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difficult in its navigation and impassable except in a strong,
freshening wind. Thence the sea merges into a vast deep till it
reaches 'Uman; and here one sees what the Most High has mentioned,
* Waves like unto firmly rooted mountains.'¹ It is however
entirely safe in the outgoing, but dangerous in the incoming; and
wrecks by the force of wind and waves are not unfrequent. All
ships sailing over this part of the sea are constrained to carry for
protection a body of fighting men and throwers of naphtha.² The
port of 'Uman itself has a bad, destructive harbour. Farther lies
Famu-s-Sab',³ a frightful strait; and farther still, al-ghashabat
(the stockades) on the skirts of al-Basrah. This is by far the greatest
evil, a strait and a shallow combined. Here small huts have been
erected on palm trunks set in the sea, and people stationed
therein to keep a fire lighted at night, as a warning to ships to
steer clear of this shallow place. Our passage of it was accomplished
with great difiiculty, ten times did the ship strike on the
ground; in connection with this I heard an old man say that of
forty ships going by this way one only returns. It is not my
intention to dwell on this subject, as in that case I must needs
mention all the anchorages of this sea and the routes over it.
The waters of this sea, distinguished by the name of the Sea
of China, periodically rise toward the middle and end of each
month and twice in every day and night. The tidal flowing and 13
ebbing of the water at al-Basrah is due to the river's connection
therewith; for, when the tide rises, it forces back the waters of
the Tigris which then flow into the many channels that irrigate
inhabitants; and thus the Red Sea was formed. The author of Tajud-'Arui
improves matters by adding that this king was Alexander, the Grecian.
1 Qur'an, XL 44.
² For defence against Indian pirates who from the earliest times infested
these seas. Strange as it may appear now, when the aversion of Indians
to sea is considered, the inhabitants of India have not always been shy of
the sea. Indian flotillas have on several occasions, in the time of the Caliphs,
made descents up to the very banks of the Tigris; while it appears from
the statements of the Chinese traveller, Hwen-Thsang, that in the first half
of the Vllth century, most of the principal cities of Persia contained colonies
of Indians who enjoyed a full exercise of their religion. See Beraaud's
Introduction, p. 384.
³ The lion's mouth. The mouth of a river between Sulaimanan and Hisn
Mahdi, called Famu-1-Asad (the lion's mouth) in al-Istakhris map. Editor's
note.
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