Having shared the translations of some of the information in Arabic texts about Southeast Asia in the last post, let’s take a look at what they have to say about the place called Jāba/Zābaj, which I argue was a trans-peninsular trading empire that was based at Songkhla in what is now southern Thailand.
To being, let’s first just try to get a basic sense of what key places were mentioned in some of the early texts and how these places were positioned in relation to each other.
Akhbār al- Ṣīn wa’l-Hind (c. 850)
Langabālūs – Kalāh-bār – Tiyūma (10 days from Kalāh, as fresh water)- Kadrang (has fresh water springs, and is described as “a high mountain where slaves and robbers sometimes hide”; 10 days from Tiyūma) – Ṣanf (Champa, 10 days from Kadrang).
Also mentions an island called Rāmnī, but doesn’t indicate where it was in relation to other places.
Ibn Khurdādhbih (c. 850)
Alankabālūs – Kilah (= Kalāh; 6 days) – Jāba/Salāhiṭ/Harang (2 parasangs) – Mā’iṭ (close by) – Tiyūma (not far) – Qmār (Cambodia; 5 days) – Ṣanf (3 days)
Ya’qūbī (d. 897)
Kalāh-bār – a sea called Salāhiṭ – a sea called Kadrang
Ibn Rusta (c. 900)
Kalāh – Zābaj – Zanj / “East Africa” (typo for Ṣanf / Champa)
Tibbetts translations a part of this text as follows: “In passing by Zābaj in order to reach Zanj (East Africa) one must pass through the region of darkness, where the sun only appears for six hours in the day.” (31)
There are other passages in this text where the term “Zanj,” a term for an area of East Africa, appears. Ferrand translates those passages, and it is clear from the context that this is not referring to East Africa, but instead, to Ṣanf / Champa (see pages 68-9).
This text also mentions, in a different section, that one reaches Harang after Salāhiṭ and that these were both territories of the Maharāja.
Abū Zaid (916)
Says that among the possessions of the Maharāja of Zābaj are “the island called Sribuza of which they say the area is four hundred parasangs and the island called Rāmi [i.e., Rāmnī] which is 800 parasangs in area.” (33)
Although some of these texts are more detailed than others, I think that it is easy to see a general pattern in these works.
First, I think we can identify a trans-peninsular route that went as follows:
Langabālūs / Alankabālūs = Nicobar Islands (or somewhere around there)
Kalāh/Kalāh-bār/Kilah = Kedah
Jāba/Zābaj = Songkhla
Salāhiṭ = Sathing Phra
Harang = Patthalung
Mā’iṭ = Ko Mak?
Tiyūma = Talumphuk
Kadrang = This also appears as “Kundrang,” and is a reference to Côn Đảo/Kunlun Island/Pulo Condore, known at that time in Chinese sources as Mount Juntunong 軍突弄山.
Ok, so Kalāh sounds kind of like Kedah, and one can see how Kadrang/Kundrang could be the same as Mount Juntunong when we consider that Chinese doesn’t have the consonant cluster “dr” and 1,000 years ago this could have been pronounced as something like “kun-dwət-ləng” (according to Pulleyblank’s reconstructions).
However, why can’t we say the same for the places in between?
Songkhla, Sathing Phra, Patthalung, Ko Mak, and Talumphuk are all Thai names for places that were originally inhabited by people who did not speak Thai. This is a region that was probably inhabited early on by Mon-speaking peoples (“ko” in the name “Ko Mak,” for instance, is the Mon-Khmer word for “island”), and then at some point, you had people who speak Austronesian languages, like forms of Malay, move into the area.
Thai-speaking peoples were the last to arrive in this region, and they did so long after these Arabic accounts were created. Therefore, we should not expect there to be a “direct match” between the names in Arabic and the current Thai-ified placenames. This is especially the case when we also consider that the names that were recorded in Arabic texts were undoubtedly not exact reproductions of how those names were pronounced by local people, but instead, were Arabic-ified.
Further, the term “Jāba/Zābaj,” was used in Arabic sources to refer to the various “islands” that the Maharāja of Jāba/Zābaj controlled, and it could also refer to his “capital,” which I believe was located somewhere around where Songkhla is today. That said, I doubt that this is what the people there actually called that place, and as such, I doubt that there is a linguistic connection between “Songkhla” and “Jāba/Zābaj,” just as later there would be no linguistic connection between the name “Ayutthaya” and the way that foreigners called it, “Siam.”
