Saxon: The Emperor's Elephant (45 page)

‘Would that be enough?’ Osric asked.

‘It will put an end to his ambition to make a commercial fortune in the caliphate.’

Osric shook his head in admiration. ‘Sigwulf, you really should stay on in Baghdad. You seem admirably adapted to the court politics.’

I stepped forward and embraced my friend. ‘We lost an aurochs and never found a griffin nor a rukh, but we made sure that Carolus and Haroun will continue to exchange embassies. Whenever
one leaves Baghdad, send me your news – and Zaynab’s.’

Osric turned aside and picked up a thin sheaf of papers. ‘You’d better keep these,’ he said, placing our pages from the Oneirokritikon in my hand. ‘I can always consult
Artimedorus’s writings in the royal library. But when you get back to Aachen, you may find yourself needing every signpost in an uncertain future.’

Historical and Zoological Note

In July of
AD
802, the arrival of a live elephant created a sensation at Charlemagne’s court. The elephant, named Abul Abbas, was a gift from
Haroun al Rashid, the Caliph of Baghdad. The elephant’s journey, except for the sea crossing between North Africa and Genoa, must largely have been on foot, an extraordinary achievement by
the animal and its keepers. The exchange of rare and expensive presents – including exotic animals – was a feature of international diplomacy. Haroun despatched Abul Abbas after
receiving from Charlemagne an embassy led by two Franks, Lanterfrid and Sigmund, and a Frankish Jew, Isaac. There is no record of what presents they might have carried with them but historians
surmise that Charlemagne would have given horses, hounds and precious fabrics.

*

Why visitors entering the Round City were required to wear white clothes, when the household colour of Haroun’s family was black remains a puzzle. Haroun was only twenty
years old when he came to power and relied heavily on the advice of a Persian family, the Barmakids. His favourite was Jaffar, son of the Chief Vizier. Jaffar accumulated such influence and wealth
that he issued his own coins. Archaeologists have found a gold dinar issued by Jaffar and dated
AD
798 in treasure discovered on the coast of Zanzibar. Arab merchants traded
to East Africa from the seventh century
AD
, perhaps earlier. They took advantage of the annual reversal of the monsoon winds to make the round trip from home ports in the
Arabian Gulf and Oman, and developed a complex system of astro-navigation based on an encyclopaedic knowledge of the stars.

An even more unusual gold dinar came to light in Rome in the first half of the nineteenth century. The coin was minted in England by King Offa of Mercia and imitated gold dinars issued by
Haroun’s grandfather, Caliph al-Mansour, in
AD
773–4. How it got to Rome is a mystery. The coin is unlikely to have been a gift from Offa to the pope because the
inscription proclaims Allah as the only God. More probably the coin was intended for use as currency in Mediterranean trade. It seems that Offa’s moneyer could not read Arab script because he
inserted Offa’s name upside down. The coin is now in the British Museum.

*

Many animals in the medieval bestiaries or books of beasts can be traced back to creatures listed in an anonymous second-century Greek compilation known as the
Physiologus
. The behaviour of the animal was considered to be as important as its size and appearance. Various classical authors, notably Pliny, also contributed descriptions of
wonderfully weird beasts, as did garbled reports filtering back to Europe of unusual animals roaming foreign lands. The basilisk, for example, was said to be either a cross between a rooster, snake
and a lion, whose gaze could turn a man to stone, or a small serpent with a breath so toxic that if a man on horseback struck it with a spear, the venom ran up the spear shaft and killed both rider
and steed. In fact, several bestiary animals that might have been disbelieved by a sceptic as fantasies, were real. They included the ostrich, dromedary, chameleon and the remora. The latter, a
suckerfish, attaches itself to a larger host fish or to a vessel’s hull by sucker plates on its head. Additionally, the medieval mind credited it with being able to stop a vessel moving
through the water, hence its name: in Latin
remora
means ‘delay’.

Two of the imaginary bestiary creatures have had second lives. The little snake with a tiny horn above each eye that Walo picks up in the Egyptian desert is now known as a cerastes viper, a
miniature version of the long-horned cerastes serpent shown in the Book of Beasts. In Central America the basilisk lizard (
basiliscus
) has crests or ‘sails’ on its spine,
making it look exactly like the picture of its namesake in the bestiaries. The medieval observer would be amazed by the basilisk lizard’s genuine ability to stand up on two hind legs and run
for a short distance across the surface of water. The modern nickname is – Jesus Christ Lizard.

*

Ibn Khordadbeh, Director of Posts and Police for the caliphate, wrote the best surviving account of the Radhanites, the roving Jewish merchants, a hundred years after
Sigwulf’s imaginary journey. According to Ibn Khordadbeh, the Radhanites could speak Arabic, Persian, Latin, Frankish, Spanish and Slavic, and they ranged across an astonishing network of
trade routes that extended from France in the West to China in the East, and included India. Khordadbeh describes the route that Sigwulf uses from Pelusium at the mouth of the Nile, by camel
caravan across the desert, to Suez, where the Radhanites took ship ‘on the Eastern Sea’.

*

The belief that the long, spiral tooth of the narwhal was an alicorn, a unicorn’s horn, persisted until the sixteenth century. An alicorn was worth many times its weight
in gold, as much for its presumed medicinal value as for its rarity. An alicorn was supposed to detect and react to poison. Dipped into a poisoned drink, it made the liquid bubble or darken. Ground
into powder it was an antidote for poisoning, as well as a cure for epilepsy and a guard against plague and fever. Unsurprisingly, an alicorn was a popular gift for monarchs who feared for their
lives. Queen Elizabeth I of England, Mary Queen of Scots, and Philip II of Spain all had alicorns in their treasuries.

That other royal gift, the elephant Abul Abbas, lived until
AD
810 when he was in his forties. He died of pneumonia after swimming in the Rhine, so it is said. He will
reappear in the third volume of SAXON.

Also by Tim Severin

NON-FICTION

The Brendan Voyage

The Sindbad Voyage

The Jason Voyage

The Ulysses Voyage

Crusader

In Search of Genghis Khan

The China Voyage

The Spice Island Voyage

In Search of Moby Dick

Seeking Robinson Crusoe

FICTION

Viking: Odinn’s Child

Viking: Sworn Brother

Viking: King’s Man

Corsair

Buccaneer

Sea Robber

Saxon: The Book of Dreams

First published 2013 by Macmillan

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