Where Facts and History Meet Myth and Legend Groups or Communities in the Marvels of India Stories Model

The ʿAjā’ib al-Hind (Marvels of India) is a collection of sea stories allegedly compiled by Captain Buzurg Ibn Shahriyār (d. 399/1009) which belongs to an Arabo-Islamic literary genre called the ʿajā’ib, containing themes of entertainment—things that are marvellous and strange. But these stories are...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIndia quarterly Vol. 76; no. 3; pp. 392 - 410
Main Author Agius, Dionisius A.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New Delhi, India Sage Publications, Ltd 01.09.2020
SAGE Publications
Sage Publications India Private Ltd
Subjects
Everyday life
Group identity
Islam
Middle Ages
Indian Ocean
India
stories model
Marvels of India
nautical data
fact and fiction
community or group identity
maritime landscapes
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Summary:The ʿAjā’ib al-Hind (Marvels of India) is a collection of sea stories allegedly compiled by Captain Buzurg Ibn Shahriyār (d. 399/1009) which belongs to an Arabo-Islamic literary genre called the ʿajā’ib, containing themes of entertainment—things that are marvellous and strange. But these stories are not merely entertaining, they are an additional resource for the modern researcher because they also reflect the realities of daily life in seafaring communities of the Indian Ocean in the ninth and tenth centuries. Among the tales of the fantastic and the marvel, we find the simple humanity of the seafarers, something lacking in the purely factual, medieval, geographical and historical texts. A complementary model to the understanding of the maritime landscape of a group or community is proposed in this article. The stories model in this article demonstrates the relationship of an occupational group with other seafarers in a trans-regional Indian Ocean trade.
ISSN:0974-9284
0975-2684
DOI:10.1177/0974928420936132