However, I can see vague linguistic connections between the following terms: Salāhiṭ/Sathing Phra, Harang/Patthalung, Mā’iṭ/(Ko = island) Mak, and Tiyūma/Talumphuk. And again, given that we are comparing Arabic-ified versions of placenames with Thai-ified versions of placenames, vague linguistic connections are probably the most we can hope to find.
What we can then do to gain a clearer sense of what the placenames in Arabic texts referred to is to look at the geographic descriptions and information about these places in those texts.
Jāba/Zābaj, Salāhiṭ, and Harang are mentioned together, and Mā’iṭ is close by.
If you look at the above map of the Songkhla area, you can see that there is a big lake called Songkhla Lake. It is called Thale Sap Songkhla in Thai, and “thale” is a Mon-Khmer word for a body of water.
Songkhla is located at the southeastern corner of the lake where there is a strategic opening to the sea, and Patthalung is located on the western side of the larger section of the lake.
To the east is a strip of land that separates the lake from the sea. This is called Sathing Phra and in the early 1980s, archaeologist Janice Stargardt did work here and found that there is evidence that there used to be canals that went across Sathing Phra and connected Songkhla Lake with the sea.
Then in the middle of Songkhla Lake are two islands. One is called Ko Nang Kham. This has meaning in Thai, and it means “the island of Lady Kham.” I don’t know who Lady Kham was, but obviously, there must be a story behind that name, and given that the name is in Thai, I’m guessing that this is a later Thai story rather than an early story created by the indigenous or early inhabitants of this region.
The other island is called Ko Mak, and “mak” here is the Thai word for “many.” This doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t mean “many islands” because Ko Mak is just one big island. It also shouldn’t mean “big” because the Thai word for “big” (yai) is used in the names of islands. My guess would be that this is a Thai-ification of an earlier name, such as whatever the name was that Arabic sources refer to as “Mā’iṭ.”
[And here it is probably worth noting for people who don’t know Thai that the final “k” in “mak” doesn’t really get pronounced, and this word, therefore, sounds more like “maa” with a swallowed “k” at the end. I don’t know Arabic, but from that transcription, it looks like it is pronounced as “maa” with a short “t” at the end.]
So, when we consider that there are four placenames of places that are close together that get mentioned in Arabic sources after Kedah (Jāba-Zābaj / Salāhiṭ / Harang / Mā’iṭ), and we then look at the geography of where people would have gone if they traveled across the Malay Peninsula from Kedah and find that there are four places that logically could be viewed together (Songkhla / Sathing Phra / Patthalung / Ko Mak), then I think we start to get stronger evidence for the correspondence between these terms than the vague linguistic connections allow us to make.
Let’s now look at some more details. Various accounts mention a “volcano” near Jāba/Zābaj. This has led scholars to conclude that Jāba/Zābaj must have been located on the island of Sumatra because there are no active volcanoes on the Malay Peninsula.
Ok, but let’s look at what the Arabic texts actually record.
Akhbār al- Ṣīn wa’l-Hind (c. 850)
They say that near Zābaj is a mountain called the Mountain of Fire, which it is not possible to approach. Smoke escapes from it by day and a flame by night, and from its foot comes forth a spring of cold fresh water and a spring of hot fresh water. (27)
Ibn Khurdādhbih (c. 850)
There is in Jaba a small mountain with fire on its summit stretching for the distance of a hundred cubits but having only the height of a lance. One sees its flames at night but only smoke during the day. (29)
Mas’ūdī (d. 956)
The volcano of Zābaj is in the sea of China. (39)
Dimashqī (d. 1327)
The island of the Maharāja is very large, its length being twelve days [march] and its width five. At its extremity is situated a large volcano, which throws cinders like stones, with the noise of thunder and lightning. Because of the fire near it, there is neither habitation nor road for the distance of a parasang. This volcano is the largest in the world, there is nothing like it. The place which it occupies is called the Isle of the Volcano, and compared with the rest of the island, it is like the foot compared to the limb. (62)
So, in the ninth and tenth centuries, there was mention in Arabic sources of a “small mountain” that had a fire on its summit, and that it was in the “sea of China,” meaning on the eastern side of the Malay Peninsula.
Then in the fourteenth century, you get an account of what clearly appears to be an active volcano. How can we explain this information?
