Early Mapping of Southeast Asia. Thomas Suarez

closer to China than India, but was considered part of latter. There is no definite identification for Zabaj; though it was certainly an Indonesian island. Probably it was Java or the east coast of Sumatra; Zabaj may be related to the term Srivijaya, the great Indonesian maritime empire of a thousand years ago.⁸⁷

      Some of the same texts which describe Zabaj also refer to the island of jaba. As with medieval European maps which depict an island of 'java; jaba may have been either Java or Sumatra, or both, depending on the author. From jaba it is said to be about fifteen days' sail to the Islands of Spice− clearly Java, assuming the texts' 'spice islands' to be the Moluccas- yet it is also described as being situated on the sea route to China, which makes Sumatra more likely.

      Volcanoes are mentioned in connection with both Zabaj and jaba. Akbar al-Sin wa 'l-Hind (mid-ninth century), wrote that

      near Zabaj is a mountain called the Mountain of Fire, which it is not possible to approach. Smoke escapes from it by day and a flame by night, and from its foot comes forth a spring of cold fresh water and a spring of hot water.

      The report conjures up an image of a monumental volcano such as Krakatau or one of the smaller volcanic Indonesian islands known as 'Gunung Api' ('fire mountain'); a tamer one is described at about the same time by Ibn Khurdadhbih as being on jaba:

      There is in Jaba a small mountain with fire on its summit stretching for the distance of a hund red cubits but having only the height of a lance. One sees its flames at night but only smoke during the day.

      The island of Ramni is clearly Sumatra, usually described as being the first to be reached after leaving Ceylon, and washed by two seas− Harkand (Bay of Bengal) and Salahit (Malacca Strait). In the mid-ninth century, Akbar al-Sin wa 'l-Hind wrote that on the island of Ramni there are plantations called fansur, the latter being the name of a Sumatran kingdom later visited by Marco Polo. By about the year 1000, there are references in Arab texts to an island named Lamuri, another of Polo's Sumatran ports-of-call, as well as of Friar Odoric and other early European visitors. In the fourteenth century we find the island referred to by its modern name, Sumutra, in the text of Rashid al-Din (d. 13 18) and Samutra in the travelogue of Ibn Battuta (dictated in 1355).

      Another Southeast Asian port frequented by Arab sailors in the route from India to China was Kalah. Reference to Kalah is found as early as 650 in accounts of Nestorian Christians, and appears in Arab writings two centuries later. It lay roughly six days' sail from the Nicobars, and ten days from Tioman, an island off the southeast coast of Malaya. In about 940, Abu Dulaf stated that it was at the limit of Chinese sea-faring. Kalah's people, or at least its trading community, were dressed in sarongs, the men and the women alike. Abu Dulaf describe the town as

      very great, with great walls, numerous gardens and abundant springs. I found there a tin mine, such as does not exist in any other part of the world.

      The thousand-year-old lore of Sind bad described Kalah as a great empire bordering on India, in which there are mines of tin, plantations of bamboo, and excellent camphor." Scholars have proposed that Kalah lay on the coast of Mergui (northwestern Malaya), or Kedah, or one of the islands which lie on the western waters of Malaya, such as Phuket.⁸⁸

      Champa is described by many texts, which refer to the kingdom as Sanf It is said to lie along the sea route to China between Qmar (Khmer, i.e., Cambodia) and Luqin (Lung-p'ien, a port at the mouth of the Red River). Akbar al-Sin wa 'l-Hind (ca. 850) noted the kingdom's export of aloeswood, and that mariners en route to China next called at an island with fresh water named Sundur Fulat (logically Hainan, but possibly Pulo Condore).

