latter, too, literally embodies world knowledge at the time and informs ‘world making'. 69 An example of other maps that depict a multitude of islands is Fra Mauro's 1459 world map, in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice. It depicts "the Indian Ocean as filled with marvellous islands, and has a legend indicating that there are 12,600 islands in the ocean … and depicts four-masted ships sailing among those islands. These ships are also mentioned by Polo in his Book 3, chapter 1 (Van Duzer, "From Odysseus to Robinson Crusoe" 148-149). 77 Importantly, it realizes Mandeville's desire for circumnavigation and ushers in the ensuing maritime exploration of new worlds. The Vulgate Latin manuscript advances the connection that the aforementioned versions make to maps a step further, by having the authorizing book provide the information depicted on a kind of globe shown to Mandeville: Then [the Pope] had a certain very voluminous book brought in that he called Polichronica, and he had them read in it many great and wonderful things and even more than were contained in my book. And he had a cardinal show me a certain spherical instrument … containing in itself in the form of figures or pictures virtually all realms and races of people - a wonderful device that he called the Sphere of the World. And he said that the instrument was made according to the order and arrangement of the foresaid volume previously shown to me. And there I found all the sorts of men and animals included in my justnoted book, and bidding farewell to my lord the Pope I obtained from him his blessing, with him declaring and confirming those things described in my book to be true. (Higgins 259-260) Mandeville obtains the Pope's approval by having him substantiate his truth claim in The Travels. Once more, he employs the humility topos, evident in his desire to obtain the pope's blessing before taking leave. This scene, as well as the previous one with the mappa mundi, serves a two-fold purpose. First, the pope consolidates both theological and terrestrial knowledge, especially the knowledge Mandeville introduces. The pope's blessing bestows on Mandeville the status of authority and elevates his erudition. The humility topos and the blessing underscore the newly achieved status that earns him credibility and renders his argument for circumnavigation compelling. Second, by involving the pope in both instances, Mandeville brings back the secular exploratory discourse of the text full circle to the pilgrimage discourse with which he started. The purpose of blending the secular and the devotional satisfies the various wishes of the audience and sustain the balance Mandeville creates throughout The Travels. 78 The introduction of the globe at this point in the narrative is significant. It confirms The Travels in a double move. First, it confirms the realms and races that Mandeville portrays. Second, "the sphere of the world" further validates the sphericity and, hence, the possibility of circumnavigating the world, which inform The Travels. The notion of the globe prominently undercuts the idea of the hot uninhabitable southern zone that impedes circling the world - a notion that Ralegh rejects, as will be apparent. The pictorial aspect is central in two ways. It looks backward at a globe made according to the information available in a voluminous book to achieve authentication. Then, almost a century and a half later, Mandeville's work informs the first extant Western globe, known as the Nuremberg globe (1492). The Nuremberg globe will look backward at the text, the same way the text once looked backward at the "sphere of the world" in a manner suggestive of the unfinalizable aspect of Mandeville's text. This asserts the dialogic context into "the boundless past and boundless future" between The Travels and the cartographic expressions of the world (Bakhtin, Speech Genres 170). Prior to mentioning the world globe in this version of The Travels, in all other versions Mandeville mentions the orb, which speaks to Mandeville's purpose of promoting a circumnavigable complementary earth. The globe or orb has always symbolized sovereignty over the world since Roman times when it was held in the hand of an emperor or king. Later, Christianity added a religious significance to the orb, which became surmounted by a cross (Harley, "Maps, Knowledge, and Power" 296). In front of the Church of Saint Sophia, Mandeville notes the statue of the Emperor Justinian who "used to hold in his hand a round gilded apple, but it has long since fallen out" (loc 639). The apple stands for the orb/globe, which, he explains, "signifies the lordship that he had 79 over the world, which is round" (loc 639). Incidentally, the Nuremburg globe is also known as the Erdapfel (Earth apple). In Curiosity and Pilgrimage, Christian Zacher suggests that "Mandeville is … very much interested in the roundness of the apple; the object is not only a symbol but also the first of a series of spherical images he will discover in surveying the religious geography of the Christ-centered pilgrim world that wheels about Jerusalem" (134). However, another layer of meaning, I suggest, is that the apple/orb, when juxtaposed to the world globe the pope has, foregrounds Mandeville's spherical circumnavigable worldview along with the push for exploration, and thus world dominion, as the ships on both the Catalan Atlas and Nuremburg globe indicate. The question of globes and ‘world making' becomes more poignant in Ralegh's The Discoverie and the portraits of Queen Elizabeth I explored in the following chapter. The Erdapfel globe is generally attributed to the German mariner and cosmographer Martin Behaim, who had spent some time in Portugal - the dominant maritime nation in the fifteenth century. Behaim had "sailed as far west as the Azores ….Thus not only did he have access to the best practical seafaring knowledge of the western and eastern routes, but also to a vast body of theoretical geographical and cartographical material collected at Sagres by Prince Henry earlier in the century" (Moseley, "Behaim's Globe" 89).70 Notably, the globe is a culmination of what the West knows of the Earth until this time, or as Moseley puts it, it "summarizes European knowledge of the world before Columbus' discoveries" (89). This knowledge 70 Prince Henry, later known as Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), was a son of the Portuguese king John I. He was responsible for the early development of Portuguese exploration and maritime trade with other nations through the systematic exploration of Western Africa, the islands of the Atlantic Ocean, and the search for new routes. He thereby initiated the Age of Discovery. 80 incorporates mythological lands, lore, and draws on sources like travel narratives by Mandeville, who alone is mentioned thrice in relation to Sciapods, the Antipods, and the Pole Star.71 The globe re-creates the world. It follows, in my view, The Travels and the medieval mappae mundi in creating a distinct mode of visual representation (Harley, "Deconstructing the Map" 233). The dominant mode is constructing world knowledge via the metaphor of water, whose abundance on the globe renders continents parvae insulae. The shift from a flat depiction of the world (already known to be spherical) on a map to a three-dimensional representation of the world on a spherical globe expands the notion of circumnavigation. The reference to the antipodes on the globe from Mandeville's The Travels implies the exploration of an area becoming better known. As such, it is a more literal manner not only of "world making," but also of world re-making. The significance of the metaphor of water in terms of world knowledge and expansion becomes apparent in early modern times. The persistence of Mandeville's watery worldview informs early modern world domination as the reproduction of the fifteenth-century Dutch map that accompanies one version of The Travels shows (see Figure 4). The map depicts the direct association seen by the Dutch maritime power and the audience between the text and waterways, as the cartographer displays Mandeville sailing across the waters of the ecumene, which still preserves the T-O schema. Notably, on the map Mandeville, rather than Jerusalem, is at the centre. The author's centrality might well underscore the prevelance of secular rather religious thinking at the time. To his right and left there are sailing boats. The map is utterly devoid of the monstrous races For the exact reference in German that cites Mandeville, see Moseley "Behaim's Globe and 'Mandeville's Travels'," p. 89. 71 81 Figure 4. Fifteenth-Century Dutch Map of Mandeville's The Travels he encounters. As such, the map stresses secular rather than religious knowledge and focuses on water-bound exploration that serves the Dutch maritime ambitions. The cartographer apparently recognized the exploratory power embedded in Mandeville's text and reflected it on the map. The map here emits a form of power-knowledge (Harley, "Deconstructing the Map" 243). Knowledge stems from the power the foundational water metaphor affords the Dutch to explore the world and conceive it the same way Mandeville does. In addition to the map, Mandeville's account influences explorers such as Christopher Columbus whose voyage to the New World is appropriately undertaken in 1492 - the same year the globe was made. Columbus partially realizes Mandeville's fictional account of the man sailing the world. As such, he adopts the knowledge of 82 (circum)navigation that Mandeville advances. András Bernáldez, the historian of Columbus' second voyage, describes Columbus having studied "Ptolemy and other books and John Mandeville" (Bennet 235). In addition, Bernáldez "cites Mandeville several times, giving references to particular chapters of The Travels" (235). As we shall see, Sir Walter Ralegh also uses the knowledge The Travels advances. In fact, the whole dialectic between old medieval knowledge of the world and new Renaissance knowledge is more poignant in Ralegh's account. The previous examples show that Mandeville was for some "the author of a travel account useful for ships sailing" to places like China (Moseley, "The Metamorphosis" 19). Alternatively, as Bennett aptly puts it, The Travels simultaneously shaped and served "an imaginative and motive force for the explorations and discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries" (236). Consequently, I propose that Mandeville's account has obviously been associated, in the European collective memory, with either island literature, or with (circum)navigation as a paradigm of travel to promote discovery. In this respect, it continues and enhances the metaphor of water. Not surprisingly, John Leland (c. 1503-1552) the English poet called Sir John Mandeville "Britain's Ulysses" (Zacher 154). Mandeville goes down in history as an Odysseus-like figure, and his text becomes identified with the earliest account of sea voyages. Even when The Travels lost its reputation as a factual account and gained instead a notoriously fictitious one, it was still appreciated by the school of geographers and cartographers of the sixteenth century. Gerardus Mercator thought that, while Mandeville's account was somewhat "fabulous," his geography ought not to be 83 condemned, and Abraham Ortelius took much the same position" (Bennet 240).72 Sebastian Münster's Cosmographie Universalis (1544), contains unacknowledged portions of Mandeville's text to replace the Travels "as [a source] of popular information about the Orient" (241). Therefore, The Travels embodies the geographic information of its day, which partly informs subsequent knowledge of cartography and exploration. Conclusion In short, the construction of knowledge of the world through the metaphor of water goes beyond the immediate context of The Travels. The text draws on the earlier water-bound legacy and informs subsequent early modern notions. It structures the Western worldview and becomes significant in terms of identity making and expansion. In the service of such perspective, Mandeville employs the discursive strategy of attachment through the notion of the antipodes and portrays a balanced spherical world where each point, including water spaces, has its opposite. He punctuates his narrative with an abundance of water mirabilia to complement this view. The outcome is a foregrounding of water space as a binding medium to the antipodal region that could be safely navigated both ways. To substantiate his view further, Mandeville consciously places his text in dialogue with medieval maps and globes. All three representations of the world share the abundance of water space and the construction of an identity fashioned by water borders. Winston Churchill writes in his memoirs that "at every stage of European history the Mercator's 1569 world map is titled Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium Emendate Accommodata ("New and more complete representation of the terrestrial globe properly adapted for use in navigation"). 72 84 solution to great problems has come as much, if not more, from the sea as from the continent" (du Jourdin 129). His words capture the European attachment to water at different stages of history, whether for economic, religious, political, or geographic reasons, all of which allude to a particular way of imagining and fashioning the world. The sense of identity-making related to water spaces and (circum)navigation persists into subsequent travel texts and maps, and is fundamental to the paradigm of traveling by water. A water-bound worldview has been ingrained in Western thought since classical times and continues to do so after Mandeville's Travels. To quote du Jourdin: "Although the subjects of many travel writings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not European, their maritime character conveyed the attention their authors paid to things of the sea" (205). On his visit to Brazil, the explorer John de Léry (1536-1613) says "‘those who have not been at sea … have seen only half the world'" (205). The Travels then is an example of a compelling watery world that heralds a larger change through inspiring real (circum)navigational exploration, as seen in Ralegh's The Discoverie. CHAPTER TWO GILDED WATER AND UNCHARTED LAND IN SIR WALTER RALEGH'S THE DISCOVERIE OF THE LARGE, RICH, AND BEWTIFUL EMPYRE OF GUIANA Those that are desirous to discover and to see many nations, may be satisfied within this river, which bringeth forth so many armes & branches leading to severall countries, & provinces, above 2000. Miles east and west, and 800. Miles south and north: and of these, the most eyther rich in Gold, or in other marchandizes. (Ralegh 194) Sir Walter Ralegh's account of his first voyage to the New World during the reign of Elizabeth I of England entitled The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana (1596), hereafter referred to as The Discoverie, is a unique example of a travel text that engages dialogically with Mandeville's Travels. It references the Travels explicitly as well as implicitly by adumbrating a world of waterways and rivers. It also develops the dialectic between classic and new knowledge that The Travels initiates. Besides this apparent dialogism, my justification for the text rests on its liminal status between medieval and early modern moments of exploration, as noted by Mary Campbell in The Witness and the Other (85). The term liminality, as I use it here, highlights the inbetween status of the text. It negotiates the overlapping dialectic between the classical traditions, which inform the medieval worldview, and the nascent Renaissance knowledge that informs the early modern world. It exists at a juncture between 86 overlapping notions, such as the emerging co-existence of the medieval attachment to the foundational metaphor of water, and the early modern attachment to the metaphor of land that gradually becomes literal, as ways of knowledge construction and ‘world making'. The text reveals the attendant transformation in depicting such governing perceptions cognitively on maps and later on globes, in the question of monstrosity, and in the distinction between empirical reality and hearsay. The term liminality captures these thresholds and the slow cultural shifts, along with the position of The Discoverie within the literary tradition. The text serves my argument of the persistence of the European attachment to water as an expression of identity, knowledge and expansion to conceive the world and dominate it in the early modern period. Such conception affects the representation of the world in both The Discoverie as a travel text and in maps and globes. However, I contend that while The Discoverie remains largely faithful to the medieval European worldview, it also marks a slow shift to overland expansion that signals new experience. It raises the following questions that I attempt to answer: To what extent does this new experience affect the foundational metaphor? Does the metaphor resist, especially that the New World is a place where this tension can happen? What is the relationship between travel texts and maps of the early modern period? What type of mental construct does the advent of the globe in the late fifteenth century introduce? Why is there a gradual shift to overland expansion that exists in tandem with the rise of European, and specifically, British maritime power? How does the dialectic between water and land metaphors direct Ralegh's travels, the discourse of marvels, and the search for gold? How does a text written at the threshold between medieval and early modern moments of world 87 history integrate new knowledge with the old to develop mental attitudes and world conceptions? The text's liminality, therefore, between a water-bound worldview and land-bound expansion and their contingent notions, forms the inquiry of the current chapter. My approach to The Discoverie differs from the dominant scholarship. Neil Whitehead, for example, explores the text from an ethnographic angle in "The Discoverie as an Ethnographic Text." Mary Fuller examines the constant deferral of attaining gold in "Ralegh's Fugitive Gold" and Joyce Lorimer analyzes Ralegh's reference to gold mines versus the riches of El Dorado in "Untruth and Consequences." Both Walter Lim and Louis Montrose study the colonial aspect of the text in ""To Seeke New Worlds" Ralegh's The Discoverie of Guiana," and "The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery," respectively. Exotic races earn Laura Schechter's attention in ""all that glitered": Relationships of Obligation and Exchange in Ralegh's Discoverie of Guiana," Kathryn Schwarz's "Falling off the Edge of the World: Ralegh among the Amazons," and Scott Oldenburg's "Headless in America: The Imperial Logic of Acephalism." In The Witness and the Other, Mary Campbell looks at the use of language to describe New World experiences, whereas Stephen Greenblatt focuses on Ralegh's self-fashioning in Sir Walter Ralegh: The Renaissance Man and his Roles. While drawing on the aforementioned studies, I break from the scholarly tradition surrounding Ralegh's The Discoverie by contending that it enlarges upon the metaphor of water unfolded in Mandeville's The Travels, as evident in the water-based itinerary to and in Guiana. Ralegh organizes and embeds his account in waterways - the ocean and the rivers. He follows Mandeville's example by rendering water spaces the location of 88 mirabilia and monstrous races. However, I argue that this water-based view co-exists with a subtle shift to overland exploration within early modern travel texts and maps. The issue of empire building directs Ralegh to extend his travel schema to include overland in a parallel way that territorial expansion directs the Arab focus on overland routes. Remarkably, in Europe's case, navigation leads to the gradual overland expansion and empire building, while overland travel leads to empire building in Arab medieval culture. One crucial consequence of the advent of land-borne expansion for Europe is the gradual dissociation from water as a metaphor of ‘world making' and the gradual attachment to land, first as a co-existent metaphor of ‘world making' in the early modern period, then as an alternative mindset and reality in modern times. Therefore, I propose that in The Discoverie, there is a slow emergence of land space despite the still overwhelming abundance of water spaces. I continue to explore the questions that The Discoverie raises, along with the shift in visualizing the world in travel accounts and maps/globes through Lakoff and Johnson's metaphor theory as a cognitive process that contributes to the water-bound mindset. Metaphor theory is particularly helpful here in discussing the role of inherited medieval values in informing the early modern world perspective since "our values are not independent but must form a coherent system with the metaphorical concepts we live by" (Lackoff and Johnson 23). Medieval European cultural values, such as hearsay, as well as the discourse of wonders, are entrenched in the metaphorical system of waterways that I present in Mandeville's The Travels. At the same time, the tenacious grasp of old traditions and ways of world making in the text prove that "it is by no means an easy matter to change the metaphors we live by" (146). 89 Gradually, the metaphor of land and the experiential principle of autopsy start to shake former notions in a way suggestive of the ability of new metaphors to create a new reality in The Discoverie. I therefore build on Lackoff and Johnson's premise that when "a new metaphor enters the conceptual system that we base our actions on, it will alter that conceptual system and the perceptions and actions that the system gives rise to" in order to analyze the dialectic between the co-existing conceptions: water and land (146). In The Discoverie, the metaphor of water takes on an added significance compared to Mandeville's The Travels. On the metaphoric level, it continues to inform Europe's identity making, especially in light of England's maritime power in the Elizabethan Age of Discovery. On the literal level, it leads to New Worlds, the formerly antipodal regions sought after in The Travels, and their ensuing acquisition. More important, the desired acquisition of lands entails the acquisition of gold, exemplified by the riches of the mythical city of El Dorado (literally the gilded one), which is waterbound. Hence, water maintins its value as the best possible way of imagining the world and as a power base. It leads to new lands and treasures that, in turn, pave the way to overland exploration and discovery. Ralegh employs the concept of attachment as an attendant organizing principle in his account to maintain the metaphor of water as a source of power for European identity. However, the attachment that takes place here is different from Mandeville's. It entails the dialogic relationship the text forges between the Old World and the New World. In a sense, both parts of the world lead to one another through waterways, the same way the ecumene and the antipodes do in The Travels. The New World reflects the Old through "the principle of attachment" whereby the traveler explains the unfamiliar through 90 assimilating it to the familiar (Pagden 21, 24). Therefore, I examine the concept of attachment as the framework to interpret the significance of water and the emerging land in The Discoverie. The attachment that takes place in both sides of the world suggests a complementary relationship that grows out of the abundance of water spaces and water marvels, especially gold, which Ralegh recounts to uphold an alluring, yet balanced perspective for future British enterprise in Guiana. He embeds Guiana in water spaces to connect it and bind its respective inhabitants to the Old World. His account intimates the shift in European thought regarding water spaces. Such shift ranges from water as a possible barrier separating the ecumene from the antipodes in early medieval thinking, to its reconfiguration as a passage, which could ultimately facilitate metaphoric travel and circumnavigation in Mandeville's The Travels to realistic (circum)navigation, and domination of new worlds through the gradual shift to an overland paradigm of travel. Both water-bound perspective and overland exploration are apparent in the mapping tradition of the time, particularly in the map of Guiana attributed to Ralegh, which he refers to in The Discoverie, and the maps based on his account that I study in connection to the text. Maps are metaphors of ‘world making' that entail the "hierarchicalization of space" as Harley suggests ("Deconstructing the Map" 237). Like The Discoverie, they hierarchicalize water spaces. Examining the maps necessitates examining the European emphasis on globes in the late fifteenth century that co-exist with the flat maps, and their significance for England's maritime exploration. Both maps and globes are "a manipulated form of knowledge" that "fashion" particular features in a manner suggestive of their increasing link to power, "especially in periods of colonial history" (Harley, "Maps, Knowledge, and Power" 277). The multiple portraits of Queen 91 Elizabeth and Sir Walter Ralegh resting their hands on a globe with ships sailing across the ocean in the background attest to the importance of the global shift that entails the power/knowledge dialectic engendered by the metaphor of water. The juxtaposition of travel text, portraits, and maps/globes combined demonstrate that Ralegh not only realizes Mandeville's dream of (circum)navigating the world, but gradually reconfigures the primarily water-based paradigm of travel to emerging overland exploration. This chapter begins by examining the textual background of The Discoverie, as well as the author and his sources, before offering a brief overview of the Renaissance mapping tradition that entails the significant shift from map to globe. I move, then, to a discussion of the dialogic relationship between maps, globes and travel texts. The following section substantiates my argument regarding Ralegh's liminal metaphor of water that gives way to the metaphor of land and its implications. The water topography examined includes rivers and islands. Last, I discuss how this view translates into a compelling emphasis on the relationship between water and gold, as well as an emphasis on the water-bound, and gold-bound exotic races through the concept of mirroring. All quotations and citations of The Discoverie in this chapter come from Neil Whitehead's transcribed edition, which I have purposely chosen given its reliability. Ralegh and The Discoverie Nothing epitomizes the essence of Ralegh's colorful personality better than his own speech from the scaffold in 1618: "I have long been a seafaring man, a soldier and a courtier …" (Nicholl 22). Born around 1554, Ralegh was all the above, and even more, for he was an explorer, a mapmaker, a poet, and a writer. As an explorer, he was 92 instrumental in the British colonization of North America and was granted a royal patent to explore Virginia, which smoothed the path for future English settlements. Despite his illustrious career, he fell out of Elizabeth's favor due to his clandestine marriage to Elizabeth Throckmorton, one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting, without the Queen's consent, for which both Ralegh and his wife were confined to the Tower of London before their ultimate release and retirement to his estate at Sherborne, Dorset.73 To regain Elizabeth's favor and attain the gold of the mythical city of El Dorado, Ralegh undertakes the Guiana voyage in 1594; "a theatrical gesture calculated to dazzle the queen…but … also the fulfillment of a personal vision" that he had for a long time entertained (Greenblatt, "Theatricalism" 104). Ralegh's navigational and geographic skills rendered possible his adventurous undertaking. Suzanne Gossett remarks in "A New History for Ralegh's "Notes on the Navy" that Ralegh's "voyages of exploration to Virginia and Guiana, his part in the Cadiz expedition, his shipbuilding, [and] his appointment as ‘Vice Admiral of Devon and Cornwall,' all reflect his lifelong preoccupation with the sea and maritime affairs" (15). Writing in the same vein, Andrew Sinclair maintains Raleigh was "not only interested in western discovery…but also in shipbuilding and navigation" as apparent in the changes he introduced to "marine design that made the English ships triumph over those of the Spanish and the Portuguese…" (28-29). Among Ralegh's numerous writings, Observations Concerning the Royal Navy and Sea-service (1612) and later A Discourse of the Invention of Ships, Anchors, Compass, &c. (1615?) underscore his contribution to On the relationship between the Queen and Ralegh, see Andrew Sinclair, Sir Walter Raleigh and the Age of Discovery, p. 26. For other references on Ralegh's life and the Guiana adventure, see for example Marc Aronson, Sir Walter Ralegh and the Quest for El Dorado and Raleigh Trevelyan, Sir Walter Ralegh. 73 93 England's maritime power. His geographic skills, for which he is less known, inform his Guiana expedition. In "Ralegh as a Geographer," R.A. Skelton highlights Ralegh's interest in geography and the way it "colored his thought and conditioned his activity," as noted by his collaboration with both its heralds: Dr. John Dee and Richard Hakluyt the younger (131). Ralegh's geography books that he had in the Tower of London, his History of the World that abounds with geographical references and the self-referential parts in The Discoverie to his own maps, underline his cartographic inclinations. Both Gossett and Skelton's reflections suggestively raise and conjoin issues that I pursue below in relation to Ralegh's status as geographer, navigator, and traveler combined.74 Ralegh's motive for composing The Discoverie, as he clarifies in the "Epistle Dedicatorie," was to prove that he was "neither hidden in Cornewall, or elsewhere, as was supposed" by some people (121). His purpose is twofold, for in addition to denying his presence on English soil, he aims to prove that he brought the gold ore from Guiana rather than East Africa as falsely alleged.75 For this reason, he attempts "to give aunswere as well to the said malicious slaunder, as to other objections" (125). The way Ralegh invokes the Queen in his text renders it in Walter Lim's words: "a negotiating and transactional text, with Ralegh offering the (symbolic) gift of Guiana and its gold to win back the queen's favor and to fulfill individual desire…" (37). The negotiating and transactional value of the text, I would add, resides in Ralegh's desire for exoneration. Thus, The Discoverie is written in awareness of the failure to bring back the promised 74 For the maps that Ralegh was familiar with at the time and their worldview see R.A. Skelton, "Ralegh as a Geographer," pp. 134-135. For more see on these allegations, see Mary Fuller, "Ralegh's Fugitive Gold," p. 50 and Andrew Sinclair, Sir Walter Raleigh and the Age of Discovery, p. 63. 75 94 gold, a recurring failure on Ralegh's second expedition to Guiana in 1616 during the reign of James I, which, along with other charges, ultimately brings him to the scaffold.76 The manuscript version of Ralegh's The Discoverie is currently in Lambeth Palace MS 250, ff. 315r-337v, bound in a volume entitled Elizabethan Voyages. It is listed as ‘Sir Walter Ralegh's Discourse of his first Voyadg to Guiana, it is addressed to his distant kinsman, Charles Lord Howard and to Sir Robert Cecil'. The manuscript consists of "twenty-two folios, numbered and written in a small, secretary hand" (Lorimer, "Introduction" xxiv). Between the manuscript submission in 1595 to Queen Elizabeth and her advisors and the appearance in print of the first edition in 1596, Sir Robert Cecil "made several careful editorial suggestions, often highlighting moments of ebullience and passages (including Ralegh's descriptions of Amazon women) that the queen might deem sexually incontinent…" (Schechter 6).77 To this comment, Lorimer adds that Cecil excised "Ralegh's account of the beast called Jawari, his descriptions of spleen stones, his joking allusion to the tendency of men to get distracted by women… [and his] raucous characterization of Guiana as a paradise for drunkards, womanizers and tobacco smokers…" (xxvi).78 Omission, or heavy alteration, of any sexually inappropriate references to women in the original manuscript is intentional since the aim of the voyage is to "appease so powrefull a displeasure" of the Queen, as Ralegh writes in the "Epistle Dedicatorie," rather than remind her of his escapade. After Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, Raleigh was again imprisoned in the Tower, this time for being unjustly involved in the Main Plot against King James I. He was accused of spying for the Spanish and of betraying his country. 76 For a more complete account of the physical description of the manuscript and the relationship of the manuscript to the text, see Lorimer, "Introduction," pp. xxiv-xxx. In the same edition of The Discoverie, Lorimer includes facing page transcriptions of the manuscript as well as the printed version. 77 78 For more on the omissions Cecil suggests, see Lorimer, "Introduction," pp. xxxi-xxxv. 95 That Cecil's editorial hand kept Ralegh's references to the monstrous races inhabiting the borders of Guiana intact displays that news about these races was still in demand by his readers, inside and outside the royal court, who expected them to turn up in the New World as they had always turned up in the Old.79 The expectation underscores the notion of integrating old information and hearsay within experiential knowledge of the New World. Anthony Grafton claims in New Worlds, Ancient Texts that new information "did not modify or cancel the old, but piled up alongside it" (106). While the tendency in the early modern era of transposing the monstrous races to the New World substantiates this claim, I also argue that there was indeed a coterminous tendency to replace old structures and worldviews. The Discoverie certainly exhibits both trends. It simultaneously keeps and rejects particular conceptual metaphors through engaging with the discursive use of the principle of attachment. An illustrative example is Ralegh's transference of select monstrous races, such as the Acephali, from the East to the West. Moreover, Lorimer notes that Cecil replaced "vague allusions to the works of other travellers … with a specific reference to ‘Maundeuile" (lxxii). Cecil's substitution places Ralegh's The Discoverie squarely in a dialogic relationship with The Travels. It demonstrates how Mandeville's worldview reconfigures the old structure of a limited navigable world to a circumnavigable space, which ultimately leads to the appearance of the metaphor of land. As such, Ralegh draws on The Travels to keep old knowledge of the monstrous races, as well as introduce new knowledge of a reconfigured metaphor of the world. On the monstrous races in the text, see Lorimer, "Introduction," pp. lxxii-lxxiv, and Neil Whitehead's "The Discoverie as Ethnological," pp. 91-101. 79 96 Consequently, Ralegh's sources interweave old knowledge of the world with its new counterpart. The persistence of old knowledge remains fruitful since "it still offered the only moorings to which one could affix new facts and ideas" even though ancient texts were beginning to be considered "the work of fallible men" (Grafton 117). Ralegh's sources range from Pliny the Elder's classical writings, the Mandeville author's travel account, to André Thevet's contemporary travel and geographic writings on the New World in a gesture that underscores the intertextuality of exploration, which becomes "a product of rereadings" in Tzevtan Todorov's sense (Grafton 13). If Marco Polo and Mandeville's accounts had once inspired Columbus, they inspire Ralegh, too, later on.80 Prior to Ralegh's voyage, André Thevet (1516 -1590), a French explorer and cosmographer, recorded his travels to Brazil in Singularities of France Antarctique (1557). Ralegh cites him in relation to what were thought to be oysters on trees, a phenomenon also mentioned by Pliny, then again in connection with Maragnon that Thevet describes as a "braunch of Amazones" (131, 138). The latter's remarks on the aboriginal people color Ralegh's views: "upon the river of Amazones Thevet writeth that the people weare Croissants of gold…" (145). As we shall see, it is not only Thevet's Singularities that influences Ralegh, but also his cosmographic views in Cosmographie universelle (1575) largely inform the global shift at the time.81 For accounts that discuss this interdependence of voyage and text specifically to Amazons, see, for example, Rosenthal, "The Isle of the Amazons," p. 257. 80 81 Thevet's book was for a long time "the subject of borrowings, imitations and polemical debate" as Frank Lestringant maintains in Mapping the Renaissance World (9). However, he later gained the notorious reputation of being "a plagiarizer" who "claimed to have seen what he did not see." He was, therefore, denounced in Richard Hakluyt's collection The Principal Navigations (1600) mainly because of the "untruths" that he comprised out of "the works of sundry Phylosophers, Astronomers, and Costmographers, whose opinions he gathered together'" (Greenblatt, "Foreword" xii). Here we see the 97 However, Ralegh's sources draw a line of demarcation between his narrative and Mandeville's in terms of encyclopedism. In Ronald Swigger's words, encyclopedism, which is "a total order of words ... in which human beings tell themselves what they know and understand about the universe," is more often discerned in earlier medieval travel relations (355).82 A representative example is The Travels whose author exhibits the tendency for extensive compilation that accounts for the inclusion of Pliny, the Alexander Romances, and Odoric of Pordenone's travels. Yet "this imperative of comprehensiveness [weakens] for the European travel writer" in the sixteenth century and during The Age of Discovery, as Campbell notes (219). One reason for this change, I propose, is that comprehensiveness exists in tandem with exercising imagination that largely depends on the inclusion of hearsay, as seen with The Travels, while experiential knowledge exists in tandem with empiricism that applies the autoptic principle in verifying facts selectively rather than comprehensively, as in The Discoverie. Therefore, Ralegh relies mainly on contemporary rather than classical sources. To be precise, Ralegh's intended audience is Charles Howard and Sir Robert Cecil, whom he mentions explicitly in the "Espistle Dedicatorie" in the hope of seeking their "double protection and defense" to influence Queen Elizabeth (120). On a broader level, he addresses his fellow citizens in the address "To the Reader" with the aim of arousing their commercial motives and interest in the rich future colony that would secure Ralegh's position in court if more adventurers seek it. This is evident in the quote shift, as well as the preference for individual authorship and autopsy rather than compilation and encyclopedism. For further discussion, see Roland Swigger's "Fictional Encyclopedism and the Cognitive Value of Literature," pp. 351-366. 82 98 with which I start the chapter and Ralegh's concluding words at the end of The Discoverie on "the rich trade which England maie bee possessed off [in Guiana]…" (185).83 Consequently, Ralegh casts Guiana in paradisiacal terms and continuously emphasizes the prospect of attaining gold. There is no evidence as to how many copies Robert Robinson printed of Ralegh's first edition of The Discoverie, but buyers far exceeded the supply, something that influenced the decision to print three more additional editions in 1596 (Lorimer lxxx). The major subsequent reprints are Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations (1600), Thomas Birch's The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh (1751: vol. ii), Arthur Cayley's The Life of Sir Walter Raley (1805), and The Works of Sir Walter Raleigh (1829) by the Clarendon Press. The Hakluyt Society also printed another version in 1848, edited and introduced by Robert Schomburgk. Outside England, an abridged Latin version and a German one appeared in Nuremburg in 1599, both by the geographer Levinius Hondius. Ralegh's text was "published by Theodore de Bry in Frankfurt in 1590. In 1602 three … German editions had appeared, as had a Dutch version in 1598 which was reprinted in 1605, 1617, 1707, 1727 and 1747" (Whitehead, "The Discoverie as Enchanted Text" 10-11). Besides, there is the 1722 French translation of Francois Coreal's Voyages à I'Amerique. No less popular than Mandeville's Travels, the popularity of The Discoverie at the time of its early publication is attributable in part to the audience's curiosity about Ralegh's account of his travels and his colorful life, and in part to the "more fanciful parts … [that] captured early modern readers' imaginations" (Lorimer lxxxiii). On this point, Greenblatt suggests that "Ralegh's sensitivity to his audience may be seen most clearly in his different terms for the profits of the enterprise: "Gold for the merchant adventurers" ("Theatricalism" 106). 83 99 Consequently, illustrations of several marvels mentioned in Ralegh's narrative appeared on the cover of many editions of The Discoverie, a move in keeping with the mingling of classical knowledge and New World exploration (Oldenburg 40). The popularity of the account for the later reprints, I maintain, also intertwines with the colonial desire for gold as evidenced by the activities of the West India Company in the eighteenth century. Together with this, Ralegh's voice guaranteed the popularity of the text well into the nineteenth century as he promulgated "a commercial sensation" in the address "To the Reader" and throughout a text that dwells on gold and riches (Lorimer lxxxiv). It is, therefore, tempting to call The Discoverie a gilded text about gilded rivers and lands. The veracity of the text and the autoptic principle Ralegh employs guaranteed the account's success at the time of its publication. For him, it was a much needed strategy "to counter the arguments of those disposed to dismiss his entire enterprise as the product of an overactive imagination," especially since he failed to find the anticipated golden city he set out to discover (Lorimer, "English and Irish Settlement" 14). However, even if Ralegh rejects Mandeville's encyclopedism, he certainly adopts his framework as he casts his ocean-bound voyage of discovery within the context of pilgrimage: "But, if what I have done, receive the gracious construction of a paineful pilgrimage, and purchase the least remission…" (121). Louis Montrose interprets Ralegh's desire to present the narrative as "a penitential journey, an act of fleshly purgation undertaken to expiate the incontinent lapse in his devotion to the queen" (11). While this is true, I suggest that the framework of the pilgrimage fits Ralegh's discursive strategy of accentuating gold and portraying the New World as a counterpart to Jerusalem and Paradise. The use of the pilgrimage framework might be intentional. On the one 100 hand, it promotes The Discoverie by aligning it to a successful antecedent - Mandeville's The Travels. On the other, it leads to a gilded land abundant in riches. With this, I turn to a brief overview of the mixing of medieval and Renaissance mapping processes in order to explore the shift to land that takes place in the world and the manner in which it informs The Discoverie. The World Picture in Western Renaissance Cartography The mingling of classical knowledge and new knowledge of the New World, along with the shifting attendant attitudes and mental conception of the world are evident in Renaissance travel accounts and mapping traditions. In Ralegh's account, there is no clear break between past and new knowledge since "the era in which the Greek and Roman classics were first being widely published and studied was also the heyday of New World exploration, and the cross-breeding of the two movements produced an exotic array of hybrids" (Romm 6). Rather, travel texts and mapping traditions are a point of convergence for a multiplicity of discourses - among them are exploration, expansion, experiential knowledge, location of Paradise and the wonders of the East, habitability of the antipodes, and more prominent, the emergence of new lands on the terraqueous globe. The mapping traditions that conceptualized the medieval worldview still exercised an influence on the maps and globes of the sixteenth century. Among the visible strands discussed earlier, are the T-O maps that go back to the fifth century B.C. but took on a decided Christian emphasis in the Middle Ages. However, the basic T-O image failed to mirror the increasing diversification of the ecumene, "a diversification which began to emerge in the enormous circular mappae-mundi … of the late fourteenth 101 and fifteenth centuries" as Jerry Brotton observes in Trading Territories (30). The encyclopedic mappae mundi gradually gave way to another geographical tradition that was picked up again in late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century Europe: Claudius Ptolemy's classical text, written in the second century A.D., the Geographia. What was significantly different about the emergence of Ptolemy's representation of the known world, "was its conceptualization in terms of geometrical rather than symbolic principles" that entailed the use of longitudes and latitudes (Brotton 32).84 Such conceptualization supports the preference for the quantitative nature of experiential and factual knowledge over audition or hearsay. The Ptolemaic geographical tradition of world representation overlapped with yet another influential tradition: the portolan or navigational charts. According to Scafi, "The earliest surviving example of a nautical chart is the so-called Carte Pisane, thought to have been created between 1275 and 1291, but the majority of surviving charts … date from the fifteenth century" (199). Quite why or how charts for navigation began to appear in the Mediterranean basin remains enigmatic.85 A possible Arab influence is discerned since "A significant amount of early charts were produced in the North African cities of Tunis and Tripoli," such as the ‘Maghreb chart' (1330) "believed to have been produced in Granada or Morocco" (Brotton 104). The anonymous Arab mapmaker included "all the standard traits of the early portolan chart, with its proliferation of rhumb lines, exact delineation of coastal territory and place names running perpendicular to the See Jerry Brotton, Trading Territories, pp. 31-33 for more information on the influence of the Ptolemaic legacy. 84 For a thorough discussion of Portolan charts, see Tony Campbell, ‘Portolan charts from the late thirteenth century to 1500', The History of Cartography: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Mediaeval Europe and the Mediterranean, vol. I, Eds. J. B. Harley and D. Woodward. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987, pp. 371-463 85 102 coastline" (104).86 The extensive use of the sea charts by the Dutch and the English in the sixteenth century comes as little surprise, for it coincides with the rise of Europe's maritime power as a way of ‘world-making'. Along with the flat Ptolemaic maps and the portolan charts, the spherical globe prevailed in early modern times. The globe dates back to the Greek philosopher Crates of Mallos who was supposed to have constructed one in the second century BC showing a quadripartite division (Scafi 250).87 The Portuguese charged Martin Behaim (1459- 1537), a merchant from Nuremberg, to make the earliest extant terrestrial globe in 1492 discussed above. As Brotton insightfully remarks "what seems to have motivated the Portuguese in offering Behaim such a position was his commercial knowledge, rather than his intellectual credentials" (69).88 Notably, the preference for a merchant versed in long-distance travel to produce the globe, I maintain, underscores the association between travelers and cartographers that once characterized medieval Arab culture, and now characterizes early modern European culture. The association continues later on as noted with future travelers/cartographers like Ralegh and Thevet who perform, as well as represent, the world through traveling spaces and charting maps, an association that stems from Europe's desire of empire-building the same way medieval Arab culture once did. Rather than replacing the flat map, the globe co-existed alongside it from the fifteenth century onward, echoing in the process the dialectic between tradition and On the hybrid nature of the Maghreb Chart that bears a mix of Arab, Catalan, Hispanic, and Italian place names, see Brotton, Trading Territories, pp. 104-106. 86 87 See Brian Harley and David Woodward, with Germaine Aujac, ‘Greek Cartography in the Early Roman World', in Harley and Woodward, eds. History of Cartography, I (1987), pp. 162-163. For more on the production of the globe and its commercial dimension, see Brotton, Trading Territories, pp. 24, 67-70. 88 103 novelty. To the extent that the globe is an outcome of the long and polysemous tradition surrounding the water-bound mappa mundi and retains vestiges of it, it also departs from it. The departure is in keeping with the way fifteenth-century cartography was "in a limbo between the traditional schematic view of the world provided by the mappae mundi … the carefully drawn coastlines of the portolan charts, the attempts by … cartographers to incorporate new information into their world maps, and the pervasive but also confusing influence of Claudius Ptolemy" (J.Phillips, The Medieval Expansion 209-210). This limbo reflects the liminality of Ralegh's text in terms of modifying and/or discarding old ideas, as much as it reflects the opposite attempt to preserve the old image of the world. The first century of printing produced "traditional texts and comforting images of the cosmos" that some travelers to the New World took with them because of their familiarity (Grafton 22). A case in point is the first bishop of Mexico who took with him "a set of treatises by the Venerable Bede which gave a much older but equally coherent account of nature-including a little map which showed the world's land masses as isolated spots on a globe of water" (22). This same Bede starts his history of the English people with an emphasis on England's maritime geography, a metaphor of ‘world making' that influences Mandeville's The Travels and persists in the Renaissance. Leonardo di Piero Dati's fifteenth-century Italian poem La Sfera (The Sphere) where he describes the world according to the schematic geography of the old school: "A T within an O shows vividly/How all the world is cut up into three" is another example (67). Both the bishop of Mexico and Dati represent the persistence of the foundational metaphor of water in the West and the difficulty of changing it, despite the emergence of new knowledge of the world (Lakoff and Johnson 146). 