Marco Polo and the Somali coast, about 1298

In short

The Venetian Marco Polo dictated his book of travels in about 1298. He never visited the Horn of Africa and wrote about it from what others told him. No Somali place appears under its own name, but three passages are linked by scholars to the Somali lands. This page follows the standard English edition by Henry Yule, revised by Henri Cordier: The Book of Ser Marco Polo, 3rd edition, volume 2 (London: John Murray, 1903), Book III, chapters 33–35 (archive.org). Page numbers are from that volume.

"Madeigascar": Madagascar or Mogadishu?

What Polo says (pp. 411–413). Chapter 33 describes an island "about a thousand miles from Scotra" (Socotra):

• "The people are all Saracens, adoring Mahommet."
• "They have four Eskeks, i.e. four Elders, who are said to govern the whole Island."
• "The people live by trade and handicrafts."
• Together with "Zanghibar", it has more elephants than any country, and "the amount of traffic in elephants' teeth in these two Islands is something astonishing".
• "In this Island they eat no flesh but that of camels; and of these they kill an incredible number daily."
• There is red sandalwood, ambergris from whales, and many leopards, lions and other wild beasts. Ships bring "cloths of gold and silk" and other goods.
• Ships from Maabar (south-east India) reach it in 20 days but need more than 3 months to return because of a strong southward current.

The chapter goes on to the giant bird "Rukh" and its feather, sent to the Mongol emperor.

Yule's reading (p. 413). Yule believed Polo was the first writer to speak clearly of Madagascar, but that "his information about it was very incorrect". Madagascar has no elephants, camels, leopards, bears or lions. Yule wrote that Polo "made some confusion between Makdashau (Magadoxo) and Madagascar". He pointed to:

• The camels. "Above all the camel-killing indicates Sumali Land and Magadoxo as the real locality of part of the information." He quotes Ibn Battuta: at Mogadishu "the natives keep camels in great numbers, and they slaughter several hundreds daily".
• The sheikhs. Ibn Battuta wrote that the ruler of Mogadishu had no higher title than sheikh, and the Portuguese historian De Barros wrote that Barawa was governed by 12 sheikhs. Yule added that "this kind of local oligarchy still prevails on that coast".
• Ivory and the Muslim population, which also fit the Somali and East African coast better than Madagascar.

Other views (p. 414). Cordier's added note records that the French geographer Alfred Grandidier concluded that Polo gave "a very exact description of Magadoxo" and did not know Madagascar at all. The French scholar Gabriel Ferrand believed Polo really meant the island of Madagascar. Cordier wrote that he saw no reason not to accept Yule's mixed reading.

The Ming records (pp. 413–414). Yule added that the Annals of the Ming dynasty describe Mogadishu ("Mu-ku-tu-su") as a dry, mountainous country by the sea, where at times it does not rain for years, and record a mission from it to China in 1427. Barawa ("Pu-la-wa") produced frankincense, myrrh and ambergris. For the Chinese sources, see Chinese records of the Somali coast.

White sheep with black heads

In chapter 34, on "Zanghibar", Polo writes that the sheep "are all exactly alike in colour; the body all white and the head black; no other kind of sheep is found there" (p. 422). Yule's note says: "These sheep are common at Aden, whither they are imported from the opposite African coast. They have hair like smooth goats, no wool." He adds that the Italian traveller Varthema also described them, and that a small figure of one, found in an Egyptian tomb, was in the Cairo Museum (p. 424). For the medieval sheep trade from Berbera and Maydh to Aden, see Zeila, Berbera and Mogadishu in the records of Rasulid Yemen.

The war between "Abash" and the "Soldan of Aden"

What Polo says (pp. 427–431). Chapter 35 describes "Abash" (Abyssinia), ruled by a Christian king, with Muslims living "towards Aden". The people "are in daily war with the Soldan of Aden, and with the Nubians". Polo tells a story set in 1288: the king sent a bishop on pilgrimage to Jerusalem; on the way back the "Soldan of Aden" seized and forcibly circumcised him; the king then invaded the sultan's land, beat "the Kings of the Saracens, who were three in number" at a strong pass, and ravaged the country for more than a month before going home. Polo tells the story from a strongly Christian point of view and closes it with open hostility to Muslims.

Yule's notes (pp. 432–435).

• Aden or Adal. Yule wrote that the story "requires us to conceive of the Sultan of Aden as dominant over the territory between Abyssinia and the sea, or what was in former days called Adel, between which and Aden confusion seems to have been made". He noted that a medieval map by Marino Sanudo also puts Aden on the African shore. He asked whether the sultan of Aden may once have had some power over the Muslim states of Adal, since Abyssinian letters to Egypt were sent through the sultan of Yemen.
• The coast before. Citing al-Masʿudi, Yule wrote that until at least the 10th century "Musalman families" lived in Zeila and the other ports as tributaries of the Christian kingdom. Later the Muslim communities of the coast grew powerful, and inland provinces such as Ifat and Dawaro came under Muslim governors.
• Which war? The story resembles the campaigns of the Ethiopian king Amda Seyon against Ifat, Adal and their allies. Yule noted that the 18th-century traveller James Bruce dated those wars to about 1315–1316, too late for a book of 1298. Henry Salt and Guillaume Pauthier proposed moving the Ethiopian dates earlier to fit Polo. Yule wrote that he had at first agreed but, after studying the king lists, kept Bruce's chronology.

The French historian Éric Vallet reaches a similar view from Yemeni sources. He writes that Polo "clearly confuses" the sultan of Aden with the Muslim princes of the coast or the interior, and that relations between Rasulid Yemen and Ethiopia's rulers were generally peaceful (Vallet, L'Arabie marchande, ch. 6 §75).

Related pages

• Early Mogadishu and the Benadir coast before 1300
• Ibn Battuta in Mogadishu and Zeila, 1331
• The Sultanate of Shewa and the founding of Ifat
• Greek and Roman writers on the Somali coast
• Books about Somalis before 1500