two legs protrude, and on the third day the two legs and thighs. This continues so that a little more protrudes each day until they have completely emerged on the last day of the month of Nisan [April]. In the month of May their head comes out and the whole figure is complete. They are suspended by their hair. Their form and statures are most beautiful and admirable. At the beginning of the month of June, they begin to fall from these trees and by the middle of the month there is not one left on the trees. At the moment of falling to the ground they utter two cries: "Wag, Wag". When they have fallen to the ground, Aesh without bones is found. They are more beautiful than words can describe but are without life or soul.
The writer explains that Waq-waq lies at the end of the inhabited world to the east, where the coast touches the Greater Sea. A century later Qazwini (d. 1283), much of whose material was recycled from older writings, adds an Amazonian twist to the island. He repeats the story that the Waq-waq fruit looks like women hanging from the branches by their hair, and notes that
al-Mubarak of Siraf claimed to have been into the island and seen the queen seared upon a throne, completely naked and with a crown on her head, surrounded by four thousand young virgin slaves, also naked. Others say that these islands are called this because there is found a species of tree, having fruit, which produces a noise "Waq-waq!" The inhabitants of this island understand this noise and draw disagreeable omens from it.
Kurtubi informs us that man does not live on Waq-waq, but ra ther that
there is a kind of great tree whose fruit, which grow among its blossoms and boughs, are always lovely women such that those who see the beauty of their shape and the grace of their body are asronished. The breast and vulva of each one are like [those of] other women, and in the branches of the tree they are suspended from the branches by their heads [hair] like a kind of fruit. Sometimes they all make the sound vak-vak. Therefore they call the island Vak-Vak.
Fig. 25 The Waq-waq tree, said to grow on the island of Waq-waq, somewhere in insular Southeast Asia. Ottoman, ca. 1600. [Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul]
Friar Odoric, a European who reached China via Southeast Asia in the early thirteenth century, was told a version of the story of the Waq-waq tree, and a Chinese writer, Tu Huan, noted one rendering of it as well. The fabulous Waq-waq tree is depicted in Islamic art with both male and female 'fruit', but the tree was described in the Pali language as nari phala ('girl-fruit tree'). In the early nineteenth century the Thai poet Sunthorn Bhoo borrowed the idea, writing of "a garden of magical fruits [whose) trees bear beautiful women as fruits," and the image of the tree is found in Thai art as a tree with 'woman mango fruit' (fig. 26). Another recurring motif of Waq-waq is the plenitude of gold to be found there. Gold is considered to be so abundant in Waq-waq that it is not highly esteemed, and is even used for dog collars.
The corroborative evidence for Waq-waq led al-Idrisi to include it as a group of islands in his atlas of the world (fig. 28), though he dismissed the fantastic lore associated with it. Waq-waq remained a prominently mapped feature into the middle of the seventeenth century, when the island is found in the position of Sumatra on the map of the world by Indo-Islamic cartographer Sadiq Isfahani.
Bartayil
Bartayilwas an island which was associated with the beating of drums, musical instruments, and the sounds of dancing. From this island "one continually hears the noise of the drums, flutes, lutes, and all sorts of musical instruments, a sound soft and agreeable, and at the same time dancing steps and the clapping of hands." This story was repeated by various writers with minor embellishment (the size of the ensemble grew in the later renderings). The island was also believed by sailors to be the dwelling place of the Antichrist. Some sources noted that cloves are purchased there from "invisible people", probably referring to the common system of silent barter. An animal, looking like a horse but with a mane of such length that it trailed on the ground, came onto the island from the sea. Sailors were said to be too frightened to investigate the island or its music. The island was visited by the legendary Sindbad, who called it Kasil.
Fig 26 A Thai adaptation of the waq-waq tree, the landmark of an Indonesian island described in Arabic geographic texts. The tree was incorporated into Thai poetry as "a garden of magical fruits [whose] trees bear beautiful women as fruits," and the artist who executed this image, labeled it as a tree with "women mango fruits." From a southern Thai manuscript, probably late eighteenth century.
As with Waq-waq, there is no reliable identity for Bartayil. Sailors' imagination probably made the association of Bartayilwith the Antichrist from the appearance of the island's people (they were said to have faces resembling shields of leather, with split ears) and the unearthly effect of its incessant music with no visible source. The idea that the Antichrist would be found in the east probably grew from the tradition of the apocalyptic monsters, Gog and Magog, while Bartayils strange horse may have evolved from the lore of the Chinese triple-headed goddess, Kwan-yin, who was sometimes said to assume the form of a horse, and who was supposed to have been born in the southern ocean from a father whose empire extended from India to Southeast Asia. The purchase of cloves does not mean that the island was itself a source of the spice (which at that time would have meant the Moluccas), but simply that it was a market place for them- as the sixteenth-century Portuguese historian, João de Barros, noted, Portuguese and Malay merchants preferred to conduct their trade in the Banda group, rather than sail all the way to Ternate itself.
Fig. 27 World map of al-ldrisi, mid-rwelfi:h century, a copy bearing the date 960 AH (1553 A.D.). Oriented with south at the top, Africa wraps around the southern Indian Ocean. The Arabic tide of al-ldrisi's geography translates as The Recreation for Him Who Wishes to Travel Through the Countries. (Approx. 23 cm diameter) [Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms. Poe. 375]
The Islands of Spice
'Islands of Spice' are, of course, presumably references to the Moluccan and Banda Islands, but many allusions to spice islands in Arab texts are vague and semi-mythical. The principal question regarding the identification of the Arab texts' reference to "Spice Islands" with the Moluccas is whether the sailing time they quote for reaching the islands is sufficient, and the answer to that question depends on the identity of the points of departure. As early as about 850, Ibn Khurdadhbih stated that the "Islands of Spice" are said to be reached after fifteen days' sailing from "Jaba, Salahit, and Harang." If, as some scholars believe, these three places lay at the southern end of the Malacca Strait, then the fifteen days would doubtfully have taken a vessel further than eastern Java.92 Other authors repeat the same figure, among them, interestingly, the Italian traveler Nicolò de' Conti. Conti stated that he sailed fifteen days from Sumatra and Java to Sanday, a source for nutmeg, and Bandam (Banda), a source for cloves. In fact, Banda was the source for nutmeg, and only served as a market for cloves which were brought there from Ternate and Tidore in the Moluccas.
Even as late as the fifteenth-century, al-Mahri's navigational text is little more specific than to acknowledge Banda as the source of nutmeg, that "the islands of Cloves are called Maluku and are four islands [actually five], " and to place the islands to the southeast of jawa (they actually lie to the northeast, but Arab pilots tended to envision Indonesian islands aligning to the southeast). He states that the latitude of these islands "is certainly unknown, although people of some knowledge have suggested their latitudes." Islands of spices of less definite identity are described in earlier Arab writings, recorded by different names and not placed in clearly identifiable places, but probably all refer to the Moluccas, even if based on second-hand data.
Cloves