104 Notably, the co-existence of two competing worldviews gains momentum with the advent of printing that standardizes the world picture along with the symbolic representation of water, and later land, as metaphors of power. Normally, "cartographic workshops … [tend to] standardize our images of the world" and result in expressing "an embedded social vision" (Harley, "Deconstructing the Map" (245-246). Printed woodcuts had already exhibited the tendency to reproduce the same images according to inherited convention, but printing realizes their total standardization. Quoting William Ivins, Brotton notes how "towards the end of the fifteenth century in Europe print allowed for the development of … ‘the exactly repeatable pictorial statement'" (35). The cartographic image of the world whether old, new, or both could be repeatedly reproduced, as seen with the bishop of Mexico carrying Bede's map to the New World, or sixteenth-century maps containing a hybrid mix of the old and the new. Amid this sea change, the mental construct that the globe unfolds bears several layers of signification. First is the question of scale and representation. The comparatively smaller scale of a global representation was radically different from the extended flat scale of the earlier medieval world maps, which admitted "a profusion of different places" and races (Lestringant 2). The detailed representation of world maps that condense past, present and future eschatological events in one continuum is largely absent in the broader outlines of the more modern globes. Although globes maintain some of the residual local legends and folklore that crowd medieval maps, they rather point to "the anticipated … conquests and ‘discoveries' of the modern age" (4). With that comes a privileging of the ocean as the new field of exploratory action over the Mediterranean center of the Old World prevalent in earlier medieval maps, and an 105 ensuing displacement of the Mediterranean and Jerusalem from their central position. Accordingly, the ocean configures notions, such as the antipodal legacy of classical times, as well as the all-encircling ocean surrounding the ecumene formerly noted in the Beatus and Hereford maps. Thevet, Ralegh's source for contemporary mapping, refutes Saint Augustine's claim about the nonexistence of the antipodes the same way Mandeville does. He devotes a whole chapter in his Singularity attacking a line of classical auctoritates like Thales, Pythagoras, Aristostle, Pliny, and Ptolemy who "had affirmed without proof that the torrid zone and the glacial zones…were uninhabitable" (Lestringant 25, 29). To counter their views, he relies on other auctoritates, such as the medieval Arab philosopher Avicenna and Albertus Magnus. In a matching move, Ralegh refutes the view that the world is eternal and unchangeable in his History of the World. In addition, he refutes the belief of some classical geographers and the Christian Fathers that "those parts of the world, lying within the burnt Zone, were not in elder times habitable, by reason of the Sunnes hieat; neither were the Seas, under the Equinoctiall, navigable" (Skelton 146). Against the belief of the torrid Southern end impeding circumnavigation, he argues: "Unless these authorities were "grossely mistaken" …there must have been change; for ‘wee know by experience, that those Regions, so situate, are filled with people, and exceeding temperate; and the Sea, over which we Navigate, passable enough'" (Skelton 146). The commonality between Thevet and Ralegh's views implies their reliance on navigation as the best way of world domination that leads to the habitable antipodal regions. In this respect, they come close to Mandeville's consistent claim in The Travels about the circumnavigability of the world despite the belief in a southern torrid zone. 106 The emphasis on navigation coupled with the introduction of new knowledge led to the derisive view in early modern times of "the imaginary geography of medieval times rooted in classical antiquity" or what Robert Appelbaum terms ‘anti-geography' in an eponymous article ("Anti-Geography").89 The defeat of antigeography, I propose, is the defeat of imagination and hearsay that gives way to the experiential knowledge advanced by exploration. Such attitude reflects in two sets of works. First, Giovanni Battista Ramusio, Richard Hakluyt, and Theodore de Bry's popular collections of voyage-accounts in the late sixteenth century, some of which incorporated Mandeville's The Travels and Ralegh's The Discoverie. Second, Richard Brome's 1638 stage comedy The Antipodes, berates the classical traditions of ‘anti-geography', and ascribes belief in the marvelous to "a neurotic illusion, brought on by excessive narcissism, indolence, anxiety, and sexual inhibition, as well as too much reading" (Applebaum). Both works contribute to the change by deriding the old and pinpointing how Thevet and Ralegh's notions, among others, were conducive to the gradual change in worldview. The crucial turning point, however, between medieval and early modern ways of world making appears in the significant change in perspective regarding the all-encircling ocean. Thevet proves via his voyages and experiential knowledge that the ocean is encircled by lands. This view contrasts sharply with the medieval T-O view portrayed in travel accounts and maps of the lands being surrounded with and cut through by water. In the Cosmographie universelle, he maintains, "Now that I have found lands of such great extent, why should I continue to say that it is Ocean that surrounds the earth? Since, on In his article "Anti-Geography," Appelbaum defines the term as "a system of imaginary geography, a geography beyond geography, as it were - a system of fantasy with roots in classical antiquity that had a long development in early modern Europe and that continues to be observed even today, albeit in a highly modified form" (http://purl.oclc.org/elms/04-2/appeanti.htm). 89 107 the contrary, I have seen with my eyes the Ocean performing a sort of quick turn and turning back on itself from west to east'" (Lestringant 28).90 Thevet's statement is in line with Lakoff and Johnson's argument that "no metaphor can ever he comprehended or even adequately represented independently of its experiential basis" (20). Through his experiential knowledge, he validates that the metaphor of water, exemplified by the ocean, is no longer this aquatic girdle engulfing the ecumene. And so, from an island, the earth is "inverted into a belt that encloses everywhere an ocean reduced to the contours of a second Mediterranean or, better, of a vast Caspian Sea" (30). Based on this idea, during Raleigh's time there is growing concern with the ratio of water to land. In fact, men at the time "anxiously scrutinized their maps and questioned travelers… [about] the extent and relationship of the land masses and the existence of navigable passages through or around them" in an attempt to combat the Spanish sovereignty over the ocean (Skelton 133). Together with the discovery of the antipodes, this entails, I suggest, an inversion in the appearance of the medieval world map where water now shrinks as land expands. Importantly, it also entails a gradual adoption of the new metaphor of land to construct knowledge of the world rather than the metaphor of water that submerged the medieval ecumene. As such, the metaphor of land creates new meaning and thereby defines a new reality" (Lakoff and Johnson 212). The changes brought about by Renaissance cartography substantiate my initial claim of a new reality predicated on the gradual shift to overland exploration affected through navigation. Within this reality, attachment connects the Old and New Worlds. To this Thevet adds, "‘Yet through my navigations I have essayed, not only that there was land, but as well that the sea was so bounded by it that there was no further water to be seen, as at the coast of Antarctica'" (Lestringant 27). 90 108 That the globe becomes more widespread in the sixteenth century is no wonder since it satisfies the emerging expansionary European, and specifically British, ambitions. The symbolic significance of the shift from the flat mappa mundi to the spherical globe involves what Lestringant calls "an upward displacement of one's point of view" that grasps the cosmos in its totality in a single global view (5). For the first time, the elevated eye of the cosmographer coincides with the gaze of the Creator as the former sees, conquers, and names uncharted territory the way Columbus does.91 The metaphoric ocular grasp of the observer over the global universe literally translates into Elizabeth I's firm grasp over the globe in various portraits. Aptly, the circularity of the globe is emblematic of the royal orb, which symbolizes "the plenitude of a power [and] the closure on to itself of a universal empire" (Lestringant 22). Pierre de Ronsard's 1555 "Hymn to the Heavens" expresses the obsession with the circular form of the orb as symbolic of power and the terrestrial orb: "For nothing is excellent in this world, that is not round" (23).92 Elizabeth I's portraits are a realization of this political power the same way the statue of the Emperor Justinian, holding the apple/orb in The Travels, embodies imperial power and the sphericity of a circumnavigable cosmos. Significantly, the sphere is more emblematic of the notion of circumnavigability than the flat map where you tie the far ends together into a tube to connect the ends of the earth. This brief survey of Renaissance cartography elucidates Ralegh's worldview at The global view was problematic since it incurred the charge of "blasphemous pride" upon cosmographers like Belleforest and Thevet. For more on that see Lestringant (5-6, 12). Also, see the same reference for a summary of how Thevet draws upon Ptolemy and Sebastian Münster to arrive at his global vision (12). 91 Pierre de Ronsard (1524 - 1585) was a French poet whose "Hymns" were dedicated to Margaret de Vallois. For more information on other poets who extolled the orb, see Lestringant's Mapping the Renaissance World, pp. 22-23. 92 109 the time and the notions he relies upon in his voyage to the New World. The global framework that Mandeville and Thevet unfold, Ralegh later simultaneously embraces and reconfigures to a more land-bound perspective. With this in mind, I turn presently to the fascinating dialogue between The Discoverie as a travel text, Ralegh's map of Guiana, and the globe portraits of Queen Elizabeth. The Discoverie, Maps and the Globe Portraits My focus here is squarely on the relational dialogic between The Discoverie as a travel narrative, Ralegh's map of Guiana, the globe portraits of Elizabeth I, and the attendant question of the global shift that signals the change to overland expansion. All three - text, maps, and globes - foreground "a distinct mode of [mental and] visual representation" that Harley attributes to cartography, and which I extend to travel texts as well ("Deconstructing the Map" 233). With this, I aim to accentuate the dialectic of old and new knowledge, influential ways of ‘world making', the conceptual metaphors of water and land, and the importance of Ralegh's account within the literary tradition. Around 1570, Ralegh's contemporary John Dee, the Elizabethan geographer, remarkably located in his Preface to Euclid's ‘Elements of Geometrie' maps as well as globes within the domestic interiors of Elizabethan England, noting that: "To conclude, some, for one purpose and some, for an other, liketh, loveth, getteth, and useth, Mappes, Chartes, and Geographicall Globes" (Brotton 20). The two objects became integral to the Elizabethan household, revealing the "dynamic depictions of the changing geographical shape of the early modern world, which were also inextricably bound up with its changing diplomatic and commercial contours" (Brotton 21). This changing world was 110 driven by commercial and expansionary imperatives that recall the same imperatives that govern medieval Arab culture and render maps crucial aspects of travel texts and, and render, by extension, the traveler a geographer as well. Likewise, in early modern Europe, maps and globes play the dual function of displaying political and imperial dynamics whose power structure stems from the foundational metaphors of water, and later land. In the process, maps become integrated in travel texts like Ralegh's and Thevet's, and travelers become cartographers like them, as does Martin Behaim. In this sense, maps become complex objects symptomatic of discovery and an expanding ecumene. Throughout the text, Ralegh refers to his own map: How all these rivers crosse and encounter, how the countrie lieth and is bordred, the passage of Cemenes, and of Berreo, mine owne discoverie, and the way that I entred, with all the rest of the nations and rivers, your Lordship shall receive in a large Chart or Map, which I have not yet finished and which I shall most humbly pray your Lord to secret, and not to suffer it to passe your own hands; for by a draught thereof all may bee prevented by other nations. (144) He repeats his promise of turning in the map, on two more occasions in The Discoverie (160, 191).93 In these instances, Ralegh's intention is to chart and name the rivers and islands he passes by. The accent on delineating and hierarchicalizing waterways comes as no surprise in view of the Mandevillean legacy of a navigable water-bound world that he inherits. However, charting rivers acquires greater importance since they contain gold and lead to the riches of El Dorado. The intertwining between gold and rivers permeates medieval thought and maps, as will become apparent. The emerging value of maps underscores that "to own the map was to own the land" (Harley, "Maps, Knowledge, and According to Joyce Lorimer in his introduction, "Ralegh was determined to restrict the circulation of his map of Guiana to his innermost group of supporters. He had no intention of providing readers of the printed text with a roadmap to Manoa or gold mines" (lxxiv). 93 111 Power" 289). Ralegh's concern, thus, for keeping the map secret echoes the relationship between maps and empire building as the former "anticipated" the latter and was used to "legitimize the reality of conquest" (282). Unlike the eastward orientation of medieval European maps, Charles Nicholl notes that Ralegh's map is inexplicably oriented towards the south, and the upper or southern half of it is entirely blank (15). He further remarks, "that orientation to the north was not insisted on at this time" (15). I strongly argue that the southward orientation comes from medieval Arabic maps that were always oriented towards the south at the top, as I discuss in Ibn Fadlan's Risala. The fact that Ralegh's map is derivative of Spanish sources substantiates my view, since medieval Spain was a hub of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim learning.94 The borrowing underscores the interaction between Arab and European cultures in the cartographic field and the possible mutual influence. This is highly likely in view of the impact of Avicenna, and later Leo Africanus' views on Thevet regarding the possible habitability of the torrid zones, which in turn informed European thought regarding the habitability of the antipodes. Ralegh's map features various rivers and their branches near the top part and in the bottom part on the left and right hand side (see Figure 5).95 The map also delineates the surrounding water of the Orinoco basin and reflects the water-bound paradigm of travel undertaken by Ralegh and his men. It shows the Lake of Manoa-the site, Ralegh believed, of El Dorado - at the exact center. The placement of the lake in the middle 94 Notably, Andreas Walsperger's 1488 world map precedes Ralegh's map in borrowing the southward orientation at the top. However, little is known of Walsperger and whether he possibly got the southern orientation from Spanish connections is unclear. Subsequent maps based on Ralegh's, such as the map of Guiana by Theodore de Bry (1599), also emphasize rivers as evident on the left hand side of the map. 95 112 Figure 5. Ralegh's Map of Guiana, El Dorado, and the Orinoco Coast reflects the symbolic placing of geographic elements to represent their value - just the way medievals constructed their maps and other imagery. The centralization recalls Harley's concept of the ‘omphalos syndrome', which I present in my reading of Mandeville's text and the pertinent maps that centralize Jerusalem ("Maps, Knowledge, and Power" 290). However, the religious-oriented navel of the world in Mandeville's text becomes secular and commercial in Ralegh's and reflects the intersection of power, commerce, and conquest. Nicholl further suggests that the blank top part on the map is 113 intentional to accentuate by contrast the lake for the viewer whose eyes go "straightaway" to it (15). The blankness insinuates how "silences on maps … [become] part of wider cultural stereotypes" that pinpoint "the geography of power" (Harley, "Maps, Knowledge, and Power" 292). To my mind, the power generated by the empty space accentuates by contrast the existence of multiple river branches surrounding the lake, and emphasizes their role as the path to the golden city. Between rivers and lake, the map features mainly waterways and stresses the organizing metaphor of water necessary to construct knowledge of the New World and experience it. Ralegh's excerpt quoted above, and his map, intimate his awareness of the importance of intertwining both travel and cartographic traditions since, as Skelton suggests, "he doubtless read and approved the robust claim made by Richard Willes, in I577, for geography as a science useful to the state" and for travelers (131). The map Ralegh promises to sketch renders him a mapmaker, and renders "The Discoverie of Guiana, [his] major attempt at descriptive or regional geography, [which] reveals his sensitivity to climate and natural conditions and his ability to characterize landscape" (139). Skelton's remark on Ralegh's descriptive and regional mapping resonates, I propose, with the al-masālik w-al-mamālik (Routes and Realms) tradition in medieval Arabic travel narratives and maps, which flourished because of the Arabs' attachment to the foundational metaphor of land as a power base for expansion and thus ‘world making'. According to this tradition, the traveler/cartographer emphasizes the regions he travels through with his eye mainly cast on the land, as exemplified in The Epistle of Ibn Fadlan and Leo Africanus' Description of Africa. The fact that Ralegh refers to, then later sketches, the El Dorado map, 114 underscores, in my view, the conflation between traveler and cartographer - a conflation central to medieval Arab travelers. The novelty of bringing together geography and travel in early modern Europe contrasts with its absence before Ralegh in medieval European literature. As we have seen, Mandeville only refers to the mappa mundi and the globe to confirm the existence of the various races he saw and the places he frequented rather than to provide a regional description. This is another example of the possible influence of Arabic travel texts and maps on their European counterpart. The intersection between both traditions serves the purpose of Europe at a time of extensive travel and exploration, which takes place through navigation. Therefore, "the more pervasive [Europe's] territorial and social ambitions … the greater its appetite for maps" (Harley, "Maps, knowledge, and power" 280). In this respect, Ralegh is ahead of Mandeville who only promotes the possibility of circumnavigating the world. The fusion between travel and cartography appears in Ralegh's continuous desire to chart rivers. Although Ralegh does not mention globes by name in The Discoverie, but rather in writing through accentuating the shift to the exploration, and ensuing possession, of new lands on the globe, the globe portraits of Elizabeth I best embody these changes. Crispin van de Passe's 1596 engraving of Queen Elizabeth made in the last decade of her reign is a case in point (see Figure 6). The portrait shows a full-size image of Elizabeth as the empress of the oceans. She stands between two columns and holds an orb in her left hand. In the background, there are ships on the vast ocean. The two columns represent the Pillars of Hercules, the gateway to the Atlantic Ocean and the New World. Regarding the globe in Elizabeth's hand, "the use by artists of globes and maps as emblems with their own specific symbolism can be traced back to the 115 Figure 6. Crispin van de Passe's Engraving of Queen Elizabeth, 1596 116 classical world. As a politically laden sign the globe or orb has frequently symbolized sovereignty over the world" (Harley, "Maps, knowledge, and power" 296). By the sixteenth century, orbs and globes "were primarily intended to convey the extent of the territorial powers, ambitions, and enterprises of their bearers" (296).96 The ships behind Elizabeth's figure complement the territorial competition as they signal England's maritime power and the acquisition of new lands on the orb/globe she grasps. The portrait is emblematic of the inception of a distinctively early modern discursive practice of identity fashioning that England, and Europe by large, undertakes. It is an identity long predicated on attachment to the metaphor of water, even before Mandeville's time, and that structures knowledge of the world. In early modern times, the metaphor gains prominence as it becomes the means to acquiring new lands and gold. The same gesture abounds in other portraits, such as the "Ditchley" portrait of Queen Elizabeth (ca. 1592), by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, and The Armada Portrait of Queen Elizabeth by George Gower, c.1588.97 In the former, Elizabeth stands on a globe-like cartographic representation of England, and in the latter, she sits with her right hand resting on a globe where the background is divided between British ships heading to the New World on one side, and sunken Spanish ships on the other. Likewise, Ralegh's portrait attributed to Federico Zuccaro (undated) and painted around the time of his preparation for Guiana shows him resting his right hand on the globe with fingers touching the coast of Greenland. The hand gesture signifies discovery of the New Land. For more background on globes and maps in early modern England and in literary works, see Helen Wallis, "Globes in England up to 1660," The Geographical Magazine 35(1962-3), pp. 267-79 and Victor Morgan, "The Literary Image of Globes and Maps in Early Modern England," English map-making 1500-1650, pp. 46-56. 96 See Louis Montrose, "The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery" for a reading of the "Ditchley" portrait from a gender perspective, pp. 13-14. 97 117 The dialogue between text and maps carries over to the discourse of monstrosity. Ralegh's map is devoid of the monsters he mentions in The Discoverie. In his study of maps, he insists, "maps must be tested by experience" and mocks geographers who describe those Countries, whereof as yet there is made no true discoverie, that is, either by leaving some part blanke, or by inserting the Land of Pigmies, Rocks of loadestone, with Head-lands, bayes, great Rivers, and other particularities, aggreeable to common report, though many times controlled by following experience, and found contrarie to truth . . . Therefore the fictions … painted in Maps, doe serve only to misleade such discoverers as rashly beleeve them, drawing upon the publishers, either some angrie curses, or well deserved scorne. (Skelton 142) Ralegh stays true to his view in that he depicts no monsters. Yet he contradicts himself as he leaves the southern part blank and inserts a place that he made no true discovery of, namely El Dorado. Ironically, "the lake at the center of Ralegh's Guiana chart," Nicholl notes, "is quite unequivocally something animate. It looks like a monster …. [and reflects] the terra incognita" (15). The depiction of the lake is indeed strange. Its amorphous body is akin to a millipede, and resembles an almost fabulous creature. Such depiction might be intentional on Ralegh's part for it confers a mythical aura upon El Dorado. Its amorphous shape renders it uncontrollable, and unattainable. In this sense, the map and the depiction of the city enter a dialogic relationship with the text. To find Ralegh's monsters, we have to look elsewhere, precisely at Theodore de Bry's 1599 map of Guiana based on Ralegh's map (see Figure 7). The map features beyond Guiana at roughly the left of the map, an Amazon and an Ewaipanoma walking side by side and holding what looks like long staffs. As Oldenburg suggests, "Ralegh's description of the Ewaipanoma [and Amazons], rather than the City of Gold, seems to have resonated most strongly with the reading public" who were still attached to the classical knowledge of the old world peopled by monsters (48-49). El Dorado is still 118 Figure 7. Map of Guiana by Theodore de Bry, 1599 119 there, but the cartographer shifts it more to the bottom rather than the center. In addition, he renders it a normal oval shape that deflects the viewer's eye and redirects it to the monstrous races. The monsters are intentionally placed close to El Dorado, both in Ralegh's text and on various maps, to symbolize the abundance of riches. Like various maps of the New World, De Bry's map is illustrative of the fertilization of old and new knowledge of the world. The depiction of monsters reveals that the early modern audience is still partially "responding to anti-geographical [or mythical medieval] traditions as if they were literally true accounts of sociophysical space" (Appelbaum, "Anti-geography"). In this respect, New World maps still mirror Old World maps in their conception of the world and its inhabitants. In de Bry's map, the Amazons and the Ewaipanoma exist at the extreme edges of the New World where cosmographers once conventionally located them on medieval mappae mundi. Both Ralegh's The Discoverie and New World maps, therefore, engage in a dialogic relation with the medieval legacy. The matter of discovering the New World was fresh, though cast in an old mold. Hence, early modern cartographers, like de Bry, intentionally commit what Lestringant calls "cartographical anachronisms" (112).98 The anachronisms that belong to the bygone medieval worldview, like depicting monsters or the location of Paradise, familiarize the unfamiliar space by grafting the Old World on the New. They also signal the unknown and uncharted territories for "a map at this time …could have gaps only if it masked them with a cartouche or with images of fabulous creatures" (113). The gaps these figures Another example is Columbus' cartographer, Juan de la Cosa, showing in his 1500 world map Gog and Magog and a Blemyae. 98 120 cover highlight the limit of human geographic knowledge that Ralegh and his crew experience and seek to expand. The swinging pendulum between water and land as two foundational metaphors of ‘world making' that reflect classical versus new knowledge of the world is evident in Ralegh's voyages on the rivers of Guiana that I examine next. A "laborinth of rivers" and The Emergence of Land The Discoverie is primarily a water-bound voyage both in terms of sailing across the ocean from the Old World to the New, and in terms of the preferred paradigm of travel for Ralegh and his crew in Guiana. Like Mandeville's The Travels, it reflects the way "the conceptual systems of various cultures partly depend on the physical environments they have developed in" (Lakoff and Johnson 147). The island-like topography of Europe dictates the conceptual metaphor of water as a way of ‘world making' and becomes a prefiguration of the dominant conceptual metaphor of water that structures the New World, which like the Old has a watery physical environment. It follows that moments of overland exploration in the The Discoverie remain few in comparison with the predominant riverine exploration. These moments, in my view, overlap with the discovery of lands and riches and the proliferating obstacles that sometimes the rivers pose, which force Ralegh to move landward. The opening lines of The Discoverie best capture this interplay: On Thursday the 6. of Februarie in the yeare 1595 we departed England, and the Sunday following had sight of the North cape of Spayne…from thence wee coasted by the Gran Canaria, and so to Tenerife …wee departed and directed our course for Trinedado with mine owne shippe…. On the coast we saw a fire, as we sailed from the point Carao towards Curiapan…. I my selfe coasted it in my barge close abord the shore and landed in every Cove, the better to know the Iland, while the ships kept the chanell. From Curiapan after a fewe daies we turned up Northeast to recover that place which the Spaniards cal Puerto de los Hispanioles 121 and the inhabitants Conquerabia, and as before…I left the shippes and kept by the shore, the better to come to speech with some of the inhabitants, and also to understand the rivers, watring places and portes of the Iland….(Ralegh 130-131) Like the Mandeville author before him, Ralegh starts his narrative with a water-bound itinerary from England, the point of departure, to the "North cape of Spayne," the point of arrival. Between these two points, hardly anything is said of the ocean voyage. Rather, we have a detailed account of anchoring briefly at different littoral areas and sailing up and down countless rivers that he desires to "understand." In fact, during Ralegh's exploration of Guiana, he had only "penetrated 200 miles inland, but he made it appear that he had found an empire ready for the taking" (Sinclair 63). Yet his extensive naming and description of rivers contrasts with his reluctance to mention all the different islands: "Peru hath … so many llands, portes, Cities, and mines, as if I should name them with the rest, it would seeme incredible to the reader…" (123). Ralegh's reluctance can be read as a sign of "fear that his narrative will look … like the more fictive travel narratives that had gained popularity in England at the time" (Oldenburg 39). His attitude is in keeping with the gradual dissociation of travel narratives and cartography from early medieval anti-geographic tendencies and from the classical way of ‘world making'. While The Discoverie bears resemblance to Mandeville's The Travels, it also seeks to distance itself from its fictional aspect. As will be apparent, it succeeds in this, albeit temporarily. The reasons for maintaining a water-bound itinerary even after Ralegh's arrival, I propose, could be attributable to his ignorance of the yet uncharted territory that render it difficult to penetrate, as well as to the medieval legacy of a water-bound world picture. Ralegh's engagement with Pagden's notion of ‘the principle of attachment' allows for "the creation of an initial (if also sometimes troubling) familiarity" in Guiana that bridges 122 the gap between the Old and New World (Pagden 36). Because the discovery of America is radically different both from any prior history and from any other "discovery," there is always the desire to graft the familiar Old World on the New World to contain its novelty (Todorov 5). To resolve such a conundrum, Ralegh resorts to the concept of attachment. Significantly, he maintains mirroring the metaphor of water and the paradigm of travel it fosters until a new metaphor and paradigm emerge, which can bridge the gap or dialectic between old and new worlds and forms of knowledge. Therefore, Ralegh employs the inherited legacy apparent in prior medieval travel narratives and maps. Quoting Lestringant, "when [the old navigators] travelled through these unexplored regions, they were less concerned with discovering a new world than with verifying the past of the old" (53). Water, in this context, is the familiar metaphor the West lives by and uses to define its conception of the world and emerging maritime power just as land is the metaphor the Arabs live by and use to interpret their worldview and expansionary ambitions. As such, Ralegh maintains this cultural baggage despite the gradual awareness of the existence of more landmasses at the time. Naturally, the water-based itinerary that starts with the ocean extends to Guianan topography where Ralegh uses the conceptual knowledge of water to represent new space. I note the following pattern in his account: simultaneous traveling, mapping, and naming of myriad rivers wherein, when obstacles arise, he and his crew anchor their boats and move shortly to land, then back again to exploring the country via water. River mapping is clear in Ralegh's detailed listing of rivers, such as the Amazon and its branches. He interweaves topography with the historical role of rivers as "contact zones," to borrow from Mary Louis Pratt (138-139). They are sites of confrontation among 123 warring Spanish groups on the one hand, and sites of the cultural encounter that takes place between him and the natives on the other (138-139). His list grows as he mentions the river of Oia and a report of the Spanish explorer Agiri moving from one port and island to another (141-142, 144).99 He also includes Berreo's river itinerary in which the latter: "affirmed that there fell an hundred rivers into Orenoque from the north and south, whereof the lest was as big as Rio grande, that passeth between Popayan and Nuevo reyno de Granada….But he knew not the names of any of these…" (149). Later, Ralegh and his men are caught up in a labyrinth of rivers and islands: we might have wandred a whole yeere in that laborinth of rivers, ere we had found any way…for I know all the earth doth not yield the like confluence of streames and branches, the one crossing the other so many times, and all so faire and large, and so like one to another, as no man can tell which to take: and if we went by the Sun or compasse hoping thereby to go directly one way or other, yet that waie we were also carried in a circle amongst multitudes of Ilands, and every Iland so bordered with high trees, as no man could see any further than the bredth of the river, or length of the breach. (156) The dizzying "laborinth of rivers" Ralegh delineates evokes the labyrinth of islands and rivers of Paradise in The Travels.100 In both narratives, such depiction describes a waterbased mental picture of the world that applies to the Old and the New World. The subtle association between both worlds in water terms is explicit in naming and comparing rivers. The attachment allows the traveler "to make some measure of classification" and "above all, it [allows] him to name, and by naming to take cognitive possession of what he had ‘laid eyes on'" (Pagden 36). In Travel and Discovery, Boies Other instances of listing and describing rivers are Orenoque or Baraquan that "hath nine branches" and "the great Amana, which ran more directlie without windings and turnings than the other" (Ralegh 158, 160). 99 For other instances of a successive cataloguing of rivers like Casnero, Cari, Pao, Caturi, Voari, Capuri, Meta, Beta, Dawney, Ubarro, Guiacar, Goavar, see Ralegh, The Discoverie, pp. 179-181. See also the following sections, pp. 171-172, 174, and 177. 100 124 Penrose remarks that the Amazon is "the misnomer which has survived through the centuries" and was transposed to the New World (115). We see this transposition in Thevet's observation of the similarity between the courses of the Ganges and Amazon Rivers: "If the former ‘maketh the separation of one of the Indies from another towards the East', the river named after the mythical warrior-women living without men could ‘make the separation of India, America…, and of Perou'" (Lestringant 54). Similarly, in The Discoverie, Ralegh notes that the entrance of one river is "as bigge as the Thames at Wolwich…" and that another "is as broad as the Thames at Wolwich" (155, 175). Therefore, "from one hemisphere to the other, a natural frontier was reflected and doubled, making of the New World a mirror-image of the Old. Between these two halves, furthermore, the common name of Indies' translated solidarity of essences" (Lestringant 54). Here as elsewhere, Ralegh and Thevet attach what is unfamiliar to what is familiar through upholding the Old World as a mirror to reflect and construct the New. The abundance of water spaces Ralegh sketches in his account exists in tandem with an equal emphasis on their accessibility and navigability. The Orinoco "is navigable with ships … and from the place where we entred it may be sailed up in small pinaces to many of the best parts of Nuevo reyno de Granada, and of Popayan: and from no place may the cities of these parts of the Indies be so easily taken and invaded as from hence" (Ralegh 169). Also "all three [branches of the Orenoque] are goodly branches, and all navigable for great ships" (169). Towards the end of his account, Ralegh reminds the reader that "the navigation is short, for it may bee sayled with an ordinarie wind in six weekes, and in the like time backe againe…" (195). He further warns the reader that "Guiana hath but one entraunce by the sea…for any vessels of burden, so as whosoever 125 shall first possesse it, it shall bee founde unaccessable for anie Enimie, except he come in Wherries, Barges, or Canoas, or els in flatte bottomed boats… [since] "by land it is more impossible to approach" (197). The aforementioned passages foreground Ralegh's water-bound conception that recalls Mandeville's assurance about the navigability of the ecumene if shipping and company are available. The New World is as embedded in waterways and navigable as the Old. Emphasis on the navigability of rivers is apt since the metaphor of water emphasizes power as it leads, in his words, to the possession and invasion of Guiana. This comes as no surprise at a time when England's maritime power is on the rise. As Sinclair explains, "before Queen Elizabeth's reign, the English contribution to the Age of Discovery was little" (14). Yet, "The building of a Royal Navy by the Tudor kings and the founding of Trinity House as a school of navigation showed interest in the mastery of the sea [which] was only a prelude to innovation and expansion" (14).101 Therefore, Ralegh's words are rooted in the emerging maritime development he contributes to through his navigational skills. What Ralegh actually finds contradicts his mental mapping and expectations based on his water metaphor. The rivers in the New World are difficult. I argue here that the halts in the voyage undermine Campbell's claim of "the immediacy of pure action in the imaginatively accessible waters of the oikoumene" that she notes in the text (235). Early on, Berreo warns Ralegh of rivers impossible to enter because they were "so low, and [full] of flats, and that his companies were daily grounded in their Canoas which drew but twelve inches water…the rivers beginning once to swell, it was impossible to For more on England's rising maritime power during Elizabeth's age see Lim, "To Seek New Worlds," pp. 31-32. 101 126 stem the currant…" (Ralegh 154). Ralegh discards the warning and sends his men on the rivers (154-155). They become entangled in the circuitous "laborinth of rivers" mentioned earlier (156). Later, in a scene, which recalls Conrad's Marlow on the River Congo amid the threatening river and the extreme heat, Ralegh and his company "began to despaire, the weather being extreame hot, the river ordered with verie high trees that kept away the aire, and the currant against us every daie stronger than [the] other…" (160). Therefore, Ralegh reconfigures his mental journey through relying on his experiences. To change the metaphor of water that does not fit his imaginative and actual geography, new knowledge (of land) must creep in. The other few instances of rivers acting as barriers in the text include an instance when they "were not able with a barge of eight oares to rowe one stones cast in an lower, and yet the river is as broad as the Thames at Wolwich…" (Ralegh 175). In addition, the native chieftain Topiawari advises Ralegh against proceeding any further to El Dorado "for at this time of the yeare, we should not be able to passe any river, the waters were and would be so growen ere our returne" (183). Ralegh himself experiences "a mighty storme, and the rivers mouth was at least a league broad, so as we ran before night close under the land with our small boates, and brought the Galley as neere as we could, but she had as much a doe to live as coulde be, and there wanted little of her sinking, and all those in her…" (191). How do we then interpret these moments within the framework of attachment, especially given that on the surface Ralegh's narrative gives the impression of an allnavigable New World that, in turn, reflects the Old World? The underlying metanarrative suggests a rupture in the navigable world picture Ralegh promotes that hinders rather 127 than facilitates travel. These moments of rupture distance The Discoverie temporarily from the smoothness of traveling on rivers apparent in Mandeville's text, and bring it in proximity to the river-related anxiety inherent in Ibn Fadlan's journey, as we shall see. However, before Ralegh renounces his expectations of smooth travel on water, he has to experience physically the unexpected new type of behavior of the rivers. In such moments, I propose, attachment becomes somehow distorted, or rather dysfunctional. The metaphor of water that fosters a dialogic relationship between both hemispheres, which turn out to be not that identical, collapses. The few instances of the intractability of the rivers call for another operative metaphor and paradigm of travel. Within this context, land emerges as Ralegh shifts gears to overland exploration. At this point, land is not just a metaphor, but also an emerging reality. The moments of overland exploration are indeed few in comparison to their extensive water-bound counterpart. The following is an instance of moving landward occasioned by the difficulty of sailing. After Ralegh and his crew travel for the three days on the river bordered by thick trees in the extreme heat, they find the "Orenoque, Caroli, as all the rest of the rivers were risen fowre or five foote in height, so as it was not possible by the strength of men, or with any boate whatsoever to rowe into the river against the streame" (175-176). At this point, Ralegh "sent Captaine Thyn…and some 30 shot more to coast the river by lande, and to goe to a towne some twentie miles over the valley called Amnatapoi, and if they found guides there, to farther towards the mountaine foote to another greate towne, called Capurepana…" (176) Furthermore, there are moments when Ralegh travels over land to discover the territory: "After l had displanted Don Anthonio de Berreo…leaving my ships at 128 Trinedado, at the port called Curiapan, I wandred 400. Miles, into the said country by land and river …" (122). Here the discovery is affected by both land and water.102 As Ralegh becomes more accustomed to land, he ventures some miles "leaving my shippes so farre from me at ancor in the sea, which was more of desire to performe that discovery…" (135). Yet he and his men do not penetrate deep into the land: "We sailed always west up the river, and after a while opening the lande on the right side, the country appeered to be champaine… I therefore sent…some fewe soldiers, to march over the banks of that red land, and to discover what maner of country it was on the other side…" (170). More often than not, they keep to the banks of the various rivers, such as Winecapora where they send word to the chieftain of the nearest indigenous town (188). This discussion of Ralegh's voyage reveals yet another aspect of the liminality of his text and the terrain as he tries to pin it down, which oscillates between water and land. Mostly, Ralegh keeps to the riverbanks since "there ran a ledge of so high & impassable mountains" that forced him to "[pass] by the mouths of many great rivers…" (148-149). Here as elsewhere, the mountainous landscape leads him back to water exploration. I argue here that overland exploration remains incomplete because it is more arduous and less familiar. It sharply contrasts with the more familiar paradigm of water exploration and is further evidence of the difficulty of renouncing the water metaphor, which creates reality. Although within the context of the New World, both water and land spaces are largely uncharted, Ralegh obviously privileges navigation as the preferable way to travel. With this, I turn to the relationship between the metaphor of water, gold, and monsters. 102 Berreo, Ralegh says, also "[journeys] for the most part by river, and the rest by land…." (147). 129 Water and Gold It is not uncommon to find gold in waterways, as the history of gold rush in California indicates. However, the insistence of The Discoverie on locating gold as a desirable economic value mainly in water underscores "that our values are not independent but must form a coherent system with the metaphorical concepts we live by" (Lakoff and Johnson 23). The metaphor of water organizes the Western conceptual view of the world, its various experiences and actions, such as rendering gold water-bound in keeping with its Biblical place and with Old World notions. The significance of the metaphor of water in The Discoverie is more power-based than in Mandeville's The Travels. It is commercial and colonial: "For whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself" (Ralegh, "A Discourse of the Invention of Ships" 325).103 The trade in tobacco with the native population was actually "the substance of English colonial activity in the period between the first and final expeditions of Ralegh" (Whitehead, "The Discoverie as Enchanted Text" 22).104 However, gold, and by extension El Dorado, rather than tobacco, looms large in The Discoverie. An indigenous group, whose members had carried out a religious ritual until 1480, inspired the origin of the legend of El Dorado, the golden one, as Mary Fuller clarifies. The ritual "involved covering a leader in gold dust … at Lake Guatavita, near See Brotton, "An Empire Built on Water: The Cartography of the early Portuguese Discoveries" in Trading Territories on the relationship between commerce, maps, and the establishment of a maritime empire, pp. 46-86. 103 For more on the trade in tobacco and its complicated reception in England see Sandra Bell, "The Subject of Smoke: Tobacco and Early Modern England" in The Mysterious and the Foreign, pp. 153169. 104 130 Bogota, but the practice was terminated when the tribe was defeated by another indigenous group" ("Ralegh's Fugitive Gold" 50). Fuller further explains that the political leader's authority was renewed yearly in a ceremony that saw tribal members sprinkle gold dust on the figure before he dropped golden objects into a lake as thanks to the gods. Reports of the ceremonial lacustrine treasure deposits morphed in the European mind into a golden city, Manoa, which could be found at the lake's edge, and a belief that multiple golden leaders or el Dorados existed in different locales. (50) 105 The version of the legend related by Ralegh in The Discoverie that I quote at full length comes from Spanish sources, particularly from one Martynes, who upon seeing the ritual calls it El Dorado: those that pledge him [the leader] are first stripped naked, & their bodies annoynted al over with a kinde of white Balsamum … of which there is great plenty and yet very deare amongst them, and it is of all other the most pretious … when they are anointed all over, certaine servants of the Emperor having prepared gold made into fine powder blow it thorow hollow canes upon their naked bodies, until they al shining from the foote to the head, & in this sort they sit drinking by twenties and hundreds…. (141) The legend passes on to Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada, who bequeaths the search for El Dorado to his heir Antonio de Berrio. Later, both de Berrio and Sarmiento become Ralegh's captives and informants.106 Throughout the text, Ralegh cites various Spanish sources, both written and oral, as evidence for the existence of gold. He recounts the eyewitness account of a Spanish captive who met Berreo and "saw with him fortie of most pure plates of golde … and swords of Guiana decked and inlaid with golde, feathers garnished with golde, and divers rarities which he carried to the Spanish king" (143-144). For more background on the legend, see Laura Schechter, ""all that glistered": Relationships of Obligation and Exchange in Ralegh's "Discoverie of Guiana," p. 8. For the myth and its odyssey in various travel works, see Joyce Lorimer, "Introduction," pp. xxvii-xxviii. On the distinction between colonial versus native understandings of El Dorado, see Neil Whitehead's "The Discoverie as Ethnological text," pp. 71-73 105 For more information on the Spanish sources, see Andrew Sinclair, Sir Walter Raleigh and the Age of Discovery , p. 56 and Mary Fuller, "Ralegh's Fugitive Gold," p. 52 106 131 He later recalls his conversations with the same Berreo about Amapaia, a place "so marvelous rich in gold … and is situate upon Orenoke … [where] they presented Berreo with 10. Images of fine gold among divers other plates and Croissants…" (147).107 The expectations that the Spanish and the British entertained for a golden city stem, in part, from the native myth. Together with this, Europe's encounter with Africa left it with the notion that gold was "especially engendered as a physical property of the ‘torrid zone', or equatorial latitudes" (Whitehead, "The Discoverie as Ethnological" 71). Also, Ralegh's "interests in, and connections with, alchemists and mystics, such as John Dee, suggest that he also may have had further reasons to anticipate and seek out a ‘golden king'" (71). Both the encounter with Africa and the study of alchemy belong to the Old World and are grafted onto the torrid zone in the New World largely in keeping with ‘the principle of attachment' where by the New World reflects aspects of the Old. Long after the natives renounced the practice, the mythic apparatus of El Dorado continued to glow and grow in the New World, which is not surprising given the significance of gold for Europe as an instrument of power. As Whitehead rightly notes, El Dorado "acted as a constant stimulus to further colonial conquest and occupation of the continent … in a way that abstract appeals for ‘exploration or ‘discovery' could never have been" ("The Discoverie as Ethnological" 75).108 Ralegh embodies this gold-fever in his address to the reader. The Spanish King's Indian gold "indaungereth and disturbeth 107 For more examples of Berreo's stories to Ralegh about the gold, see the text, p. 151. 108 Columbus also emphasizes the importance of gold, because in his view, it was as Pagden suggests, "the one commodity which no one would wish to exchange for any other" (27). He further elaborates that "it was gold's transportability combined with its rarity and durability which had made its worth seem more than merely relative in the first place, precisely because it was these qualities which had made it so well suited to be a medium of exchange. Gold was a symbol … of the unique capacity of the human to carry with him what he is able to possess" (27). 