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INTEODUCTION, 1
century the Mohammedans at Canton, — which they called Khanfu,— had
become so numerous that in 758 they were able, for some reason which has
not come down to us, to sack and bum the city and make off to sea with
their loot \
5 The earliest Arab narratives concerning the China trade date from the
ninth century. They are those of a trader called Soleyman and of Ibn
Wahab of Basra; the former made the voyage to China in the first half of
the century, the latter in the second. They have been recorded by the Zeyd
Hassan of Siraf in his little work entitled Salsalat-al-tewarykh, or «Chain of
10 Chroniclesa^ From it we learn that at this time the products of China were
very expensive and scarce in the markets of Basra and Baghdad, on account
of the fires in Canton which frequently destroyed them, and also by reason
of the frequent wrecking of the ships engaged in the trade and the acts of
pirates. Some of the trade also went to the ports in the Yemen and to other
15 countries. The ships engaged in the China trade ^ sailed from Siraf on the
coast of Fars, where the goods were brought from Basra, Oman and other
places. They then went to Mascat, whence they sailed for Kulam-Male,
which port was reached in a month. Passing the Nicobar Islands they made
directly for Kalah on the Malay Peninsula, which was reached in a month
20 from Kulam. From Kalah four days were employed to reach Pulo Condore,
from which point a month's sail brought them to Canton.
On arriving at Canton each ship handed over its cargo to the agents of
the Chinese Government, and it was stored until the last ship of the season's
fleet arrived, when three-tenths of the merchandise was retained as import
25 duty and the balance handed back to the owners. The principal imports into
1) T'ang-shu, 10 and 258'". See also Bretschneider, Early Chinese and Arabs, 10—11 and
Chavannes, Documents sur lea Tou-Kioue, 173. Ehanfu is Euang (cli6u) Fu. On the identity of
Khanfu of the Arabs with Canton, see infra p. 20, n. 3 and 22, n. 1.
2) Text and translation published by Beinaud in Kelation des Voyages faits par les
30 Arabes et les Persans dans I'Inde et h. la Chine. See p. 12 et seqq. See also E. Dulaurier,
Journ. Asiat., 1846, J& 10.
3) The text reads aChinese ships.» Masudi (Prairies d'or, 1, 308) also speaks of «the ships
of China which used to go to Oman, to Siraf, to Obollah and Basra, while the ships of those
countries sailed directly for China.)> The so-called aChinese ships» may have been built in China,
35 but it seems highly improbable that they were owned or navigated by Chinese. Down to the end
of the twelfth century the names of Aden and Siraf even were unknown to the Chinese. Ch6u
K'tl-fei, Ling-wai-tai-ta, II, 13 says distinctly that «when the Chinese traders (l^^ @ j^
jSi ) wished to go to the countries of the Arabs they had to embark at Quilon on small
boats {-j^) on which, with a fair wind, they could make the voyage in a month. There is no
40 evidence that it was not the same in the time of Soleyman and Masudi.
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