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Swahili Sailors in Early China
Page 3
- In a corner of the western seas, in the stagnant
waters of a great morass,
Truly was produced a qilin, whose shape was as
high as fifteen feet,
With the body of a deer and the tail of an ox,
and a fleshy, boneless horn,
With luminous spots like a red cloud or purple mist.
Its hoofs do not tread beings and in its wanderings
it carefully selects it ground,
It walks in stately fashion and in its every
motion it observes a rhythm,
Its harmonious voice sounds like a bell or a
musical tube.
Gentle is this animal, that in all antiquity has
been seen but once,
The manifestation of its divine spirit rises up
to heaven's abode.
The emperor of China was delighted with the gift and
hospitable to the Swahili. At the time of their departure the
emperor ordered a large fleet of several thousand men to
escort them back to Africa. Louis Levathes describes for us
the commotion in East Africa upon their arrival:
- Alarmed spread quickly through the East
African town of Malindi. Across the sea, beyond
the coral reef, strange storm clouds appeared on
the horizon. Fishermen hastily dragged their
outriggers to safety on dry land. As the clouds
gathered, it suddenly became clear that they
were not clouds at all but sails-sails piled upon
sails, too numerous to count, on giant ships with
large serpent's eyes painted on the bows. Each
ship was the size of many houses, and there were
dozens of these serpent ships, a city of ships,
all moving rapidly across the blue expanse of
ocean toward Malindi. When they came near, the
colored flags on the masts blocked the sun, and
the loud pounding and beating of drums on board
shook heaven and earth. A crowd gathered at
the harbor, and the king was summoned. Work
ceased altogether. What was this menacing power,
and what did it want?
The fleet moored just outside Malindi's
coral reefs. From the belly of the big ships
came small rowboats and men in lavish silk
robes. And among the faces were some the king
recognized. These men he knew. They were his
own ambassadors, whom he had dispatched months
ago on a tribute-bearing mission. Now emissaries
of the dragon throne were returning them home,
and they brought wonderous things to trade.
Cheng He is a very famous admiral of the Chinese Naval
fleet. He was also a eunuch and a Muslim. Under his command
the Chinese naval force was the largest it had been in all of
history. Their huge naval ships were four hundred feet long
and were able to house thousands of men. Between 1405 and
1433 Cheng He had made seven great voyages with his fleet.
It was Cheng He and his fleet who took the honor of escorting
home the Malindi ambassadors.
An interesting twist to the story about the Malindi
giraffe is the fact that when ever Cheng He visited Africa he
usually returned to China with African ambassadors. And the
ambassadors habitually brought exotic African animals to
present to the imperial court. After his fourth voyage Cheng
He returned to China with another group of ambassadors from
Malindi. On September 16, 1416 these ambassadors presented
another giraffe to the imperial court. Nearly two years after
the giraffe painted by Shen Tu. At the palace gate in
Nanjing the emperor also received from them zebras which the
Chinese called "celestial horses" and "celestial stags"
(probably oryx). This event again repeated itself three
years later:
- When Zheng He returned to China on July 15,
1419, the emperor richly rewarded all the fleet's
officers. The foreign ambassadors who came to
pay tribute to the emperor were received at court
on August 8 and caused a sensation. The African
envoys paraded their curious animals, and court
officials "craning their necks looked on with
pleasure, and stamping their feet when they were
scared and startled, thinking that these were
things that were rarely heard of in the world
and that China had never seen their likeness."
In his book, They Came Before Columbus, Dr. Ivan Van
Sertima points out the Swahili were actually transporting
elephants to the courts in China in the thirteenth century.
This demonstrated the level of sophistication in their ship
building and navigational capabilities. In East Africa's Fort
Jesus Museum there is presently on display a model of a type
of ship the Swahili used to sail across the Indian Ocean. It
is also worth nothing Levathe's words on this matter:
- In 1498, when Vasco da Gama and his fleet of
three battered caravels rounded the Cape of Good
Hope and landed in East Africa on their way to
India, they met natives who sported embroidered
green silk caps with fine fringe. The Africans
scoffed at the trinkets the Portuguese offered-
beads, bells, strings of coral, washbasins-and
seemed unimpressed with their small ships.
The Husuni Kubwa palace as it appeared during the height of Swahili wealth and power.
The structure contained more than 100 rooms.
Throughout the period of this trade accidents and mishaps
did occurred. Traveling great distances across the oceans has
always been fraught with miscalculations and dangers for both
the Chinese and the Swahili. Some voyages never made it to
their destinations. Others were unsuccessful in returning
home. In various places in the Pacific we can find small
populations which are remnants of ship wrecked Swahili and
Chinese sailors.
For example, off the coast of Kenya there exist a series
of remote islands called the Bajun Islands. In 1935, while
studying the Bajunis, an Italian anthropologist noticed their
complexion was much lighter than other groups in the region.
Some of the men had very long flowing beards. A
characteristic seen with many elderly Chinese men today. Many
Bajunis claim their ancestors were shipwrecked Chinese
sailors. One Bajunis group called the Washanga has a story
about their origins. They have passed this story down from
one generation to the next. As the story goes a Chinese
sailing vessel was wrecked off the coast of the Bajun island
of Pate. Having no way to return home the sailors settled at
a place called Mui Wanga on the island. They converted to
Islam and married the local women:
- The two dozen or so members of the Washanga
tribe who live on Pate and some of the surrounding
Bajun islands today all believe they are descended
from Chinese. Some are proud of this heritage;
some are not and will say they belong to another
clan. The proud ones remember with particular
fondness a story their parents passed on to them
about the time long ago when the king of Malindi
gave the emperor of China a gift of a male
giraffe and a female giraffe. They like to point
out that although one giraffe died on the way
to China, the other lived. The Chinese emperor
was very pleased with the unusual beast, which
became a symbol of the friendship between the
Chinese and the Swahili. It is remarkable that
on this remote corner of the African coast,
people who speak no Chinese should know the
details of a story that is written in classical
Chinese and read only by a handful of scholars.
The Washanga are not unique. There are other groups in
the Pacific with similar stories. Located in the South
Pacific are a set of islands called Fiji Melanesia. It is
interesting to note the term "Melanesia" means "islands of
the Blacks". The native Fijians say they arrived on the
islands from East Africa and are proud of their African
heritage. They also have an old Fijian saying:
- We, the Black people of Fiji, came here a long
time ago to our present homes in Fiji from
Tanzania, in East Africa. We don't know exactly
when we came to Fiji but we know we came from
Africa.
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