132 all the nations of Europe, it purchaseth intelligence, creepeth into Councels, and setteth bound loyalty at libertie, in the greatest Monarchies of Europe" (127-128). Here, as elsewhere, he underscores the competition with Spain over lands and riches. Indian gold should enrich the British coffers as much as it enriches the Spanish coffers. The legend of El Dorado produces the tenaciously abiding conviction of the nexus between water and gold, which the text reinforces. The Empire of Guiana lies directly east from Peru towards the sea …and it hath more abundance of Golde then any part of Peru…Manoa the emperiall Citie of Guiana, which the Spanyardes cal el Dorado, that for the greatnes, for the riches, and for the excellent seate, it farre exceedeth any of the world, at least of so much of the world as is knowen to the Spanish nation: it is founded upon a lake of salt water of 200. Leagues long like unto mare caspium. (136-137) Both Guiana and its actual city Manoa are located close to water. The former is "east from Peru towards the sea" and the latter is founded upon a lake that mirrors mare caspium in the Old World, thus reinforcing the mirroring between both hemispheres. Other instances of gold existing in proximity to water are the Spanish finding "grains of gold in some of the rivers" in the island of Trinedado with its "magnificent garden of golden and silver trees and flowers" (Ralegh 136-137).109 Before leaving England, Ralegh is told that the French "have made divers voiages [on the Amazon], and returned rich gold and other rarities" (145). The rivers also contain silver mines as one Captaine George tells him (175). Significantly, on the Caroli riverside, Ralegh and his men take up stones that "promised eyther golde or silver by his complexion," in a contrastive gesture to Mandeville's reluctance to take up any treasure from the vale Perilous (176). The juxtaposition is between "the knight of non-possession" - as Greenblatt in Marvellous Possessions calls Mandeville - on a mission to explore the 109 Ralegh gives a report of the various attempts by the Spanish to find gold via water (143). 133 world via his unbridled imagination, and "the knight of possession," as I call Ralegh, on a mission to possess the world via empirical knowledge (28). Lakes, such as Cassipa and Manoa, are also sites of gold. The first has "great store of grains of Golde … found … when the lake falleth by the banckes…" (Ralegh 177). The second, according to Topiawari, has "grains of perfect golde and in peeces as bigg as small stones…" ( Ralegh 185). The dialectic between the Old and New World and forms of knowledge underscores the multilayered complexity of the nexus between water and gold, and the persistence of the metaphor of water in structuring the concepts cultures live by. The first layer of signification, I contend, is biblical. Genesis describes the land of Havilah close to Paradise "as a place rich in gold and surrounded by the [river] Pishon…" that resurfaces as the river Ganges on the earth (Scaffi 13).110 Furthermore, the region of paradise was thought to be "surrounded by a river labelled Crisacoras, a corruption of the Greek Chrysorrhoas, meaning ‘stream of gold'" (Scafi 102). The idea comes from antiquity where various rivers bear the name "the golden stream," such as the Nile and the Lydian river Pactolus mentions in Virgil's Aeniad (102). Rivers of Paradise inherit the classical notion of being gold-laden. According to Honorius Augustodunensis' (c.1098-1140) idea of their underground passage from paradise to the inhabited world, the rivers re-emerge as the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile, and the Ganges, and acquire the religious value apparent in The Travels (Edson and Savage-Smith 59). Interestingly, travelers switch Paradise conceptually from the Far East to the Far West in a gesture that contradicts medieval maps. One reason for this mental shift, I 110 Havilah shows on medieval world maps, such as the Anglo-Saxon or Cotton World Map. 134 maintain, could be that the traveler's preconceived notion of a lush Paradise full of rivers structures the New World, since it, too, is lush and has an abundance of rivers.111 Also translating the New World in terms of the vastness and emptiness that Paradise invokes depopulates it and renders it easier to colonize. Natives are outside the new Paradise that the Europeans can claim as a familiar space that both the Old World and biblical concepts seem to prefigure. Yet, the topographical similarity stops here. The medieval spiritual value inherent in rivers of Paradise, and by extension, rivers of the Old World becomes economic in the New World. The kernel remains the same, but reinterpreted within a new context in terms of rivers full of gold, which mimic the gold in the rivers of Paradise. In his letter to Spain about the New World, Ralegh's predecessor, Columbus, "made it seem an earthly paradise, nearer to dream than discovery" where "the rivers there proceed from the terrestrial paradise" (Sinclair 11; Pagden 22).112 Ralegh's view echoes Columbus', for images of Guiana haunted him in the Tower and influenced his description of Eden in the History: "Those regions [in America] …may of all other parts bee best compared to the Paradise of Eden … (Greenblatt, "Ralegh's Second Voyage" 158). Further portrayals of the New World promoted this paradisiacal view. De Bry's Great Voyages (1590-1634) opens with an "engraving of Adam and Eve standing beneath the Tree of Knowledge, in that first Paradise to which all romance landscapes refer" (Campbell 209). Both Columbus and Ralegh's stances, coupled with depictions of the 111 See Alessandro Scafi, Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth for a comprehensive study of Paradise in European thought and on maps. In particular, see chapter 7: "Where Is Nowhere?," pp. 160-191, and chapter 8: "The Twilight of Paradise on Maps," pp. 191-254. For further discussion on Columbus paradisiacal view of the New World, see Mary Campbell, The Witness and the Other, pp. 175-176. 112 135 New World, highlight the relationship between travel and the desire to regain Eden.113 The abundance of gold in rivers renders the landscape gilded just like the medieval pilgrims' accounts of Jerusalem, which serve as a model and a mirror to the New World. Theoderich, for example, in his Guide to the Holy Land, describes the different landmarks, such as the chapels of St. Mary and the altar of St. Nicholas as having gold, silver and jewels (15-16). In addition, the golden gate and its chapel are gilded (34). Similarly, Ralegh describes "hils with stones of the culor of Gold and silver…" (186). He assumes that "Part of the gold is on an island that has a magnificent garden of golden and silver trees and flowers" and where "finally there was nothing in his [the emperor's] country, whereof hee had not the counterfeat in gold" (137). The account of a gilded land is promising for future adventurers, who will find "rich and bewtifull cities," "temples adorned with golden Images," and "sepulchers filled with treasure" (Ralegh 194).These examples make Guiana and El Dorado analogous to the celestial Jerusalem, which was "paved with gold and walled with precious stones..." (Campell 247). From all this, it is only logical to portray the rivers as gilded for they lead to El Dorado - the Jerusalem of the New World - and the terrestrial Paradise. The second layer of signification, in my view, is the water metaphor that conditions the European way of world knowledge and domination. The discourse of gold follows the discourse of travel in terms of liminality. Like the travel paradigm in The Discoverie, which is primarily water-based and secondarily land-based, gold occupies a liminal space between water and land. The prevalence of water as the most common way to travel and conceive the world postulates that gold must exist in the topography most For more on this point, see Walter Lim, ""To Seeke New Worlds": Ralegh's The Discoverie of Guiana" in The Arts of Empire, p. 45. 113 136 familiar to European travelers. On few occasions, Ralegh mentions gold existing inland: "if wee entred the lande over the mountains of Curaa …" (175). Later, marching overland "to view the strange overfals of the river of Caroli, which rored so farre of," he sends some of his men "to see if they coulde finde any minerall stone alongst the rivers side (176). On another occasion, he describes a mightie river which toucheth no side of the mountaine [of crystal], but rusheth over the toppe of it, and falleth to the grounde with a terrible noyse and clamor, as if 1000. Great belles were knockt one against another. I thinke there is not in the worlde so straunge an overfall, nor so woderfull to beholde: Berreo tolde mee that it hath Diamondes and other precious stones on it, and that they shined very farre off…. (188) Notably, in two of the examples where Ralegh ventures on land to find gold, water is still in the background. It is along the riverside and in the "overfall" close to the mountain. The description of the waterfall full of diamonds that Ralegh calls "overfall" recalls the discourse of wonder, which intertwines with water in Mandeville's The Travels. Since waterfalls were "so straunge" a sight to Ralegh, he attaches them to the familiar "great belles" of English churches.114 Just as rivers are a path and barrier to the voyage in The Discocverie, they also figure in the same manner in relation to gold. They simultaneously lead to as well as fail to lead to the golden empire. The emphasis on rivers as a means of reaching gold is apparent in Ralegh's claim that "those that trade [with] Amazones returne much gold, which … commeth by trade from Guiana, by some branch of a river that falleth from the country into Amazones…" (145). Likewise, the Orinoco is "navigable for ships" and "leadeth to that great Empire of Inga, and to the provinces of Amapaia and Anebas which In The Witness and the Other, Mary Campbell discusses new words, such as waterfall, cataract, lagoon, whirlpool, swamp, etc… that joined the English language "during the first century of the period of English exploration" (226). The word waterfall was not coined yet, hence Ralegh's use of overfall. 114 137 abound in gold…" (180). The economic value of rivers and the circulation of power entailed by the circulation of gold are evident. They recall the economic value of water in Marco Polo's Travels mentioned in the previous chapter. Conversely, rivers obstruct the path to the golden city. Their nonnavigability is apparent in Berreo's advice to Ralegh, and later in Topiawari's advice to "deferre [the search] till the next yeare, when … it woulde be more seasonable to travel, for at this time of the yeare, we should not be able to passe any river, the waters were and would be so growen ere our returne" (154, 183). Ralegh also renders the mission impossible through his firsthand account of all the branches and small rivers which fell into Orenoque [that] were raised with such speed, as if wee waded them over the shooes in the morning outward, we were covered to the shoulders homewarde the very same daie: and to stay to dig out gold with our nailes, had been Opus laboris, but not Ingenii: such a quantitie as would have served our turns we could not have had…. (165) He punctuates his narrative with the proliferating obstacles in rivers that serve as a justification for not attaining gold. The failure to reach Guiana is "an absolutely central absence" in the text as Campbell suggests (238). For this reason, he turns waterways into a barrier as much as he turns them into a navigable path. The continuous deferrals of gold necessitate Ralegh's "lengthy apologetics" (Fuller, "Ralegh's Fugitive Gold" 55).115 It renders gold an ever present yet always absent and never attainable object of desire.116 During the sixteenth century, the location of the golden city gradually shifted, in an eastward direction, across the subcontinent. As Charles Nicholl explains in The 115 pp. 45-55. See the same source for a discussion of the deferral of finding gold in Ralegh's text, especially For other examples of deferral in The Discoverie other than the ones I provided, see pp. 122123, 125-126, 151, 154, 164, 156, 176, 183, 186 and 188. 116 138 Creature in the Map: Geographically, that shifting location of El Dorado is also the shifting frontier of exploration in South America. El Dorado, lying just beyond the known frontier, draws people on, forges the trails that will later convey settlers and soldiers and traders. In this sense, the quest for El Dorado is synonymous with the whole process of European exploration in tropical America." (12-13) 117 I want to expand upon Nicholl's perceptive remark about the relationship between the golden city and colonial frontiers by underscoring the role of conceptual metaphors in configuring paradigms of travel. As mentioned above, both gold and golden city remain close to water as long as the discovery remains water-bound. The shift in stages towards land of the location of the city and of gold, I contend, entirely depends on the European traveler's own shift to an overland paradigm of travel. Once the traveler embraces the metaphor of land as a mental conception for knowing the world rather than the metaphor of water, El Dorado moves landward. The ever-shifting location of El Dorado, along with its mythical aspect, was invitation enough for the belief in the existence of "multiple golden leaders or el Dorados … in different locales" rather than a single El Dorado (Fuller, "Ralegh's Fugitive Gold" 50). The myth becomes a floating signifier that proliferates in a way similar to the legend of Prester John, the mythical Christian King of the East. Both are constantly deferred and unattainable. The circulating Prester John letter in the medieval west is akin to the circulating legend of the city in early modern times. In both cases, the figures of Prester John and El Dorado are conflated with their realms, more so in the latter's case where El Dorado signifies both emperor and empire. Ralegh says of El Dorado's riches, For a full discussion of the chimerical location of El Dorado, see Charles Nicholl, "Mapping El Dorado" in The Creature in the Map, pp. 9-20. 117 139 And if Peru had so many heapes of Golde, whereof those Ingas were Princes, and that they delighted so much therein, no doubt but this which nowe liveth and raigneth in Manoa, hath the same humour, and I am assured hath more abundance of Golde, within his territorie, then all Peru, and the west Indies. (194) The riches Ralegh attributes to "this which nowe liveth and raigneth in Manoa" is reminiscent of the riches available in the realm of Prester John in Mandeville's Travels. Following the logic of mirroring between the Old and the New World, some early modern writers transposed the legend of Prester John to the New World. A case in point is Giuliano Dati's (1445-1523) "Songs of the Indies," which "imposed upon the New World the vast myth of Prester John" and "provided a long catalog of the monstrous races" (Friedman 199). If the Old World has its Prester John, the New World has its counterpart El Dorado, who echoes the older legend in terms of the water-bound chimerical location and the abundance of riches. It is apt for these legends to take root in water-related spaces to sustain the conception of the world in terms of the foundational metaphor of water that contains within its folds all the aspects of life ranging from riches to monstrous races, which I examine in depth in the next section. Monsters and Wonders in The Discoverie The metaphor of water organizes knowledge of the monstrous since, like gold, it is an extension of the conceptual reality and values that the metaphor creates. In addition, the tension in Ralegh's text between classical knowledge and the experiential carries over in the depiction of monsters. The monstrous races that figure most in The Discoverie are the Amazons and the Acephali or Headless people. Besides the liminality of these races between the real and the imagined, three issues, I propose, inform the discourse of the monstrous: they live close to waterways, they have their counterpart in the Old World, 140 and they are connected to gold. Ralegh promises to relate things that he has "seene … and knowe to be true" (194). However, he includes the exotic races that "evoke the world of epic-romance," along with El Dorado, as Greenblatt notes ("Theatricalism" 107). In particular, he incorporates the Amazons and the Acephali since they belong to the New World as much as they belong to the Old World. Thus, in my opinion, aptly connecting and mirroring the two hemispheres. Both races are well-established elements of European myth dating back to classical antiquity, namely Pliny the Elder. As part of the rhetoric of attachment, travelers entertained "expectations of finding all or most the [monstrous] Plinian races in the New World … well into the period of scientific geography" (Friedman 198). The disappearance of these races took place in stages at the heels of objective anthropology and Renaissance empiricism, both tied to new discovery. Later, they were cathected on the aboriginal inhabitants as a familiar frame to comprehend them.118 On the other hand, the Amazons and the Acephali appear more frequently in travelers' accounts of the New World than other monstrous races. The reason, as Whitehead explains, is that they were already "part of the native repertoire" prior to European contact, especially in light of archaeological evidence ("The Discoverie as Ethnological" 70-71). Ralegh, then, includes material regarded fanciful according to Old World standards, but real according to the natives' standards. The effect is double fold. First, the more fanciful aspects of the narrative "captured early modern readers' imaginations" in Oldenburg's words, "for illustrations of several wonders mentioned in Ralegh's narrative See John Block Friedman, "Epilogue" in The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, pp. 197-211 for a more thorough discussion of the question of monstrous races in the context of the New World and the oscillating reaction between acceptance of and rejection of their existence. 118 141 are featured prominently on the cover of many editions of The Discovery of Guiana…." (40). Second, it was "precisely those ethnological elements that Ralegh incorporated" and that could be regarded as the most credible that have "caused his account to be mocked by subsequent generations" (Whitehead, "The Discoverie as Ethnological" 108). Either way, the relational dialogic between the Old and the New World concerning the Amazons and the Acephali helped in their relocation. Moreover, they find their way to maps of the New World. As Fuller rightly notes in "Arthur and Amazons: Editing the Fabulous," "standards changed and sources too, but the quantity of Amazons [and Acephali] remained constant" (180). Ralegh locates the Amazons close to gold and to rivers where the French trade with them: "on the south side of the maine mouth of Orenoque, are the Arwacas: and beyond them the Canibals. And to the south of them the Amazones" (193).119 He further maintains These Amazones have likewise great store of these plates of golde, which they recover by exchange chiefly for a kinde of greene stones, which the Spaniards call Piedras Hijadas, and we use for spleene stones, and for the disease of the stone we also esteeme them: of these I saw divers in Guiana, and commonly every king or Casique hath one, which their wives for the most part weare. And they esteeme them as great jewels. (146) In what seems to be a moment of digression in the narrative from the act of discovery and the pursuit of gold, Ralegh refers to the Amazons. The moment of digression I interpret as a moment of continuation, which resonates with Laura Schechter's take in "all that glistened": Relationships of Obligation and Exchange," where she views the Amazons as "simultaneously [signaling] the valuable jewels and metals that could be extracted from For more on the Amazons, see Abby Wettan Kleinbaum, The War against the Amazons and Louis Montrose, "The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery," pp. 25-29. 119 142 el Dorado's kingdom and control access to this precious merchandise" (30). The mythical status of the Amazons and the fact that Ralegh never actually sets eyes on them or reaches their water-bound territory renders them symbolic of deferring the acquisition of the equally mythical gold empire. Like the rivers of Guiana, the Amazons lead to gold, yet simultaneously obstruct the path. Ralegh's description further displays the liminality of the text between classical knowledge of the world imbued with legends and new knowledge of the world colored with empiricism. To verify their reality, he resorts to experiential knowledge. His claim of having seen the spleen stones is proof enough for having seen the women, even if he never does.120 Both the Amazons, and by extension, the stones further confirm the existence of El Dorado. Like the persistent metaphor of water, Amazons had to maintain their place in early modern travel texts such as Ralegh's because "In a time when the face of the earth daily was changing its aspect, the Amazon provided authors with an image that was both exotic and reassuring" and, I would add, familiar (Kleinbaum 77). The Old World prefigures this familiarity where in the collective memory the Amazons of Africa and Asia live close to rivers. Ralegh grafts them onto the New World as he says; "the memories of the like women are very ancient as well in Africa as in Asia: In Africa those that had Medusa for Queene: Others in Scithia neere the rivers of Tanais and Thermadom…" (146). To quote Schechter: Tentative sightings and reports of nearby Amazon women were frequent features in early modern travel literature,121 but writers of the genre also regularly 120 Schechter calls the relationship between the Amazons and spleen stones a "metonymic gesture," p. 26. According to Fuller, "Reports of American Amazons dated back as far as Columbus's second voyage, in 1494, when they were localized on Martinique as the explorer sailed past, unable to approach 121 143 connected Amazon women to the guarding of treasure hordes … early imaginative texts like the Prester John narratives, which describe the Amazon women's territory as separated from other regions by a river that begins in paradise; and older exploration and travel texts, which describe exotic locales offering fantastic creatures and largely untapped natural resources. (30) The Amazons' connection to water is classical and medieval. It carries over to the early modern era, as water becomes a prominent source of maritime power and expansion. However, their connection to gold is particularly medieval rather than classical: "Wealth and generosity were two of the virtues of the chivalric ideal, and in the hands of [several] authors …, the Amazon was the perfect female counterpart of the proper knight" (Kleinbaum 114). Within the context of the New World, the bond between the Amazons and wealth is further sealed because of the added economic value that gold acquires. We see these relational dynamics in Mandeville's The Travels, which connects the Amazons to treasures and places them in proximity to the realm of Prester John and the rivers of Paradise.122 Maintaining the symmetry, Ralegh's text also places them in proximity to treasures, El Dorado, and the rivers, which are an extension to the rivers of Paradise. Thus, Ralegh's dialogic use of former texts that reflect the continuity of a particular tradition renders the Amazons in The Discoverie a sign of familiar otherness. The process of attachment between Amazons of the Old World and the New is mutual since they have prior presence in native culture.123 In fact, Columbus did because of contrary winds. A few decades later Hernán Cortés reported with enthusiasm indigenous testimony about an island inhabited only by women, and full of riches …." In fact, they "inhabited the imaginary geography of the Americas almost from the beginning" ("Arthur and Amazons: Editing the Fabulous" 177-178). 122 For a list of other travelers who associated gold with the Amazons, see Kathryn Schwarz, "Falling off the Edge of the World," pp. 57-58. On the native counterpart of the Amazon myth in Guiana and the trade in gold, see Whitehead's "The Discoverie as Ethnological," pp. 89-90, and 95-96. 123 144 "encounter fighting women, sometimes fighting alone, sometimes in the company of men, and sometimes leading the men" (Kleinbaum 113). Whitehead reads this association between both worlds as a sign of "cultural convergence" that accentuates "the universality of gender antagonism" and provides "the basis for a mimetic elaboration of the Amazon theme by both natives and colonials" (97). The moment of cultural convergence, as I read it, allows Ralegh to create an analogy of the Amazons with Queen Elizabeth. He ends his account with the Amazons, who "shall hereby heare the name of a virgin, which is not onely able to defend her owne territories and her neighbors, but also to invade and conquere so great Empyres and so farre removed" (199). The association emphasizes the political relationships and economic gain embedded in the colonial project Ralegh promotes and maintains the attachment between both worlds.124 Not unlike the Amazons, the Acephali, called Ewaipanoma by the natives, underscore the juncture between the discourses of gold and waterways in relation to mirabilia and monsters: "To the west of Caroli are divers nations of Canibals, and of those Ewaipanoma without heads. Directly west are the Amapaias and Anebas, which are also marvelous rich in gold" (Ralegh 192). Once more, Ralegh's text seems interrupted by a fantastic digression from the search for El Dorado, while in fact reference to the race substantiates the existence of gold in a way that recalls the wealth of Mandeville's Cynocephali. As Oldenburg clarifies, the race is a "sign that he was close to his goal [for] in his imagination the Ewaipanoma and El Dorado were intimately linked by de Vera's [Spanish] letter" that Ralegh appends to his text to lend it credibility (48). Additionally, For the intersection between gender relations and the colonial discourse, see Louis Montrose, article "The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery" and Neil Whitehead's "The Discoverie as Ethnological," p. 98. 124 145 their location in water reflects the persistence of the metaphor of water in organizing and structuring the discourse of wonder in The Discoverie. In a more extensive paragraph, Ralegh restates their location in waterways and describes them physically, maintaining that though it may be thought a mere fable, yet for mine owne parte I am resolved it is true, because every child in the provinces of Arromaia and Canuri affirme the same …. [Topiawari's son] tolde me that it was no wonder among them, but that they were as great a nation, and as common, as any other in all the provinces, and had of late yeares slaine manie hundreds of his father's people…." (178) Ralegh proves the existence of the Acephali, and by extension, the Gold City in stages. In this passage, he obviously relies on the presence of alterity in the natives' culture, which "is made to conform to European expectation, generated not just by a knowledge of the Classical canon but also, as in this case, by knowledge of other ethnological information" (Whitehead, "The Discoverie as Ethnological" 94). Here, he strays from his promise to relate only what he has seen and adopts instead the principle of audition to prove his story. Both native children and adults supposedly confirm the existence of headless races at the extreme edge of the New World, and even suggest mutual warring. Ralegh then invokes Mandeville as he proceeds: such a nation was written of by Maundevile, whose reports were held for fables many yeares, and yet since the East Indies were discovered, wee finde his relations true of such thinges as heretofore were held incredible: whether it be true or no the matter is not great, neither can there be any profit in the imagination, for mine owne part I saw them not, but I am resolved that so many people did not all combine, or forethinke to make the report. (178) His use of Mandeville's account accentuates the process of attachment between the Old World and the New. The passage oscillates cautiously between acceptance and rejection of the myth. He starts with "seriously entertaining the still more improbable claims of" Mandeville and calls them "true" (Greenblatt, "Foreword" ix-x). His acceptance 146 immediately seeps into ambivalent rejection as he distances himself from the rehabilitation of Mandeville since he "had no desire to present his report on Guiana as a poet's dream" (xi). At this point, he re-embraces the autoptic principle and experiential knowledge. The ebb and flow between both stances shows the co-existence, sometimes the tension, between classical knowledge predicated on imagination and hearsay on the one hand, and new knowledge predicated on the exercise of empiricism on the other. The liminality of the Acephali between reality and imagination, thus, echoes the other set of liminalities formerly presented: the liminality of El Dorado between the real and the mythical, and the liminality of the paradigm of travel between water and land. Besides incorporating Mandeville and the natives' account to lend credibility to his own account, Ralegh relies on his conversation with a Spanish traveler, "a most honest man" that he "may not name … because it may be for his disadvantage" (178).125 He assures his readers that "if I had but spoken one word of it while I was there, I might have brought one of them with me to put the matter out of doubt" (178). Ralegh employs "the familiar European practice of bringing samples … back from the newly discovered lands, in order to allow those at home to savour the wonders and confirm for themselves the truth of the travellers' tales" (Greenblat, "Foreword" ix-x). Western inquisitiveness leads to the empirical practice of collecting samples. Renaissance travelers, like Ralegh, continue the medieval practice discussed before in The Legend of Duke Ernst, where Just as Ralegh's description of the Ewaipanoma was informed by Mandeville's headless antecedents, so the description of the Ewaipanoma informs subsequent descriptions of the New World. For example, "one of the most striking reports is an eyewitness account of the capture, torture and execution of an Acephali, as witnessed by the shipwrecked Dutch sailor Lourens Lourenszoon among the Arocouros of the Amapa coast (between the Amazon and Oyapock rivers) in 1623, five years into his captivity. In his deposition before the Directors of the West-Indische Compagnie, made after his rescue in 1625, we are told that Lourens joined a war-party sent against the Acephali" (Whitehead, "The Discoverie as Ethnological" 92). References to originary beings such as the Acephali can readily be found in early modern literature, such as Gonzalo's speech in Shakespeare's The Tempest (3.3, 43-49). 125 147 Duke Ernst brings back home monstrous races as trophies. Even though autopsia has failed Ralegh on this occasion, he still seems to believe in the existence of the Ewaipanoma, and even more so because they had riches and live close to El Dorado. Besides the Amazons and the Acephali, Ralegh mentions the cannibals on a few occasions in the text. Like them, they are close to water. They are endowed with "barbarous nature, as they will … sell the sonnes and daughters of their owne brethren and sisters…" (Ralegh 153). They also assail travelers and natives "with many Canoas" and shoot "poisoned arrows" (155).126 He recalls how their Arwacan Pilot "feared that we would have eaten them….for the Spaniards to the end that none of the people in the passage towards Guiana or in Guiana it selfe might come to speech with us, perswaded all the nations, that we were men eaters, and Canibals…" (165). The last instance echoes Caroline Bynum Walker's discussion of wonder in Metamorphosis and Identity where she labels ‘the [medieval European] literature of entertainment' as ‘deeply perspectival. It is a reaction of a particular "us" to an "other" as evidenced in James of Vitry's commenting shortly after 1200 that "perhaps the Cyclopes, who all have one eye, marvel as much at those who have two eyes as we marvel at them"' (55). Mandeville's encounter with the various mythical races provides an antecedent to this perspectival tendency that Ralegh reworks in his account. This deeply perspectival aspect of wonder as a mutual reaction is at work in Ralegh's recurring mention of the natives expressing wonder at the European other: "The retinue Topiawari brought with him on the visit, besides bringing gifts, "came [to the 126 pp. 90-91. On cannibalism in native ideologies, see Neil Whitehead's "The Discoverie as Ethnological," 148 riverside] to wonder at our nation" (172).127 As we shall see, Ralegh's rhetoric of native wonder at the European other is similar to Ibn Fadlan's when he maintains that the Rus wondered at them. While Ibn Fadlan's rhetoric of native wonder is not colonial, Ralegh's certainly is the opposite. "In colonialist discourse," as Lim suggests, "the wonder experienced by the native is itself a source of wonder for the European beholding native gullibility, which, in turn, is the site of vulnerability for colonial penetration into the space of the Other" (38). The moment of cultural interaction and mutual wonder between the two groups aptly takes place by the river, the recurring contact zone and metaphor of ‘world making' and conquest in The Discoverie. Conclusion Ralegh's The Discoverie upholds Europe's attachment to water as a conceptual metaphor that becomes a feasible reality with circumnavigation. Concomitantly, it displays a developing attachment to the emerging metaphor of land, which becomes literal once Ralegh explores the Guiana. The co-existence of both metaphors as ways of constructing world knowledge results in a gradual change in the attendant paradigm of travel from a water-bound one to a land-bound one. The Discoverie lies at the heart of this change. It still maintains the water-bound view, accentuated more by Europe's rising maritime power that plays a significant role in the acquisition of land, and leads to territorial expansion. The text sustains the foundational metaphor of water through employing ‘the principle of attachment' between the Old World and the New. The liminality that characterizes the travel paradigm and worldview naturally See the following sections in The Discoverie for more instances of the natives wondering at Ralegh and his followers, pp. 139-140, 166. 127 149 characterizes the location of gold and monsters closer to water than to land in keeping with Old World traditions. As the influential metaphor for creating and organizing reality, water becomes a repository of the various aspects of life, such as travel, gold, and monsters. The dialogic relationship between The Discoverie as a travel text and the maps and globes intimate the dialectic between the metaphors of water and land as ways of ‘world making'. Like travel narratives, maps and globes reveal "in the selectivity of their content and in their signs and styles of representation" ways of conceiving the human world, which "exerts influence upon articular sets of social relations" (Harley, "Maps, knowledge, and power" 278). Their emphasis on the metaphor of water exhibits the dialogue they engage in with travel texts. At the same time, they intimate the dialectic between the classical and early modern knowledge noted in travel texts. The shift to land stems from the change in the cosmographic view at the time promoted by Thevet, among others, and the intractability of rivers in Guiana. However, these reasons interlace with exploration and the search for gold. As such, Ralegh's text realizes Seneca's supposed prophecy in the Medea: "In later years there will be generations/ for whom Ocean will loosen the chains/of nature, the earth will be revealed in its immensity, /Tethys will uncover new worlds, / and earth's furthest boundary will not be Thule…" (375-379; Hine 69). What starts out as diametrically opposing worldviews and world representations between the Arabs and the European becomes eventually similar as binaries begin to dissolve. We see in Ralegh's The Discoverie a point of convergence where Arab and European maps and travel texts come close and the gap between them decreases when Europe turns to over-land expansion. The convergence is attributed to the exchange of 150 knowledge between the two cultures in the cartographic field. Leo Africanus' Description is a case in point. The outcome is the fascinating and thoroughgoing shift in paradigms and worldviews. Yet even more engaging is the process of placing both cultures and ways of ‘world making' into conversation, a process that takes shape in my undertaking of Ibn Fadlan's Risala and fully culminates in Leo Africanus' Description of Africa. With this, I turn to the complementary Arabic counterpart of Western identity formation and knowledge of a shared world. CHAPTER THREE THE INVERTED WORLD OF IBN FADLAN'S RISALA When the day came that the [dead] man was to be burned and the girl with him, I went to the river where his boat was anchored. I saw that they had drawn his boat up on to the shore and that four posts of khadank or other wood had been driven into the ground and round these posts a framework of wood had been erected. (Ibn Fadlan loc 1291) Thus far, we have seen that the metaphor of water outlined in Mandeville's The Travels constructs knowledge of a watery world that facilitates circumnavigation. This knowledge becomes conducive to the exploration of new worlds in Sir Walter Ralegh's The Discoverie. The latter juxtaposes the pervasive metaphor of water with the emerging metaphor of land in such a way that turns them both into literal realities and brings the Western conception of the world a step closer to the Arab land-bound conception. In this part of the dissertation, I contrast the metaphor of water with the metaphor of land, which informs the medieval and early modern Arab knowledge of the world. Ibn Fadlan's Risala, which forms the core inquiry of this chapter, is framed by land. The fascinating encounter between Ibn Fadlan's worldview and a novel water-bound counterpart that unfolds on his travels north marks for the author the introduction of an alternative way of conceiving the world. In 922 AD Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, the Arab envoy of the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir to Almish, the Volga King of the Bulghars, composes an account of his journey known as 152 Risalat Ibn Fadlan. Risala, a term commonly translated as epistle, is a genre in Arabic literature, which Naser Abdel Razek al-Muwafi defines in al-Rihla fi al-Adab al ‘Arabi (The Journey in Arabic Literature) "as a piece of writing on a particular topic, whether individual or social, composed in a literary style that excites the feelings of the readers" (my trans.; 265). It is not likely that Ibn Fadlan called his account Risala. More likely, he called it a report. Difficult to classify at the time, it is probable that Ibn Fadlan's contemporaries considered it a Risala since it conforms to the salient features of the genre (265). The other term that Ibn Fadlan's contemporaries could have used, but did not, is rihla or journey. It derives from the root r-h-l: to move from place to place usually on land (123). The twelfth-century jurist and theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali defines the genre in his compendium Ihya' ‘Ulum al-Din (Revival of Religious Sciences) as "a kind of movement and mingling" whose "aim" is the "incentive" (24). Twentieth-century scholars, such as Salah el-Din el Shamy, nuance the definition as "an accomplishment or an individual act that entails crossing the barrier of distance and breaking the barrier between one place and another for a specific aim" (24). The term rihla was quite uncommon in the early tenth century; therefore, scholars employed the more common term risala. As the genre became better established, Ibn Fadlan's Risala became classified as a rihla. It shares the features of rihla, such as the use of dialogue more than fifteen times, the recurring use of verbs of movement like: serna/walked, rahalna/traveled, akamna/stayed, mararna/passed, nazalna/descended, and the fact that it is more literary than geographical (266-267). I travel back in time to Ibn Fadlan's text, because it is representative of the golden age of Arab traveling that starts with Ibn Khurdādibih in the ninth and tenth 153 century. During this period, literary geography developed significantly and the number of travelers was on the rise.128 The Risala also overlaps with the beginnings of the classical school of geography, also known as al-Balkhi school, which nuances al-masālik w-almamālik tradition that Ibn Khurdādibih initiates (al-Muwafi 85). Loosely translated as "Routes and Kingdoms," the tradition focuses on the description of countries, kingdoms, and the distance of paths and routes (91). The Risala distinguishes itself as one of the early texts that fulfill the genre of rihla. It remarkably stands independent of, but not detached from, geography (241). As such, it illustrates the nexus between travel and geography. Moreover, it serves my argument for the subject of land as an expression of knowledge, identity, and exploration that lies at the heart of medieval Arab travel narratives and the dialogic relationship these texts maintain with maps. In its entirety, Ibn Fadlan's tenth-century account is a favorable counterpart to Mandeville's fourteenthcentury text. The Risala raises the following questions: What structure does the author use to conceive the world? What is the significance of the metaphor of land in medieval Arab thought and how does it turn into a reality? How does the metaphor function in Ibn Fadlan's travels, especially when compared to Western near-contemporaneous travelers to the north? How does Ibn Fadlan employ attachment in the Risala, especially in relation to rivers and water-bound customs? How does the metaphor of land frame the depiction of marvels in the text? Do travel texts and maps share the same mental organization of the world? What is the significance of the ship burial scene at the end of the account? 128 The term "literary geography" refers to a genre of literature that focuses on a geographic topic from a literary perspective. Literature here supersedes geography. This is different from "descriptive geography," a genre that focuses on the geographical description of a place in a scientific, nonliterary way (al-Muwafi 36-37). For a discussion of the differences between the three genres of descriptive geography, literary geography, and rihla that form the Arab corpus, see the same source, pp. 35-38. 154 Wide ranges of scholars have acclaimed the Risala. In his introduction to the Arabic edition Risalat Ibn Fadlan, Sami al-Dahhan remarks the significance of the epistle as a "political and historical document" that "fills a gap in [European] history" (my trans.; 51, 30). The Risala was, therefore, studied by Orientalists like Christian Martin Fraehn as a historical document that "pre-dates the earliest Russian written source, The Russian Primary Chronicle of 1113, by almost two hundred years and sheds new light on the Rūs" (Lunde and Stone, "Introduction" loc 543; Noonan 488).129 It also represents, in Daniel Baker's words in Explorers and Discoverers of the World, a "valuable ethnographical resource on the history of the steppes in central Asia" owing to the description of the various groups Ibn Fadlan encounters (308). The principal part that secured the popularity of the Risala is the Viking ship burial scene. This scene remains "one of the most remarkable documents of the Viking age" (Stone, "Ibn Fadlan and the Midnight Sun" 3).130 Conversely, in his preface to the English translation Albert S. Cook critiques Ibn Fadlan's description that supposedly shows the "very primitive customs of this northern people," but "most important, it gives an idea of the superior attitude of the Moslems toward … this group of still pagan Western Europeans" (17). As we shall see, Cook takes Ibn Fadlan's description at face value. In The European [Other], Nizar Hermes provides an insightful study of the moments of cultural encounter in Ibn Fadlan's Both James McKleithen in his introduction to the English edition and James E. Montgomery in "Ibn Fadlan and the Rusiyyah," reiterate Fraehn's view. They maintain that Ibn Fadlan has left us "virtually the only eyewitness account of the composition of peoples … in the Eurasian Steppe region between the time of Herodotus and the Dominican and Franciscan missions in the thirteenth century," thus proving to be "an invaluable source of information for modern scholars interested in ...the birth and formation of the Russian state," among other issues (McKleithen 3; Montgomery 1). 129 Henryk Siemiradzki (1843 -1902), a Polish painter, painted Burial of a Varangian Chieftain in 1883 based on the ship burial of a Rus chieftain as described by Ibn Fadlan in the tenth century (al-Dahhan, "Introduction" 38). 130 155 text that debunk the charge of superiority and show an attempt at objectivity (80-98). The examination of the multilayered significance of the metaphor of land forms my point of departure from the dominant scholarship on Ibn Fadlan that centers, in the main, on the historical and ethnographic aspects, as well as the process of othering, or lack thereof. I continue to discuss the questions the Risala raises along with the hegemonic discourse of land through Lakoff and Johnson's study of metaphors and their ability to structure everyday concepts (47). In the text, the metaphor of land shapes Ibn Fadlan's concept of the ecumene and the preferred paradigm of overland travel. Land space is an organizing principle that bears on the question of crossing rivers, encountering different customs and water-bound wonders. In doing so, Ibn Fadlan draws on a pre-existing tradition of representing the world in land terms dominant in travel texts and maps, but also obvious in pre-Islamic literature and later emphasized by the homiletic force of the Quran. This structure appears in his diction in line with the notion that our adopted structure "is reflected in our literal language" (47). Ibn Fadlan understands the world in terms of land units since "the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another" (6). The multiple rivers he encounters while journeying north represent a threshold to different worlds, but more important they represent, I contend, an unfavorable disruption to the overland journey. The metaphor theory is particularly helpful in interpreting Ibn Fadlan's reaction to the different rituals he sees, since "the metaphors we live by, whether cultural or personal, are partially preserved in ritual" (235). This becomes especially explicit in the ship burial scene, which preserves the metaphor of water in medieval Western thought. The significance of land space is complex given the intimate attachment to land in 156 Arab culture and literature. Commercial and territorial expansion further directs the Arab focus on overland routes and renders the metaphor of land symptomatic of power relations for a whole culture. It informs ‘world making' and identity making simultaneously. Metaphorically speaking, the land-bound focus gives the appearance of being the best way of imagining and structuring the world. Literally speaking, it gives rise to the intertwining traditions of rihla and al-masālik w-al-mamālik. As such, the metaphor of land in the Risala implies a mindset that reveals a broader set of values and contingent discourses attached to imagining a land-bound conception of the world. Ibn Fadlan does not resort to the antipodal theory as an organizing principle the same way Mandeville does.131 Instead, he employs the land borne traditions of rihla and al-masālik w-al-mamālik. Therefore, I examine both culturally entrenched traditions as crucial frameworks to interpret the significance of land in the Risala. Despite the difference in organizing principles between the two authors, I contend that Anthony Padgen's concept of attachment, whereby the traveler assimilates the unfamiliar to the familiar to create new meaning, is still at work. However, for Ibn Fadlan the association that takes place between his world and the world beyond on topographic and cultural levels is not as direct as in Mandeville's account. It is what I call inverted attachment that grows out of sets of opposites, such as land versus water, heat versus cold, and usual versus unusual customs, which subtly become familiar. By inverted attachment, I mean a The antipodal theory does not seem to play a significant role in travel narratives even though the Arabs knew of it from the Greeks. For example, al-Bakri (1014-1094) says in al-masālik w-al-mamālik that beyond the Atlantic we do not know what lies there to the West until the East in China. The sun when it sets down in China rises in the immortal islands and vice versa. Al-Umari (1300 - 1384) also assumes in Kitāb al-masālik w al-Absār the existence of a continent or land beyond the Atlantic. He says if water revealed land in our part, then it could be revealed in the other and it could have its flora, fauna and people too. Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (1236 - 1311) in al-Tuhaf al-Shaheya reiterates the same concept of finding habitation beyond the inhabitable parts that we have not heard of (Al-Kilany, Surat Uruba 420). 131 157 world upside down that contrasts with the familiar world of the traveler. Ibn Fadlan anchors both parts of the world, home and not home, in land spaces. He employs attachment to connect his world and its inverted opposite to maintain the conceptual metaphor of land. His innovation lies in shaping the rihla and embedding it in land routes as early as the tenth century, thus setting the worldview for subsequent travelers. The medieval Arabic world maps that accompany al-masālik w-al-mamālik tradition are visual manifestations of the metaphor of land at work in travel texts. They are symptomatic of the hegemonic discourse it produces. As J.B. Harley notes "Maps are never value-free images…. Both in the selectivity of their content and in their signs and styles of representation maps are a way of conceiving, articulating, and structuring the human world" ("Maps, Knowledge, and Power" 278). In keeping with Harley's view, I aim to underscore the way maps articulate and structure the world in land terms according to the Routes and Realms tradition that interweaves with the rihla. Juxtaposing both text and image demonstrates the dialogue between them, especially that according to Houari Touai in Islam and Travel in the Middle Ages, "the geographer is by definition a voyager" in medieval times (136).132 Such relationship pertains more to Arab culture than to its medieval Western counterpart where dissociation between the traveler and the geographer is largely the norm. Taken together, Arabic travel narratives and maps not only reflect, but also produce and actively create, the metaphor of land as a literal reality and an expression of exploration and identity. It incorporates all aspects of life, such as travel paradigms and mirabilia, as well as aspects of the after-life, such as burial rites. This chapter begins with examining the textual background of the Risala. Next I There is consensus among scholars such as Ahmet Karamustafa, Hourai Touati, and Nizar Hermes regarding the conflation of geographer and traveler in the Islamic travel/cartographic discourse. 