      As with the Ramayana and India, the legendary voyages of Sind bad record some distant memory of Arab voyages to Southeast Asia. Sindbad traded extensively in India (the 'Sind' of Sind bad denoting a region of India, now part of Pakistan) and traveled to Ceylon and beyond. In the course of his first voyage, he visited the island of Kasil, describing it in terms matching the island of Bartayil of the geographers. On his third voyage, Sind bad reaches Salahit, a place cited by several Arab geographers which probably lies in Sumatra. During the course of the fourth voyage, he went to Naqus (Nicobar Islands) and Kalah (western Malaya?), and the fifth voyage he reached islands with spices and aloeswood. The people of these last islands "love adultery and wine and do not know about the proper methods of praying"- complaints commonly made by Arab sailors about some Southeast Asian islands.

      Waq-waq: the Life of a Myth

      One of the most recurring and enduring place names recorded in Islamic tradition which is associated with Southeast Asia is the island or archipelago of Waq-waq. Various solutions have been suggested to the riddle of the island's identity− Sumatra is most often proposed, but so is Madagascar, since the integration of Ptolemaic geography into the Arab world view had created confusion between the islands of eastern Africa and those of southern Asia. The only realistic answer is that Waq-waqwas some undetermined Indonesian island, and that the popular lore associated with it eventually transformed it into a mythological place just out of reach of the conventional trade routes. Different sailors may well have identified different landfalls as Waqwaq.⁸⁹ The island's most distinguishing characteristics were its namesake tree, which bore fruit of girls (figs. 25 & 26), and its abundance of gold.

      The metamorphosis through which Waq-waq was transformed from a real place to a legend by the progressively fanciful lore surrounding it, offers an ideal chance to examine the life of a Southeast Asian geographic myth. We will look at several descriptions of Waq-waq and its tree, in chronological order, and see how an unassuming description of local features was gradually transformed into the magical land of Waq-waq.

      A geography by the Persian author Hudu al-'Aiam, dated 982 relates that

      "east of [China] is the Eastern Ocean; south of it, the confines of Waq-waq, the Sarandib mountain, and the Great Sea.. Wag-wag belongs to the hot zone... its capital is M.qys, which is a small town (where) merchants of various classes stay."⁹⁰

      Another text, the Masalik wa'l Mamalik attributed to Kurtubi (d. 1094?), states that "occasionally due to the strength of a violent wind some ships reach the island and through the perseverance of the sailors land on [it]."⁹¹

      Our metamorphosis begins in about the year 1000, with the geographical treatise of Aja'ib al-Hind. Al-Hind wrote that

      Muhammad ibn Babishad rold me that he had learned from men who had landed in the country of Waq-waq, that there is found a species of large tree, the leaves of which are round but sometimes oblong, which bear a fruit similar to a gourd, but larger and having the appearance of a human figure. When the wind shook it there came from it a voice... A sailor seeing one of these fruits, the form of which pleased him, cur it off to bring it back, but it immediately collapsed and there remained in his hands [only a Aabby thing] like a dead crow.

      There are no mysterious or mystical claims here. The author had simply heard from second-hand sources that the island had a curious tree which bore a gourd-like fruit that resembled the human figure. The fruit made a sound with the wind, and it lost its hardness when removed from the branch. Many retelling the story of the tree, however, fell to the temptation to elaborate upon the curious description of the tree's fruit. Shortly after Al-Hind's text, another author, Biruni (973- 1048), was already trying to stop the wild stories that had sprouted up about Waq-waq:

      The island of al-Waq-waq belongs to the Qmair islands [Qmar]. Qmair is not, as common people believe, the name of a tree which produces screaming human heads instead of fruits, but the name of a people the color of whom is whitish. They are short in stature and of a build like that of the Turks.

      Similar repudiation came from al-Idrisi (d. 1165), who sifted through texts and travelers' reports in Sicily: "[In Waq-waq] there is the tree about which Mas'udi [Arab geographical author, d. 956] tells us unbelievable stories which are not worth telling."

      Nonetheless, the writings of another twelfth-century author, Kitab al-Jugh rafiya (Spanish), reveal how embellished and horticulturally precise the myth had become:

      In the part of the land of China which is in the sea... the largest and most important island is Wag-wag. It is so called because there are great tall trees there [which] bear fruit in the month