Journey
ʿAbd al-Razzāq — Herat to Vijayanagara (1442–44)
Shah Rukh's envoy from Herat, who waited ill and slighted at Calicut for months before being summoned inland to Vijayanagara, and then wrote the fullest Persian description of fifteenth-century south India: the seven enclosures, the open jewel bazaars, the elephant stables and the Mahanavami durbar he was himself received at in the royal enclosure.
Stops (5)
- Herat · home · sent 1442
Shah Rukh's capital and the centre of Timurid painting and bookmaking, from which he was sent as envoy to the Zamorin of Calicut and then summoned on to Vijayanagara. The Herat workshops of his day are the direct ancestor of the Mughal atelier, so the court that sent this embassy is also the source of the style Akbar's painters were taught.
- Hormuz · out through Hormuz
Down through Kerman to Hormuz and across the Arabian Sea on the monsoon — the standard route from any Persian court to India, and the one every Timurid and Safavid embassy used. He describes the crossing as the worst part of the journey and was seasick and ill for much of it.
- Kozhikode / Calicut · Calicut, 1442–43
Calicut, which he disliked — he was unimpressed by a port where “the Muslim and the infidel” traded on equal terms and nobody troubled about his embassy — and waited there, ill and frustrated, for the Zamorin to take notice. He was Shah Rukh's envoy and expected to be received as one; Calicut received merchants.
- Mangaluru / Mangalore · Mangalore, 1443
Mangalore, the landing on the Vijayanagara coast, from which the road turned inland and up the ghats. He records the tribute and the reception, and the climb through Belur and Banavasi took his party a month. This is where a Persian embassy stopped being a nuisance and became the empire's responsibility to feed and escort.
- Hampi / Vijayanagara · Vijayanagara, 1443–44
He describes seven concentric fortified enclosures, bazaars of jewellers selling pearls and rubies openly in the street, a treasury, an elephant stable and the Mahanavami festival — the city, he wrote, was such that “the eye has not seen nor ear heard of any place resembling it”. He was received at the Mahanavami durbar, which is the ceremony the platform in the royal enclosure was built for.