132 158 discuss the metaphor of land within the pre-existing literary and nonliterary traditions of rihla and al-masālik w-al-mamālik. Third, the argument focuses on Ibn Fadlan's landbound view and its implications within the framework of inverted attachmnent on topographic and cultural levels. The fourth section examines marvels within the dialogic relationship between texts and medieval maps. This chapter concludes with my research question concerning the persistence of the overland tradition in later works, such as Leo Africanus' The Description of Africa. All quotations and citations come from Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone's Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness, a faithful English translation of Sami al-Dahhan's Risalat Ibn Fadlan - a reliable Arabic edition of the most complete manuscript of the Risala. Throughout the chapter, I consistently use the English translation as well as the original Arabic. The Author, the Mission, and the Text About Ibn Fadlan's person, we know very little. What we can glean from his own account is that he was in the service of al-Muqtadir.133 His language in the Risala suggests he was well versed in Islamic sciences.134 The account opens with a brief selfintroductory exordium where he sets the reason for his journey: This is the book of Ahmad ibn Fadlān al-‘Abbās ibn Rāshid ibn Hammād, the client of Muhammad ibn Sulaymān, the envoy of the caliph Muqtadir to the king of the Saqāliba in which he tells of all he saw in the lands of the Turks, the Khazars, the Rūs, the Saqāliba, the Bāshghirds and others, their various customs, Abu 'l-Fadl Ja'far ibn Ahmad al-Mu'tadid, better known as al-Muqtadir bi-Allah, was the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad from 908 to 932. 133 Most of our information on Ibn Fadlan derives mainly from Yāqūt al-Hamawy's Lexicon of Countries as Abd al-Rahman Hmeida, Sami al-Dahhan, and Shamsuddine al-Kilany suggest respectively in a'lam al-Jughrafeyin al-‘Arab (Masters of the Arab Geographers), the introduction to the edited Arabic Risala, and Surat Uruba ‘inda al-Arab (The Image of Europe for the Arabs), pp. 199; 28; 195. 134 159 news of their kings and their current status. (loc 603) The embassy, he asserts, is a response to a letter arriving from Almish ibn (Shilkī) Yiltawār, king of the Saqāliba, to the Abbasid Caliph. In the letter, Almish asks for "someone who could instruct him in the Faith [and] teach him the laws of Islam," help with building a "mosque … so that he could have the prayers said in his name," and "a fortress [to] be built, for defence against the [Khazar] kings who were his adversaries" (Ibn Fadlan loc 603).135 Critical opinion, such as Ahmed Zeki Validi Togan and A.P. Kovalevsky, however, argues that the embassy was not a response to an invitation as much as it was a pre-emptive step on the part of the Abbasid caliph to consolidate his power, and earn political prestige and commercial gains along the northern routes and kingdoms (Canard 46-47). The suggested motives of the caliph are in keeping with the Arabs' use of land as a source of hegemony to configure power relations. On the other end of the spectrum, Thomas Noonan in "European Russia: c500-1050" asserts that Almish's motives for approaching the caliph were first his desire to suppress the "tribal leaders" and "the ruling elite which included 500 prominent families," and second, he needed help "against Khazar domination" (504).136 The mission probably combines elements of all the above in addition to Ibn Fadlan's intentions, which center on the delegation dispatched by the caliph in answer to Almish's request, and the aim to provide an eyewitness account of the customs of various groups. Specifically, Ibn Fadlan is charged with the responsibility of "reading the letter to 135 p. 9. For more on Almish and his kingdom, see Richard N. Frye's "Ibn Fadlan's Journey to Russia" The Khazars were a Jewish rival state that threatened the Bulghars and exhausted them with taxes. For more information, see the entire section on "European Russia" in The New Cambridge Medieval History, pp. 487-513. 136 160 the king, making over to him the gifts that had been sent him … supervising the teachers and jurists," along with delivering the desired amount of money (loc 612). The embassy was prepared by Nadir al-Harami who does not participate in the journey (al-Kilani 195; Hermes 82). It is composed, as Ibn Fadlan says, of Ibn Sawsan al-Rassi, an ex- Russian slave; Tekin al-Turki, a Muslim Turk; and Bares al-Saqlabi, the Slav; in addition to Almish's envoy ‘Abd Allah ibn Bashtu al-Khazari (the Kazar) who journeys back home with the caliph's delegation (loc 612; al-Dahhan, "Introduction" 69). Consequently, Hermes notes, the embassy is "conversant with many of the languages spoken by different peoples they met en route to Volga Bulgharia" (82). It reflects the diversity of the then mosaic-like culture of Baghdad whose members are adept in languages that facilitate conversation with each other, as well as the foreign other. Given the certain identity of Ibn Fadlan, the status of the Risala is not as complex as Mandeville's The Travels. News of the embassy is known through the generous, though incomplete, excerpts of Yāqūt al-Hamawy (1179-1229) in his immense geographical dictionary, Mu‘jam al-buldān (Lexicon of Countries).137 We know from Yāqūt that Ibn Fadlan returned to Baghdad though the manuscript for the return journey did not survive (al-Dahhan, "Introduction" 38). The circulation of the Risala among a medieval Arab audience points to its integration and transmission in works prior to Yāqūt's Lexicon. As the latter asserts, "the story of Ibn Fadlan and his dispatching by Al-Muqtadir to Bulgaria is a popular and wellknown account among the people. I have seen many copies of it" (al-Dahhan, 42). Yāqūt al-Hamawi (1179-1229), a geographer/traveler, was the first to recognize the importance of the epistle and to incorporate it in his work. For more on Yāqūt's travels, and how he might have possibly acquired the Risala, see Lunde and Stone's introduction to Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness (loc 533-542). 137 161 Unattributed reproduction of the account has been noted in al-Mas‘udi (896-956), alIstakhri (c.850- 957), and Ibn Hawqal's (d.978?) geographic works (al- Dahhan, 41-43, 54-56). In the sixteenth century, the geographer Amin Razi incorporates excerpts of the Risala in his work.138 Quoting Nabil Matar in Journeys to the Other Shore, Roxanne Euben notes that "‘the tradition of tawaatur (repetition with the same content), which has been used in the establishment of Islam's religious canons, widely served in the authentication as well as dissemination' of information through travel texts" (74). This tawaatur or citational tradition rescues the Risala from oblivion. In Routes and Realms, Zayde Antrim analyzes the interaction between land and texts in medieval Arab works. She maintains, "the intertextual and interactive nature of the discourse of place can also be thought of as "citational," in the sense that earlier works were often used as templates for … later works, enhancing the legibility of the cities they described to an audience for whom such earlier descriptions might have the ring of the familiar and the authoritative" (70). Similarly, I argue that the integration of Ibn Fadlan's travel text in the works of the aforementioned travelers/ geographers emphasizes the persistence and intertextuality of the metaphor of land that becomes a "familiar" and "authoritative" metaphor to live by. This integrative process illuminates the active intertwining of the disciplines of travel and cartography, alluded to earlier. The study of Ibn Fadlan's Risala remained inextricably bound up with Yāqūt's text until the discovery of the Mashhad manuscript in the city of Mashhad in Iran in 1923 138 For more on Amin Razi, see H.M. Smeyser, "Ibn Fadlan's Account of the Rus with Some Commentary and Some Allusions to Beowulf" where he reproduces his text and suggests that he might have been using an older manuscript, but the problem is that he is a "rationalizer." It is hard to know where the text ends and where his rationalizing begins, pp. 95-99. Also, see M. Canard, "Introduction" in La Relation du Voyage d'Ibn Fadlân Chez les Bulgares de la Volga, p. 43. 162 by Ahmed Zeki Validi Togan (1890-1970).139 The discovered manuscript dates from the eleventh century and contains a number of travel works, "including the two epistles of Abu Dulaf Mis‘ar ibn al-Muhalhil, the first half of the Kitāb al-buldān [the Book of Countries] of Ibn al-Faqīh, and an account of Ibn Fadlān's journey to Bulghār (al-Dahhan 47; Lunde and Stone, "Introduction" loc 555). Togan's discovery was a real breakthrough in the study of Ibn Fadlan. As Stone remarks, the Mashhad manuscript is "very similar, but not identical, to that preserved by Yāqūt. Some small differences in wording may be the result of editorial interventions by Yāqūt, but others are not so readily explained" ("Introduction" loc 555). In the same vein, al-Dahhan notes Yāqūt's heavy editing hand and critique of the Risala in some parts (43). Unfortunately, the Mashhad text is incomplete; "it breaks off abruptly in the middle of a passage describing the Khazar khāqānate" (al-Dahhan 48; Lunde and Stone, "Introduction" loc 555). Yāqūt made no use of the portion of the Risala that contains Ibn Fadlān's return journey, which eventually vanished. Most probably, "both the Mashhad manuscript and the text used by Yāqūt present abbreviated versions of a longer original" (Lunde and Stone, "Introduction" loc 555). The Risala was published in Arabic twice, first by Togan who accompanied his German translation with a photocopy of the Mashhad manuscript and second in 1959 by Sami al-Dahhan, who thoroughly edited it (al-Dahhan 50). It was translated into several languages, such as Russian, French and English (44). Later, the Risala was turned into a For more on Togan and his discovery of the manuscript, see Lunde and Stone, "Introduction" in Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness (loc 555) and al-Dahhan, "Introduction" in Riaslat Ibn Fadlan on the status of the text and its recovery and discovery, pp. 47-48. See the same source for a chronology of the different orientalists who studied the epistle, pp. 44-49. 139 163 novel, a movie, and a Syrian television series.140 Structure, Audience, and Itinerary Ibn Fadlan's style is unique in part because "his sentences flow smoothly" and without "affectation" (al-Dahhan 28). He structures his Risala like a "story whose events cohere" and uses "dialogue" (28). The narrative movement from unmediated reporting, to passive voice, to first-person narration, and active voice underscores a renegotiation of his relationship to and gradual familiarity with the peoples and cultures he encounters. These textual shifts as he journeys north reflect an attempt, in my view, to bridge the gap between the self and the other, in ways comparable to Mandeville's. Remarkably, Ibn Fadlan's narrative structure does not depend on citing former written sources (Lunde and Stone, "Introduction" loc 428). True, he was writing at a juncture when the traditions of rihla and al-masālik w-al-mamālik were taking shape, yet he still could have drawn upon previous works, such Ibn Khurdādibih's mid-ninthcentury al-masālik book. That Ibn Fadlan chooses not to do so is, I propose, a conscious act that can be ascribed to the serious nature of his mission. Hence, he employs Qur'anic diction and metaphors in addition to one of the prophet's sayings (al-Dahhan 29). This narrative strategy is instrumental in describing unfamiliar customs in familiar terms in accordance with Padgen's notion of attachment that travelers use frequently on their travels. It is conducive to Ibn Fadlan's adoption of certain Qur'anic concepts, such as 140 Ibn Fadlan's account inspired Michael Crichton to write his first novel Eaters of the Dead (1976), in which he extends Ibn Fadlan's journey to Scandinavia where the latter "witnessed Grendel's attack on the hall of Rothgar as recounted in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf" (Lunde and Stone, "Introduction" loc 521). The 1999 American movie The 13th Warrior is based on the novel. In Arab culture, the Risala was used as a response to the 2005 Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in Denmark when it was turned into the Syrian television series Saqf al-Alam ("Roof of The World") in 2007. 164 upholding diversity within and without dar al-Islam (Muslim lands) as a source of takamul (complementarity) (al-Kilani 34-35). Based on this notion, he rejects the climatic theory that ascribes particular traits to each race depending on the climate they enjoy. Notably, Ibn Fadlan's religious consciousness, coupled with the role assigned to him in supervising the fuqahā' (jurists), contributed to the misconception many scholars held about his role as a faqῑh (jurist) (al-Muwafi 241). Ibn Fadlan was an administrative employee in the royal court and not a faqῑh (246). None of the authors who incorporate the Risala mentions any theological writings by him. Also praised is Ibn Fadlan's "vive curiosité," "faculté d'observation étonnante," and that "le contenue concret de son exposé est considérable et donne l'impression d'avoir été puisse dans la réalité" (Canard, "Introduction" 48). The accuracy of his observations of the manners and customs of the various tribes, noted by R. P. Blake and R.N. Frye, underscores the autoptic principle he rigorously applies (Smeyser 94). Both medieval Arab travel narratives and maps emphasize the principle of ‘iyān - a term congruent to "autopsia" among the ancient Greeks. Touati quotes Marcel Detienne on the definition of "autopsia" maintaining that it refers to "a witness who is all eyes" (9). As such, ‘iyān relies on the experiential knowledge of the traveler, a feature somehow absent in medieval Western texts, but present in early modern European texts like Ralegh's The Discoverie. The principle resonates with Lakoff and Johnson's view that "no metaphor can ever he comprehended … independently of its experiential basis" (20). Ibn Fadlan is, therefore, "careful to separate what he has seen from what he has heard," as J.E. 165 Montgomery remarks in "Travelling Autopsises" (12).141‘Iyān also renders the Risala realistic and reliable, especially given Ibn Fadlan's aversion to blending fact and fiction. The desire to avoid blending fact and fiction is crucial given Travis Zadeh's remark in Mapping Frontiers of Ibn Fadlan's "proximity to centers of power [in Baghdad that] suggests not only a caliphal audience, but also larger networks connecting the ruling elite, the bureaucratic interests of the secretariat, and the social circles of littérateurs" (182). Yāqūt's testimony that he saw circulating copies of the Risala reveals the kind of reception the text enjoyed. It must have satisfied the curiosity of the lettered Muslim world desirous of an eyewitness account of different peoples (Canard, "Introduction" 34). Ibn Fadlan's ekphrastic attention to detail and use of the empirical tone while reporting his experiences guarantee his re-entry into the orbit of the Abbasid dominion upon return, which anticipates an account of facts rather than marvels. Consequently, his audience shapes his narrative as much as Mandeville's audience does. After leaving Baghdad, "the City of Peace … on Friday, 11 Safar 309/21 June 921," as Ibn Fadlan maintains, the embassy reaches the city of Bulghar on the twelfth of muharram 310 AD (May 12, 922 AD) (Lunde and Stone, "Introduction" loc 621).142 Baghdad was the hub of tenth- and eleventh-century Muslim civilization, "only rivalled Montgomery further remarks that "Ibn Fadlān's Travel Account is situated exactly at the midpoint of a two-century-long process in Islamic intellectual development which witnessed the articulation of a theory of iyān which culminated in the empiricism of Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī," p. 19. 141 142 In medieval times, city names were characterized by multiplicity: "Most cities were assigned more than one name, and the more names a city could claim, it seems, the better" (Antrim 35). For the origin of Baghdad as a name and why the Arabs switched to the City of Peace at times see the same source, p. 35. See also Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, chapter 6 "The Countryside," pp. 98-108, and chapter 7 "The Life of Cities," pp. 109-130, for a background on Islamic cities. 166 in wealth and size by Cordoba, the capital of Muslim Spain" (loc 224).143 It was common in the works of many geographers to present Baghdad as the omphalos of the world.144 Underscoring the merits of a particular city in medieval Arab travel texts and maps is the counterpart of the "omphalos syndrome" typical of medieval Western travel texts and maps that I point out in relation to Jerusalem in The Travels (Harley, "Maps, Knowledge and Power" 290). The Abbasid Translation Movement, which saw the translation of the many Greek books available throughout the Eastern Byzantine Empire and the Near East into Arabic from the middle of the eighth century to the end of the tenth, consolidated Baghdad's centrality.145 A case in point is Sallām al-Turjumān, the envoy of al-Wathiq to the land of Gog and Magog, who was adept in thirty languages.146 Throughout this arduous Eurasian journey, Ibn Fadlan's embassy crosses present day Iran, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tataristan, Bashkoritan, Azerbaijan, Russia, Ukraine, and most likely Scandinavia (Hermes 82). The caravan follows the old Khurāsān road that takes them to Rayy and Nῑshāpūr before they cross the river Oxus to Bukhārā - the famous Silk Road city. They continue on their way to Khawarazm and Jurjānīya where 143 For more on Ibn Fadlan's culture, see al-Dahhan "Introduction" (18-22). Ibn Khurdādibih's Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik generally maintains Baghdad as "a central hub from which long distance itineraries originate" (Antrim 102). 144 See the seminal study by Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: the Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ʻAbbāsid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th Centuries) for a thorough background on the translation movement. Of the diversity of Baghdad, Gutas says, "Away from Byzantine influence in Damascus, there developed a new multicultural society in Baghdad based on the completely different demographic mix of population of ‘Iraq," pp. 19; 17-20. See also Nizar Hermes, The [European] Other on the role of the translation movement, p. 13. 145 Al-Turjumān means the translator, from tarjama or translation. For a delightful account of his journey and the crossover between travel and translation, see Travis Zadeh, Mapping Frontiers. 146 167 they spend three months awaiting the spring thaw147. Later, they ride through Kazakhstan and come across the seminomadic Turkic tribes known as the Ghuzz (Oguz) Turks and a Pečeneg camp, probably near the Ural River. Soon afterwards, they reach the lands of the Bāshghird. A month later, the party finally arrives at their destination, the lands of the Bulghārs (Lunde and Stone, "Introduction" loc 307-345).148 The round trip takes twentyeight months in total including a six months' stay in various places (al-Muwafi 244). The Metaphor of Land in Medieval Arab Thought This section focuses on the interweaving frameworks that inform the metaphor of land as the dominant manner of ‘world making'. They range from pre-Islamic and Qur'anic traditions to the Routes and Realms tradition, the rihla, and Arabic poetry. Together they produce the hegemonic and literal discourse characteristic of land. To the medieval Arabs, land constitutes a strong attachment and a source of identity. A brief survey of land, its literal and symbolic value, and the increasing variety of meaning it accumulates through these traditions, is crucial to understanding the complex land-bound view of the Risala. The abundance of desert in the Arab environment fosters its attachment to the metaphor of land long before the advent of Islam. Put differently, the metaphor is founded on geographic conventions and experience. Similar to the attachment to water in The Travels, here the attachment to land demonstrates the way the conceptual systems of 147 The Khwārazmians were great merchants and travellers; Ibn Hawqal says they journeyed as far as the lands of Gog and Magog - that is, well into subarctic regions -in their search for fine furs" (Lunde and Stone, "Introduction" loc 321. For more details on the itinerary, see al-Dahhan "Introduction" pp. 25-28 and Hermes, The [European] Other, pp. 82-84. 148 168 cultures depend on their physical environments (Lakoff and Johnson 147). In pre-Islamic culture, which lasts until the 630s, land was significant for some ancient civilizations who suffered from the dearth of water resources in arid areas (Hmeida 21-25; A. Hourani 910).149 In the Arabian Peninsula, lived the "settled cultivators" and the "nomads" (A. Hourani 10). The former was attached to the land through cultivation, while the latter through the scarcity of water. Overland trade in the desert bound the Arabs further to land. The power of tribal leaders in the Arabian Peninsula, A. Hourani asserts, was "exercised from oases, where they had close links with merchants who directed trade through the territory controlled by the tribe" (11). The pre-Islamic seasonal trading journey of the famous Qoraysh tribe rihlat al-shitaa' wa al-saif (the journey of summer and winter) showcases this pattern for trade.150 According to tradition, the advent of Islam in the 630s consolidates the preIslamic bond to land. It emphasizes the physical environment (desert) and the conceptual metaphor of land the Arabs hold through the homiletic force of the Qur'an. Repeated in the Qur'an is the injunction to contemplate the creation of the heavens and the earth. Verse 67:15, for instance, enjoins people to roam al-ard (land) enjoying God's bounty. The specific association between overland travel and knowledge acquisition is apparent in numerous verses that exhort readers to ‘travel on the earth and see' both how the end Hmeida starts his anthology on Arab geographers with a history of travel in ancient civilizations, to show that the medieval Arabs, many belonging to these civilizations, continued a longstanding traveling tradition. Likewise, Albert Hourani starts his history of the Arabs people with ancient civilizations. 149 According to tradition, Qoraysh was one of the prominent merchant families in the Arabian Peninsula out of which Prophet Muhammed is born. Their journey is documented in an eponymous Qur'anic chapter. 150 169 comes to the unjust and ‘how He originated creation' (Euben 35)151. In the Pilgrimage chapter, verse 47 asks, "Have they not traveled in the land so that they may have hearts wherewith to understand, or ears wherewith to hear?" thus stressing the use of experiential knowledge when traveling.152 The various Qur'anic patterns of interaction with the land point out the physical environment we interact with, which forms our concepts (Lakoff and Johnson 147). These patterns nuanced the Arabs' allegiance to land as a source of identity, and added to its symbolic and literal value. The land-bound view in the Qura'nic discourse orients the perspective of Arab travelers and cartographers towards lands and peoples, rather than waters. The ratio of water to land mentioned in the Qur'anic verses corresponds to its ratio in reality. Stories shared with the Bible like Noah's Ark, Moses' crossing of the Red Sea, and Jonah's story with the whale contain water. In addition, the Qur'an mentions the rivers of Paradise around forty-six times, yet they never show on medieval Arabic maps because of the absence of the concept of their re-emergence in the earth, which contrasts with the biblical tradition.153 Even though rivers of Paradise are occasionally part of Islamic art and architecture, such as in the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra Palace in Granada, their incorporation in Islamic culture does not amount to a water bound representation of the world. They belong to the afterlife rather than life. Nevertheless, land gains 151 29:20. See the following verses on this issue, 3:137; 6:11; 12:109; 16:36; 29:20; 30:9; 30:42 and The hadith tradition (Prophet Mohamed's sayings) also stresses the association between travel and knowledge as in "Seek knowledge even though it be in China." The hadith specifies China, which was considered a faraway place during the Prophet's time. 152 See Blair and Bloom, "Introduction" in Rivers of Paradise: Water in Islamic Art and Culture, pp. 3-20. Also, see Hillenbrand's "Gardens beneath which Rivers Flow" in the same source for the religious context of water in Islamic culture, pp. 27-58. 153 170 prominence because of the recurrent injunction to travel and explore mainly via overland routes. In Ahsan al-Takāsim (The Best of Divisions), al- Muqaddasi says, "it is a must to point all Muslims' attention to God's words" and he follows that with a Qura'nic verse that urges people to "roam around the earth" in order "to see," stressing that "in what We [God] have mentioned [there is] a lesson for those who consider and advantages for those who travel" (al-Kilany 33).154 Ibn Fadlan's desire to "[tell] of all he saw in the lands" he passes through is then in line with the Qur'anic injunction to travel, see, and know. The religious discourse considerably promoted the Arabs' sense of land and knowledge of their position in relation to the cosmos, which becomes clear with the expansion of Islam. In the aftermath of the "intensification of encounters between peoples during the expansion of Muslim rule in the seventh and eighth centuries, the scholarly classes of the Umayyad and early Abbasid Caliphates developed competing notions of how to measure and divide the world" not to mention "the administrative requirements of controlling the vast territories claimed by the Abbasids" (Antrim 88-89). In view of this intensification, land encompassed more than travel and knowledge. It fulfilled expansion and the necessity of establishing an advanced system of postal services to link the various lands and kingdoms. The significance of land then develops from a sense of identity or belonging to one of hegemony and power. The fadai'l literature brings into focus the sense of attachment to land and the power attributed to the place, as it becomes representative of the centre of the world. As Antrim puts it, "no matter how peripatetic the social group … Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Shams al-Dīn al-Muqaddasi or al-Muqaddasi (c. 945/946-991) was a medieval Arab geographer, author of Aḥsan al-taqāsim fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm (The Best Divisions in the Knowledge of the Regions). 154 171 land was not considered an undifferentiated mass in the early Islamic world" (8).155 Antrim's argument of the Arabs' belonging to land, as shown in their corpus, substantiates my expanded argument of the medieval Arab conception of the metaphor of land as a source of knowledge that structures and dominates the world. Consequently, the fascination with cities and land borders that I note has always been part of the Arab way of ‘world making'. The fact that land units and mountains, rather than waterways, constitute boundaries is obvious in travelers/cartographers' works, such as Leo's Description. In Boundaries and Frontiers in Medieval Muslim Geography, R.W. Brauer notes that for cartographers boundaries were "conceived in terms of a network of lines of communication between cities" (5, 13).156 We see this in Ibn Fadlan's account where he moves from one center of political power to another, usually denoted by reference to a city. This does not come as a surprise when considering the logical connection between the rise of an Islamic empire and the ensuing "emergence of a chain of great cities running from one end of the world of Islam to the other" (A. Hourani 110).157 Given the Arabs' land-based perspective and overland journeys, most cities, "lay inland, not on the coast; [since] the Muslim hold over the coast of the Mediterranean was precarious, and ports were liable to attack by enemies from the sea" (110).158 The 155 See the same source for more details on the significance of land for early Muslims, p. 8. 156 He quotes A. Hourani's insightful remark that "Before the modern age frontiers were not clearly or precisely delimited . . . one should rather think of the power of a dynasty as radiating from a number of urban centers with a force that tended to grow weaker with distance. . .," p. 13. For more details, see in particular chapter 6 "The Land and its Uses," pp. 98-108 and chapter 7 "The life of the City," pp. 109-130. 157 The focus on cities in Arab culture predates European culture, where cities flourish as late as the thirteenth century. In the eleventh century, the Crusades began to stimulate the revival of commerce, which helped in the ensuing revival of European cities. For more European cities, see "Cities" in Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800, pp. 591-693, and for 158 172 growing chain of cities gave way to their representation in the medieval Arab corpus in the two notable categories: a) fada'il ("merits") treatises that praise a city, and b) topographical histories, which "represent cities through historical reports, as well as ParaBiblical and legendary material" (Antrim 33).159 Both categories started in the eighth century and took shape as Ibn Fadlan was writing his account. He praises, for example, the diverse flora and fauna he sees in the lands of the Bulghars, and describes Gog and Magog when he examines a huge skeleton assumed to belong to the apocalyptic race. The metaphor of land, foregrounded by the Qur'anic discourse, coupled with the cultivation of knowledge and expansion in the seventh and eighth centuries, paves the way for land as a reality and as a tradition. Soon enough, the tradition leads to "the beginning of intensive written production in the Islamic world and the stage at which the representation of land in texts acquires the critical mass necessary to be seen as a discourse" in the ninth century (Antrim 5). Abu Zayd Ahmad b. Sahl al- Balkhi (d. 322/934), the pioneer of the ‘Balkhi School', developed Ibn Khurdādibih's al-masālik wal-mamālik tradition. His world atlas and maps are no longer extant, but are believed to have been reproduced and revised in the works of three tenth-century geographers: alIstakhri, Ibn Hawqal, and al- Muqaddasi.160 Interest in roads and regions is prominent in the works of other ninth-century geographers, such as al-Ya‘qubi, as well as in the the nexus between cities and economy, see Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce AD 300 - 900. For more on al-tareekh al-fada'eli, or "merit history" of cities, see Shamsuddine al-Din alKilany's Surat Uruba ‘inda al- ‘Arab fi al- ‘asr al-wasit, pp. 33-34. 159 160 In his seminal work La géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu'au milieu du 11e siècle, André Miquel traces the genealogy of Arabic geographical writing that culminates in what he terms the "al-masālik w-al-mamālik" genre, produced between the ninth to the eleventh centuries that resulted in "a veritable human geography" of the Islamic world. See Miquel, pp. 1:28-33, 239-241, 253-257, 35-112, and pp. 267-330. 173 subsequent works of the twelfth-century al-Bakri and al-Idrissi.161As mentioned, some of the geographers who shape the discourse of land, such as al-Istakhri and al-Bakri incorporate sections of Ibn Fadlan's Risala, a point that validates the significance of Ibn Fadlan's text in shaping the metaphor of land and the overland rihla. The Balkhi School maintains the pre-Islamic tradition of inscribing land space in Arabic poetry. As Zadeh suggests, "One of the basic semiotic structures of the geography involves stringing together lines of poetry in order to accentuate the various routes of the world" as seen in Ibn Khurdādibih's al-masālik w-al-mamālik where he cites the poetry of Abu Nawas, Imru' al-Kays, and Hussayn b.al-dahhak on places and towns (32).162 The connection between land and language lasts for a long time. We find it in the lexicon of Yāqūt that incorporates Ibn Fadlan's account and in al-Zabidῑ's eighteenth-century Tāj al‘arūs, a linguistic lexicon (Hmeida 40). This link points to the incorporation of the metaphor of land into the physical and literary fabric of Arab power structures. Characteristic of this tradition is the adoption of Arab geographers and travelers of a discursive strategy that consists of sketching space in the form of itineraries (Touati 174). A representative example is the eleventh-century rectangular Islamic world map in The Book of Curiosities that displays the anonymous cartographer's depiction of a network of itineraries. They "seamlessly portray the Muslim and non-Muslim lands arrayed around, and within, the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea ... [which] belies For the difference between al-Balkhi school, eastern cartographers, and Andalusian cartographers, such as al-Bakri and al-Idrisi, see al-Kilany, pp. 407-418, and Hussein Mu'nis' Tarikh aljughrafiya wa-l-jughrafiyyin fi-l-Andalus. One of the main differences is that the Andalusians were cartographers, travelers and historians who managed to employ the Greco-Roman and the Indo-Persian tradition of mapmaking, but without slavishly following it and becoming restricted by its theories. 161 162 33. For more on the integration of poetry in geographic works, see Zadeh's Mapping Frontiers, p. 174 the supposed exclusion of the non-Muslim world from the gaze of the ‘Balkhi school' of geographers" (Antrim 117).163 In addition, Arab cartographers employ "stylised linework and extreme abstraction of geographic forms" for what seems to be mnemonic purposes (Edson and Savage-Smith 75).164 Rather than the pictorial expression of the world apparent on medieval Western maps that depict monstrous races, Arab maps depict the world in geometric figures to render the copyist's task easier when copying maps. A case in point is al-Kashgari's map that features lands in semicircles, like the land of Gog and Magog, and rectangle-like lands like the Hijaz. Moreover, al-Balkhi renounces Ptolemy's seven climates distributed across the latitude. Instead, he divides Dar al-Islam into twenty-four parts, a number that alMuqaddasi adjusts to fourteen, thus aligning the climates with the lands of Islam. AlBalkhi also uses the term climates to mean regions and he does without the longitudes and latitudes (al-Kilany 25, 284-285). Employing the term climates to mean regions accentuates the Arabs' attention to land space, a feature apparent in the titles of their geographical manuscripts, namely Kitāb al-masālik w-al-mamālik (Routes and Realms), Surat al-ard (Picture of the Earth) and Suwar al-aqālim (Pictures of the Climes).165 The integration of a series of regional maps into the written text sets the Balkhi School apart from the medieval Western tradition, where maps mostly stand apart from 163 In "The Maps are the Message," Karen Pinto also notes that most of the maps "occur in the context of geo- graphical treatises devoted to an explication of the world in general and the lands of the Muslim world in particular" (159). For the arrangement of material and areas, see the same source (159). The possibly mnemonic function of medieval Islamic maps was suggested by scholars, such as Ahmet Karamustapha in "Introduction to Islamic Maps." Savage-Smith reiterates the argument in "Memory and Maps" maintaining that the maps' purpose was "an aid to memory and a means of imposing order on new and complex material and not as a visual model of physical reality" (109). 164 For the term geography, the beginnings of its use by the Arabs, and the earlier terms used see Hmeida, A‘lam, pp. 37-38. 165 175 texts.166 The maps "add an important visual element to the [textual] representation of land in the discourse of place" in Arabic texts (Antrim 108). This is particularly significant, I propose, since most maps mainly focus on the territorial makeup of regions and foreground the medieval Arab cultural construction of knowledge of the world in terms of the metaphor of land that differs remarkably from the medieval mappae mundi discussed previously. Harley's perceptive comment that "In modern times the greater the administrative complexity of the state - and the more pervasive its territorial and social ambitions - then the greater its appetite for maps" applies retrospectively to medieval Arab culture ("Maps, Knowledge, and Power" 280). The appetite for territorial maps that the Balkhi School exhibits through systematic inclusion of the Routes and Realms tradition speaks to the metaphor of land as symptomatic of territorial expansion. The two maps that clarify the outlined characteristics of al-masālik w-al-mamālik tradition are al-Istakhri and al-Kashgari's maps. The ratio of land to water on both indicates the configuration of space in terms of land. Unlike medieval Western maps, water does not cut through land space. Al-Istakhri's tenth-century map, oriented toward the south at the top in keeping with the Islamic cartographic tradition, features more land space than water space (see Figure 8).167 He represents the world as a circle surrounded by the Encompassing Sea, with the two main bodies of water, the Mediterranean and the Based on the visual aspect Karen Pinto coins the acronyms KMMS "to refer to the classical Islamic illustrated geographical manuscript tradition. KMMS denotes Kitāb al-masālik w-al-mamālik manuscripts that contain maps, as opposed to those that do not. The terminal ‘S' in the acronym stands for Surat (‘picture' in Arabic) and indicates that these manuscripts are accompanied by carto-graphics" ("The maps are the message" 173). She rejects the "Balkhi school" sobriquet and coins instead the phrase "KMMS mapping tradition"; for an explanation, see also Pinto's, "Ways of Seeing," pp. 11-16. 166 The question of the southern orientation of Islamic maps has not been resolved yet, as Karamustafa claims in "Introduction to Islamic Maps" (9). 167 176 Figure 8. Al-Istakhri Map, Tenth Century Indian, reaching in from the east and the west toward the center, where a narrow land barrier - called barzakh in the Qur'an - disconnects them.168 His map consists of a set of geometric configurations. Rivers are parallel lines; towns are either squares or circles. Islands are perfect circles in the Mediterranean. The dialogic between maps and texts of the Balkhi School could be gleaned from al-Istakhri's words: "our plan is to describe, and to delineate on maps the various seas [and lands] affixing the name of each so that it may be known in the maps" (Tibbetts 112). The word barzakh has both a geographical and a spiritual meaning. Etymologically, it means a barrier between two things. In the Qur'an, it refers to the strip of land that separates two bodies of water as in 55: 19, 20. It also refers to the state between life and death as in 23: 100. 168 177 The works by al-Istakhri and Ibn Hawqal include twenty regional maps and commentaries and only three focus on seas. Al- Muqaddasi even goes as far as eliminating the sea (Antrim 110-111).169 Among the three, Ibn Hawqal's work contains the longest commentaries on sea maps. However, his approach to them resembles his approach to terrestrial regions (176). Together with this, al- Muqaddasi's elimination of water space is suggestive of "whether bodies of water were considered regions in the same sense as the other plots of land described and mapped in the geographies" (176). Al-Kashgari's eleventh-century map emphasizes land and follows the same stylized, geometric configuration typical of medieval Arabic maps (see Figure 9). It features straight lines, circles, and rectangles. Yet, it warrants special consideration since it uses geography to situate the Turkic languages.170 Interest in listing the various languages and races, such as al-saqāliba and al-rūs reflects the Arabs' interest in lands and peoples. The map is a visual manifestation of Ibn Fadlan's attention to the language of Khwarazm and his attempt at translating foreign words, such as Pekend for bread (loc 684, 835).171 It persists in Leo's The Description too. The Arabs' fascination with languages predates Islam and is later consolidated in Qur'an 49:13, which promotes diversity, and enjoins man to know the different peoples and tribes. The rihla is the other twin tradition to al-masālik w-al-mamālik that informs the 169 See Antrim for the difference between al-Muqaddasi's maps and the others (178, 119). 170 The map is part of al-Kashgari's Diwan Lughat al-Turk (Compendium of Turkic Dialect). For more details on al-masālik w-al-mamālik, see Antrim's Routes and Realms, pp. 108-125; Gerald Tibbetts' "The Balkhi School"; Hopkins' "Geographical and Navigational Literature"; El:Djugràfiyâ. Some scholars use other names to describe the intellectual relationship between al-Istakhri, Ibn Hawnal, and al- Muqaddasi and their contribution to geographical thought, such as the "classical" school (I. I. Kratchkovsky), the "al-masālik w-al-mamālik" genre (André Miquel), or the "Atlas of Islam" school (Konrad Miller). See also el- Khiarita (Antrim 174). See Hmeida, pp. 67-95; al-Kilany, pp. 281-320, and Zaki Mahmoud, al-Rahala al-Muslimun fi-l-‘Usur al-Wusta (Muslim Travelers in the Middle Ages). 171 178 Figure 9. Al-Kashgari Map, Eleventh Century metaphor of land. According to al-Muwafi, the discipline that made most use of the rihla is geography. The link between the two was not intentional. They were actually mutually exclusive (89-90).172 The intricate overlap between the two traditions led to the dual role of traveler and cartographer. The main incentives for the rihla are travel in search of knowledge or talab al-‘ilm, pilgrimage to Mecca, travels of adventure and exploration, mercantile travel, and migration and emigration. There is also journeying to, with or for For further discussion of the intertwining between the two disciplines, see Hmeida, p. 57 and al-Kilany, p. 284 in A'lam al-Jughrafiyyin al-A'rab and Surat Uruba respectively. 172 179 the sake of patrons, and establishing postal services that in turn gives rise to descriptive geography, and diplomatic envoys, such as Ibn Fadlan's mission (Toorah 53; Hmeida 5051).173 In A. Hourani's words, "From the beginning of Islamic history … men moved in search of learning, in order to spread the tradition of what the Prophet had done and said from those who had received it by line of transmission from his Companions. In course of time, the purpose of travel expanded" (128-129). The Prophetic tradition urges people to emulate the Prophet's travels, that range from his nocturnal journey (al-isra w al-mi‘raj) to Jerusalem accompanied by the angel Gabriel where they ascend the heavens to alhijra, the migration from Mecca to Medina, which inaugurates the Islamic calendar according to tradition. These, along with the images of earlier peripatetic prophets in the Qur'an promote the rihla and serve as its model. Traveling for various aims, I contend, enhanced the Arabs' attachment to land and its recurring depiction in travel texts and maps. It has come to signify power and knowledge. Consequently, "the concepts of home and homesickness emerged as topics of interest between the ninth and eleventh-centuries" (Antrim 13).174 An example of this notion of al-hanin ila al-watan or homesickness is apparent in Leo Africanus' text where home is an ultimate destination. It occasionally resurfaces in Ibn Fadlan's account, too, where he compares places and rituals to Baghdad. Among the initiators of the rihla are Sallām al-Turjumān, Ibn Wahb al-Korashi, and Sulaiman al-Sirafi, not to mention Ibn Fadlan's near contemporary al-Ghazzal. There For more background on the rihla, see Roxanne Euben's Journeys to the Other Shore, pp. 3445, Hmeida's A‘lam al-Jughrafiyyin al-‘Arab, pp. 41-56, al-Kilany's Surat Uruba, pp. 57-78, al-Dahhan's "Introduction," pp. 13-17, and Zaki Mohamad Hasan's al-Rahala al-Muslimun, pp. 5-14. Also, see Travis Zadeh's Mapping Frontiers on the relationship between al-masālik and the Abbasid court, p. 34. 173 For examples of anthologies and Arabic literary works that center on land and homesickness, see Antrim's Routes and Realms, p. 150. 174 180 are also pre-Islamic travelers, such as al-Zaheri. These examples, I contend, counter Lunde and Stone's claim that "At the time he wrote, there was no established genre of travel writing in Arabic, so Ibn Fadlan had no model. He seems simply to have jotted down his impressions as they occurred to him, and his book is all the better for it … and most unusually in an Arabic work, never refers to written sources" (loc 428). Travel writing had been around before Ibn Fadlan's time, but it took full shape, as Hmeida remarks, in the twelfth century (85). Ibn Jubayr, Ibn Battuta, and Leo Africanus, among many other travelers, give the rihla its full contour. Rather than the absence of the rihla as a genre to draw upon, Ibn Fadlan might have refrained consciously from citing former sources to offer a precise account of his diplomatic mission devoid of digressions. The fourteenth century saw the culmination of the rihla as a genre, especially in the aftermath of the "intensification and localization of participation in the discourse of place as well as a systematization of the transmission of manuscripts" (Antrim 5). The travels of Ibn Jubayr, Ibn Battuta, al-‘Abdari, and al-‘Aiashi are illustrative examples.175 Their accounts are anchored in land as evidenced by the preference for overland routes in the medieval and early modern era. The rihla reproduces many of the tropes characteristic of geography, especially al-masālik w-al-mamālik tradition, in the form of ‘iyān (autopsia) that entails first-hand knowledge of the travelers' surroundings, a dislike for blending fact and fiction, and a land-based mental organization of the world. That Ibn Fadlan's account finds its way into Yāqūt al- Hamawi's Mu‘jam al-Buldān is no surprise given the dissemination of such a rich legacy, which becomes part of the Arab collective consciousness the same way the On the development of the rihla and its subsequent independence as a genre, see Abdurraziq Al-Muwafi's Al-Rihla fi-l-Adab al-‘Arabi (The Journey in Arabic Literature), especially pp. 5-78. 175 181 water-bound legacy becomes part of the European collective memory. Even though Ibn Fadlan is writing in the tenth century, before the rihla takes full shape, it is safe to claim that he is familiar with the aforementioned traditions, such as Ibn Khurdādibih's book on Routes and Realms. Significantly, he was a contemporary of alBalkhi, who founded the Balkhi School of terrestrial mapping in Ibn Fadlan's native city, Baghdad. He also recounts his meeting with al-Jayhani, a prominent geographer and author of the lost manuscript al-masālik w-al-mamālik, in Bukhara.176 Notably, he influenced al-masālik w-al-mamālik and the rihla traditions through the unattributed inclusion of his Risala by followers of the Balkhi School. An illustrative example is Ibn Fadlan's near contemporary, Ibn Hawqal, who writes in his 977 work Sūrat al-ard (The Picture of the earth), almost half a century after the Risala: What prompted me to compose [the treatise]…is that in my youth I was always passionate about reading books of itineraries (kutub al masālik), aspiring to the method of differentiating among realms (mamālik) in writings and in reality and distinguishing them one from the other in terms of religious schools of thought and rules sof conduct and determining their impact on aspirations, customs, fields of learning, sciences, particularities, and generalities…. (my trans.;11) Ibn Hawqal's incentive to compose his work largely echoes Ibn Fadlan's incentive to "[tell] of all he saw in the lands of the Turks, the Khazars, the Rūs, the Saqāliba, the Bāshghirds and others, their various customs, news of their kings and their current status" (loc 603). Moreover, Ibn Hawqal adopts Ibn Fadlan's method of "differentiating among realms … in terms of lifestyles and characteristics." He follows Ibn Fadlan's example of paying attention to particularities and generalities. In the introduction to the English translation of the text, Lunde and Stone lament Ibn Fadlan's silence regarding al-Jayhani's lost manuscript (loc 314). However, al-Muwafi asserts that al-Jihani wrote his geographic work after Ibn Fadlan's return journey, which I find a more logical proposition given Ibn Fadlan's attention to details (242). 