800 AD CHINESE EXPLORER, TALKS OF HORN OF AFRICA

September 11, 2011
This is not as ancient as i would have liked but it still shows an interesting discription of life in east africa. With an account of the culture of  drinking blood mixed with milk, still present in certain people like the Maasai / masai.  it also talks about the dynamic of activity within those early communities. The somali or muslim berbers of some sort were attacking or taking slaves from the nilo-saharan people.  supposedly these accounts are taken from a a failed expedition by the Chinese to repel the Muslim armies, a soilder finds his way back to china via this east africa to India route.
Text taken from:- Freeman Grenville: Selected Documents
-Esmond Bradley Martin:History of Malindi
-Duyvendak: China’s discovery of Africa
-Neville Chittick : East Africa and the Orient.
Also called Duan Chengshi
N-SOMALIA
Southwest from Fulin (the roman orient), after one traverses the dessert for two thousand miles is a country called Ma-lin. (is not Malindi) Its people are black and their nature is fierce. The land is pestilentious and has no herbs, no trees, and no cereals. They feed the horses on dried fish, the people eat hu-mang (the Persian date). They are not ashamed of debauching the wives of their fathers or chiefs, they are the worst of all barbarians. In the seventh moon they rest completely(Ramadan). They then do not send out nor receive any trade and sit drinking all night long.
BERBERA
The land of Po-pa-li (Bobali) is in the south-western Ocean. The people do not eat any of the five grains but they eat meat: more frequently even they pick a vein of one of their oxen, mix the blood with milk and eat it raw. They have no clothes, but they wrap around their waists a sheep’s skin which hangs down and covers them. Their women are clean and well behaved. The people of the country themselves kidnap them and sell them to strangers at prices many times more then they would fetch at home. The products of the country are ivory and “a-muat”(ambergris)(he is the first Chinese to mention it).
When Possu (Persian) traders wish to enter this country, they gather about them several thousand men and present them with strips of cloth. All, whether old or young, draw blood and swear an oath, and then only do they trade their goods.
From of old this country has not been subject to any foreign power. In fighting they use elephant’s tusks, ribs, and wild buffaloes’ horns as spears, and they have cuirasses and bows and arrows. They have twenty myriads of foot soldiers. The Arabs are continually making raids on them.
chinese discription of blood drinking maasai
chinese dipiction of blood drinking
maasai blood drinking cow
maasai blood drinking cow
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Category : Literature