Let’s start with the fourteenth-century account of a volcano. The reference to “the island of the Maharāja” is vague in that these texts sometimes referred to “the island” of the Maharāja and at other times stated that he ruled over many islands. The statement that “its length being twelve days [march] and its width five,” is also vague.
Tibbets inserted the word “march,” indicating that this was an explanation of walking distance, however in these texts, “days” are usually an indicator of sailing distance (and do we really think that Arab mariners walked for 12 days across land?).
If we think of the Maharāja’s empire as taking 12 days to sail across from east to west, and five from north to south, then that would perhaps be an accurate description of the area stretching from Songkhla and Patthalung across the Malay Peninsula to include parts of Sumatra as well as Kedah. And sure enough, at the extremity of that empire, one could have found an active volcano, such as Bur ni Telong in northern Sumatra.
As for the small mountain with a fire on its summit that only burned at night, I think we can make a case that this was a mountain in Patthalung called Khao Ok Thalu.
This mountain is a defining feature of the region, and today is the symbol of Patthalung Province. So, why would there be a fire on top at night?
I would like to posit that fires were intentionally set there at night to direct ships towards Jāba/Zābaj, Salāhiṭ, Harang, and Mā’iṭ. Khao Ok Thalu is visible from far out at sea, and if one lit a fire there at night, this would have enabled ships at night to identify where Jāba/Zābaj was.
In a world where polities on the eastern side of the Malay Peninsula controlled trans-peninsular trade routes, there must have been competition between these polities, and Jāba/Zābaj could have gotten the upper hand by operating a premodern “lighthouse.”
One obvious way to check this theory is to send a geologist up to the peak of Khao Ok Thalu to test the ground for any evidence of burnt sediments from 1000+ years ago.
Given the way that this small “mountain of fire” is described, this is the only logical guess that I can make, because the accounts clearly do not seem to be describing an actual volcano.
Another feature of Jāba/Zābaj that is mentioned concerns a place where fresh water and sea water meet. This was reported in detail by Abū Zaid (916). In talking about a former Maharāja, he stated the following:
“His palace faced onto a talaj which emanates from the sea; one means by talaj an estuary resembling those which the Tigris forms when it passes by Baghdad and Basra, an estuary which the salt water of the sea invades at high tide and which is fresh at low tide. This water formed a small lagoon adjoining the palace of the king.” (33)
The foreign word that Abū Zaid mentions here, “talaj,” is strikingly similar to the Mon-Khmer word for a body of water, “thale.” That term is used today in the name of the body of water that the city of Songkhla sits next to, Thalai Songkhla, a body of water that has a narrow outlet to the sea.
I think it is safe to say that we have a “perfect match” here.
Finally, Idrīsī (d. 1165) says of Harang, the place that I believe corresponds to what is now Patthalung, that “There exists in the island of Harang a great abyss, of which no one has been able to reach the bottom. This is a remarkable wonder.” (53)
Do a YouTube search for “Patthalung cave” and you can find this remarkable wonder.
In conclusion, even though the Arabic texts that contain information about Southeast Asia have limitations, I think we can nonetheless get a sense of the places they referred to, and we can definitely see the trans-peninsular trading empire of Jāba/Zābaj with its base at Songkhla.
We can also get a sense of other places, such as the tributaries of Jāba/Zābaj on the island of Sumatra, and that is a topic which we will examine next.
This Post Has 5 Comments
The “abyss” might well be a blue hole, but has been understood in the Brunei context as Mt Kinabalu (with Harang as Brunei) which would put Mait in the southern Philippines (discussion of which would certainly open another can of worms). There is a chance that the Mait in the 10th century is the Mayidong referred to by Fei Xin in the 15th century.
Thanks for mentioning this. I’ve seen mention of Brunei, but I have never followed up on that. Is there one person in particular who promoted that idea? If so, who was it?
Robert Nicholl started this idea in an article published in 1983 in JSEAS and it has since been taken up by local Brunei writers, bloggers, and wikipedia enthusiasts.
Ok, thanks!! Yes, I’m curious to see how he made his case.
Ma-i in chinese records was just Ba-i, same character in Chinese writing system.
North of Bo-ni is the island of Ba-i (Laguna de Ba-i near Tundun/Manila)
There are 2 volcano in Luzon, aone in Pinatubo facing south China Sea through San Marcelino River.