176 182 A contemporary of two rich traditions, Ibn Fadlan's account is midway between geography and rihla, as al-Dahhan and Miquel suggest (28; Miquel 226). For Miquel, Ibn Fadlan stands apart from previous travelers in that he establishes the basic relationship between place and time, a quality characteristic of the later rihlas of Ibn Jubayr and Ibn Battuta. His Risala takes after geography in paying attention to place after arranging it according to temporal measurements particular to history (226). In this respect, Ibn Fadlan sets the stage for the rihla, which is grafted on a land-bound cartographic system of representation. It is worthwhile at this point to make a clear distinction between the actualities of sea travel on the one hand, and the widespread topos of Arabs as land lovers. My argument so far for a land-bound representation of the world whether in text or image does not mean that the Arabs never took to the sea. In Arab Seafaring, George Hourani contends that the Arabs mastered the sea. He maintains, "The coasts of Arabia were in all historical ages in contact by sea with other countries" as shown in the other nations' records of their voyages in Arabian waters (6). More recently, Carole Hillenbrand quotes S. D. Goitein and Lawrence Conrad's assertions that the famous maritime history of Arab seafaring in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean "is reflected in the practical details of the Geniza documents" discovered in Cairo (46). Likewise, Gerald Tibbetts seconds the view that "The Arabs … had been sailing the Indian Ocean before the Islamic era, and once the empire of Islam had become a stable entity, ocean trade was revived and the caliphate acted as a new economic stimulus for long voyages to such places as Africa and China" ("Navigational Literature" 257). The commercial aspect could be one reason for Ibn Hawqal's lengthy commentary on water bodies, in comparison to al-Istakhri and al- 183 Muqaddasi, as mentioned above. Along the same lines, Norman Thrower claims Muslims traveled from "their North African and Middle Eastern homelands to India, Southeast Asia, and China to trade, proselytize, and settle" (280). He cites the Sindbad tradition as having arisen from the Arabs' "epic navigational feats" (280). While I agree in part with Thrower's supposition, I find citing the Sindbad tradition somewhat problematic. Stories like "Sindbad the Sailor" and "Aladdin" were not initially part of the Arabian Nights, but were later additions (Haddawy, "Introduction" xv). Out of the numerous stories that comprise the Arabian Nights, only two take place in water: "Sindbad the Sailor" and "The Story of Jullanar of the Sea." The rest take place on land. This seconds my claim that the water-bound construction of the ecumene tends to be more Western than Arab. It is not the dominant way of ‘world making' in Arab thought despite the indubitable navigational feats. In fact, the Arabs' overland travel accounts outnumber their navigational counterpart despite the existence of prominent navigational accounts, such as Sulayman al-Tajir's ninth-century account of China and India, Akbār al-Sin w-a-l-Hind recounted in Silsilat al-Tawarikh (Chain of Histories). He describes his encounter with a whale and islands inhabited by the naked and the cannibals (19, 25). His account is somewhat comparable to the Mandeville author who encounters naked island-dwellers and canniballike people.177 Remarkably, unlike al-masālik w-al-mamālik texts, no maps accompany these navigational accounts. For more on al-Sirafi's voyage, see the Arabic text Silsilat al-Tawarikh (The Chain of Histories), 1999. Also, see Nizar Hermes' The [European] Other, pp. 25-29, 32-35 and Hmeida's A‘lam alJughrafiyyin, p. 76. 177 184 In "Sea versus Land," Muhsin Yusuf sets out to prove that the Arabs used land and water routes extensively as a means of transportation from 622 to 1517 AD (233).178 He adds that The knowledge of the sailors concerning the seas was better and more accurate than what was reflected by geographers. Some geographers such as al-Mas'ūdī and al- Muqaddasi tell us that the sailors used guide books which provided them with information concerning the shape of the seas, the shape of the coasts, and the location of the islands and ports. The geographers, did not always record this valuable information because they doubted its accuracy. (235-236) True sailors' accounts were not always trustworthy because of the fantastic elements sometimes incorporated; however, I propose that the aforementioned geographers refrained from recording "this valuable information" in part because of the terrestrial mapping of the Balkhi School, which informs their representational thinking and ‘world making'. In addition, Yusuf's interest is commercial. He focuses on the importance of maritime transportation for merchants at a time that coincides with the rise of Ottoman maritime power in the sixteenth century (239). It is worthwhile, in my view, to distinguish between the sea as a means of transportation and commerce on the one hand, and a means of constructing cultural knowledge of the world and its contents in travel accounts and maps. This is why, "in spite of the fact that a great deal of improvement took place in the field of sailing on the high seas, sailing continued to be a dangerous task and many travelers continued to avoid this kind of transportation" (236). The travels of Ibn Battuta and Ibn Jubayr are a case in point. Both travelers exhibit preference for land travel rather than water travel. Rhetorically, some texts and writers find travel by land less dangerous.Their accounts focus chiefly on routes, realms, and peoples, rather than In fact, Hmedia says, "The navigational routes were the main routes that the Arabs took to reach the regions of the Far East" (65-67). 178 185 the water voyage.179 In addition, Arabic poetry displays the leitmotif of al-khawf min-al-bahr (fear of the sea), which is quite common in Classical Arabic literature.180 Hermes cites the voyage of the ninth-century Andalusian poet and diplomat al-Ghazzal to the Vikings as exemplary of fear of the sea (101). The Arab-Sicilian poet Abu al-‘Arab (1113) provides another example: "To the Rum, the sea does belong! / In it, ships sail only riskily/As for the land, it is in Arabian hands!" (314). The poet Ibn Barraq al-Hudha expresses this leitmotif even more powerfully: "Will I escape from sailing the sea?/ Will a humpbacked "ship," in the darkness every evening, rush with us through the dark depths./ Its prow cleaving the water, persevering, on dunes of stinging brine?" (Hillenbrand 47). These literary examples are crucial in the way they set up a contrast in the relationship of both Arab and Western cultures to land and water. Abu al-‘Arab's lines imply that water belongs to the Rum, a term that denotes the Byzantine Empire, whereas land belongs to the Arabs. Ibn Barraq interestingly relies on land-bound images to the dreaded sea voyage. The ship is "hump-backed" like a camel and the waves of "stinging brine" conjure up the image sand dunes. This representational tendency validates my claim that the Arabs are more accustomed to land whereas medieval Westerners are more accustomed to water, where Arab ships sail "riskily" "through the dark depths." Fear of the sea demonstrates that despite the Arab navigational skills and voyages, the metaphor of land takes precedence as it plays a crucial role in foregrounding empirical power. With See Ross Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, pp. 237, 271,309,518-9,590,634 and Ibn Jubayr's Riḥlat Ibn Jubayr, pp. 294-296. 179 Yusuf suggests, "Some historians have claimed that the Arabs were afraid of the sea and therefore did not use it. While this claim may be correct for the Arabs of central Arabia it did not apply to those who lived along the southern and eastern shores of the peninsula" (232). However, the leitmotif of "fear of the sea" was dominant in Arabic literature. 180 186 this brief overview of the frameworks that configure the metaphor and reality of land in Ibn Fadlan's time, I turn to the Risala. On the Road to Almish Ibn Fadlan constructs his knowledge of the world and its inhabitants according to land. He embeds his narrative in the frameworks of al masālik and the rihla. Early on in the Risala, he says that the caravan set out from Baghdad to Nahrawan, then to Daskara (loc 621). The English translation of the Arabic verbs of movement - "set out," "marching at speed," and "continued" - does not do justice to the Arabic. In the original Arabic version the verbs used; rahalna wa serna (we journeyed on foot and walked) emphasize the overland route (73-74, 78-79). In particular, the verb "rahalna" that derives from the same etymological root of the rihla (r-h-l) underscores the tradition Ibn Fadlan follows. The systematic use of verbs indicative of the land journey in the Risala demonstrates that as long as "the metaphorical concept is systematic, the language we use to talk about that aspect of the concept is systematic" (Lakoff and Johnson 8). Ibn Fadlan's metaphorical concept of land determines his systematic land-bound language. Equivalently, when the caravan is about to reach Almish, the English translation goes thus: "When we were a day and a night's journey from the king of the Saqāliba…" while the Arabic uses the word "masira," loosely translated as journey, but indicates a walking journey since it derives from the verb sara - to walk (loc 934; 411). The fast pace that characterizes the onset of the journey continues as long as Ibn Fadlan and his convoy take the overland route. On the road to Transoxiana, he says, "We then continued our journey and reached Sāwa. We stayed there two days and set out for 187 Rayy ...Then we headed for Khuwār al-Rayy and stayed there three days. Next, we made for Simnān and thence to Dāmaghān…" (loc 626). Approaching the land of the Oguzz, he adds, "We continued on our way each night, from midnight until afternoon or midday, moving as fast as we could and over the longest stages possible" (loc 737). Ibn Fadlan's words are suggestive of the progress the caravan achieves on the road. As we shall see, the quick rhythm of the overland route the caravan takes contrasts significantly with the slowness and laboriousness entailed in crossing rivers. Camels figure as the primary means of transportation in the rihla. On several occasions, Ibn Fadlan describes the camels' reaction to the cold weather, or remarks on how they had to halt to allow the animals some rest. In the desert of Amul, he says, "We stayed there for three days to allow the camels to rest before setting out into the desert" (loc 626). Later, in a place called Jīt "A great deal of snow fell, so that the camels were floundering in it up to their knees" (loc 724). The description of the camels is part of Ibn Fadlan's portrayal of the caravan to the land of the Turks, which was, in his words, "extremely well organized" (loc 724). The highly organized caravan is unlike the chaotic river voyages Ibn Fadlan and his convoy will embark upon, where they have less control over the progress and speed of the rihla. Ibn Fadlan's account contrasts remarkably with Mandeville's The Travels in which the narrator embeds his account in waterways right from the beginning, and emphasizes sailing as the primary means of travel to various destinations. Yet if Mandeville's account borders more on the fictional given the shadowy identity of the author, Ohthere of Hålogaland, a Norwegian near-contemporary to Ibn Fadlan did travel to the same area north of Russia. He journeyed there about sixty years earlier, and 188 significantly, his account is similar to Mandeville's, but contrasts with Ibn Fadlan's. A comparison with juxtaposition at this point between Ibn Fadlan and Ohthere will help us discover the two distinct mental perceptions of the world. In the course of a business visit to England, Ohthere, a Viking landowner and seafarer from Hålogaland, relates an account of his travels to King Alfred the Great (871-899) in about 890 AD. His account was preserved when Alfred ordered a group of scholars to produce a series of translations into Old English of ‘books that were most needful for all men to know' (Page 45). One of these books is Paulus Orosius' fifth-century Latin work Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII (Seven Books of History against the Pagans). The early part of the work is a "geographical introduction to the countries of Europe, and into the translated version was inserted Ohthere's description of Scandinavia" (45). The narrative structure is like "a statement based on an interrogation" (45). Ohthere resorts to the question and answer format, typical of Eddic songs and other texts teaching tradition at his time. It contrasts with the smooth flow of Ibn Fadlan's detailed narrative structure that relies on uninterrupted description and interlacing dialogues. Compared to Ibn Fadlan's account, Ohthere's is much shorter and less detailed, but strikingly water-bound. Ohthere, who lives "further north than that of any other Norwegian," undertakes two journeys, one north to the White Sea, and the other south to Denmark (Page 46). He also speaks of Sweoland (central Sweden), the Sami people, the Cwenas, living in Cwena land, to the north of the Swedes, and the Beormas, who live by the White Sea and whose language, he notes, relates to the Sami in northern Norway. Unlike Ibn Fadlan, the water paradigm influences the narrative structure. He describes the journeys through the number of days it takes to sail from one point to the 189 next rather than the stretch of time it takes for the overland rihla. The motivation for his journey is "to explore how much farther north the land stretched, or whether anyone lived to the north of the uninhabited land. So he sailed north along the coast. The whole way the waste land was to starboard and the open sea to port; this went on for three days. By then he was as far north as the whale-hunters reach at their farthest" (Page 46). Besides demarcating the voyage in terms of the days it takes Ohthere to sail, whales seem to demarcate space instead of camels. Prominently, the existence of whales seems to mark the limit of the ecumene to which "whale-hunters reach at their farthest." The account further accentuates the water-bound itinerary as we learn that Then [Ohthere] continued north as far as he could sail in the next three days. Then the land curved eastward (or the sea formed an inlet in the land - he didn't know which). All he knew was that he waited there for a west-north-west wind and then sailed east along the coast as far as he could reach in four days. At that point he had to wait for a wind from due north because the land turned south there (or the sea formed an inlet in the land - he didn't know which). From there he sailed due south along the coast as far as he could reach in five days' sailing. There a great river opened up into the land. So they turned in along it…. (46-47) This excerpt raises a number of issues. First, the author seems at a loss whether land or water takes over. Water appears to shape the land and give it contours with the sea forming an inlet. In addition, sailing does not present a barrier. Rather, water creates the route and shows the way. The leitmotif of fear of the sea earlier noted in Arabic poetry is absent. Like Mandeville, Ohthere registers various bodies of water. He may indeed be anticipating the fjords characteristic of the area. The quick pace in Ohthere's voyage equates with Ibn Fadlan's overland rihla. Interestingly, Ohthere comes close to Mandeville as he, too, implies the encroachment of the sea upon the land. Twice he mentions that either the land turned direction or that "the sea [turned] in on the land," a fact he cannot confirm, yet it creates the impression of a land not only surrounded by 190 water, but of water cutting through it in accordance with the medieval mappae mundi. Ohthere then delineates maritime life and trade: "He made this journey - apart from the desire to explore the country - mostly for the walrus-hunting, since they have most excellent ivory in their tusks … and their skins made excellent ships' cables" (Page 47). The significance of shipping and shipping equipment is evident here as he describes in detail the walrus, lists its benefits, and prides himself on slaying "sixty of these in two days" (47). Sea life is further apparent in his depiction of the Lapps as fishers who pay a tribute to the Permians that "consists in the pelts of wild beasts, in birds' down and whale-bone and in the ships' cables that are made from of the skins of whale and seal" (47). 181Importantly, the water-bound tribute in Ohthere's account contrasts with the land bound gift exchange in Ibn Fadlan's account. The latter mostly consists of expensive fabrics and spices, which underscore Arab trade and the commercial significance of land. To complete the effect, Ohthere mentions maritime interactions between the Cwenas and the Norwegians as he says, "Scattered over the fells are very large fresh-water lakes, and the Cwenas carry their boats over land to the lakes, and from there attack the Norwegians. They have very small, very light boats" (48). In contrast, Ibn Fadlan's account of portage entails hardships and much preparation as will become clear. The account of Ohthere's second voyage to the south to the trading-town Sciringesheal is even briefer than the first. Navigation and the sea voyage are central almost to the exclusion of peoples and lands. Just as Ohthere opens his account with The whale plays a central role in the Anglo-Saxon literary imagination in poems, such as The Whale where it is both the guardian of the sea and symbolic of the deceiving devil. Whalebone was prized as a substitute for elephant ivory. For a thorough discussion of the significance of whales in Western culture, see the following book chapters in The Maritime World of the Anglo-Saxons: Carolin Esser-Miles, ""King of the Children of Pride": Symbolism, Physicality, and the Old English Whale," pp. 275-303, Carol Neuman de Vegvar, "Hronæs ban: Exoticism and Prestige in Anglo-Saxon Material Culture," pp. 323-337, and Ian Riddler, "The Archaeology of the Anglo-Saxon Whale," pp. 337-355. 181 191 sailing and the sea voyage, he closes it in the same way remarking that "South of this place Sciringesheal a great sea opens out into the land" and "a lot of islands" (Page 48). Once more, he offers another description of fjords. The water-land relation here, as elsewhere, denotes that water shapes the land. The aim of juxtaposing Ohthere's account to Ibn Fadlan's is to foreground two different ways of mental mapping of the world. Apart from a cursory discussion of both as travelers to the land of the Vikings in Gwyn Jones's A History of the Vikings and in Zaki Muhammad Hassan's Al-Rahala al-Muslimun (The Muslim Travelers), there is no in-depth comparison of the two accounts. The main point scholars make is "we know of none who preceded Ibn Fadlan in traveling to the area north of Russia except Ohthere the Norwegian" (Hassan 30). The brevity of Ohthere's account and the contrasting mindsets of the travelers could be the reason behind the near absence of a thorough comparison. However, the comparison is seminal. The contrast consolidates the comparison as it conjures up the cultural poetics of knowledge in terms of metaphors of water and land. Both strategies of knowledge construction are complementary ways of ‘world making' that further illuminate my argument. This being said, I turn to Ibn Fadlan's use of attachment in the Risala. Inverted Attachment in the Risala So far, we have seen that the metaphor of land in Arab thought frames Ibn Fadlan's land-bound journey to Almish. This section explores his discursive use of attachment during this journey in relation to two issues: rivers and washing customs. As mentioned above, Ibn Fadlan employs ‘the principle of attachment' to familiarize the 192 foreign through re-creating the common metaphor of land on his travels. However, in a world that contrasts topographically and culturally with his, attachment becomes inverted as it underscores sets of opposites and pinpoints a disorienting upside down world. Importantly, the sense of disorientation leaves Ibn Fadlan with the challenge of adapting the strategy of attachment to negotiate a world of inverted opposites and sustain the landbound legacy grounded in the Qur'an, the masālik tradition, and the rihla in an attempt to constitute a binding medium between both parts of the world. Ibn Fadlan's treatment of rivers and washing rituals are exemplary of how his land-based conceptual system plays a crucial role in defining everyday reality and the process of world re-making. Concerning rivers, they contrast with land units, such as desert, mountains, and cities that the Arab traveler uses to demarcate the landscape in a typical rihla or masālik text. In the Risala, rivers organize the trip despite Ibn Fadlan's effort to render land the organizing principle. Significantly, I argue, rivers are disruptive to the overland traditions of al-rihla and al-masālik. More significant, they disrupt Ibn Fadlan's own narrative. Part of the disruption stems from the way they present a liminal space in the Risala. The liminality entails a threshold or a frontier zone between two worlds, and signals entry into an inverted world. River crossing reorients and reconfigures Ibn Fadlan's gaze as he witnesses different topographical and cultural norms. In "Ibn Fadlan: Crossing Over and the Nature of the Boundary," Hayward-Jensen observes that the text records twenty-three river crossings ("The Postcolonialist"). The longest and most detailed narrations are the crossing of the Jayhun, the Yaghindi, and the Jayikh rivers. The first major river-crossing in the Risala is the Jayhun River at Jurjānīya, which, according to Ibn Fadlan "froze for its entire length and the ice was seventeen 193 spans thick" causing "Horses, mules, donkeys and carts [to slide] over the ice as if on roads, and the ice was solid and did not crack. The river remained like this for three months" (loc 692). Just like Ibn Barraq al-Hudha's comparison of ships to the humpbacked camels and brine to dunes in his poem, Ibn Fadlan uses attachment to compare the frozen river to the more familiar metaphor of roads, but where animals slide. The significance of this strategy is that it demonstrates how Ibn Fadlan overcomes the inverted image of the frozen river with the analogy to roads. It reveals the way his ‘imaginative geography' continues the land-bound rihla on the torok (travel roads) that the caravan had been taking and attempts to re-make a familiar world that the different topography unexpectedly unmakes. Yet, the depiction of the road-like, ice-covered river as "solid" and "not [cracking]" turns rivers into deceptive lands disorienting to the traveler in ways similar to a mirage in the desert because the ice would crack and melt and the road would ultimately collapse. The same strategy of attachment recurs shortly afterwards as Ibn Fadlan continues: "We saw a land which made us think a gate to the cold of hell had opened before us" (loc 696). The phrase displays the Qur'anic narrative structure that punctuates the text. It is frequent in the Qur'an, as in verses 16:29, 39:71, and familiar to Ibn Fadlan who employs it to describe, and thus, domesticate the foreign. In both examples, he seems to be exaggerating the cold in a way that implies the opposite climate in Baghdad and marks his enterance into a liminal space. The two excerpts underscore Ibn Fadlan's use of common cultural tools, such as experiential knowledge and autopsia to describe the phenomena. He experiences the solidity of the frozen river and sees the land with the gate of cold. Curiously, his mental and imaginative mapping of the journey seems to 194 resist the actual mapping dictated by the unfamiliar topography to the extent that he describes the two instances in somewhat oxymoronic language: cold/hell and ice/road. Ibn Fadlan's encounter with the cold and its freezing effect on his appearance and the deceptive topography is further accentuated during his three-month stay in Jurjaniya. There, Ibn Fadlan, "who could not hide his nostalgia for the warmth of the East, has movingly captured the hardships endured by the local inhabitants during this cold weather" (Hermes 83). He recounts a second-hand story of "two men [who] set out with twelve camels to load wood in the forest, but they forgot to take flint and tinder with them. They had to spend the night without a fire and in the morning their camels were dead from the terrible cold" (loc 704). He confirms the story with his experiential knowledge: I saw how the intense cold made itself felt in this country: the roads and markets were so empty that one could wander through most of them without seeing a soul…. Coming from the bathhouse, on returning to the house I looked at my beard. It was a block of ice, which I had to thaw in front of the fire. I slept in a house, inside which was another, inside which was a Turkish felt tent. I was wrapped in clothes and furs, but in spite of that my cheek froze to the pillow. I saw cisterns in that country lagged with sheepskins, so that they would not crack or burst, but it did no good. In truth, I saw the earth split and great crevasses form from the intense cold. I saw a great tree split in two from the same cause. (loc 704) The details in the testimony lend credibility to what he heard, and is a further instance of the principle of ‘iyan or autopsia at work in the text. The core of Ibn Fadlan's description abounds with a series of inverted attachments or images. The empty roads and markets contrast strikingly with their busy counterpart in Baghdad. His frozen beard connotes that the cold is slowly creeping on him too and changing his appearance. Interestingly, though he is accustomed to traveling by land, here what he describes is largely apocalyptic. It is not terra firma. Instead, it is 195 as deceptive as the frozen road-like river in that it splits and great "crevasses form from the intense cold." The land seems engulfing and threatening in Ibn Fadlan's eyes. The familiar metaphor of land is no longer a source of security and power. Rather than offer him temporary respite, it seems to shatter around him, just as the tree splits in two. Given the surrounding novelty, Ibn Fadlan's contact with the inhabitants is limited and his account of these three months is noticeably terse. He focuses on nature and topography rather than people. Linguistic interaction is minimal and is substituted by comments on the harsh cold. The situation undergoes a change later in the rihla where Ibn Fadlan becomes more conversational as he acclimatizes better. His few remarks on the people center on their cold-induced attitude: "In this country, when a man wishes to make a nice gesture to a friend and show his generosity, he says: ‘Come to my house where we can talk, for there is a good fire there'" (loc 692). He adds, "It is the rule among them that beggars do not wait at the door, but come into the house and sit for an hour by the fire to warm up" (loc 692). The Qur'anic framework of complementarity among the different peoples mentioned at the beginning of the chapter structures Ibn Fadlan's description of the inhabitants' customs. The significance of the aforementioned episode is two-fold. First, he refrains from reiterating the dominant cosmographical views entertained about the inhabitants of extreme regions. Some Arab thinkers had endorsed the Greco-Roman notion of the relationship between "an identifiable location on the earth's surface and a celestial body [that] had the capacity to produce physical conditions of heat, cold, humidity, or aridity that imprinted themselves upon its inhabitants, influencing not only their appearance but also their temperament and aptitudes for different pursuits…." 196 (Antrim 94). As such, he avoids the idea of the common barbarity associated with extreme climates that was held by the tenth-century polymaths al-Biruni and al-Mas‘udi, for example.182 Instead of this climatic determinism, Ibn Fadlan applies the Qur'anic framework of takamul (complementarity) and follows the ‘ulama's (religious scholars) opposition to "such profane considerations" (95). For them, climatic determinism was diametrically opposed to the equal view of humanity expressed in the Qur'an, and exemplified by many verses, such as verse 49:13.183 Second, his praise of the inhabitants' hospitality indicates a moment of developing intimacy and complementarity between cultures, where the feeling of otherness seeps into familiarity, namely that of shared hospitality and generosity customary to both Ibn Fadlan and his audience. Such attitude conforms to the dominant Muslim view, which regards diversity within and without dar al-Islam as a source of takamul (complementarity) (Al-Kilany 34-35). Although Ibn Fadlan maintains a neutral tone that does not express the desire for crossing the Jayhun quickly, the long-awaited crossing at the end of the three months is mentioned hurriedly: "We then set about obtaining what we needed for the journey. We bought Turkish camels and had boats made out of camel skin, to allow us to pass the rivers we needed to cross in the land of the Turks. We laid in three months' supply of 182 The notion that "the external, natural cosmos influenced the formation of ethnic, cultural, and geographical identities" drawing specifically from the Galenic division of the four humors and their effects on a person's character. The Arab and Persian geographers "continued a long tradition of viewing the balance of temperature and moisture as a cause for the temperamental differences between peoples. These Galenic concepts entered directly into geography and cosmography through the writing of Ptolemy, who strongly influenced Arabic and Persian writers with his climatic division of the world. The extremities of heat and cold were viewed as natural factors that defined where civilization could take root. Accordingly, the severe temperatures in the farthest extremes of the north and south made these regions of the earth uninhabitable" (Zadeh 85-86). In verse 49:13 God says, "O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into peoples and tribes, that you may learn about each other. Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things)." 183 197 bread, millet and dried and salted meat" (loc 702-713). Unlike Mandeville's The Travels where the barrier that waterways might have posed dissolves and becomes a desirable path to the antipodal region, Ibn Fadlan depicts the river as an inhospitable space better crossed quickly. His portrayal of the preparations and the crossing is abrupt and silent in a manner that matches his near silence about the inhabitants. Having crossed, Ibn Fadlan regains his eloquence and offers his readers a contrastingly detailed description of the caravan and the road trip to the Turks. He remarks that the caravan was "extremely organized," and he sketches the itinerary and the challenges faced. We even see an attempt at small talk with a Turk who accompanies them (loc 729). Based on the pointed contrast between Ibn Fadlan's initial silence and lack of interaction with the Jayhun River inhabitants and his attempt at small talk with the Turk afterwards, I differ with HaywardJensen's claim that "Fadlan's physical proximity to the Other produces a textual anxiety which renders the moment of contact unnarratable" ("The Postcolonialist"). Within the context of a land-based discourse, I contend that both crossing and contact are rendered unnarratable, because Ibn Fadlan encounters obstacles to his rihla where even the land does not appear solid enough and cracks. The second major river crossing is the river Yaghindī. The preparations entail fetching "folding boats made of camel skin," placing camel saddles "at the bottom of the boats," and filling them "with clothes and baggage." The crew then use poles "as oars" and push out before calling the animals "with loud cries" to swim across the river (loc 892). Ibn Fadlan's experiential knowledge here is narratable and detailed. His tone is relaxed and demonstrates that he is now more accustomed to crossing rivers. Nevertheless, the river voyage is still undesirable. In a passage reminiscent of crossing 198 particular rivers in Ralegh's The Dicoverie where the natives shoot arrows, Ibn Fadlan expresses similar fears. He says, "It was essential to get one of the companies of men-atarms over the river first, before any of the caravan crossed, so that they could form an advance guard to protect the others, in case the Bāshghirds fell on our people while they were crossing" (loc 892). Crossing is beleaguered by the threat of attack rather than the threat of inhospitable climate and snow. However, Ibn Fadlan's narrative deflects the threat for once he crosses the river, he finds only the destitute Bajanak (Pechenegs) encamped at the edge of the water. The convoy stays there one night, thus turning difference and hostility into familiarity and normality again (loc 898). Ibn Fadlan's preference for the overland route overshadows the rest of the river crossings, which go undescribed. After the Yaghindī, he hastily mentions a series of rivers: "a river called Jām ... the Jākhsh, the Udhil, the ‘Ardin, the Wārsh, the Akhtī and the Wabnā, which are all great rivers," but certainly disruptive to the rihla and delay him from arriving at his final destination (loc 892). The cataloguing of rivers echoes Mandeville's cataloguing of islands and Ralegh's of countless rivers. The third major river crossing is the Jāyikh, which, according to Ibn Fadlan, is "the largest [they] had seen, the most impressive and the swiftest" (loc 903). The hindering and chaotic nature of this river is such that he "saw a leather boat overturned in midstream and those who were in it drowned" (loc 903). The river engulfs "Many of [his] men [who] were carried away and a certain number of horses and camels were drowned." He further adds, "It cost us great efforts to get across that river" (loc 903). It is worth noting that Ibn Fadlan uses inverted attachment when he depicts the opposite scene of the organized caravan. The chaos involved in crossing the Jāyikh underscores the smoothness 199 of the ensuing overland journey: "Then we marched for several days ….Then we halted in the lands of a Turkic people, the Bāshghirds" (loc 903). The contrast points to Ibn Fadlan's preference for a particular travel paradigm rather than the other. It further demonstrates the disruptive role of rivers in the text and the rihla and his attempt to normalize the world picture right afterwards by juxtaposing the image of an organized caravan with an image of chaos. The last illustrative example of the use of inverted attachment in relation to rivers takes place when the convoy reaches the kingdom of Almish. Ibn Fadlan focuses on waterways during his protracted stay there: When we caught up with the king, we found him encamped by a body of water called Khallaja. It consists of three lakes, two large and one small, but there is nothing that can plumb their depths. A farsakh separates this place from the great river called Itil that flows from their country to the land of the Khazars. On this river is the site of a great market which is held frequently and where all kinds of precious merchandise is to be had. (loc 1144) His description of Almish's water-bound kingdom offers an inverted description to landbound Arab kingdoms. He notes that rivers, like the Itil, demarcate boundaries there as they separate Almish's kingdom from the land of the Khazars. This contrasts with mountains and deserts demarcating space in Leo's The Description. Later, Ibn Fadlan adds that Almish once "set off from the stretch of water called Khallaja to a river called Jāwshīr, where he stayed for two months" (loc 1180). Also, "When a boat arrives in the land of the Saqāliba from Khazar territory, the king rides out and checks what is in each boat and levies a tithe on everything" (loc 1216). The boats obviously carry commodities, highlight the commercial value of water in the north, and offer a contrasting view to the commercial value of land for the Arabs. The watery world of Almish recalls fleetingly the watery world of Prester John in Mandeville's The Travels. In addition, as a recent 200 convert to Islam, Almish's Islam is similar to, but not the same as Arab Muslims, just as Prester John's Christianity differs in the minds of Catholics from mainstream Christianity.184 In an inverted move, the West needs Prestor John to combat the Muslims, while Almish needs the caliph to combat the Jewish Khazars. Ibn Fadlan's attention to rivers in Almish's realm could be attributable to his movement further away from the familiar land-bound metaphor of constructing world knowledge. In a sense, Almish's kingdom ushers in an alternative way of forming world knowledge and, more important, it is, in my view, a prelude to the ship burial scene that comes shortly afterwards. Culturally water comes up again and demonstrates in the process Ibn Fadlan's recurring use of inverted mirroring in relation to washing rituals. For the purpose of my argument, I focus squarely on water-related customs, instead of other prominent customs that have held the attention of scholars, such as the incident of the Ogghuz woman exposing her intimate parts.185 The encounter with different washing rituals is inextricably bound to crossing rivers and to the manner cultural values are entrenched in the metaphorical system (Lakoff and Johnson 23). Crossing rivers illuminates the difference in cultural norms since rivers represent a "contact zone," in Mary Pratt's words, or "social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other" (4). The contact aspect is apparent in Ibn Fadlan's interaction with the inhabitants and their customs, together with his attempt at negotiating differences. Ibn Fadlan's anxiety about the disruptive role of rivers in contrast to the overland 184 Ibn Fadlan notes Almish's ignorance of some Islamic precepts, such as the laws of inheritance: "I told the king that this was not allowed and explained to him how inheritance should work until he understood" (loc 1111). 185 See Nizar Hermes, The [European] Other for further discussion of this incident, pp. 85-87. 201 journey carries over to issues of cleanliness and performing ablutions. His recurring comments on the inhabitants' filthy habits, such as the Bashghird eating lice, earned him a notorious reputation among some scholars, such as Albert S. Cook who interprets his comments in terms of cultural superiority as earlier discussed (17). Similarly, Al-Azmeh focuses in "Barbarians in Arab Eyes" on filth, promiscuity, and funerary rites in the Risala as indices of "barbarousness" (5). There is, nevertheless, another level of complexity inherent in Ibn Fadlan's discourse of filth. I suggest that it ultimately ties to the conception of knowledge of the world through the metaphor of land in his rihla. As we have seen, water for Mandeville is sacred because all water sources, including rivers and wells, originate in paradise. Likewise, I argue that Ibn Fadlan holds water sacred in his Risala though he interprets it within a different context. In the lands of the Ogghuz Turks, Ibn Fadlan is critical of their hygiene and sanitary customs asserting they have nothing to do with water, especially in winter: "They do not wash after polluting themselves with excrement and urine. They do not wash after major ritual pollution [janāba], or any other pollution. They have no contact with water, especially in winter" (loc 758). Refraining from washing after the actions mentioned specifically contrasts with the obligation to wash after performing the same actions in Islam. Ibn Fadlan repeats himself almost verbatim when later describing the uncleanliness of the Rūs, thus resorting to the same parallelism he previously used when describing the exposure of both the Ogghuz and Bulghar women (loc1238). In view of this, his "condemnation of Viking [and Ogghuz] hygiene and his exaggeration concerning their filthiness …[is] a projection of his religion's conception of perfect hygiene and the importance of flowing water" (Hermes 96). Ibn Fadlan considers water sacred, because 202 washing after these acts renders a Muslim taher (pure or clean), and ready to pray. The metanarrative behind Ibn Fadlan's religiously oriented view of water, I propose, has to do with the desire to maintain his spiritual journey of praying. As much as the abundance of rivers in the account delays the rihla, lack of washing hinders another kind of journey - this time a spiritual one. Ibn Fadlan complains that "None of the merchants, or indeed any Muslim, can perform his ablutions in [the] presence [of the Ogghuz] after a major pollution; it must be done at night where they cannot see him, otherwise they become angry and say: ‘This man wants to put a spell on us -he is practising hydromancy.' And then they fine him" (loc 779). The taboo on washing is irritating for Ibn Fadlan, who needs to perform ablution (washing) before he prays. The incident sheds light on several issues. In the absence of (clean) water, Muslims have the license to perform tayammum (an act of dry ablution using a purified sand or dust, which may be performed in place of ritual washing). The cold that causes Ibn Fadlan's beard to freeze and the difficulty of washing among the Ogghuz qualify for this license. However, Ibn Fadlan neither mentions nor performs this license mentioned explicitly in the Qur'an. His insistence underscores an almost illogical obsession with maintaining the cultural association between his world and the foreign world. Yet this insistence collides with different cultural norms, namely the fear of hydromancy. The fear indicates the Ogghuz' belief in the power grounded in water, which speaks to my argument of the power of the metaphors of water and land to each culture. It also entails their possible fear that Ibn Fadlan, a stranger to their culture, can invoke the power of water to harm them. On his side, Ibn Fadlan interprets the difficulty of washing along religious terms. It is particularly inconvenient since it disrupts his daily spiritual journey punctuated by the 203 five prayers that conform to the fives times of the day: dawn, noon, midday, sunset, and night. The charge of hydromancy is an instance of epistemic and cultural boundaries. As much as crossing the river to the land of the Ogghuz facilitates mediation and collapse of otherness, it can indicate an inverted opposite in terms of understanding cultural norms and the world at large. In the land of the Rus, Ibn Fadlan notes their habit of circulating the same water basin amongst themselves for washing (loc 1248). The underlying concern here is that this ultimately filthy water is unlike the running water necessary for performing ablutions. Its stillness, along with the infrequent washing of the Rus, contrasts with Ibn Fadlan's diurnal journey of washing and praying and even threatens to disrupt it, the same way rivers disrupt the rihla. Ibn Fadlan's daily washing must have appeared excessive, if not an anomaly. These incidents recall William of Rubruck, the thirteenthcentury Franciscan missionary, who maintains "People [at the Chan's residence] gathered around us, gazing at us as if we were freaks, especially in view of our bare feet, and asked whether we had no use of our feet, since they imagined that in no time we should lose them" (173). The narrative establishes Ibn Fadlan's otherness early on while journeying to the land of Ogghuz. For the Ogghuz, the caravan is something they have "never either seen or heard of. Never in our whole lives, nor in the lifetimes of our fathers, has an envoy of the caliph come to us" (loc 881). The novelty of Ibn Fadlan's mission and his habits is, therefore, reciprocal. With this, I turn now to the novelty exemplified by the ‘aja'ib (marvels) tradition in the rihla, which I discuss in contrast to Western marvels to reveal how Arabic permits only selective recognition of marvels. 204 Uncounted ‘Aja'ib (Marvels) In the realm of Almish, Ibn Fadlan asserts he saw countless ‘aja'ib (marvels) (alDahhan 123). World conception through the metaphor of land, I propose, extends beyond the rihla and structures the different aspects of life, such as the author's notion of marvels. With the exception of the description of Gog and Magog in the Risala, I note that most marvels are embedded in land rather than in water to mirror the land-bound world picture. Moreover, the discourse of marvels appears in the dialogic relationship between travel text and map. To address these issues, I survey first Ibn Fadlan's use of the term ‘aja'ib within the larger frame of al-adab al ‘aja'ibi (literature of marvels or wonders) and compare it briefly to the term mirabilia, previously discussed in Mandeville's The Travels. The Greek legacy the Arabs inherited primarily from Ptolemy and Aristotle rendered medieval Arabic travel and geographical texts, as Scott Taylor suggests, hostile to "the blending of factual and fictitious elements in the same genre" (599). The Qur'anic discourse advances this rationalist tendency in many verses that stress experiential knowledge and urge people to see and understand the world. Nevertheless, this does not preclude the transmission of marvels in works heavily invested in the ‘aja'ib tradition, such as Abu Hamed al-Gharnati's Tuhfat al-Albab (Gift of the Hearts) and al-Mu'rib ‘an ba‘d ‘aja'ib al-maghrib (Exposition of Some of the Wonders of the West).186 Well-versed in theology, Ibn Fadlan must have been aware of the discourse of ‘aja'ib that permeates the Qur'an and literature. The narrative of al-isra' wa al-mi‘raj Abu Hamid al-Gharnati (1080-1170) is, "the only other Arab traveler to make his way to Bulghar" after Ibn Fadlan (Lunde and Stone, "Introduction" loc 431). His main interest is recounting marvels. 186 205 (the Prophet's ascension to the heavens) in the Qur'an is an illustrative example of marvels for a Muslim audience. Interestingly, the Qur'an refers to itself (Q. 72:1); as a ‘ajab (marvel) (Zadeh 181).187 The ‘ajab lies in the incomparable language of the book, which is regarded as a miracle. In literature, there are the siyar or biographies of heroes, such as sira of ‘Antara, Sirat Hamza, al-Sira al-Hilaliyya, and certainly The Arabian Nights (Abu-Deeb 15). All these traditions feature a range of marvels and miracles. Linguistically, Arabic reserves two terms for wonders; ‘ajab which entails "the surprising or unfamiliar" and derives from the root a-j-b, to wonder, and gharib which entails "the truly marvelous and inexplicable" and derives from gh-r-b, to find strange, and the geographical direction the west (Taylor 599). Critics sometimes distinguish between both Arabic terms or use them interchangeably as Kamal Abu-Deeb notes in The Imagination Unbound (10).188 The salient features of al-‘ajib/al-gharib are 1) "lack of knowledge about the cause (sabab) of a given phenomenon," 2) the tendency sometimes to see wonders as part of "the greater design of God's grandeur," and 3) the tendency to see wonders as a "subversion … [of] the established order" (Zadeh 3, 139; Abu-Deeb 16). Similarly, English reserves the term 'mirabilia', for "things which cause wonder simply because they are not understood," and 'miracula', "things which are actually Zadeh notes that "Muslim exegetes took the primary meaning of the word for a Qur'anic verse [aya) to be equivalent to a marvel (‘ajab), demonstrating a deeper symbolic relationship between the Qur'an as a linguistic phenomenon and the human reaction of astonishment at the reception of divine revelation" (181). 187 See Mohammed Arkoun, L'Etrange et le merveilleux dans l'islam medieval for some enlightening debates among different scholars on the subject. 188 206 contrary to or beyond nature" (Akbari 167).189 The discourse of mirabilia in Western culture shares these features too, as Lorraine Daston and Catherine Park show in Wonders and the Order of Nature (109-133). Dislike of blending fact and fiction in Arab travel texts keeps the marvelous at a minimal level in the Risala. It stems from a propensity for autopsia, which "plays an essential … role in the procedures of speaking the truth" (Touati 235). Ibn Fadlan's treatment of the marvelous is restricted in comparison to Mandeville's where, as Akbari observes, "the marvelous diversity encountered … is progressively assimilated into an overarching system, only to overflow finally the boundaries of the discourse that seeks to contain it" (166-167). The regenerative multiplicity of the monstrous in The Travels contrasts significantly with its shriveling dearth in the Risala. Furthermore, since antiquity the West saw the East as "the great repository of the marvelous, the focal point of … dreams and magic…. [and] … the truly foreign" (Le Goff 41). Conversely, Ibn Fadlan's text presents a balanced humanized north that does not continuously produce something new and where novelty is subsumed within the boundary of plausibility. This is why, when "the marvelous occurs, it is "subjected to a rigorous scrutiny which gives short shrift to the irrational" (Montgomery, "Travelling Autopsies" 19). What guides the telling and labeling of the few marvels in the text, I maintain, is change in appearance. Ibn Fadlan seems to extend the marvelous changes of topographical phenomena from one form into another, such as rivers freezing and melting, and the land cracking, to the marvels he sees on his journey. Notably, these For more discussion, see Suzanne Conklin Akbari, "Diversity in The Book of John Mandeville" in Eastward Bound: Travel and Travelers: 1050-1550, p. 167, and Caroline Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity. 189 207 marvels are inextricable from man, in keeping with Jacques Le Goff's insightful remark in The Medieval Imagination on the crucial difference between Western and Arab cultures in their treatment of wonder: In Muslim tales involving marvelous animals, plants, and objects, there is nearly always some reference to man. In the medieval West the opposite is true. The world is largely dehumanized. Marvels feature a world of animals, minerals, and plants. There is a rejection of humanism …. (32) To Le Goff's remark, I would add that in Arab culture the marvelous is also inextricable from land. These two aspects contrast with Mandeville's attention to the water-bound marvels that stand apart from humanity and mark the near absence of human interaction with the phenomena. The land-bound marvels in Ibn Fadlan's text range from the northern lights, the red landscape, snakes, plants, and the rhinoceroses. Of the northern lights, he says, "in the cloud were shapes of men and horses" fighting and clashing, a phenomenon that Almish explains as the encounter between "the believing and the unbelieving Jinn" (loc 10341045). More striking here is the locals' counter reaction to Ibn Fadlan and his companions who suddenly become the subject of marvel: yataajjabūna min fili-nā (they were astonished at our behavior). Montgomery reads the counter-reaction as symptomatic of the travelers being "transformed by the Bulghārs into marvels for their edification, contemplation and amusement" ("Traveling Autopsies" 17). While I second this reading, there is also the possibility that Ibn Fadlan deflects or circumscribes his own feeling of wonder by projecting it on the locals. Instead of exhibiting his sense of wonder at the phenomenon, he exhibits the local's wonder at him and his company. He displays similar sense of wonder when he sees the numerous snakes in the country, especially when what he mistakes for a thick tree trunk turns out to be a large snake (loc 1070). Unlike the fear- 208 stricken Ibn Fadlan, the locals do not kill snakes. The unexpected attitude of the locals again strikes Ibn Fadlan as unusual and merits his attention more than the phenomenon itself. He also marvels at "the landscape dyed red at sunrise, everything -earth, mountains, all that one sees when the sun rises is like a great cloud and the red glow stays thus until the sun has reached its zenith" (loc 1059). In all former marvels, change of appearance is an integral part. It poses an unfamiliar threat to Ibn Fadlan and his company. In "Travelling Autopsies," Montgomery ascribes Ibn Fadlan's fear and wonder at the northern lights to the noise more than anything else, and suggests that snakes are "a cultural marker, an indication to the traveller that he is in a foreign land" (14, 76-78, 13).190 While these are valid arguments, I argue that the metanarrative beyond these wonders is transformation. Clouds change into men and horses that fight spectacularly. The snake is tree-like and the landscape turns red. These changing phenomena recall the land that cracks in the Jayhun and the roadlike frozen river. Wonders, thus, remain land-bound in keeping with the structural metaphor of land, and continue to mirror inverted opposites to the familiar for Ibn Fadlan. The only wondrous animal mentioned in the text is the "rhinoceroses," which "When it sees a man on horseback, it charges him." Ibn Fadlan describes how people hunt it, adding that "In the king's possession I saw three great plates of a material resembling Yemeni onyx, and he told me that they were made with the base of the horn of this animal" (loc 1192). His account of the hunting process and the plates substitute ‘iyan as he does not see the animal. Again, change of appearance persists as the animals' horns are turned into plates. The king instills wonder into Ibn Fadlan and his company For further discussion of the marvels in Ibn Fadlan's Risala, see J.E. Montgomery "Spectral Armies, Snakes, and a Giant from Gog and Magog," pp. 64-87. 