Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Part 193

[p.335] doe,” and embarked for Persia upon the Red Sea. He touched at certain ports of Al-Yaman, and got into trouble at Aden, “where the Mahumetans took him,” and “put shackles on his legges, which came by occasion of a certayne idolatour, who cryed after him, saying, O, Christian Dogge, borne of Dogges.[FN#4]” The lieutenant of the Sultan “assembled his council,” consulted them about putting the traveller to death as a “spye of Portugales,” and threw him ironed into a dungeon. On being carried shackled into the presence of the Sultan, Bartema said that he was a “Roman, professed a Mamaluke in Babylon of Alcayr;” but when told to utter the formula of the Moslem faith, he held his tongue, “eyther that it pleased not God, or that for feare and scruple of conscience he durst not.” For which offence he was again “deprived of ye fruition of heaven.”

But, happily for Bartema, in those days the women of Arabia were “greatly in love with whyte men.” Before escaping from Meccah, he lay hid in the house of a Mohammedan, and could not express his gratitude for the good wife’s care; “also,” he says, “this furthered my good enterteynement, that there was in the house a fayre young mayde, the niese of the Mahumetan, who was greatly in loue with me.” At Aden he was equally fortunate. One of the Sultan’s three wives, on the departure of her lord and master, bestowed her heart upon the traveller. She was “very faire and comely, after theyr maner, and of colour inclynyng to blacke:” she

[p.336] would spend the whole day in beholding Bartema, who wandered about simulating madness,[FN#5] and “in the meane season, divers tymes, sent him secretly muche good meate by her maydens.” He seems to have played his part to some purpose, under the colour of madness, converting a “great fatt shepe” to Mohammedanism, killing an ass because he refused to be a proselyte, and, finally, he “handeled a Jewe so euyll that he had almost killed hym.” After sundry adventures and a trip to Sanaa, he started for Persia with the Indian fleet, in which, by means of fair promises, he had made friendship with a certain captain. He visited Zayla and Berberah in the Somali country, and at last reached Hormuz. The 3rd book “entreateth of Persia,” the 4th of “India, and of the cities and other notable thynges seene there.” The 8th book contains the “voyage of India,” in which he includes Pegu, Sumatra, Borneo, and Java, where, “abhorryng the beastly maners” of a cannibal population, he made but a short stay. Returning to Calicut, he used “great subtiltie,” escaped to the “Portugales,” and was well received by the viceroy. After describing in his 7th book the “viage or navigation of Ethiopia, Melinda, Mombaza, Mozambrich (Mozambique), and Zaphala (Sofala),” he passed the Cape called “Caput Bonæ Spei, and repaired to the goodly citie of Luxburne (Lisbon),” where he had the honour of kissing hands. The king confirmed with his great seal the “letters patentes,” whereby his lieutenant the viceroy of India had given the pilgrim the order of knighthood. “And thus,” says Bartema by way of conclusion, “departing from thence with the kyngs pasporte and safe conducte, at the length after these my long and great trauayles and