190 209 through displaying his authority over the animal by turning its horns into artistic plates. Montgomery remarks that it is "in the King's political interests, as a means to further his cause of conversion to Islam and inclusion within the Abbasid polity, to convince the Muslims of the existence of the karkaddan (the rhino) in his territory and of his people's ability to hunt it successfully" ("Travelling Autopsies" 12-13). This political display of power is a useful strategy to impress the Caliph since the Arabs prized the wondrous animal, which was not part of their environment. This is why Arab travelers, such as Sulayman al-Tajir in his account of China and India, Akbar al-Sin w-a-l-Hind, pay attention to the animal on their travels and include their empirical knowledge of it (36).191 Two things are worth noting here: a) wonders are located on land and b) man and his reactions are always at the center, I argue, to subvert and contain the ‘ajib. The metaphor of land organizes the Arabs' construction of world knowledge that includes these wonders. The way the Risala establishes a link between the ‘aja'ib and man proves Le Goff's point. It also demonstrates that the Arab accounts of marvels include the empirical component. A traveler has to observe and connect the human somehow to the phenomenon. The northern lights are in the shape of men and Ibn Fadlan includes the locals' reaction to them. The account of snakes underscores people's uncustomary attitude towards them. In both episodes, the king is a commentator on the phenomena. Excessive lightning in the country is interpreted within people's reaction to the damaged tents, while the rhinos challenge men on horses. Such a catalogue of marvels contrasts with the near absence of the human in al-Tajir compares certain aspects of the animal to familiar animals in his culture, such as the camel, the cow, and the elephant. He pays particular attention to his horn. He adds his empirical knowledge as he maintains that he tried the animal's meat and found it delicious (36). 191 210 Mandeville's text. In India, Mandeville describes the snakes and the rhinos, among a plethora of other animals, to the exclusion of man and his reaction. Interaction is largely minimal between the human and the nonhuman. Instead, there is remarkable overflow of animals that seem to be on the loose and stand apart from humanity. On the other hand, the human looms large in Ibn Fadlan's catalogue of wonders, sometimes larger than the phenomenon itself. The relationship between the human and the wondrous is interactive and involves human reaction in what appears to be an attempt to ward off the danger of the unfamiliar and contain it within the boundaries of the human rather than the supernatural. The bond between the marvelous and man is at its best in Ibn Fadlan's account of the corpse of one of the races of Gog and Magog in Almish's kingdom. The incident gains prominence, since it represents the sacred geography and the apocalyptic vision inherent in religious exegesis. It overlaps with Arabic maps that always depict the barrier to the land of Gog and Magog in the extreme north, thus representing for medieval thought "the frontiers of knowledge, a semiotic ‘No more beyond' (non plus ultra), which … demarcates the limitations of human capacity" (Zadeh 6). In this respect, Ibn Fadlan reaches a point in the rihla where he is almost veering off the world map. In Islamic thought, the northern lands held "a particular fascination for Muslims, for they played a crucial role in Islamic eschatology. This contrasts with the fascination that the East held for Western Christians. The Arab geographers placed the lands north of the Caucasus in the Sixth and Seventh Climes" beyond which the "lay the Land of Darkness, a mysterious, mist-shrouded land, inhabited by the tribes of Gog and Magog" (Lunde and Stone, "Introduction" loc 272-296). These tribes trapped by the barrier that 211 Dhu al-Qarnayn (he with the two horns), a military figure empowered by God, built, represented the most brutal savages on the earth believed to wreak havoc on the Day of Judgment.192 The severity of the climate renders the lands beyond them uninhabitable. By the time Sallām al-Turjumān undertakes his journey to the barrier, "early Arabic geographical tradition had already established that the lands of Gog and Magog lie beyond the Khazar, situated between the sixth and seventh climes, stretching across the farthest edge of the inhabited world" (Zadeh 94). Al- Khwàrazmi, for example, in Surat al-Ard "locates the city of Magog in the seventh clime, and the interior city of Gog, which lies beyond the seven clime, in the far northeast, above the arctic circle" (237). The incorporation of Sallām's journey on his return to Baghdad in 844 in Ibn Khurdādibih's Book of Roads and Kingdoms underscores the interaction between maps and texts, which stresses the overland journey and worldview that Sallām enacts in his rihla. A precursor to Ibn Fadlan, Sallām's account is "one of the earliest first-hand accounts in Arabic of the Central Asian route to China," which provides "additional evidence that the overland route to China was open in the mid-ninth century" (Lunde and Stone, "Introduction" loc 272-296).193 Therefore, it would not be far-fetched to assume that Ibn Fadlan was familiar with Sallām's recent account, especially given his interest as a well-versed Muslim in eschatological questions, such as Gog and Magog. Geographically speaking, geographers map Gog and Magog in the northernmost It is of note that, "in the course of the early Arab conquests, the figure of Dhu al-Qarnayn was positioned, at least metaphorically, as a source of emulation for military expansion" (Zadeh 98). The story of Dhu al-Qarnyn is in Quran (18:92-8). In Islamic thought, there was sometimes a conflation, as well as confusion between Dhu al-Qarnyn and Alexander the Great, who is ascribed similar adventures in the Alexander romance. On that see Faustina Clara Wilhelmina Aerts, Alexander Magnus Arabicus: a survey of the Alexander tradition through seven centuries: from Pseudo-Callisthenes to Sụ ̄ rī. 192 See Travis Zadeh, Mapping Frontiers where he compares the similarities between Ibn Fadlan and Sallām's accounts of Gog and Magog. His take is within the context of translation, pp. 186-187. 193 212 regions of the earth as shown on al-Kashgari's map (See Figure 13). The tradition continues in subsequent maps, such as Ibn Hawqal's in the eleventh century. Zadeh remarks that in the latter's account, the people of Gog and Magog are hairless, and they only "trade with merchants after plucking out all the hair from the merchants' beards" (145). He further notes that this detail "resonates with Ibn Fadlan's astonishment at the beardless Turks he encountered on his journey who plucked all the hair off their faces, and suggests that the merchant tales of Gog and Magog that reached Ibn Hawqal were based on the identification of these savages with Turkish nomads" (145). Also, "such a process of transposition seems to be the basis of the account by the Persian scholar Shahmardân b. Abi T-Khayr (fl. 476/1083), who describes how "merchants … were able to make contact with the monstrous races" (145). The possibility of communicating and even maintaining trading relations between merchants on the one hand, and Gog and Magog on the other, is suggestive of the possibility of crossing boundaries. It figures the human element and its interactive role in wondrous tales as mentioned earlier in the Risala, and as will be clear in Ibn Fadlan's own account of the race. The depiction of Gog and Magog on maps is common to medieval Arabic and medieval Western mappae mundi. It reveals how "Maps are ineluctably a cultural system" embedded in "the politics of Knowledge" (Harley, "Deconstructing the Map" 232). The maps show the defining values, whether religious, social, or ethnographic, which make up "an archaeology of that knowledge through time" (236). The Western tradition displays solid archeology of knowledge of a plethora of monsters, as apparent on the Hereford and the Ebstorf. Conversely, Arabic maps only depict Gog and Magog. The difference stems from the classical inheritance bequeathed to each culture. Arab 213 cartographers inherited the geographical writings of Ptolemy and the cosmological writings of Aristotle whereas the early Latin geographical tradition, including Pliny and Macrobius, were unknown to Arab scholars, but well known to their Western counterparts (Edson and Savage-Smith 75). The Arab's unawareness of Pliny and Macrobius determines, in part, maps minus monsters and water spaces.194 Together with this, there is the attachment to land and the dislike for blending the real with the fictitious. The race of Ya'gug wa Ma'gog (Gog and Magog) underscores the common eschatological view in the Bible and the Quran.195 In both traditions, the monstrous as a sign of otherness, exemplified here by Gog and Magog, "dwells most often at the margins of the imagination, pushed from the center toward land's end" (Zadeh 1). Yet because Arabic maps are verbal, unlike Western maps that tend to be pictorial, the depiction of the race is different. On the Arabic maps mentioned earlier, the figures of Gog and Magog are not depicted, but the barrier is, usually in the form of an arctic circle that includes the phrase "the land of Gog and Magog,"196 whereas on Western maps, the races are visually represented and rendered obvious to the viewer. The story of Gog and Magog is iterated in the Risala: one day the locals in Almish's kingdom find a giant swimming in the Itil. The king has the giant captured and 194 See the previous chapter where I discuss Macrobius' map within the context of the background of a medieval water-based view and suggest that his map influenced the conception of the world in water terms. "The tale of Yâjûj and Màjuj, along with the wall built by Dhu ‘l-Qarnayn, as a pedigree that predates the Islamic configuration, with its roots in Jewish and Christian eschatological traditions tied to the tale of Gog and Magog, who appear, either individually or together, in Genesis l0: 2, 1 Chronicles 1:5, 5:4, Ezekiel 38-9, and Revelation 20:7-10. In Christian apocalyptic scenarios, the hordes of Gog and Magog, whose number is as the sand of the sea..., will come as ants; to spread destruction over the earth" (Zadeh 42). 195 Similarly, the labels ‘Land of Waq-waq' are peculiar to medieval Arabic maps, but no drawings of the Waq-waq themselves. The Waq-waq is a mythical tree that produces human-like fruit (Edson and Savage-Smith 66). 196 214 detained. When he finds out from the people of Wisu that the giant belongs to the apocalyptic races of Gog and Magog, he has him hanged from a tree. The king describes the race to Ibn Fadlan as "naked," enclosed behind a barrier formed by the sea, and that they feed on a God-sent fish out of which they cut off sufficient pieces to eat. If they eat more than they need, they could die (loc 1153-1164). Ibn Fadlan does not miss the opportunity to see the corpse. Under a tree, he says, there was the giant's head "like a beehive," his ribs "like the stalk of a date cluster and the bones of his legs and arms were enormous too. I was astonished at the sight. Then I went away" (loc 1175). The comparison to a "stalk of a date of cluster" underlines Ibn Fadlan's recurring strategy of attaching the unfamiliar to the familiar and normalizing it. Moreover, he employs his empirical knowledge to verify the truth and lend the story credibility. The necessity of ocular proof throughout the Risala reflects "An anxiety for authenticity [that] inflects the presentation and management of the marvelous and can be traced throughout Islamic geographies and cosmographies" (Zadeh 7).197 The continuous endeavor to verify the authenticity of marvels through ‘iyan is a standard feature of geographical and travel narratives. When it fails, the witness immediately distances himself and resorts to hearsay. Ibn Fadlan resorts to this strategy in the account of the rhinoceroses, the Khazars' affiliation with Gog and Magog, and Almish's story of the custom of strangling intelligent men, an incident that Montgomery interprets as "psychological warfare" ("Travelling Autopsies" 12). In these instances, Ibn Fadlan lacks 197 "The account of how Ptolemy gathered information about the earth through informants whom he dispatched around the world became a well-traveled motif in Islamic geographical discussions of measurement and empiricism." Ibn Hawqal, Muqaddasi, and Jahiz offer remedies to assay the veracity of any given account. The common factor in all is direct observation as the most privileged mode of knowledge (Zadeh 8, 10). 215 ocular proof and is careful to distinguish direct knowledge from hearsay. One crucial aspect of mirabilia, I propose, is its use in diplomatic relations to instill fear and wonder into the hearts of diplomats. Almish's strategy to inspire these sentiments in Ibn Fadlan through displaying the corpse, probably of a mammoth, was part of a "psychological warfare." His aim was to pressure the latter to deliver the designated money from the caliph, which he thought Ibn Fadlan was hiding, but that was never delivered.198 The desire to instill wonder and fear into Muslim ambassadors from foreign kingdoms recurs in other texts, such as the rihla of ‘Imara Ibn Hamza, the envoy of alMansur to the king of the Rum, who inspires fear in the former by displaying marvels, such as two ferocious lions, two swinging swords, and a red cloud followed by a green.199 A close examination of Ibn Fadlan's account of Gog and Magog reveals a number of issues. First, unlike the ‘aja'ib discussed so far in the Risala, this is the only one associated with water. The sea separates the race behind a barrier from the rest of humanity and the giant is found swimming in the river Itil. Just as rivers delay the flow of the rihla and cause some of Ibn Fadlan's men to drown, here the river is a marker of an apocalyptic danger. It foregrounds the fearful journey that one of the races of Gog and Magog undertake from their realm to Almish's kingdom. Unlike travelers who cannot go beyond the non plus ultra into the land of Gog and Magog, the race can undertake a counter journey and cross the boundary. Second, their nakedness evokes Ibn Fadlan's description of the Bulghars' mixed bathing and the Ogghuz woman baring herself. Nakedness, then, insinuates otherness and monstrosity. The detail about the fish Gog and 198 See Ibn Fadlan's text for the reasons as to why the money was never delivered (loc 651). 199 For more information on the rihla of ‘Imara Ibn Hamza, see al-kilany's Surat Uruba, p. 185. 216 Magog cut off some parts to eat echoes vaguely the fish in Mandeville's The Travels that cast themselves on the shores of the island of Calonak for the locals to take as much as they want (Mandeville loc 2545). Another similarity between the two accounts of the race relates to the manner in which they transpose otherness and graft it onto actual races. Mandeville does so explicitly by aligning the Jews with Gog and Magog, while Ibn Fadlan does so implicitly by stating "Some go as far as to say that Khazar [who are Jews] are Gog and Magog," a supposition that his rational mind rejects (loc 1411). The mere transposition of monstrosity onto certain peoples suggests the fluidity of boundaries inherent in the giant swimming in the Itil, but dwelling in Almish's kingdom. Ibn Fadlan's reaction to the giant's body underscores a moment where language circumscribes the unnatural. The Arabic original captures this better than the English does as Ibn Fadlan says, "ta‘ajabt menho wa ensaraft" (I marveled at him and left) (alDahhan 140). The phrase is cursory and restrictive. It shows that the "monstrous and illicit can be managed and controlled by description itself" (Zadeh 89). One explanation could be his desire to inhibit the sense of wonder inherent in the threat of the monstrous through a cursory treatment of it, as well as to save his narrative from running riot with the irrational. It also pinpoints his possible suspicion of the story (al-Muwafi 250). His reaction pushes otherness back within the boundaries of the normal. Hence, Ibn Fadlan, I propose, resorts to linguistic abruptness to prevent himself from veering off the map that encompasses knowledge of the world into the land of darkness that entails ignorance. There is, in general, a tendency in the Risala to normalize rather than monstrosize the other. The nearly contemporaneous Anglo-Saxon manuscript The Wonders of the East 217 (1000 C.E.) highlights Ibn Fadlan's own construction of otherness. As Hayward-Jensen notes "The Anglo-Saxon narrator's fabulous depictions of bizarre bodies with grotesque compositions contrasts significantly with Fadlan's rather flat descriptions of the various people groups he encounters" ("The Postcolonialist").200 Indeed, his description, as well as reaction, to the supposed monstrous race he encounters is flat. It lacks the grotesqueness of description that characterizes Mandeville's The Travels. The threat that the traveler might veer off the map as he travels further north and come in proximity to Gog and Magog is evident as Ibn Fadlan's familiar concept of time also turns unfamiliar. He notes that the length of days and the shortness of nights render performing the stipulated five prayers challenging (loc 1042). Not surprisingly, Ibn Fadlan includes this detail within the catalogue of wonders in Almish's land. I propose here that what starts as deceptive topographies ranging from cracking lands, and frozen rivers, to red-dyed landscapes culminates in the notion of time that ultimately breaks down leading to Gog and Magog. Time here has to collapse because Gog and Magog become a physical reality as the corpse indicates, thus placing eschatological time into the here and now. Therefore, the narrative distorts the normative laws of everyday reality, especially of time and space, which becomes even more evident in Ibn Fadllan's account of the ship burial scene, which I turn to presently. The Ship Burial and the Inverted Worldview The metaphor of land in the Risala that systematically structures the Arab mental organization of knowledge and life extends to the afterlife. Ibn Fadlan's See Asa Mittman and Susan Kim, Inconceivable Beasts: The Wonders of the East in the Beowulf Manuscript for a thorough discussion on the manuscript and the beasts it portrays. 200 218 description of the ship burial scene and his exchange with one of the Rus on their different burial rites underscore that "The metaphors we live by, whether cultural or personal, are … preserved in ritual" (Lakoff and Johnson 235). They structure and inform cultural rituals. The episode is an apt place for the text to break down and remain incomplete for, in my view, it is a mesmerizing crescendo, which presents to Ibn Fadlan an inverted conception of world knowledge. It represents a climactic moment that pulls together the different strands in the Risala. Remarkably, Ibn Fadlan manages to maintain the process of attachment and collapse of otherness despite the radical inverted opposites the trance-like scene presents. His success demonstrates his endeavor to make the rational predominate the seemingly irrational and normalize it. The circulating assumption at the time is that bilad el rus (the land of the Rus) is a place where people venture to but never return. Writing in the tenth century, Ibn Hawqal claims they kill strangers and they descend in water to trade, allowing no one to accompany them (al-Dahhan 40). Ibn Fadlan's account stands as unique since he came, he saw, and he returned to tell. The first time he sets eyes on the Rus he says, "I saw the Rus, who had come for trade and had encamped by the river Itil. I have never seen bodies more perfect than theirs. They were like palm trees. They are fair and ruddy" (loc 1232).201 Scholars note that his description of the Rus "is one of the few that treats them as traders rather than bloodthirsty raiders" (Stone, "Ibn Fadlan and the Midnight Sun"). He presents them as a mercantile community engaging in transactions and amassing fortunes as evidenced by the number of torques women wear round their On the possible origin of the Rūs, see Montegomery "Ibn Fadlan and the Russiyah," p. 23. On the different groups and their origins, see Richard Frye, Ibn Fadlan's Journey to Russia, pp. 81-130. For a comprehensive discussion of the subject, see Gwyn Jones, A History of the Vikings. 201 219 necks (loc 1233). Moreover, Ibn Fadlan renders the Rus and some of their customs familiar on several occasions. On these occasions, he "seems to construe the Other's rare familiarity through common topoi of his own culture" (Hermes 95).202 He employs, for instance, the Qur'anic diction, apparent in the word yatsadaq, which indicates their offerings to the gods (al-Dahhan 154). As Montgomery rightly notes, Ibn Fadlan interprets the practice in light of Islamic and cultural rituals ("Ibn Fadlan and the Russiyah" 11). The notion of sadaqa or giving alms is part of Islam that he uses as a "process of approximation" to borrow from Roxanne Eubene (44). It speaks to his attempt to circumscribe idol worship within the boundaries of positive Islamic values. The same strategy of approximation according to Qur'anic terms continues in the ship burial scene. When Ibn Fadlan asks the interpreter to explain the slave girl's words when allowed to gaze at paradise over what seems like a doorframe, he is told she describes paradise as green. The description, as Montgomery remarks, fits the Islamic view of paradise as verdant rather than the Viking view, and it is "quite likely … a cultural solecism on the part of Ibn Fadlan" ("Ibn Fadlan and the Rusiyyah" 18). The probability of a cultural solecism gains ground since the description is mediated through translation. As much as it familiarizes the awkward moment of ship burial, it also emphasizes Ibn Fadlan's attempt to comprehend his surroundings according to his conceptual knowledge of the world. Upon hearing of the ship burial tradition among the Rus, Ibn Fadlan expresses his wish "to have certain knowledge of this" which he does when "one day [he] learns For the Qur'anic importance of palm trees as a metaphor, see Hermes, pp. 94-95. See also I.Farooqi's book Plants of the Qur'an. 202 220 of the death of one of their great men" (loc 1276). He goes to the place where the boat is first anchored by the river, and then rested on a wooden construction on the appointed day of cremation. The congregation comes forward pronouncing unintelligible words. He then describes the "witch" or angel of death responsible for killing the slave girl, the laying of the well-vested dead man in the boat along with fruit and drink, and sacrificial animals. Before her death, Ibn Fadlan records that the slave girl has sexual intercourse with the friends of the dead man, glimpses at the green paradise above the frame of a door, is made intoxicated by the angel of death and taken to the boat. The crowd outside bangs on their shields to muffle the girl's cries while being stabbed. Afterwards, they set fire to the boat and at the place where it was drawn out of the river, a round hill is built amid which is set a wooden pole that bears the name of the deceased (loc 12911343).203 Contrary to the customary Islamic burial rites, the cremation scene appears diametrically opposite, if not grotesque. Hence, it requires Ibn Fadlan's‘iyan or ocular proof to avoid being called "a gullible collector of hearsay" (Hermes 97). His captivating account forms the basis for subsequent travelers who incorporate the Risala in their work, such as Ibn Hawqal and al-Mas‘udi. Both similarly mention the burning of the dead and their jawari (slave girls) (al-Dahnan 34). In the Western tradition, Wulfstan of Hedeby's ninth-century account of his sea voyage from Hedeby to the In "Ibn Fadlan and the Russiyyah," Montgomery quotes Dolukhanov's explaining "Ibn Fadlan's account shows the Rus as combining two aspects of funerary ritual (boat grave and cremation)" (13). 203 221 trading centre of Trusco depicts the cremation of wealthy people in Esteland.204 Although his account is a precursor to Ibn Fadlan's, it is not as detailed. He describes the incident in few lines and focuses mainly on the bequeathal of the deceased man's inheritance among the men with the swiftest horses in the country. The ship burial custom Ibn Fadlan describes was not a stable religious practice among the Nordics. It underwent modification, "depending … on whether the deceased and/or ship was cremated and buried, or simply buried" (DuBois 71). Literary texts refer "to even a further variation: the launching of the boat unmanned to drift upon the sea, sometimes aflame" (71). Oblivious to the complexity of the practice and its variations, Ibn Fadlan records the last variation. His account is, nevertheless, accurate in depicting the manner "pagans [in Scandinavia] of status and wealth availed themselves of elaborate boat burials" (DuBois 73). The tradition has its roots in eastern Sweden, "but best known today for the remarkable royal ship burials of Oseberg and Gokstad in southern Norway" (73). The Sutton Hoo burial of East Anglia, England, demonstrates that this form of burial was practiced by the Anglo-Saxons too and "could appeal to even the non-Scandinavian noble" (73).205 The custom lasted from the seventh through twelfth centuries and was loosely intertwined with Christianity, as it spread among the Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons (Klein 6). The significance of the ship burial, I contend, serves my argument for Wulfstan of Hedeby was traveler and a trader whose short account was incorporated along with Ohthere's in Alfred the Great's translation of Orosius's Histories. 204 205 For a good introduction to the archeology of burial in the early Middle Ages, see Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales, ed. Sam Lucy and Andrew Reynolds, London: Society for Medieval Archaeology, 2002. Also, see Martin Carver, "Ship Burial in Early Britain: Ancient Custom or Political Signal?" in The Ship as Symbol in Prehistoric and Medieval Scandinavia. Eds. Ole Crumlin-Pedersen and B. Munch Thye. Copenhagen: Nationalmuseet, 1995, pp. 111-124. 222 conceiving the world according to two dominant metaphors of ‘world making' that medieval Arabs and Westerners entertain. It certainly goes beyond Howard-Jensen's supposition that "The preparations of the body, the collection of food…, the sacrifice of animals …, the copulation between slave girl and masters, and the drinking of nabidh, …mimic [in part] Fadlan's gathering of boats and arming against the cold" ("The Postcolonialist"). Instead, the preparations entailed in the ship burial scene represent an inversion of the metaphor of land in Ibn Fadlan's Risala, whether in terms of overland travel or in terms of burial rites. The journey that the dead man undergoes shows a propensity for traveling by water, as shown in both Mandeville's The Travels, Ohthere's account, and Ralegh's The Discoverie. The choice of a ship funeral underscores how "ritual forms an indispensable part of the experiential basis for our cultural metaphorical systems" (Lakoff and Johnson 235). It is tempting to see "the boat as a symbol of a journey to the otherworld," especially that "the ferry to the otherworld is a widespread motif in world mythology" (DuBois 74). However, the ritual also reflects the rise of maritime power in the medieval Western world. The origins of the expansion of sea power can be traced to early medieval times, as David A. E. Pelteret suggests (127). By the latter part of the eleventh century, for example, "the Anglo-Saxons had developed ships that could handle the sea route round the Iberian Peninsula and through the Mediterranean" (128). During Ibn Fadlan's time, the prevalence of the ship burial custom underscores "the rise in importance of boat travel in the scattered and diversified settlements of western Norway and the North Atlantic" (DuBois 74). It is, therefore, logical for the metaphor and reality of water, a source of world domination in life, to be part of afterlife as well. 223 At the other end of the spectrum, in Ibn Fadlan's world the metaphor of land carries over to the afterlife as the dead are buried in land. The brief exchange between Ibn Fadlan and one of the Rus after the fire consumes the ship regarding the different burial rites in both cultures encapsulates the two dominant worldviews. [One of the Rūs was standing beside me] and I heard him speak to my interpreter. I asked the latter [what he had said.] He replied: ‘You Arabs are fools!' [‘Why is that?' I asked him.] He said: "‘Because you put the men you love most, [and the most noble among you,] into the earth, and the earth and the worms and insects eat them. But we burn them [in the fire] in an instant, so that at once and without delay they enter Paradise.' (loc 1343) The man's critique of Arab burial rites shows that "it is by no means an easy matter to change the metaphors we live by" (Lakoff and Johnson 146). Land burial is incomprehensible for the Rus as much as water burial is incomprehensible for the Arabs. The man's explanation evokes Ibn Fadlan's later remark on the hidden tombs of the king of the Khazars: "Beneath this house there is a river … that flows rapidly, which they divert over the tomb. They say: ‘This is so that no devil or man, or maggot, or reptile can reach it.'" (loc 1377). The Rus and Khazars' burial rites represent a world upside down for Ibn Fadlan where all aspects are inverted. Notably, water here too is a protective boundary and has powers that recall the power the Ogghuz attribute to it as evident in their fear of hydromancy. The inextricable link between body and land is apparent in Arabic anthologies that join both in "images of the intake of food, drink, and air native to the homeland, the sheltering of the body in the contours of its landscape, and the eventual burial of the body in its oil, dust, or sand" (Antrim 16). This inextricable relationship portrays the metaphor of land as structuring the conception of the world. It informs the traditions of the masālik, the rihla, and Muslim burial rites, all of which represent a foil to the 224 Western water-based conception of the world. Quoting Robert Pogue Harrison, Stacy Klein notes that "the surest way to take possession of a place and to secure it as one's own is to bury one's dead in it" (6). Therefore, the frequent use of the sea and the land as key elements in the disposal of the dead may also entail, in my view, secular concepts of territorialization and expansion. Both land and water are symbols of power and direct the political aspirations of both medieval Arab and Western cultures. The first conquers the world through land and the second through water. As such, the funeral ship burial is a culmination of the water-bound world picture Ibn Fadlan experiences intermittently throughout the rihla. It fuses all the divergent aspects ranging from idol worship to public intercourse, nakedness, different sanitary customs, and certainly another dominant view of life and afterlife. Conclusion As I have shown both by argument and example throughout this chapter, the Arabs have constructed knowledge of the world through the conceptual metaphor of land, which organizes their view of life, marvels, and afterlife since pre-Islamic times. The rise to prominence of overlapping traditions, such as the rihla, al-masālik w-al-mamālik, and the Qur'an was conducive to a land-bound identity that turns the metaphor of land into a literal reality. Land is also a means of hegemony and empire building. The dialogic relationship between travel narratives and maps foregrounds the metaphor of land the Arabs experience in their daily lives, perform on their travels and preserve in their rituals. Ibn Fadlan's Risala is a case in point. It features all these discourses at work. He anchors his rihla and the ‘aja'ib encountered in land rather than in water in keeping with 225 medieval Arabic maps. Throughout the narrative, rivers disrupt the masālik tradition. While traveling, Ibn Fadlan employs attachment to associate the unfamiliar to the familiar, even when the world seems inverted as in the ship burial scene and in the land that cracks. He treats the cities he travels to as "cities in the early Islamic world [like Baghdad, which] were imagined more as sites of negotiation and compromise than as symbols of Islamic purity or triumphalism" (Antrim 34). Consequently, his text ebbs and flows between negotiation, compromise, and otherness. The ship burial scene at the end sums up the constituent parts of the Risala and presents a culmination of everything Ibn Fadlan sees and experiences throughout his rihla. It represents the apogee of an inverted worldview made up of an excess of water that ultimately engulfs people and transports them to the afterlife. It contrasts with the expanse of land in the Arabic discourse that ultimately embraces people in death. The role of the metaphor of land in ‘world making' in Ibn Fadlan's Risala persists in Leo Africanus' Description of Africa. However, Leo's text adds another layer of complexity. The fascinating encounter between the two ways of cultural construction of knowledge through the contrasting metaphors of land and water in Ibn Fadlan become co-existent in Leo's text, which acknowledges their presence and equal value. With this, I turn to Leo's account. CHAPTER FOUR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST: THE PERSISTENCE OF LAND IN LEO AFRICANUS' DESCRIPTION OF AFRICA Dans la première partie de cet ouvrage j'ai parlé en general et dans leur ensemble des villes, des limites et des divisions de l'Afrique ainsi que des choses concernant les Africains qui m'ont parules plus dignes de mémoire. Les parties qui vont suivre seront consacrées à vous donner des renseignements particuliers sur les diverses provinces, les villes, les montagnes, les sites, les lois et les coutumes. (Ép. 70) The last chapter focuses on Leo Africanus' 1526 Description of Africa, hereafter the Description, where the author provides a detailed account of Northern West Africa. The text offers evidence for the persistence of the cultural construction of world knowledge in terms of the metaphor of land in early modern Arab travel accounts. The mental conceptualization of the world according to the routes, realms, and cities framework noted in Ibn Fadlan's Risala is apparent here. However, Leo's Description is distinct, because the author, I argue, juxtaposes the two metaphors of ‘world making' - land and water - with obvious inclination towards the former. Leo's contribution lies in bringing two ways of conceptualizing knowledge into conversation, and significantly, in introducing the land-based description of the world to European cosmographers, such as Thevet, who influences Ralegh. 227 Besides the pervasiveness and systematicity of the metaphorical and literal concept of land in the Description, I choose the text because its author stands significantly between worlds, as noted by Natalie Zemon Davis in Trickster Travels (loc 1546). His life spans the geographical and cultural worlds of Granada where he is born, Morocco where he moves with his family and, later, Rome where he lives for a number of years. This hyphenated subject position between East and West, I contend, determines his delineation of the co-existent metaphors of ‘world making', land and water, through what I call double attachment. Such conceptual stance contrasts with Mandeville, Ralegh, and Ibn Fadlan's texts, which are founded largely on a single worldview. Although Leo writes the Description in Rome, he upholds the Arab worldview rather than adopt its Western counterpart. In Trading Territories, Jerry Brotton remarks how "traditionally the Renaissance, with all its politically loaded connotations of the ‘rebirth' of … GraecoRoman values, transmitted via a reified classical world, has been expunged of any potentially disruptive ‘oriental' components or influences" (27). My choice for a text that reshapes the Western discourse of Africa through its multiple translations demonstrates Brotton's point of the impact of non-European knowledge on the Renaissance. The new knowledge Leo brings to his European audience of overland travel to kingdoms and diverse cultures of learning in Africa contrasts sharply with the mythical knowledge of the continent that derives from antiquity. As we shall see, the introduction of new knowledge predicated on the foundational metaphor of land, exemplified by Leo's narrative, informs European overland travel well into the eighteenth century. Scholarship about Leo tends to focus, in the main, on his "dual subject position," and his extraordinary role as go-between, translating an African and Arab world for a 228 European readership. Jonathan Burton examines Leo's own metaphors of doubleness in "A most wily bird," as obvious in the captivating parable of a "wily bird" that can "move and live effortlessly" in the air and the sea (44). Likewise, Oumelbanine Zhiri reads the parable in L'Afrique au miroir de l'Europe as symbolic of Leo's heterogeneous identity, which remains bandied between these two discourses: bird/fish or African/Westerner. The parable, in her words, renders it difficult, if not impossible, to assign a national fixed place of origin to his speech (56).206 More recently, Natalie Zemon Davis reads the parable as a way of negotiating the question of authorial responsibility, but also as symbolic of Leo's ambiguous subject position throughout the Description (loc 1857). Knowledge construction via the metaphor of land in the Description forms my point of departure from previous scholarship as I tie Leo's double identity to the metanarrative of dual worlds and double attachment. Disagreement among scholars as to whether Leo eventually returned to Africa or not is conducive to following his process of mental re-mapping of the region and the manner he comes to terms with two worldviews that reflect his subject position. Therefore, I look at the author's process of re-making the world while in Rome and its influence on his travel experience. The argument reveals how the text foregrounds two dominant ways of ‘world making' and exploration according to land and water. Together with this, I aim to show Leo's endeavor to place real knowledge of Africa and its history against the European mythical views of it. Throughout the text, preference is given to the metaphor of land. Like Ibn Fadlan before him, Leo Africanus organizes the world in terms of land configurations, which bears on questions of travel paradigms and wonders or ‘aja'ib in the text. He resorts to double Zhiri also reads the parable in terms of moral responsibility in "Leo Africanus's Description of Africa," pp. 258-265. 206 229 attachment as one instrumental way of maintaining the metaphor of land and placing it in conjunction with the metaphor of water. It also enables Leo to introduce new knowledge of Africa to his readers. To this end, he draws on the recognizable and intertwining conventions of rihla or journey, and al-masālik w-al-mamālik or routes and realms, as frameworks to shape the world and the text. The systematic use of the metaphor of land throughout the Description resonates with Lakoff and Jonson's conceptual approach to metaphors as pervasive in everyday life, thought and action (4). Leo's land-based view structures what he perceives, how he defines his reality, and determines how he acts or travels. My argument, therefore, places Davis' remark that "[Leo] was not thinking as a navigator …. His geographic eye fell on interior land spaces and their inhabitants and on distances by land" within the broader perspective of constructing world knowledge in Arab culture and thought (loc 2584). That Leo maintains the land-bound view in the early modern era demonstrates the tenacious hold by cultures on the metaphors they live by (Lakoff and Johnson146). He exhibits tendency for the metaphor his culture has always adopted (loc 2584). Land still signifies identity fashioning, commercial power and expansion in the early modern era for the Arabs. It reveals a set of cultural and political relations of knowledge and hegemony that render it the most valid way of perceiving the world. Given Leo's inbetween status and prolonged stay in Rome, there is the added layer of significance of hanin or nostalgia for his past homes in Granada and Fez that ties to the discourse of land. Attempting an answer to the question of where home is for Leo leads to better understanding of how he applies attachment differently to his text. Travelers associate the 230 unfamiliar aspects they see on their travels to foreign places to familiar aspects at home (Pagden 21-24). Attachment, thus, offers them the opportunity to re-make the world through applying the most common conceptual metaphors. But is home Granada and North Africa for Leo, or is it Rome? John Pory's 1600 English translation of the text, A Geographical Historie of Africa, maintains that Leo's narrative "works as a veritable compass," directing its readers homewards and that the text "led us the right way home; that we might at length acknowledge both who and where we are" (A3r). Pory's words indicate that, as a text composed by a former Muslim who supposedly converts to Christianity, the Description portrays Rome, and by extension Europe, as home. In this way, it helps in fostering Europe's sense of identity and position in the world. Going against Pory's attractive supposition, I contend that home for Leo is more likely to be Africa, since the text takes everything back to Africa despite seemingly offering Rome and Europe as the frame of reference. In addition, Leo relies primarily on Arab conventions and sources. Although home is more likely to be Africa rather than Europe and despite Leo's evident reliance on Arabic sources for his depiction of places and peoples, he employs what I call double attachment. This discursive strategy, I propose, is in keeping with his dual subject position and double worldview. What I mean by double attachment is the ability to shift stances back and forth between two cultures in a manner that resists categorizing home as a single place. Instead, it produces the possibility of two homes, or two points of reference, to which the author attaches the different cultural aspects. This stance contrasts with the unidirectional process of attachment apparent in the travel narratives formerly discussed where home was one place to which everything is attached. 231 As we shall see, Leo's Arabic sources are an example of double attachment that ties all notions to Africa, while the Latin inscriptions he observes on African buildings attach the African past to Rome. The decision of which culture represents home for the author, and thus which culture he assimilates the unfamiliar to, depends on the reader's perspective. For a western readership, assimilation takes place in relation to Rome, whereas for an Arab readership it takes place in relation to Africa. I continue to correlate travel texts and maps to demonstrate the process of knowledge construction that underscores dominant worldviews. Medieval Arabic maps were still reproduced in the early modern era since "the greater the administrative complexity of the state - and the more pervasive its territorial and social ambitions - then the greater its appetite for maps" (Harley, "Maps, Knowledge, and Power" 280). The territorial expansion of the Arabs kept the reproduction of al-Istakhri's land-bound maps, for example, in high demand. Together with this, Leo's ambiguous status and the multiple translations of his text require us to look at Arab cartography at the author's time and at the simultaneous depiction of Africa within Western cartography. The comparison is conducive to two different and enticing perspectives of Africa and the world. It sheds light on Leo's own construction of Africa for a Western audience. Although Leo does not include maps in his text, his translators do. Both actions of excluding as well as including maps in the text and its translations respectively merit further exploration. The Description raises the following set of questions that I attempt to answer: how do the Arabs and the West define Africa, and construct different knowledge of it? How does this knowledge influence the depiction of mirabilia? How do both cultures map Africa? In light of these mapping traditions and knowledge of Africa, how does Leo 232 structure his text and re-write Africa for his audience? How does he use attachment in such a way that wields the two dominant metaphors of ‘world making'? And how does the parable of the wily bird elucidate a context for his conception of the world? This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the status of the author and his text. Second, it examines Leo's structure, sources and voice before it compares Arab and European definition and knowledge of Africa, along with a discussion of mirabilia. The chapter then explores the process of mapping the world for Europeans and Arabs in early modern times. In the following section, I undertake a reading of Leo's Description in light of the conventions and paradigms of travel he adopts. The chapter, then, turns to Leo's construction of two worldviews that leads to his use of double attachment as a tool of ‘world making'. The concluding section offers a reinterpretation of the parable of the wily bird and Leo's influence on actual travel. Author, Audience, and the Description The name by which the author is known to the West is Leo Africanus, a name that becomes a marker of geographic identification although, as Zhiri stresses, it is a name that he never attributes to himself (L'Afrique au miroir de l'Europe 49). Born as Al-Hasan al-Wazzan in 1490 in Islamic Granada in Spain, Leo spends his childhood years in Fez in North Africa where he relocates with his family after Castille and Aragon capture Granada. His erudition prompts Sultan Mohamed Al-Wattasi of Fez, known as Mohammad al-Burtughali or Mohammad the Portuguese, to appoint him as a diplomat in 233 his court.207 His diplomatic missions privilege him with first-hand knowledge of Africa and provide the incentive for his rihla. Crossing the Mediterranean on a mission from Cairo back to Fez, Leo falls into the hands of Venetian pirates near the island of Djerba, who later present him as a gift to Pope Leo X in Rome in the Castle of Saint Angelo.208 As Crofton Black suggests in "Leo Africanus's Descrittione Dell'Africa and its Sixteenth-Century Translations," Leo's conversion to Christianity in 1519 "secured his release and he was baptized with the pope's own names - Giovanni as well as Leo" (262). He uses the Arabic version of the name "Yuhanna al-Asad," or "Yuhanna the Lion," on his manuscripts while a captive in Italy, as Sandra Young points out in "Early Modern Geography and the Construction of a Knowable Africa" (7). The Christians of Leo's day, therefore, synthesized his Latin name with the geographic place of his childhood, as he becomes Joannes Leo, Giovanni Leone, from Africa. Leo's double names, Al-Hasan al-Wazzan and Giovanni Leo, underline his dual identity and reflect, according to Zhiri, two periods of his life and the essential rupture of his narrative ("Jean Léon l'Africain" 53). The last sentence in the Description sums up this rupture and demonstrates that he never referred to himself as Leo Africanus: "Ici finit le livre de Jean Léon, né à Grenade et élevé en Berbérie" (Ép. 579). Leo's concluding words emphasize the three determining geographic places and phases of his life: Rome, Granada, and Fez. The duality in Leo's character that Zhiri points out takes root in his childhood. Mohamed Hagi and Mohamed Al-Akhdar point out, in their introduction to the Arabic Mohammad al-Burtughali or Mohammad the Portuguese (1465-1524) was so called because he spent his boyhood as a captive in Portugal (Davis loc 373). 207 There are predecessors of Leo Africanus, who, like him, were taken into captivity and wrote their accounts. One is Rehlat Harun Ibn Yahia (al-Asir) fi Bilad al Rum (The Journey of Harun Ibn Yahia (the captive) in the Country of the Rumin 890 ad, 277h. He was abducted by pirates from Attaleia. The other is Muslim al-Jarmi, who is mentioned in Ibn Rusta's writings (al-Kilany 166-174). 208 234 edition of the Description, that Leo's intelligence and quick adaptation to his Christian surroundings in Granada where Castilian and Latin were prevalent, as well as Christianity and its rituals, matched Pope Leo's aim of reviving cultural and artistic life in the Renaissance (8). The Pope was interested in Leo as a mediator between cultures. Leo's language skills conformed to "the former's deep interest in the use of "Oriental languages to disseminate Latin Christianity to the eastern churches and bring about their union with the West and to help win Muslim converts" (Davis Loc, 1102). This duality and ability to mediate appears in Leo's use of attachment that moves from East to West and back again. Little is known of Leo's subsequent life and activities in Rome. He possibly presented himself as an extraordinary polymath. His activity involved teaching Arabic to cardinals in both Rome and Naples, and to students in Bologna. His literary projects included books in Italian or Latin on history, geography and languages that relate directly to Muslims and their countries (Hagi and Al-Akhdar 10). Some of these books survived while others were lost.209 Leo does not continue living in Rome. He expresses his desire to return to Africa someday, as earlier noted. Though unconfirmed, Johann Albrecht von Widmanstadt (1506-1557), the German humanist and orientalist, claims that Leo returns to Tunis and converts back to Islam, and [Albrecht] laments the subsequent loss to Arabic studies in Europe (Black 263). He might have been forced to leave, along with other scholars, during the turmoil that shook Italy in 1527. The Turks had invaded Hungary the previous year, and the rivalry between the Christian monarchs François I and Emperor Charles V for dominance in Italy loomed large. At the same time, Pope Clement VII kept changing his policy toward the emperor until he was rewarded with an uprising and the For a list of these works, see Hagi and Al-Akhdar, "Introduction" in the Arabic edition, p. 11. Also see Louis Massignon, Le Maroc dans les premieres annies du XVIe siecle, p. 9. 209 235 subsequent looting of the Vatican and St. Peter's. A few months later, imperial mercenary troops - German Lutherans and a majority of Spanish Catholics - entered the Italian peninsula and sacked several towns including Rome.210 Leo's status between worlds raises the issue of readership. His various cultural ties render him, indeed, a "cultural palimpsest" in Bernadette Andrea's words in "The Ghost of Leo Africanus" where one culture is inscribed over the other (197). Moreover, he is, as Zhiri points out, "an author of Arab origins, writing in Europe, in faulty Italian, a text about Africa, and addressing European readers" who have minimal knowledge of Africa (Leo Africanus's Description 258). Leo is, in fact, in-between two cultures, two religions, two civilizations, and possibly two audiences, as Davis maintains, rather than a single European audience as Zhiri suggests (loc 1795). The last aspect adds an additional layer of complexity to the text. For each audience, he is a palimpsest upon which they can inscribe their cultures. As much as Leo inscribes the multilayered cultures of Africa by means of his strategy of double attachment, his readership and translators too inscribe him. Even if the Description targets a European audience in its entirety as Zhiri maintains, I propose that the likelihood of a future Arab audience must have been on Leo's mind, especially given the ongoing translation of literary and scientific works between East and West in the Renaissance, which he himself becomes part of (Hagi and Al-Akhdar 44). The risks entailed in imagining a double audience while composing are multiple. On the one hand, Leo has to ingratiate himself to his Italian circle in order to guarantee his survival, as well as guarantee his integration in their culture. On the other hand, he has to be wary not to implicate himself in speaking against the political realities Leo's life is reimagined in Amin Maalouf's historical novel Leo the African. Also, see Davis' Trickster Travels for a historian's account of his early life. 210 236 of North Africa, where he intends to return as he claims (Ép. 538). The complexity of having a double readership is compounded by the status of the Description and its history of transmission and translation. There is no consensus among scholars as to whether an ‘original' Arabic text has ever existed. Louis Massignon, who laid the foundations of the modern scholarship on Leo, argues against "the existence of an Arabic original, despite the contrary evidence offered by Gian Battista Ramusio, an Italian geographer, who wrote that Leo, on his arrival in Rome, 'had written a book, which he carried with him'"(Black 267). What we know is that Leo wrote the book in "rudimentary Italian and scarcely punctuated," which appeared in 1526 as Libro de la Cosmographia et Geographia de Affrica (Young 10). Then Ramusio, who claimed there was an Arabic original, published the Libro as La Descrittione dell'Africa in the first volume of his 1550 compilation Navigationi et viaggi.211 The printing histories of these two works remained intertwined throughout the sixteenth century and guaranteed the survival of Leo's text (Black 263). All future translations that appeared in Europe took Ramusio's text as their basis (Zhiri, "Leo Africanus's Description" 260). For example, it appeared in Jean Temporal's 1557 French edition and in John Florio's 1556 flawed Latin one, which forms the basis for John Pory's 1600 English edition - unfortunately the only In Trickster Travels, Davis remarks that "Ramusio claimed in his dedication that Giovanni Leone had ‘learned to read and write the Italian language, and had translated his book from the Arabic. This book, written by himself, after many accidents which it would be too long to recount, came into our hands'…. Ramusio had never seen an Arabic manuscript, however, and it is more reasonable to assume that Yuhanna al-Asad … was working from, recasting, and translating Arabic notes and perhaps partial drafts. Rauchenberger makes a plausible argument for an Arabic draft of the whole section on the kingdom of Marrakesh (Rauch, 133-34), but even here there would have to be many adjustments for Italian readers" (loc 6691- 6703). 211 237 English translation until now (260).212 The first Arabic translation by Selim Efendi Michael Shehata appeared in 1883 in "On Geography and Muslim Geographers." Almost a century later, in 1982, Mohamed Hagi and Mohamed Al-Akhdar published the most recent Arabic translation. All current scholarship on Leo Africanus relies on Alexis Épaulard's most influential 1956 French translation in which he collates Ramusio's version with another manuscript that might have formed the ‘original'. This manuscript is one that Angela Codazzi had discovered in 1931 in the Library of the Vatican, henceforth CGA, thus unveiling the primary differences between Ramusio's text and Leo's ‘original' work.213 Even though Épaulard does not correct all the discrepancies between Ramusio's version that he collates with Codazzi's, it is the closest we have to the original that Leo conceives and serves scholars all the better (Zhiri, "Leo Africanus's Description" 260-261). Unfortunately, since this discovery, no scholar has edited and published Codazzi's manuscript - though several have worked on excerpts. According to Davis, "this copy is a 936-page manuscript in an early sixteenth-century Italian hand, now at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Rome. It is written in a clear and often lively Italian but with a simplified syntax and a word use sometimes lacking in precision and nuance" (loc 1587). Yet this might not be the only ‘original' copy of Leo's text. Davis concurs with Zhiri that the CGA manuscript was not the only manuscript copy of Leo' text, and that Ramusio was working from another copy (loc 6567- 6580).The possible existence of 212 See Crofton Black, "Leo Africanus's Descrittione Dell'Africa and Its Sixteenth-Century Translations" for a thorough discussion of the early European translations of the text, pp. 262-272. Also, see Zhiri, L'Afrique au miroir on the differences between Ramusio and Pory's texts, pp. 59-60. See Zhiri, "Leo Africanus's Description of Africa" on the differences between Codazzzi's discovered manuscript and Ramusio's text with the editorial changes he introduced, pp. 259-260. 213 238 multiple original manuscripts that did not come down to us further complicates the status of the Description. Therefore, the strategy adopted by scholars is to come as close as possible to the ‘original' text through Alexis Épaulard's French translation, which I, too, depend upon for all the quotations in my chapter. The different translations confirm that Leo's narrative "is not a single thing, but an emerging set of ideas, shaped afresh with each new textual incarnation" (Young 10). Pory's later iteration, for example, is "repackaged for an English readership alert to the possibility of a more expansionist England" (10). In Leo's case, however, the expansion is landward rather than seaward as in Ralegh's text. It reorients the British reader's view towards a land-bound world of African kingdoms and routes. While Pory presents Leo as a devout Christian convert, Hagi and Al-Akhdar impose a Muslim vision on the ‘original' text, and reconfigure the author as Al-Hasan rather than Leo. The ability to foist convincingly different viewpoints on the author and his work underscores the fluidity and ambiguity of both, as well as his success in maintaining a dual subjectivity. With this, I turn to the structure of the text and the author's voice and sources. Structure, Voice, and Sources Leo divides the Description into two sections that comprise nine parts in total. As the quote at the beginning of the chapter demonstrates, he focuses in parts one through eight on the different divisions of Africa, the cities, provinces, mountains, and peoples' customs and traditions (Ép. 70). After providing a general overview of Africa, its limits and divisions, Leo describes in detail seven African regions and kingdoms: Marrakesh, Fez, Tlemcen and Tunis, Numidia (present day Algeria and a smaller part of Tunisia and 239 Libya), the sub-Saharan regions, and Egypt. In the second section, part nine of the book, which is more of an appendix, he describes briefly the main rivers, and diverse African flora and fauna. Leo's description of his own division underscores his purpose of writing the book, which is to describe North Africa. The emphasis on kingdoms, divisions, cities, social structures, and people's customs throughout the Description echoes Ibn Fadlan's desire to describe diverse kingdoms and the inhabitants' customs during his diplomatic mission. In this and other aspects, Leo follows the routes and realms tradition. Leo presents his subject matter through the systematic use of anecdotes. The anecdotes fit together as they foreground his eyewitness observation and, importantly, enhance the paradigm of overland travel he undertakes. The structure is composed according to the following pattern: relating personal anecdotes and vignettes that sketch the topography of a region, major cities, political conditions, and the inhabitants' dress code, customs, and belief system. After describing the Libyan desert, for example, he asserts "Je suis passé par là il y a quelques années dans une caravane avec d'autres voyageurs," and in the plains of Araoan he meets the prince of Zanaga, who invites the caravan to his tent where to rest for two or three days (Ép. 38). At Teculeht (Takoulit) in Hea (Haha) in Morocco, he resides with a gentleman at whose place he sees works "plusieurs ouvrages historiques et des chroniques concernant l'Afrique" (Ép. 76). On such occasions, Leo confirms that he is in contact with the inhabitants, and that he has an insider's view of their life and customs. He punctuates his account with personal anecdotes, such as when his bridle is stolen in Beni Rasid province in Tlemcen and he recounts a conversation with the police (Ép. 338-339). During moments of political turmoil, he witnesses the destruction of cities, such as Teijut (Tiyout) (Ép. 79). In 240 Azaamur (Azemmour), he witnesses the encounter between the Portuguese navy and the King of Fez Moulay en-Nasir and the preparations of the Arab army (125). Remarkably, Leo is not a witness, but a player in the political events as well. He is, for instance, part of a delegation from the king of Fez to Marrakesh in 921 h (130). These incidents illustrate Lakoff and Johnson's view that metaphors cannot be comprehended independently of their experiential basis (20). Leo understands and represents the metaphor of land and the overland paradigm of travel through an empirical sense, which gives him firsthand knowledge of his material. Thus, "J'ai vu" becomes a standard refrain that privileges the autoptic principle throughout the Description, which is characteristic of Arab travel accounts and geographic treatises. It recurs when Leo describes the colorful markets of Fez or some magical practices in Tunis (Ép. 200, 220). Conversely, examples of audition or hearsay recur around five times only in the Description. An illustrative example is the story one man from Fez shares with Leo about three adventurers who descend into the wells in the city and one of them gets lost (314).214 Leo's closing words denote his preference for eyewitness over hearsay: Voilà, en somme, ce que moi, Jean Léon, ai vu de beau et de mémorable dans toute l'Afrique que j'ai parcourue de part en part. J'ai note avec soin, au jour le jour, toutes les choses qui m'ont paru dignes de mémoire tells que je les ai vues. Celles que je n'ai pas vues, je m'en suis fait donner une véridique et complete information par des personnes dignes de foi. (579) Leo's voice moves from the mediated third person to the unmediated first person as he shares his experiences and anecdotes. On a couple of occasions, he maintains a removed stance: "L'auteur de ces lignes a vu Tednest après sa ruine. Tout le mur d'enceinte s'était effondré ainsi que les maisons, la ville n'était plus habitée que par les 214 For the other examples of hearsay in the text, see Ép., pp. 5, 9, 276, and 411. 241 corneilles et par les chouettes. Ce fut en l'an 920" (Ép. 75).215 Typical of the rihla, Leo also incorporates dialogue, as when he recounts his conversation with the police or his exchange on the history of Africa with the man he stays with. The use of dialogue creates the sense of immediacy and credibility to his account. It helps to overcome the temporal shift and rupture between past events and a present retelling of these experiences since the Description is written retrospectively. Ibn Fadlan employs the same strategic tool of dialogues as well. In comparison, European travel texts, such as Mandeville's The Travels and Ralegh's The Discoverie do not contain as many dialogues. The strategy of engaging autopsia while underscoring that he has not read Arabic books for quite a while allows Leo to situate himself in the rihla tradition - a tradition that depends on former sources and eyewitness testimonies. Hence, his strategy substantiates my claim that he casts his narrative within the rihla and the masālik traditions. He foregrounds his experience through bringing it to bear on the question of memory, which he seems to identify as "the epistemological authority underpinning his text" (Young 7). However, he iterates on two occasions that his memory fails him, as he has not read Arabic books for ten years (Ép. 12, 34-35).216 On both occasions, Leo enhances the role of eyewitness: "il y a dix ans que je n'ai ni vu, ni touché aucun livre d'histoire sainte"" and, later, "j'affirme qu'il y a plus de dix ans déjà que je n'ai eu sous les yeux aucun livre sur l'histoire des Arabes" (Ép. 34-35). Yet, Zhiri suggests, "what he himself considered as a weakness … helps make his text so valuable for us, because it is less dependent on the conventions of the genre and more directly linked to his own 215 See also Ép., pp. 516 and 538 for other instances of the author's self-reflexive tone. 216 In Trickster Travels, Davis notes mistakes in dates and events that Leo commits, loc 92-93. 242 experience" ("Leo Africanus's Description" 246). Given that, Leo establishes his authority by emphasizing having witnessed many events, while simultaneously not having been able to read the former works of Arab authorities for a number of years. The inaccessibility to Arabic sources to verify dates and events promotes Leo's character, memory and experiential knowledge. As Zhiri remarks, "Leo has to insist on his own experience as a source of his text, since it is the one that will validate his authority as a geographer," especially given the absence of "network of shared cultural references with the reader" ("Leo Africanus's Description, 263). For this reason, his experiences seem to haunt the text, for the less able he is to rely on public memory, preserved in Arabic books, the more he relies on his personal memory and erudition. Despite this hiatus in his exposure to Arabic knowledge, Leo draws mainly on Arabic sources as an attempt "to present African cosmographers as a source of creditable knowledge" (Young 12). In addition, I argue that his use of these sources is an example of attachment where he corrects flawed European knowledge of Africa by attaching it to the more comprehensive African knowledge. At the onset of the Description, he frames knowledge of Africa "D'après les savants africains et les géographes," a phrase he iterates on several occasions (Ép. 3, 4, 10). Among The Arab authorities, he mentions the historian Ibn Khaldūn (Ép. 8, 34-35, 447). He also cites the African chronicler Ibn Rachu, and the Moroccan chronicler Ibn‘Abd el-Malik el-Marrakochi, author of Kitāb adhDhalil wa-t-takmila (Book of Evidence and Complementarity) (Ép. 15, 22, 49,456, 108). He refers to literary works, such as El Hariri's Maqamat, and al-Dabbag's poetry (Ép. 222, 372). In Fez, he lists the work of several Sufi masters and compares their poetic skills, such as "Essehrauardi de Sehrauard," "Ibnulfarid," and "Elfargani" (Ép. 223). Of 243 geographers and travelers, he cites al-Bakri, one of the pillars of al-masālik tradition and al-Mas‘udi (Ép. 429-430, 461, 552-553, 565-566). In contrast to this endless list of Arab authorities, Leo mentions briefly two Western authorities: Ptolemy and Pliny (Ép. 419, 554). He draws on the former's knowledge of Fez, while he explicitly rejects the latter's erroneous knowledge of Africa. The outlined exploration of the countless Arabic sources Leo employs, compared to the few European sources, underscores two points. First, the comparison helps in determining where home is likely to be for the author which, given the emphasis on Arabic learning, I contend, is Africa. More prominently, the juxtaposition of these two sources of knowledge brings into focus how Leo introduces new and real knowledge of Africa to his European audience in a way that counters the old stereotypical view of Africa and the "very little reliable information about this continent" that they had (Zhiri, "Leo Africanus's Description" 258). Put differently, how does Leo construct knowledge of the world through his use of the metaphor of land, which counterbalances the Western metaphor of water as an alternative discourse of ‘world making'? With this, I turn to the early modern Arab worldview and the depiction of Africa in Renaissance Europe. Arab versus European Knowledge of Africa This section offers a brief survey of the European perception of Africa that pointedly contrasts with Leo's Arab land-based portrayal. The fact that Ramusio opens his collection with Leo's Description and gives him prominence of place over subsequent travelers, such as Marco Polo, Ferdinand Magellan, and Niccolo da Conti, demonstrates the enthusiastic reception of the text in the West. Together with this, the title of the 244 collection Navigationi et viaggi (Navigations and Journeys), embodies the way Europeans imagined the world, mainly in water terms. Simultaneously, it points to the undergoing shift in the European worldview, since Ramusio includes examples of discovery by water (Magellan) as well as examples of discovery by land (Leo). The coexistence of both worldviews echoes their co-existence in the Description too. It is crucial at this point to clarify that rather than being a single entity, Africa meant different things for both the Europeans and the Arabs. The ancient Greeks used the word Libya to refer to the land north of the Sahara, and as a name for the whole continent. The Romans applied the name Africa to their first province in the northern part of Tunisia, as well as to the entire area north of the Sahara, and likewise to the entire continent. Europe inherits this classical definition of Africa that refers to the northern part, while also referring to an entire continent or landmass surrounded by water. The TO world maps reflect this continental perception of Africa, which the medievals sketched along with Asia and Europe. The Arabs, on the other hand, used the derived term Ifrīqiyyah (Africa) in a similar fashion, though it originally referred to a region encompassing modern Morocco, Tunisia and eastern Algeria. They called this northern region the Maghreb (West).Yet, unlike the Europeans; they did not extend the term Africa to the entire continent. It designated, more specifically, the northern region. Leo could have been aware of the discrepancy between the two terms, Africa and Ifrīqiyyah, yet his Africa mainly refers to the northern part rather than the entire continent, although he tries sometimes to include areas other than the northern region. The difficulty of equating both terms renders his task more challenging, and results in a divergent view when his work undergoes translation and when European cartograpgers sketch Africa. 245 Before the publication of the Description, the imagined Western knowledge of Africa, as a continent, was remarkably poor and flawed. Ramusio's anthology, therefore, was expressly intended to correct old errors and misunderstandings, especially "celles qui décrivent l'Afrique et les Indes sont très imparfaites au regard de la grande connaissance que l'on a aujoui aujourd'hui de ces regions" (Ép., "Introduction" XIV-XV). His discursive revision, apparent in the preface to the first edition, promises the readers that "‘having once read this book of John Leo, and thoroughly considered the matters therein contained and declared, they will esteem the relations of all others, in comparison of this, to be but brief, unperfect, and of little moment'" (Burton 47). The brief survey, then, accentuates the extent of Leo's efforts in introducing new information on Africa that entails new knowledge of ‘world making' in terms of lands and routes to his European readers.217 The core description of Africa goes back as far as antiquity, and persists in the European early modern works of Joannes Boemus' Omnium Gentium Mores, Leges et Ritus (1520), and, later, in Sebastian Münster's geographic treatise Cosmographia (1544). In the former's treatise, Egyptians "were [still] worshiping cats, crocodiles, and other animals, and west of Egypt lived Troglodytes [cave dwellers] and Amazons" (Davis Loc 2576). The sources most often quoted in these texts, among many others, are ancient authors, such as Strabo, Ptolemy, and Pliny, whose view of Africa has been transmitted in medieval times, via the work of Isidore of Seville (Zhiri, "Leo Africanus's Description" 217 For recent scholarship that considers the place of Africa according to an early modern Western imaginary, see Francesc Relaño, The Shaping of Africa, Ian Smith, Race and Rhetoric in the Renaissance: Barbarian Errors, Malvern Smith, The First Ethiopians, and Josiah Blackmore, Moorings: Portuguese Expansion and the Writing of Africa. 246 261). Europe's knowledge of the real Africa was limited. Rather, their texts conveyed a mythologized place inhabited by wild animals, subhumans and the Plinian monstrous races.218 One of Münster's maps of Africa, for instance, features wild animals and a Monoculi, a single eyed being. The continuous mythologization and representation of Africa as a place of mirabilia demonstrate how myths are "ways of comprehending experience" and giving order to our lives. Like metaphors, myths are necessary for making sense of what our surroundings (Lakoff and Johnson 186). The discursive for mythologizing was one strategy for Europe to understand, contain, and describe the untraveled, and hence, unknowable African interiors. Accordingly, Africa was depicted as a dehistoricized place with little civilization, a depiction that stands in sharp contrast to Europe. It is worth remarking that Africa was not one thing. On the one hand, there was the lingering old view, and on the other, there was fresh knowledge brought about by the explorers. Nevertheless, although "geographers and historians had … begun to take into account the new information brought by the Portuguese exploration of the Atlantic coast of Africa," their information on Africa was only slightly updated (Zhiri, "Leo Africanus's Description" 261). The reluctance to include new information brought back home by the Portuguese, as well as other explorers, underscores Europe's attachment to the aforementioned representations of the Old World. In Old Worlds, John Archer reminds us that "during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, England remained captivated by the Old World even as it turned with the rest of Europe toward America' (15). For Europe, in general, the Old On the European concepts of Africa in the opening decades of the sixteenth century, see Zhiri's L'Afrique au Miroir de l'Europe, pp. 16-25. On Europe's changing views of Egypt and Ethiopia, see Jean Archer's introduction and chapter one in Old Worlds: Egypt, Southwest Asia, India, and Russia in Early Modern English Writing, pp. 1-23. 218 247 World remained "novel and unsettling … its prestige strengthened rather than diminished by the renewal of antiquity that the New World promised" (2). Such fascination explains the exotic reproduction of Africa in early modern works, such as Shakespeare's Cleopatra and Othello. It also explains the transposition of Old World marvels like the Amazons to the New World in Ralegh's The Discoverie. Significantly, Pory's additions to the English translation foist a Western vision of the world on Leo's, not only by creating a Western literary lineage for the author, but also by incorporating particular aspects left out by him. The sections Pory adds include the Red Sea, together with the mythical creatures that inhabit its Western shore like the "old time Troglodytae" (25). He also dedicates an entire section to the "most famous and knowne Islandes situate round about the coasts of Africa, which haue beene omitted by Iohn Leo" (Pory 85). The incorporation of monstrous races follows Pliny, whereas the incorporation of islands is typical of the Western water-bound construction of knowledge of the world. In addition to Ralegh's The Discoverie, Pory's account presents another example of the persistence of these traditions in Western thought. Pory filters Leo's account through the familiar grids of legend and scripture so as not to discomfort his readers. Hans Galinsky pinpoints discursive strategies like Pory's, in "Exploring the 'Exploration Report'," as an issue characteristic of overseas literature maintaining "how does one convey that subjectively true sense of the marvelous and at the same time keep the reporter's cardinal goal of conveying objective truth?" (7). He suggests a couple of rhetorical solutions: "comparison of new phenomena with both legendary and homey things at once, and the masking of the marvelous in quantative" (7). Pory employs both rhetorical solutions to overcome the diametrically opposing view of Africa Leo presents 248 and to translate Leo's culture in keeping with Western cultural norms. Alternatively, Leo's Africa in the Description is non-Plinian, demythologized, demystified, and inhabited by real people. He presents a variegated region, dynamic rather than static. Its geography and history bear the marks of successive civilizations. Hence, Leo's Africa echoes Brotton's remark that in reality What might now be called ‘the East' was not a mysterious, distant space for the geographers of the period, but was in fact one from which they drew intellectual and material sustenance. No text more vividly personified this process than the development of Ptolemy's Geographia, a text which retained the marks of its hybrid cultural emergence between Christian west and Islamic east, rather than defining the social and cultural separation between the two cultures. (34) Brotton's remark of Africa as a place offering European geographers and travelers cultural and intellectual sustenence contrasts with the way Europe perceived it. The real Africa did not match the imagined Africa. For this reason, Leo emphasizes this aspect of cultural hybridity that Brotton points out. On his travels, he accentuates trade and material exchange between Africa and Europe that gives the impression that "the supposedly ‘western' world of Europe actually defined itself as coextensive with, rather than in contradistinction to, the classical world of the east" (Brotton 34) Leo is obviously aware of the Plinian representation of Africa in the European discourse. Nevertheless, he exhibits the ability to apprehend the workings of Western/Plinian knowledge and negotiate it along the workings of his own knowledge. In part nine of the Description, he lists Africa's flora and fauna maintaining Je passerai sous silence beaucoup de choses qui ont été écrites par Pline, qui fut un savant de singulière valeur. Cependant il a certainement commis des erreurs sur quelques petites choses d'Afrique. Ce ne fut pas a faute, mais celle de ceux qui l'avaient informé et des auteurs qui avaient écrit avant lui. Comme dit le proverb vulgaire arabe: Quelle salute peut faire l'urine d'un gamin dans la masse des eaux de la mer? (Ép. 554) 249 Writing for a European audience whose source of knowledge on Africa and the East is Pliny, Leo has to pay homage to the classic authority. At the same time, he refuses to attach knowledge of Africa to Pliny and solicits, instead, Arabic sources. His eyewitness accounts and first hand experiences of Africa counter the adage Europe inherits from antiquity about "Africa always [producing] things new and monstrous" (Davis loc 4537). Therefore, he debunks Pliny indirectly in a sarcastic tone that seemingly confirms the latter's value, yet points out his errors, which attract countless imitators for centuries. In addition to Leo's empirical knowledge that counters Pliny's, I suggest he is reluctant to include him in the Description because he was unknown to Arabic scholars (Edson and Savage-Smith 75). Even when he becomes known to Arab culture, he is not wellreceived, as Leo's attitude indicates. Significantly, Leo counters Pliny's mythologized knowledge of Africa that he passes on to Europe in his account of mirabilia through offering an alternative way of constructing knowledge of the marvelous in harmony with the foundational metaphor of land in Arab thought. Writing for a European audience, Leo is expected to include some marvels, but typical of the Arab tradition he limits and rationalizes these marvels. Moreover, he circumscribes them by aligning them to man, as noted in Ibn Fadlan's Risala. The outcome of his treatment of marvels is a demystified and demythologized Africa. Throughout the Description, the only water-bound mirabilia is in Messa, a city known for stranded whales on the beach. The legend goes that this is the place where the whale vomited Jonah (Ép. 88-89) However, Leo soon dismisses the legend, for upon talking to an old Jew, he learns that instead the whales die because of the "gros écueils aigus" or the large sharp reefs. The rest of the wonders are land-bound. In Tebessa in 250 Bougia and Tunis, there are areas long excavated by the Romans, which the inhabitants take for dwelling places for giants (Ép. 372). In the mountains of Ziz in Chaus in the kingdom of Fez, Leo sees "une chose véritablement presque miraculeuse" (Ép. 317-318). He sees an enormous quantity of snakes that people keep as pets and that share their food. Leo's account of the snakes recalls Ibn Fadlan's account of the tree-like snakes in Almish's kingdom. The attention to snakes is not surprising given their abundance in the Arab deserts. They are a cultural marker of home for Ibn Fadlan and Leo. In all these marvels, including the only water-bound one, man or his reactions are included. The story of the stranded whales includes Johanna, the excavated areas are feared and shunned by people, while snakes and people interact and co-exist peacefully. Furthermore, Leo's account is devoid of monsters. He dismisses Pliny's erroneous catalogue of monstrous races the same way he dismisses al-Mas‘udi's story of a savage race that lives in the mountains and "courent comme des cheivreuils, mangent de l'herbe et vivent dans les deserts comme des bêtes fauves" (Ép. 553). He adds "Mais c'est peutêtre là un de ces mensonges notoires, parmi ceux qui ont donné si peu de sûreté et si peu de credit à l'œuvre de ce chronieur" (Ép. 533). Later, Leo cites al-Bakri's story of a young man who allegedly sleeps on the back of a gigantic turtle in the desert taking it for a rock. The following day he wakes up in another place (Ép. 565-566). The turtle here is the Arab counterpart to the whale in the European tradition that tricks sailors into believing it is an island. Leo relies on his experiential knowledge to debunk the story as he says, "Je n'ai jamais vu de tortues aussi grandes, j'en ai cependant vu certaines de la dimension d'un grand baril" (Ép. 565-566). All the aforementioned examples demonstrate that the Descrption has little room for wonders. On the few occasions that 251 they turn up, Leo rationalizes them in harmony with the Arab tradition that abhors mixing the real and the supernatural. However, writing for a European audience that does not abhor such mixing of genres makes it is incumbent to incorporate the few wonders interspersed in the text. Whereas Leo includes some mirabilia to satisfy the Western readership, he conforms to Arab rules via rationalizing the wondrous, placing it within human context, and rendering it land-borne in keeping with the metaphor Arab culture lives by. This offers another instance of the author apprehending the workings of European culture, while simultaneously bringing it within the boundaries of Arab learning. In place of monsters, Leo relies on depicting real peoples and their cultures to construct an alternative knowledge of Africa. In Derridean terms, his text is a supplement that ‘intervenes or insinuates itself in-the-place-of; if it fills, it is by the anterior default of a presence' (145). Therefore, people with a long history of successive civilizations supplement Leo's Africa. He speaks extensively of the history, geography, and culture of Africans, "thereby populating what had previously been an ideascape or, at best, a landscape" (Burton 46-47). His description is largely factual as Ibn Fadlan's, and underscores the Qur'anic framework of diversity and complementarity whereby nations complement one another. This is apparent in the way he lists their laudable traits before their blamable traits to indicate that Africa, like any other place, contains the good and the bad (Ép. 62-64). In this respect, Leo illustrates "a genre very common in Arabic culture, the listing of the qualities and flaws of people" (Zhiri, "Leo Africanus's Description" 264). He further emphasizes the hospitable lettered culture of Africa "pour prouver qu'en Afrique aussi il existe des gentilshommes et des seigneurs pleins de 252 courtoisie, tels que le seigneur de cette montagne" (Ép. 138). His depiction of courteous Africans, thus, pointedly contradicts their negative depiction in Pory's translation, as will become obvious. He divides the Africans into five races and mentions their whereabouts (Ép. 12). Throughout the account, Leo relates the political reality of the day in Africa, an aspect that Europeans are oblivious to. He gives an account of the history of Morocco and the succession of dynasties, such as the Mehdi and the Mérinides (Ép. 102-103). When in Egypt, he gives a long account of the history of the Mamluks and their political administration (Ép. 522-528). Leo further invokes the real Africa as European merchants and travelers indeed know it, which contrasts with the imagined perception, through a recurring portrayal of the commercial relations and trade the Portuguese, the Genoese, and the Venetians enjoy with the Africans. In almost all the cities Leo travels to, he records the commercial exchange between African and Arab merchants, on the one hand, and European merchants, on the other hand. The places range from Tendest and Tefethne in Morocco to Chasasa in Fez, Ifran in Numidia, and Alexandria in Egypt, to mention just a few (Ép. 83, 121, 290, 21, 496). Leo also highlights the cultural exchange between both cultures. He recounts the Arabs' astronomical skills that derive from Latin sources translated into Arabic, and mentions some translated works, such as Le trésor de l'agriculture (Ép. 57). The emerging line of demarcation between East and Europe that shows in the European discourse is further debunked in the Description through the possibility of assimilation. Leo tells us that during his time, there was one Thomasso de Marino, an honorable Genoese gentleman, who lived thirty years in Sela (Sala) in Fez. Upon his death, the king of Fez carries out the gentleman's wish and transports the corpse to 253 Genoa. The same gentleman leaves several sons, all rich and honored by the king and his court (Ép. 171). The story, I propose, is self-reflexive. It mirrors Leo's own subject position as a man between two worlds who can possibly assimilate in another culture. It insinuates to the Pope's circle that Leo's assimilation is as genuine as the Genoese gentleman's. At the same time, the underlying meaning could imply Leo's ultimate wish to go back home just like the Genoese man's wish to be buried in his hometown, in which case the anecdote reveals that home remains Africa, rather than Europe, and that Leo's assimilation is not complete. Like his use of dual attachment, the story shifts stances in both directions. The Genoese gentleman moves from West to East and East to West. Mapping the World for Europeans and Arabs The dissociation between an old Plinian view of Africa and a presumably more realistic view that I have just examined in travel texts carries over to maps and underscores the dialogue between maps and texts. Here I contrast the European depiction of Africa on European maps to Leo's descriptive mapping of it to highlight the difference in the construction of land-bound versus water-bound knowledge of the world. To this end, I look chiefly at Ramusio's map of Africa that he adds to the mapless Description, which demonstrates the persistence of the stereotypical knowledge of Africa that Leo endeavors to debunk. Despite Ramusio's intention to prioritize eyewitness accounts, the maps in his text run counter to his intentions. The opposition between the two shows the tug-of-war between new empirical knowledge and old hearsay. Margaret Small points out in "Displacing Ptolemy? The textual geographies of Ramusio's Navigazioni e viaggi," that 254 Ramusio starts his collection with Leo's description because he values the "autoptic material" the latter advances (156). The material was in line with the emphasis on experiential evidence and sense-based strategies that the Renaissance promoted, as obvious in Ralegh's The Discoverie and Francis Bacon's Great Instauration (1621). However, Ramusio leaves the task of drawing the few maps that embellish his volumes to Giacomo Gastaldi (1500-1566) - the leading Venetian geographer at the time. The inclusion of the majority of the maps accompanying the description of the voyages was not Ramusio's choice. Rather, he was urged by Girolamo Fracastoro (c. 1476-1553), an Italian scholar. Eventually, he agrees to insert them to please Fracastoro (166). Even though European traders and travelers added new details about Africa and the East, mirabilia prevail on the maps because of what Amy Glassner Gordon terms "preferred thinking," which indicates that preference of people for ‘a romantic, fantastic view of other peoples and especially of the East, to the banality of what was reported thereafter as reality"' (Tayor 608). This preferred thinking dominates Gastaldi's map of Africa, which exemplifies the tension between tradition and novelty (see Figure 10). The map is one of four "originally drawn to accompany the description of four voyages to the New World, Madagascar, Africa and Sumatra, recorded by an unknown French pilot, all of which were included by Ramusio along with the narratives" (Small 164). Its main function was to support "the detailed description of the coastline … given in the text, though, since it lacks a scale or a grid system, it does not do full justice to the description and cannot stand separate from the text for the text gives it scale" (165). The desire to sketch the coastlines contradicts Leo's near silence of coastlines since he focuses predominantly on lands and routes. It matches Pory's inclusion of coastlines and islands 255 Figure 10. Ramusio's Map of Africa, 1557 that I note earlier, and refers to the entire continent, rather than the northern region only The map depicts the encounter between Africans and Portuguese ships sailing to the continent in a gesture that enhances the sea as the means of European knowledge and exploration of the world. To the south, a Portuguese fort stands in contradistinction to what looks like a ‘native' dwelling right above it with African inhabitants in the vicinity. The depiction of naked Africans inhabiting modest dwellings denies culture and sophistication to Africa, as Zhiri notes Europe's denial of Africa's historicity at the time (Afrique au Miroir 120). As we shall see, the encounter between the Portuguese navy and Africans is central to the Description and to Leo's attempt to come to terms with two 256 ways of conceiving knowledge of the world and exploring its extremities. Contrary to the European knowledge of Africa, which the map manifests, Leo's mental mapping is landbound. It features cities with magnificent architecture, colorful markets, and people dressed in rich fabrics instead of a basic native dwelling, naked Africans, and empty deserts surrounded by water and sea monsters, as will become apparent in my discussion of attachment. Interestingly, the water spaces, sea monsters, and ships that ring Africa on Ramusio's map foist, in my view, a water-bound worldview on Africa. This worldview almost circumscribes the land and contains it. The mapmaker juxtaposes wild desert animals, such as camels, elephants, monkeys and a racing lion to the sea monsters prevalent in the medieval Western mapping tradition. The depiction of a watery world surrounding Africa substantiates my argument regarding the attention European maps and travel texts ascribe to the metaphor of water as a means of exploration. Furthermore, the monsters surrounding Portuguese sailing ships highlight the increasing pace of exploration and the decreasing pace of the fantastical in the sixteenth century. Concomitantly, they indicate the co-existence of old and new frames of knowledge. Hence, the map features an equal number of ships and sea monsters. In a similar move, Pory's map of Africa that accompanies his English translation of the Description foists a Western water-bound worldview on Africa. The map manifests that the English remained "more concerned with the Old than the New for much of the period" (Archer 2). Once more, the map features a sea monster in the bottom left in an attempt to preserve the medieval imago mundi and water surrounds Africa. Pory's endeavor supports Campbell's remark that "the mentality of the West rejected the 257 mentality of real surprise in the experience of travel, and it may be that that rejection was designed to protect an archetypal imago mundi ... revealed so clearly in medieval world maps" (150). The depiction of the sea monster on the map, along with the inclusion of a whole gamut of monstrous races and islands left out by Leo's account in the English translation affirm the audience's expectations. Both Ramusio and Pory's maps accentuate the common process of corrupting new knowledge "into older images," particularly during translation (Campbell 140). They both corrupt Leo's realistic knowledge of Africa, which is devoid of monsters and uncivilized men, into more familiar tropes. Their maps confirm Harley's supposition that maps are not value-free images and that the selectivity of their content and styles of representation are "a way of conceiving, articulating, and structuring the human world, which is biased towards, promoted by, and exerts influence upon particular sets of social relations" ("Maps, Knowledge, and Power" 278). The simultaneous corruption and selectivity of new knowledge underline the conflict between the old and new ways of ‘world making' that pertains to early modern travel accounts, such as Leo's Description and Ralegh's The Discoverie. At the same time, they indicate what Said calls the power of "imaginative geography," which lays the groundwork for eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury Orientalism that subordinates realistic geography (Orientalism, 71-73). Unlike Ramusio and Pory's texts, Leo does not append any maps to his ‘original' text even though Arabic maps were integral to geographers' treatises on routes and realms that tackle descriptive geography. Usually, they did not stand alone (Karamustafa 4). Strategic and political reasons are one speculation for Leo's exclusion of maps, as well as any description of coastlines. While Leo was writing his account, there was an 258 ongoing political conflict between North Africa and the Portuguese. Together with this, it was quite problematic to have maps "made in Italy, in the European style unfamiliar to him" (Davis Loc 1711). Not being a cartographer himself, Leo would have had to find a cartographer to sketch his Africa according to a mixture of the Arabic and European mapmaking traditions during an era of ever-shifting exploration. Despite this inconvenience, he still maps the African landcape successfully, as I presently show. Between East and West: Leo's Description of Africa This section demonstrates Leo's "hierarchicalization" of land space that I contended so far in my exploration of his land-bound construction and mental mapping of Africa. His emphasis on land follows al-Istakhri and Al-kashgari's maps, but contrasts with Europe's conceptual view of Africa. I aim to examine Leo's itinerary and construction of boundaries to demonstrate the persistence of land in his early modern travel narrative. As we shall see, this extreme prioritization of land ultimately builds up to the simultaneous contrast between both metaphors and their co-existence. Leo embeds his Description in the land-bound traditions of al-masālik w-almamālik and imitates largely the structural pattern of its disciples, such as al-Bakri. In the first part, Leo gives an overview of African topography and history, the division of Africa into territories and various peoples, along with their religions, writing systems and pros and cons. In the second part, he focuses on the Kingdom of Morocco, its various regions, such as Hea and Sus, among others. In each region, he describes the major cities, such as Tednest in Hea and Messa in Sus, along with the separating mountains between regions and cities. In each city, he describes the inhabitants, their customs, the political 259 conditions, and the economic system. Apart from part nine on the flora, fauna, and rivers of Africa, the same pattern and categories are repeated in the rest of the Description. Leo's text validates my claim of organizing the narrative according to land configurations as he cites al-Bakri, the twelfth-century Andalusian geographer and author of the treatise Kitāb al-masālik w-al-mamālik (The Book of Routes and Realms), on two occasions. In Numidie, Leo mentions al-Bakri's speculation that the city was founded by Alexander the Great. Later, he cites al-Bakri when describing "la Terre des Noirs" (Ép. 429-430, 461). Al-Bakri's treatise, which Leo had obviously read, covers Spain, North Africa, and Europe. The first part, unfortunately incomplete, surveys the history of several nations and their customs, such as the Arabs, the Greeks, and the Romans, among others. In terms of structure, Leo's introductory part on African topography, ethnography, and history echoes al-Bakri's first part. The second extant part centers on descriptive geography. Like Leo, in this part, al-Bakri focuses on realms adopting the following structure: a brief historical introduction, a general description of the whole country, the inhabitants and their economic system. He then delineates the different routes to places, describes cities and their histories. Throughout his account, al-Bakri interweaves some marvels. The structural comparison between al-Bakri's treatise and Leo's account illuminates the similar pattern of delineating kingdoms, cities, routes, and people. Both authors integrate history, politics, and various wonders in their accounts.219 Leo's categories of kingdoms, regions, cities, and routes exemplify the overland itinerary he follows. To mention one example, he travels through kingdoms, such as the four kingdoms of "La Berbérie." The first is Morocco, which he says is divided into the 219 Leo also invokes Ibn Khaldūn from whom he borrows the division of Libyan deserts (Ép. 447). 260 seven regions of Hea, Sus, Marrocos, Guzzula, Duccala, Hascora and Tedle. The second is Fez. The third is Telensin and the fourth is Tunis (Ép. 6). He then describes in detail each of these regions, their inhabitants, and punctuates his description with personal anecdotes. As he travels, he lists more kingdoms, such as the kingdoms that make up "Les pays des Noirs." These are Gualata, Chinea, Melli, Tombutto, Gago, Cuber, Agadez, Cano, Casena, Zegzeg, Zanfara, Guángara, Borno, Gaoga, Nube. He claims that he passed through the fifteen kingdoms, all situated on the Niger where the land route that serves merchants heading to either Gualata or Cairo is located (7). Notably, Leo organizes his categories of kingdoms, cities, and routes, through delineating deserts and mountains, which form the boundaries in a typical masālik treatise. The two boundaries, I propose, guide his narrative. Moreover, they frame his world and text in a way that demonstrates how he constructs knowledge in terms of the metaphor and physical reality of land. The abundance of deserts Leo lists are the division of deserts situated between Numidia and the land of the blacks where he records the five different groups who inhabit the deserts: the Zanaga, the Guanziga, the Targa, the Lemta and the Berdeoa. His acknowledgement that he borrows this division from Ibn Khaldūn offers another evidence of Leo's reliance on the land-bound Arab categorization of space (Ép. 8). The catalogue of deserts continues as he outlines le desert de Garet, Angad in Telensin or Tlemcen, the desert of Barca, cities in deserts, deserts of Libya like Zanhaga, the desert where the people of Guenziga live, and the desert where people of Targa live (Ép. 295, 326, 414-415, 432-439, 447, 448, 451). All these deserts form one crucial boundary between places Leo travels to. At the same time, he emphasizes that they are not the empty spaces European maps portray them. Instead, they are inhabited by various 261 peoples, as noted earlier. Besides deserts, the boundary Leo emphasizes the most throughout the Description is mountains. His purpose of delineating endless mountains, I propose, is strategic since they form a protective boundary. As we shall see later, they play a crucial role in the encounter between the Arabs and the Portuguese. Leo's labyrinth of mountains that contain cities and fortresses is reminiscent of Mandeville and Ralegh's equally dizzying account of islands and rivers respectively, where rivers form a protective boundary akin to the mountains. Leo notes that Imegiagen, for example, is a fortress situated at the summit of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco (Ép. 96). Likewise, he describes le Gumuha Nouvelle as a fortress city on top of a very high mountain surrounded by many other mountains (Ép. 97). The protective aspect is apparent in Leo's depiction of mountains as usually high, harsh, and difficult, such as the mountains surrounding Bedis in the Rif region or Matgara (Ép. 275, 303). In addition, some are cold, such as Gueblen and Beni Merasen (Ép. 305, 316). Lions and ferocious leopards add to the harsh depiction of mountains. They inhabit mont el col des Corbeaux, and the mountains of Bougie in Buggia and Tunis (Ép. 315, 361).220 Leo's portrayal of mountains contributes to an invincible landscape and impregnable fortress cities difficult to conquer in part because of the mountainous nature, and in part because of the fortresses. They both underscore the power inherent in land. It is worth remarking that the two boundaries Leo delineates stand out to such an extent that they render the Description novel for the European readership. They offer a different way of conceiving the world and configuring space. In the preface to the For more examples of mountains in the Description, see pp. 127, 133, 306, 308, 309, 313, 316, 317, and 330. 220 262 English translation, Pory maintains: How many desolate cold mountains, and huge drie, and barren deserts passed [Leo]? How often was he in hazard to have been captived, or to have had his throte cut by the prouling Arabians, and wilde Mores? And how hardly manie times escaped he the Lyons greedie mouth, and the devouring iawes of the Crocodile?. (Unnumbered pages) The mountainous and desert-like contours of the landscape that Leo outlines contrast with the green aquatic environment of England. Pory lists all the aspects that could possibly attract the attention of a European audience, and that would enhance his translation. The different topography, the existence of wild animals, and the danger of encountering prowling Arabs and wild Mores is conducive to an "imaginative geography" of Africa. Such geography is desert/land-based and shows Arabs in a negative light that counters Leo's positive description. What accentuates this land-based view of Africa even more is Leo's cursory treatment of rivers in the last part (Ép. 541-553). The brevity of the description of rivers contrasts sharply with the elaborate description of kingdoms, mountains, and regions. Just like Ibn Fadlan, Leo further foregrounds his overland itinerary to different places through paying close attention to people's languages. The depiction of languages is in keeping with the masālik tradition, the rihla, and Arabic maps. He cites Ibn Rakik, or Ibn Rachu as Leo calls him, the North African historian, on the language of white Africans, who "utilisent une seule langue, qu'ils appellant communément aquel amazîg, ce qui veut dire langage noble" (Ép. 15). He also registers the corrupt Arabic spoken in coastal places the same way he registers the mix of ancient African and incorrect Arabic in Guagida in Telensin (Ép. 16, 328). Once more, he cites Ibn Rachu on the question of the prior existence of an African writing system before Arabic takes over (Ép. 49). In 263 addition, Leo invokes Ibn Khaldūn on "la généalogie des Arabes berbérisés." While claiming that his "débile mémoire" does not retain all he had read in Arabic sources was, he asserts that he saw all the Arab tribes Ibn Khaldūn mentions (Ép. 34-35). The last example is illustrative of the way Leo counts on his autoptic strategy to supplement the weakness of his memory and verify his experiences. Traveling over lands and across mountains offers him the opportunity to examine the ethnographic and language divisions across Africa. His attention to languages recalls al-Kashgari's linguistic map discussed in the last chapter. In this sense, Leo follows an Arab tradition of studying peoples' languages while traveling over land. Leo continues to accentuate his land-bound itinerary through describing cities. He does so through engaging Al-Fada'il or the merits genre characteristic of al-maslālik and the rihla traditions. In the merits genre, the author extols a particular city and represents it as the center of the ecumene. The two that merit Leo's attention the most are Fez and Cairo. Of the former he says, Je doute pas d'avoir quelque peu fastidieux dans cette longue et très copieuse description de Fez. Mais il m'a été nécessaire de m'étendre sur elle, tant parce que c'est dans cette ville que se concentrent toute la civilization et tout le lustre de la Berbérie, ou mieux de toute l'Afrique, que pour vous informer complètement du plus petit detail sur la condition et sur la qualité de cette ville. (Ép. 241) Of the latter he maintains, "La renommée proclame que le Caire est l'une des plus grandes et des plus admirables villes du monde. Je e vous décrirai en detail son aspect et sa situation, en laissant de côté tous les mensonges que l'on débite à son sujet un peu partout" (Ép. 503). Leo's "positional enhancing" of both cities continues the "universal feature of early world maps" and Arab anthologies that persistently center on, what Harley calls, the "‘navel of the world', as … perceived by different societies" ("Maps, 264 Knowledge, and Power" 290). This omphalos syndrome is apparent Ibn Fadlan's praise of Baghdad, Mandeville's praise of Jerusalem, and Ralegh's praise of England. Hence, Leo's glorification of the two cities follows this tradition. Notably, the significance of land as an identity marker is apparent in Leo's extensive description of Fez. The emphasis on the discourse of land is part of the construction of the notion of watan or homeland that I noted in Arabic odes in the introduction. In medieval and early modern Arab culture, watan was seen "as a territorial attachment that was transferable over the course of a lifetime" (Antrim 22).221 The detailed description of Fez where Leo grows up invokes his feelings of hanin or nostalgia for a land-bound space. He engages, for example, in an elaborate portrayal of the different markets and guilds (Ép. 192-201). The apology he offers for his copious description underlines his consciousness of centering on Fez more than other cities. The land-bound framework that I outlined so far in Leo's text, which ranges from kingdoms, regions, and cities separated by the boundaries of mountains and deserts, determines the paradigm of travel he adopts. Leo follows an overland itinerary. He frequently mentions the caravans, which, for example, march through snow passing the route of Mauritania and Numidia (Ép. 51-52). He also mentions "certaines regions où, pendant six ou sept jours de route, on ne trouve pas d'eau" (Ép. 53). Traveling via a caravan is usually the preferred method despite the possibility of theft or death by snow in Numidia. Even though he experiences the danger of traveling by water on one occasion, he continues to praise overland travel regardless of his negative experience in the Numidian desert. Soon after he takes a boat to cross the mountains of Beni Iagza in For more discussion on the concept of watan in medieval Arab culture, see Zayde Antrim, Routes and Realms, pp. 24, 29. 221 265 Chaus in Fez, he declares that it is not practical. He sees people falling into the river and drowning. Therefore, he recommends to the reader la passerelle or the footbridge. He goes on to say that the experience made him appreciate horses and, by extension, overland travel more (309). Placing both experiences of overland and water travel in proximity accentuates Leo's preference for land as a way of defining reality. Two Dominant Worldviews The focus on land that I have outlined in Leo's itinerary and portrayal of various land configurations and boundaries foregrounds the water-based thinking he introduces. The land-bound metaphor continues to guide the narrative as Leo emphasizes the Arab territorial power in the face of the European maritime power. However, I argue in this section that Leo juxtaposes the two conceptual metaphors of ‘world making', most apparent in his portrayal of the encounter between North African countries under Arab rule and the Portuguese to reveal different, yet co-existent, ways of constructing knowledge. Leo comes to terms with the presence of two world pictures as an outcome of his dual subject position and knowledge of Eastern and Western cultures. Significantly, he presents both worldviews on equal footing, since the two cultures were powerful at the time. A discussion of the dual conceptualization of the world reveals how it organizes his double attachment and ultimately elucidates a context for reinterpreting the parable of the wily bird. Leo foregrounds the systematic expansion of the Arabs across time and different dynasties to outline the Arab legacy of ‘world making'. He goes back in time to demonstrate the significance of land in promoting this exploratory tendency as early as 266 the third Caliph ‘Uthman when he allegedly sent a great number of Arabs, nearly 80, 000, to Africa in the year 24 h (Ép. 17). Land exploration continues when the Fatimid dynasty later conquers "toute la Berbérie et la Numidie," the Sud region, and Egypt at the hands of Geohar who heads the army (Ép. 19, 22). The armies traverse the desert between Egypt and Numidia to affect their absolute control and encounter other groups, such as the Ghrétiens in the region of Berbérie (Ép. 22, 46). The expansionary power of land is obvious in Leo's account of Almohad dynasty (1145-1248) and its ruler Caliph alMansour, who establishes a vast empire that stretches from Mesa and Tripoli in Africa to Granada, parts of Aragon, Castile and Portugal in Europe (Ép. 107). In those instances, land structures the Arab conception of the world. It determines the paradigm of overland travel and the paradigm of world exploration. Both actions and experiences originate from a predominantly unifying metaphor that strings together the journey along with its accompanying paradigm of travel, the description of routes and realms, and expansion. Against this setting of the metaphor of land as a means of ‘world making', Leo posits an elaborate description of European, especially Portuguese and, to a lesser extent, Spanish maritime power. When Leo was writing his Description, Africa had already been the object of these two expansionist powers for quite some time. The first successful Portuguese attack on the Moroccan coast took place in 1415, almost a century before Leo writes his text, and was "the prelude to a ... series of assaults on the African-Atlantic coast" (Zhiri, "Leo Africanus's Description 259). The Portuguese desired to have direct access by sea to the gold mines of sub-Saharan Africa without having to depend on 267 North-African countries for this commerce.222 Their aim, therefore, was to gain control of the Atlantic coast of Africa, which they achieved by carving out parts of the coast and establishing fortresses. This paved the way to the exploratory expeditions around Africa, which culminated in Vasco da Gama's circumnavigation of the continent in 1498 (259). The other maritime power, the Spanish, successfully attacked the Mediterranean coast before being forced to abandon it by the Moroccans to focus on the conquest of America, where the British were competing with the Spaniards over Guiana, as Ralegh's text exemplifies (259). Leo embodies the complex encounter between the two dominant ways of conceiving and exploring the world in his Description via the Arabs and the Portuguese.Two motives drove the Portuguese in their North and West African enterprises: first, the continuation of the Reconquista, and second, exploration and commerce. In the text, Leo juxtaposes instances of the Portuguese attack on the Atlantic coasts of North Africa to the Arabs' reaction. The Spanish fleet also occasionally attacks and overtakes coastal cities, such as Melela in Garet in Fez, Chasasa, which the king of Fez is unable to regain (Ép. 290, 291). It also attacks Oran several times in 916 h. as well as Alger (Ép. 341-342, 348). Along with the Portuguese and the Spanish, the French under Charles V campaigned extensively in the sixteenth century. Leo's examples trace the moments when each worldview occasionally predominates and determines world exploration. Both cultures alternate between success and failure to expand their power. When the Portuguese conquer Azafi and Azemmour, in present day Marrakesh, the Arabs See Jerry Brotton, "An Empire Built on Water: The Cartography of the Early Portuguese Discoveries" on the relationship between commerce and maps and the establishment of a maritime/Portuguese seaborne empire, pp. 46-86. 222 268 have a treaty with them (Ép. 41, 75). In Tumeglast in Morocco, the Arab ruler appointed by the Portuguese, Sidi Yehie, at whose place Leo stays, collects tributes for the Portuguese king (Ép. 99). Likewise, Meramer and Beni Megher pay tribute to the Portuguese (Ép. 127). These examples display the success of the Portuguese maritime power and worldview in gaining control over territories. The power of the Portuguese and the dominance of their worldview are more apparent in their destruction of cities. Leo recounts that the gentleman he resides with at Teculeht in Hea in Morocco, where he reads many chronicles on Africa, is later killed in the war with the Portuguese in 923/1514. Part of the population of the city is captured, part fled, and part is massacred (Ép. 76). Quite often, Leo consolidates his account by offering his eyewitness for the destruction of cities at the hand of the Portuguese, such as Marrakech et Hadecchis that are "mis en ruines dans la guerre contre les Portugais," the city of Teijut in the year 920 h., or the sacked chateau of Narangia in Fez in 895 h. (Ép. 77, 79, 258).223 Conversely, Leo offers instances when the land-bound metaphor, symptomatic of expansion and power, counters the Portuguese. His examples play up the contrast between two worldviews as he recounts the attack of the Portuguese and Spanish fleet on North African coasts and the infantry defense of the Arab armies. In Seusauon mountain in the Rif, "Il fit aussi une guerre incessanté aux Portugais" (Ép. 281). Pierre Navarro, the Portuguese Prince, sends a fleet and occupies Bougie in Buggia and Tunis. Six years later Barberousse, the Turkish corsair regains it (Ép. 360-361). The same Pierre Navarro later attacks and ruins Tripoli de Berberie, and the Arabs attempt to defeat him through For more examples of cities falling to the Portuguese, such as Gartguessem in Morocco, Temeracost in the region of Guzzula, and Arzilla, see Ép., pp. 92, 123,254,261. 223 269 establishing solid walls and the use of heavy artillery (Ép 406). On other occasions, the Arab army is able to fight back and regain the seized territories. In Hanimei in Morocco in the year 920 h., Arab cavalry valiantly attack the Portuguese at the portal city and leave none alive to return home (Ép. 110). In Azamur, Leo witnesses the encounter between the Portuguese navy and the military preparations of the King of Fez, Moulay en-Nasir, who leads his army to victory (Ép. 125). Similarly, in 921 the king of Portugal sends a fleet to overtake Mahmora in Fez, but the Arabs force the Portuguese back after a land battle (Ép. 173). To Gezira in Fez, the Portuguese king sends a navy to overtake it, and a battle takes place with the King of Fez Mohammed ech-Chaikh, where the latter wins and "la flotte retourna au Portugal" (Ép. 258-259).224 Leo's emphasis on the boundary nature of mountains that I noted earlier demonstrates the power he attributes to the metaphor of land. He depicts mountains as a strategic defense against the maritime aggression of the Portuguese. Sometimes the Arab inhabitants flee in the face of an attacking fleet as in the case of the fleet sent from Lisbon to Azafi. The inhabitants take flight into the mountains of Beni Megher (Ép 120). Similarly, the Portuguese fleet attacks Anfa in Fez and the inhabitants flee to the mountains. The city is pillaged and burnt, and the houses destroyed (Ép 161). This attitude of taking flight into the mountains occurs almost daily as "Berbers fishing west of the Moroccan port of Badis were so apprehensive of Spanish pirates that the minute they saw a mast, they rowed to shore and hid in the Rif Mountains" (Davis Loc 901). Leo's expansive account of the harsh mountains' and the fortresses there emphasizes the power and protection the land affords against the maritime threat of the Portuguese and For more instances on the encounter and winning of the Arab cavalry over the Portuguese fleet in the cities of Tanja, Sebta, Tetteguin, and Tegra, among others, see Ép., pp. 264, 265, 267, 268, and 274. 224 270 the Spanish. The endless depiction of mountains is, hence, strategic. It explicitly presents a land-bound conception of the world, and implicitly counterbalances it with the power of the sea. This brief sketch of the complex relationship between the Portuguese and the Arabs substantiates my contention that Leo endeavors to delineate a dual perception of the world by reconciling the two metaphors of ‘world making'. He places them in conjunction to acknowledge their co-existence as two equally valid ways of conceiving and exploring the world rather than to highlight their opposition. In Questions on Geography, Michel Foucault maintains, "The spatialising description of discursive realities gives on to the analysis of related effects of power" (70-71). When applied to Arab and Western cultures, the spatialized description of their realities along water and land metaphors foregrounds the related effects of power in the form of knowledge conception, identity making and world exploration. The correlation between both metaphors in the text further pinpoints the significance of each for the pertinent culture. Just as territories can be acquired via overland conquest for the Arabs, they can also be acquired via seaborne conquest. This dual worldview, thus, influences Leo's strategy of attachment that I explore next. Double Attachment in the Description Leo's double subject position and dual worldview exemplified by the metaphors the Arabs and the Portuguese embrace structures his dual attachment in the Description. The strategy enables him to construct knowledge of Africa to his readers in a manner that reflects his dual subject position. In the previously examined texts, attachment meant 271 assimilating the unfamiliar notions a traveler encounters to the familiar notions at home in an attempt to maintain a particular world picture. Caught between two cultures, Leo's strategy of assimilation entails ambiguity. It becomes double attachment that can go in either direction as he attaches notions sometimes to Africa, sometimes to Rome, and occasionally to both. As such, it becomes a political strategy and a synthesizing tool to introduce new knowledge of Africa, which counterbalances the old knowledge, while simultaneously borrowing at times from Western concepts. He does that in part to translate unfamiliar notions to familiar ones for a Western readership, and in part to forge equivalence between both cultures. More often than not, Leo's attachment is successful. However, it occasionally fails. The levels of double attachment I discuss in the text range from Leo's use of Arabic sources, his assimilation of particular aspects of Africa to Rome, his obsession with Latin inscriptions, and invoking the Roman conquest of Africa in the past. Together with this, he merges at times Arab and Western knowledge of Africa representing the latter as a cultural palimpsest, like him, where various cultures leave their imprint. In all those examples, attachment is ambiguous and entails Leo's constant shift in stance among several multivalent positions. The Arabic sources Leo invokes to frame his narrative, which I discuss earlier, demonstrate the process of attachment that ties the limited European knowledge of Africa to a more solid Arab counterpart. The attachment is conducive to the realistic image of Africa that counters its mythologized image. In addition, it allows Leo to accentuate the land-bound tradition, when he invokes el-Bakri and Ibn Khaldoun, and to take back the various uncommon things he encounters to African knowledge, thus rendering Africa the 272 point of reference. On the other end of the spectrum, Leo shifts his stance, as he sometimes seems to portray Rome as the frame of reference. He attaches African food, dress code, particular places and architecture to Rome. This gives the counter impression that Rome is home for him. At the same time, Leo's double attachment accentuates an African culture on equal footing with Rome and Europe. The following examples, hence, demonstrate the two cultures as co-existent and largely similar. Describing the poetry of the Arabs of Numidia, Leo likens it to the vulgar verses in Italy, and in Africa, he likens the heroic epics to the Song of Roland (Ép. 40, Ep.272). Concerning food, in Tunis, he says the olives resemble those of Europe, and in Gualata (Goulette) there is a round and white grain similar to the chickpeas in Europe (Ép. 464). Even dress code is similar there, where the hats that the old wear in Hea in Morocco are comparable in shape to the physicians' hats in Italy (Ép. 72). Places could resemble one another across space: Tesegdelt resembles Orthe in Italy and the plains of the region of Morocco are like Lombardy (Ép. 79, 95). Despite the different nature of North Africa, there are certain topographic similarities, such as the river in el Gumuha Nouvelle that emerges out of a mountain like "l'Enfer de Tivoli, ville du comté de Rome" (Ép. 97). Architectural similarities abound as well. One of the temples in Morocco has huge stones like those of the Colisée of Rome. It is higher than the tower of Asinelli in Bologna and bears resemblance to some Italian churches (Ép. 100-101). In Alexandria, there are high columns that resemble the Testaccio of Rome (Ép. 496).225 Leo's presentation of Africa's rich culture that matches Rome's is intentional, in my view, as it expands his For more examples of moments of cultural mirroring in the text, see Ép., pp. 85, 128, 151, 190,197,207, 208, 209, 213, 227, 230, 365, 368, 377, 438, 471, 472, 513, 514, 545, 553, 558, 572, and 577. 225 273 juxtaposition of the two equally pervasive metaphors of ‘world making' that the Arabs and the Portuguese exemplify. The attachment to Rome looks simple and unidirectional: from East to West. However, in light of Leo's stress on Arabic learning and sources and his endeavor to debunk the Plinian views of Africa, along with his desire to return to Africa, the seeming attachment of the aforementioned various aspects of African culture become ambiguous and dual. It could also indicate an attachment in the opposite direction that entails assimilating Roman cultural aspects to Africa to accentuate the equivalence of Rome to Africa. Either way, Leo's countless examples of cultural double attachment construct a whole familiar world, which ultimately deconstructs the mythical view of Africa in European imagination. His contextualization of Africa and its inhabitants within a socioeconomic and historical setting prompt thinkers like Jean Bodin (1530-1596), the French political philosopher, "to re-evaluate the terms of Eurocentrism and call Leo ‘the only man by whom Africa, which for a thousand years before had [lied] buried in the barbarous and gross ignorance of our people, is now plainly discovered and laid open to the view of all beholders'" (Burton 55). Furthermore, Leo's Africa is a counterpart to Europe. Its culture, literature, diet, dress code, architecture and even topography sometimes echo it. Attachment here fosters a sense of co-existence between East and West, which defuses Africa's strangeness and counters the uncultured naked beings depicted on Pory's map. The question of naming places presents another illustrative example of the complexity and ambiguity of assimilation in the Description. Significantly, I contend that it reflects Leo's own double names and identity, al-Hassan and Leo. Quite often Leo 274 offers the equivalent European name of a certain place. He says, Telensin is called Césarée by the Latins and al-Qahira is commonly called in Europe "Le Caire," while the Spanish call "Vêlez de la Gomera" (Ép. 13, 20, 274). He also offers equivalent names for animals. The Arabs of Numidia and Libya have a great number of horses "que nous nommons en Europe les chevaux barbes" and in Africa, there is a kind of fish called "girafa" by the Africans and "laccia" by the Italians (Ép. 40, 376).226 Providing equivalent names for places could be taken at face value as a naïve act of familiarizing the European reader with place names and rewriting African landscape on European terms. Nevertheless, the underlying significance could be a self-reflexive gesture that points to Leo's own Arabic and Latin names, that in turn, indicates his strategy to manipulate the interplay between home and not home, which varies from one reader to another. Invoking Latin names gives way to Leo's consistent invoking of the past military glory of Rome, which again is illustrative of double attachment. Besides offering an instance of assimilation that could be interpreted along maintaining cultural bridges, I read the attachment in terms of invoking the European legacy of the metaphor of water. Read in this vein, Leo's account of the maritime exploration of the Roman Empire forms an ancient counterpart to his present day account of the Portuguese maritime power. The historical component demonstrates a water-bound legacy that dates back to the GrecoRoman tradition, which I discussed earlier in relation to Mandeville's The Travels. Leo seems to pick on this legacy throughout the account as he ascribes the establishment of countless cities to the Romans. In fact, the Arabs established few coastal cities in 226 There are more examples in the text. See, for instance, Ep., pp. 336, 375, 378, 464, 498. 275 comparison to the Romans. In Fez, the latter found cities, such as Anfa on board of the Ocean, Gualili, and Le Palais de Pharaon (Ép. 160, 245, 246). They also establish Sella situated near the river Bu Ragrag, Pierre Rouge, Maghilla, and Habat (Ép 166, 246, 247, 254). Leo emphasizes the establishment of these cities via water exploration as he maintains that they are all coastal cities, such as Tangia, Bresch and Sersel in Tlemcen, El Collo, and Bona (Ép. 263, 343,344, 364, 369).227 The cities founded close to the desert, such as Deusen and Teuzan in Numidia, are few in comparison (Ép. 441-442). Leo's emphasis on coastal cities underscores the Roman maritime power as he reminds the reader that "Toutes les villes du littoral de la Maurétanie furent d'abord gouvernées par les Romains, puis par les Goths" (Ép. 199). Therefore, Leo seems to indicate that conceiving the world through the metaphor of water rightly dates back in time to a more ancient world picture that persists in the early modern world. Leo continuously shifts stances as he directs and redirects double attachment to move from East to West and back again to offer two worldviews. Whereas the Roman military legacy tends to attach Africa to Europe, Leo's invocation of Saint Augustine goes in the opposite direction and attaches the West to the East historically and theologically. He reminds his readers that in the city of Bona (Bône), known in antiquity as Orpona, Saint Augustine becomes a bishop (Ép. 369). The mention of Saint Augustine is another strategic way of speaking to a Latin Christian audience and offering an instance of a figure that underscores the unity of all Christendom East and West, which fosters cultural bridges. Leo offers a long list of countless cities founded by the Romans. See the following pages for some more examples, pp. 345, 347, 350, 352, 360, 362-364, 369, 373-402, 429, 439, 443,456,491, 499, and 502. 227 276 The attachment inherent in Latin nomenclature, Roman history, and the figure of Saint Augustine that speaks to the unification of Christendom is most apparent in Leo's obsession with the Latin inscriptions in various cities. He employs these examples to represent his dual subject position and to authenticate his claim that the Romans had indeed established these cities. Therefore, Roman rule over the region is mirrored and literally inscribed on city walls and tombs. Mergo, Leo asserts, was founded by the Romans because "Il existe là en effet quelque murs antiques où on lit des inscriptions latines" (Ép. 256). He also finds in the Palais de Pharaon "quelques lettres latines qu'on lit sur les murs m'ont donné l'absolue certitude qu'elle a été bâtie par les Romains" (Ép. 246). Likewise, in Tebessa, he sees "des inscriptions latines en lettres majuscules et un edifice avec des piliers de malarbre carrés surmontés d'une voûte est une antique et forte cite bâtie par les Romains" (Ép. 371). He even undertakes translating some of the inscriptions he reads into Sicilian in the area where the Zagoan live (Ép. 409). He finds more Latin inscriptions in Egypt in Anthius on marble blocks and on various tombs in Asna (Ép. 499, 536). The underlying significance of Leo's act of translating the inscriptions, I suggest, has to do with his own subject position. As Zhiri explains: "Leo is making a great effort to reach [his audience] by writing in a foreign language, and by using words and concepts that were familiar to them" ("Leo Africanus's Description" 261). Writing in a foreign language renders him susceptible to issues of language and translation. Just as he observes present day variations of Arabic and non-Arabic languages across Africa, he observes the ancient inscriptions there too. Moreover, his attention to languages is part of the Arabs' attention to linguistics as a discipline. Recording different languages and 277 dialects was, in fact, one of the incentives of the rihla. The outcome was a map like alKashgari's of peoples and languages. The aim of locating the ancient Roman inscriptions in Africa leads to its representation as a palimpsest explored by different cultures by means of water and land. Leo makes a point of how each culture obliterates the traces and inscriptions of the former culture. The Goths do so to the Romans, the Arabs to the Persians, and even the Roman popes to one another upon the establishment and completion of churches (Ép. 4849). As a strategic tool, the cultural palimpsest allows Leo to juxtapose East and West. Throughout the Description, he offers several examples of places that had been ruled in the past by successive civilizations. The Romans found Sela in Fez Kingdom, the Goths conquer it, and later the Arabs "pénétrèrent dans cette region" (Ép. 169). He notes the same pattern in other cities, such as Septa and Bona in Fez and Tunis respectively, which the Romans found, the Goths seize, and the Arabs rule for twenty years (Ép. 261, 369). These examples are suggestive of maritime and territorial expansion as alternating metaphors of ‘world making'. For the Romans and the Goths, the sea is the source of power. For the Arabs, it is the land. As such, Leo maintains the thread of juxtaposing the two metaphors to show their co-existence. The last example of double attachment Leo employs is the hybridity of knowledge, which I maintain fails because of the proper lack of equivalence. Once more, I read Leo's instances of interweaving Arabic and Western knowledge as an attempt at dual construction of knowledge, which is part of the dual worldviews he presents. The process of hybridity constitutes "the horizon of his own literary production as well as of his own subject position" (Zhiri, Leo Africanus's Description 258). His construction of 278 Africa relies mainly on Arab scholars and Arab sources. On a few occasions, however, he incorporates Western knowledge. The instances I particularly look at are the terms Ifrīqiyyah /Africa. Leo gives the term ‘Ifrīqiyyah' as the Arabic synonym of Africa. The equivalence is, however, inexact, as the first designates a land-bound world or region while the second designates a water-bound world or continent. The attempted equivalence marks Leo's desire to reconcile the two metaphors of ‘world making'. According to Zhiri, "in Arab geography, Ifrīqiyyah designated modern day Tunis and the Maghreb. The concept of continent was foreign to Arab geographers. Rather they followed another path inherited from Greek geographers, and used the concept of iqlim (climate or region) to divide the world ("Leo Africanus's Description" 262). Leo organizes his narrative and describes Africa according to regions in keeping with the Arab tradition. Yet, he borrows the concept of continent from Europe. In addition, he rarely uses the term African to indicate the inhabitants of the continent Africa. In the Description, being African is opposed to being Arab and designates the Berbers, the natives of North Africa. Leo restricts the term to one ethnic group of the continent. Conversely, the European usage indicates the whole range of inhabitants of the continent in an Orientalizing move. Thus, "he uses a European term but with a meaning that makes sense only to the distinctions of his own culture" (Zhiri, "Leo Africanus's Description" 262). The example indicates that Leo shifts between two frames of reference with possibly less knowledge of the European and more of the Arabic as his reliance on Arabic sources shows. He juxtaposes both through his attempted equivalence with the possible intention of assimilating the unfamiliar Africa to a familiar notion of it that the European readership could identify 279 with. However, one does not really mirror the other and his attempt at double attachment fails. He reaches the extent of his ability to get to the limits of the strategy and its ability to designate and assimilate a particular concept that steers Africa away from an essentializing and Orientalizing European discourse. Leo's use of double attachment is premised on ambiguity. It indicates a constant shift from attaching East to West and West to East. Moreover, it synthesizes two cultures along with foregrounding the way they construct world knowledge. Nevertheless, just as the process of attachment sometimes fails in Ibn Fadlan's Risala or Ralegh's The Discoverie, it also fails on particular occasions in the Description because Leo is translating cultures. Translation, as Umberto Eco points out in Experiences of Translation, is "always a shift, not between two languages, but between two cultures" where the translator must take into account "rules that are not strictly linguistic but, broadly speaking, cultural" with the aim of producing "in a different language, the same effect as the source discourse" (17, 93). Describing a long misrepresented culture like Africa to his Italian readers is challenging, and since translation is primarily a strategy, Leo reaches for equivalents and similarities through double attachment, which we see at work in the parable of the wily bird. The Parable Reinterpreted I interpret Leo's parable of the wily bird that turns into a fish as metaphor for the geographic land/water entities. It sums up, in my view, Leo's dual subject position, worldviews, and the discursive strategy of the attachment he employs throughout his Description. The parable goes as follows: 280 Au temps où les oiseaux parlaient, il y avait un gentil et vaillant petit oiseau qui était surtout doué d'une intelligence admirable. Par sa nature il avait ceci de particulier qu'il pouvait aussi bien vivre dans l'eau parmi les poisons que sur terre parmi les autres oiseaux. A cette époque, tous les oiseaux étaient tenus de verser chaque année un impôt à leur roi. Aussi cet oiseau conçut-il le projet de ne rien payer du tout. Au moment où le roi lui envoya un de ses fonctionnaires pour percevoir l'impôt, le petit malin lui donna des paroles en paiement et, pregnant un grand vol, il ne s'arrêta pas avant d'entrer dans la mer où il se cacha au sein des eaux. Les poisons, voyant cette chose nouvelle, accoururent tous en grande troupe « Hélas! Eur répondit l'oisillon, ne savez-vous pas, braves gens, que le monde en est venu à un point tel qu'on ne peut plus vivre sur terre? Notre monde en est venu à un point tel qu'on ne peut plus vivre sur terre? Notre grand lâche de roi, par un caprice étrange qui lui est venu en tête, a voulu n'écarteler vivant, malgré ma bonté et bien que je sois le plus digne et le plus honnête gentilhomme qui soit parmi les oiseaux. » Et il poursuivit « Pour l'amour de Dieu, acceptez que je loge avec vous, afin que je puisse dire que j'ai trouvé plus de bonté chez les étrangers que chez mes propres parents et chez ceux de ma race. » Les poisons se contentèrent de cela et l'oiselet passa une année avec eux sans avoir aucun impôt à payer. Au bout de ce temps, quand vint le moment de la perception des impôt, de ses serviteurs à l'oiselet pour l'informer de roi des poissons envoya l'un de ses serviteurs à l'oiselet pour l'informer de la coutume et lui demander le montant de sa redevance. « C'est bien juste ! » dit le petit oiseau et, pregnant son vol, il sortit de l'eau, laissant la son interlocuteur le plus penaud du monde. En fin de compte, toutes les fois qu'on venait demander à l'oisillon l'impôt de la part du roi des oiseaux, il s'enfuyait sous l'eau et toutes les fois qu'il lui était demandé par le roi des poissons il revenait sur terre. (Ép. 66) Leo adapts the parable from Aesop's fable of the bat, familiar to Arab culture, and akin to The Book of the Hundred Tales, familiar to Italian culture. It exemplifies dual mirroring as it speaks to both audiences simultaneously. The parable evokes for his Arab readers a popular origin and for his Italian readers a popular collection (Davis loc 1864-1875).228 His successful choice of an Aesop-like tale is remarkable since it represents a sort of crossroads of European and African culture and offers an open discursiveness for the hybridity of knowledge already apparent in his attempt at interweaving Africa with Ifriqiya. On the possible sources of his tale, see Natalie Zemon Davis' chapter "Between Africa and Europe" in Trickster Travels. 228 281 Leo's subsequent contextualization of the parable is exemplary of his own liminal subject position as both African and European, and of his nature as a trickster. He resembles the bird whose double nature allows it to thrive in two different cultures and change its stance continuously, as shown in his use of double attachment (Ép. 66). In addition, based on my argument throughout the chapter of the co-existence of two metaphors of ‘world making, I read the parable along these lines. Changing from bird to fish and back again is reflective of two different media, earth and water, and two entirely different worldviews. The first is the bird's land-bound view while the second is the fish's water-bound view. The parable, then, demonstrates the strategic oscillation between different multivalent conceptual positions the same way amphibia moves back and forth from bird to fish. The metaphoric given of land and water in the parable is suggestive of a geographic given as well, since metaphors determine our conceptual and experiential reality. The parable substantiates my overarching argument about the co-existence of two metaphors that Arabs and Europeans uphold. The water realm the fish lives in represents Europe's attachment to the metaphor of water, while the land realm the fish lives in represents the Arabs' attachment to the metaphor of land. In both cases, land and water are metaphors of knowledge formation, identity, and exploration. The two metaphors, along with the power they engender, are clearly delineated in European and Arab travel texts and maps. Foucault's view that "cartographers manufacture power … embedded in the map text….that intersects and is embedded in knowledge" applies to travelers too (73). The power that comes from the traveler and his travel narrative, and the cartographer and his map, is ascribed to a particular manner of imagining, knowing, and 282 experiencing the world. Notably, while Leo synthesizes both mental conceptions of the world and shows their co-existence, he ultimately maintains the metaphor of land, as shown in his emphasis on his experiential knowledge of overland travel and the land-bound African topography and borders. His attention to the maritime power of the Portuguese and the Romans does not overshadow his land-bound description, which he organizes in keeping with the routes and realms tradition. Conclusion Leo's contribution lies in influencing the European reformation of travel and cartography by providing a land-based worldview of the interiors of Africa. The text reorients and reshapes Europe's world conception. It represents, in Bernadette Andrea's words, "the most authoritative touchstone for Western European incursions into the African continent from the beginning of transoceanic expansion in the sixteenth century to the apex of global imperialism in the nineteenth" (198). Leo's seminal impact on early modern travel and geography is evident in Jacob Zeigler's 1532 Quae intus continentur Syria, Palestina, Arabia, Aegyptus, Schondia, Holmiae. The German geographer uses the Description in his chapter on Egypt to renew his information on its typography. More important, it also influenced the French universal cosmographies by André Thevet and François de Belleforest, 1575. The parts they dedicate to Africa are inspired by Leo's work (Zhiri 87).229 Significantly, Ralegh, as mentioned earlier, draws on Thevet's work to reconfigure his worldview. In this sense, then, Ralegh indirectly draws on Leo's See Zhiri chapter "Noms, frontiéres, paysages" in Afrique au miroir for a detailed account of Leo's influence on early modern geographical works, pp. 87-117. 229 283 Description through Thevet. Leo's influence is acknowledged well into the eighteenth century as the following speech of the African Association demonstrates, Notwithstanding the progress of discovery on the coasts and borders of that base continent [i.e. Africa] the map of its interior is still but a wide extended blank, on which the geographer, on the authority of Leo Africanus and of the Xeriff of Edrissi the Nubian author, has traced with hesitating hand a few names of unexplored rivers and of uncertain nations…. (qtd. in Pratt 69) The London-based Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, known as the African Association for short, formed in 1788 to enhance the exploration of the African interiors. In the speech, the discovery of the African interior promotes the description of those parts previously sketched by "the hesitating hand" of al-Idrissi and Leo Africanus. Yet what seems to be "a few names of unexplored rivers and of uncertain nations" in the eighteenth century is viewed as "so much detailed information about these things" by Cardinal Pietro Bembo in sixteenth-century Italy when presented with the Description of Africa by Leo Africanus (Black 264). The African Assembly rightly notes that the description of the African interiors undertaken by both Leo Africanus and the eleventh-century geographer Al-Idrisi, author of The Book of Roger who served at the court of Roger II in Sicily, are not complete. Still, they take their works as an authority upon which they rediscover Africa to "enlarge the fund of human knowledge" (Pratt 69). Mungo Park, who travels in the service of the Association to Africa, reproduces Leo's description of Timbuktu in his own account. On account of Leo Africanus' authority, Pratt remarks, "Timbuktu had existed in European mental maps as a city of gold at the center of a wealthy and cultured kingdom" (70). The aforementioned examples illuminate the far-reaching effect of the 284 Description well beyond the Renaissance and the emergence of land as an alternative metaphor of rethinking the world. The European investment in the systematic exploration, and later colonization, of Africa relied on Leo's work that "was used to map new explorations, was reassessed in light of new information, and was unanimously considered the most important text on Africa published in Europe before the nineteenth century" (Zhiri, "Leo Africanus's Description" 260). His influence continues until the nineteenth century according to Jose Garcia Baquero, who claims to have found "Leo's influence still strong in maps designed in the late nineteenth century" (261-262). The text enjoys a long life because Leo successfully links North Africa and Europe culturally and geographically. It confirms the influence of Arab travel texts and maps on furthering Europe's land-bound interest and reshaping its worldview, as recalled in the formerly discussed southern orientation of Ralegh's map of Guiana. In short, what starts out as Ibn Fadlan's fascination with the unfamiliar waterbound view and metaphor in the ship burial scene becomes a full-blown realization in Leo's Description. It culminates into two equally valid metaphors of ‘world making' and exploration that Leo delineates using double attachment. However, because of his Arab learning, Leo enhances the metaphor of land more in keeping with the inherited traditions of al-masālik w-al-mamālik and the rihla. The parable of the wily bird embodies the interplay between the two world pictures and cultures that Leo comes to terms with. More important, it emphasizes their ability to co-exist and speak to one another. Last, Leo's influence on Ralegh by way of Thevet brings travel narratives and maps East and West into direct conversation and unites all four travelers explored in this dissertation. GENERAL CONCLUSION Throughout the course of this dissertation, I have argued for the existence of two influential ways of constructing world knowledge through conceptual metaphors. For Western culture, the metaphor of water organizes its reality and experiences. For Arab culture, the metaphor of land structures its reality and experiences. Both foundational metaphors permeate aspects of life and death, such as travel, marvels, value systems, and rituals. To substantiate my argument I pull together different strands, ranging from literary and religious texts to poetry, legends, portraits and maps, into each culture's conception of the world. I have taken John Mandeville's The Travels and Sir Walter Ralegh's The Discoverie as representative of the medieval and early modern Western travel narratives, respectively. In the former, the Mandeville author continues to represent the watery world he inherits from the classical legacy apparent in former literary works and on mappae mundi. In his work, the world becomes (circum)navigable and conducive to the preferred paradigm of travel through waterways. Ralegh takes over where Mandeville leaves off. The Discoverie realizes the possibility of navigating the world and exploring new lands. While still conceptualizing the world according to the metaphor of water and the preferred paradigm of water travel, Ralegh's text marks a gradual shift to overland exploration that, in turn, marks a shift in the visual representation of the world on maps. The emergence of more land space entails a shift in perspective that brings the Western 286 worldview a step closer to the Arab land-bound view, especially considering Leo's influence on Ralegh through Thevet. Ralegh's map, oriented towards the south in keeping with Arabic maps, does not simply indicate a process of cultural borrowing. Rather it reorients the world picture. Concerning the Arab travel accounts, I have taken Ibn Fadlan's Risala and Leo Africanus' Description as representative of the medieval and early modern travel accounts. The Risala is one of the early travel texts that present the foundational metaphor of land. It is a formative text for later travel accounts, such as Leo's Description. Written between East and West, the latter's text presents the encounter between the two metaphors of ‘world making', land and water, and the ensuing reconciliation. However, Leo persists in adopting the land-bound metaphor as he relies predominantly on the Arab legacy. In the four texts, the travelers belong to cultures in which the world is conceived in its own particular way. As they venture into foreign landscapes, they unmake and remake the world. The fascinating process of making and re-making worlds is undertaken through ‘the principle of attachment'. It becomes the traveler's discursive strategy to apply familiar knowledge of the world. The Mandeville author engages the antipodal theory, whereas Ralegh succeeds in grafting the Old World on the New and producing a mingling of the two. Ibn Fadlan engages in inverted attachment, while Leo resorts to dual attachment accomodate two world pictures. Furthermore, the juxtaposition between the two sets of travel accounts underscores relationships of exchange and reciprocity. The structural metaphors of ‘world making' are revelatory in terms of identity fashioning and exploration, and 287 mapping the world. The comparison illuminates dominant ways of organizing perception, charting the world, traveling the world, and mapping the world. Land empowers the Arabs and becomes the metaphor where they ground their identity and knowledge, while water empowers the West and equally becomes the metaphor where they ground their identity and knowledge. What starts out as diametrically opposing mindsets apparent in the Mandeville author's watery world and Ibn Fadlan's land world, becomes a gradual shift in Ralegh's text, and an engaging dialogue in Leo's. The Mandeville author is an enchanter. He speaks to the reader's imagination whereas Ibn Fadlan is a rationalizer who speaks to the reader's mind. Ralegh is an adventurer, who speaks to the urge of discovering new worlds, and Leo is an explorer of worlds on his own terms. World maps across both cultures and spaces embody these processes of mental mapping and imaginative geography inherent in the travelers' texts. This comparative study offers several contributions. Importantly, it places Western and Arab travel accounts and maps into conversation for the first time, thus revealing the dynamics of the cultural construction and borrowing of knowledge. To this end, it begs to overcome the binaries that formerly hindered this scholarly conversation from initially taking place. Yet, in reality, this dissertation pushes beyond binaries and travel narratives. In essence, it reveals that there are two, if not more, ways of making and re-making the world. While this seems simplistic, the acknowledgement of two coexistent mindsets accentuates the possibility of steering away from a unitary discourse, be it Eurocentric or Arab-centric, that dictates a particular world picture or knowledge system. It urges, instead, for embracing a multiplicity of discourses, voices, and worlds. 288 Historically and representationally, my study concludes with the early modern period and focuses, in the main, on travel works and worlds. However, it opens new prospects for future research. The notion of the cultural construction of knowledge can be a helpful tool in filling in the various lacunae in the comparative study of European and Arab cultures, among other cultures. To the best of my knowledge, for example, there has not been a comprehensive study that compares the concept of marvels in Western and Arab literary texts. Hence, this project ends with the passion for exploring marvelous worlds and texts beyond travel narratives. BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Africanus, Leo. Jean-Lion l'Africain: Description de l'Afrique. Ed. Alexis Épaulard et al. Paris, 1956. ---. 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