Source Collection: Trade and Technology
Contents
Document 1
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Author |
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201–1274) |
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Date and location |
Al-Tusi – thirteenth century, Persia, modern day Iran |
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Source type |
Primary source – images from books written by Al-Tusi and Copernicus |
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Description |
The Persian thinker Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was what we call a polymath, meaning he was an expert in many things. He made key discoveries, including theories of how planets move. Nicolaus Copernicus of Poland was another polymath, and had expertise in astronomy and math. His key scientific achievement was describing the heliocentric model of the Universe—the idea that the Sun was at the center of the Universe and not the Earth. The images below show the similarities between their ideas, even though Al-Tusi lived over two hundred years before Copernicus. |
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Citation |
Hartner, Willy. “Copernicus, the Man, the Work, and Its History.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 117, no. 6 (1973): 413–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/986460 |
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Glossary Polymath: an expert in many things |
Document 2
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Author |
Ahmad Ibn Mājid (1432–1500) |
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Date and location |
1390, modern day United Arab Emirates |
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Source type |
Primary source – book excerpts |
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Description |
This next source may be useful to any aspiring sailors. Ahmad Ibn Mājid was an Arab navigator and cartographer whose work influenced European and Asian navigators for decades. The following is a brief excerpt from his famed The Book of the Benefits of the Principles and Foundations of Navigation. In this book, he shares the basics of navigation using the Moon and stars to travel and describes the relative locations of places. |
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Citation |
Hopkins, J. F. P., and Nehemia Levtzion. Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2000. |
…
If a man wishes to do anything [by methods] not connected with the [science] of navigation, then he can do so, but whenever he lacks the [direction of Mecca… then he must find them by means of our science. So strive after it and [knowledge] will come bit by bit, for the learning of it can only come to an end at the end of one’s life and he who never overtakes anything will never leave it behind.
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When you reach that place [Sufala] the island of al-Qumr falls away on your left, but the land comes to an end on your right and turns towards the west and north. There are deserts and inlets, the first of the darkness when the sun is in Cancer [the most northerly circle of latitude on Earth at which the Sun can be directly overhead]. The land turns back from there to the land of the Kanim [modern day Chad, Nigeria, and Libya], which is in the possession of the descendants of Sayf b. Dhi Yazan. They are a white people to the south of the Sudan (who are white) on account of the distance of the sun from them in the north, like the whiteness of the Turks and the distance of the sun from them in the south. As for the blackness of the Sudan, it is because of their being burnt by the sun, for they are close to the Equator near to the sun all the time. When you get beyond the Kanim you come to the land of the Wahat, which is near to the land of the Westerners. In the old days the pepper road was from this place.
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Glossary Navigation: finding one’s way to a destination, especially by ship |
Document 3
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Author |
Abu’l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551–1602) |
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Date and location |
1594–1596, modern day India |
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Source type |
Primary source – manuscript |
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Description |
The book known as the Akbarnama is named after the person who commissioned it: the Mughal Emperor Akbar. It is a kind of pictorial biography and describes Akbar’s life using paintings, accompanied by inscriptions in Persian. The excerpted images below depict important battles fought by Akbar’s army. Many of these battles utilized gunpowder as a key technology. |
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Citation |
Miskina and Paras (Emperor Akbar’s court artists). Akbarnama. Victoria and Albert Museum. https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O9611/painting-miskina/ and Hussein, Keshani ed. The Akbarnama: A Digital Art History Student Project, March 16, 2018. https://hkeshani.github.io/darc/akbarnama/. |
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Glossary Commissioned: when someone requests and pays an artist to create a specific work |
Document 4
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Author |
Tomé Pires (c. 1465–1524 or 1540) |
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Date and location |
1512–1515, Malaysia |
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Source type |
Primary source – manuscript |
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Description |
Tomé Pires was a Portuguese apothecary. In 1511, Pires set out to India on a business trip by participating in the thriving spice trade. He eventually traveled to Malaysia and Indonesia and then became the Portuguese ambassador to China. In his book, Suma Oriental, he describes the people he meets in the Middle East, India, and the Far East. |
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Citation |
Pires, Tomé. Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires: An Account of the East, from the Red Sea to China, Written in Malacca and India in 1512–1515, edited by Armando Cortesão. Hakluyt Society, 1944. |
How They Trade in General: Cairo
The merchants from Cairo bring... gold, silver, ... vermilion, copper, rosewater, ... colored woolen cloth, glass beads, weapons...
[The merchants of] Aden bring... raisins, opium, rosewater, quantities of gold and silver, and horses... and they come to do business in Cambay. They take back with them... cloves, nutmeg, mace, sandalwood, brazil woods, silks, seed pearls, musk, porcelain, and other things...
On Gujarati Traders
They are men who understand merchandise; they are so properly steeped in the sound and harmony of it… Those of our people who want to be clerks or factors ought to go [to Gujarat] and learn, because the business of trade is a science in itself which does not hinder any other noble exercise, but helps a great deal...
The Merchants Who Come and Start Companies (in Cambay) for Malacca
As the kingdom of Cambay had this trade with Malacca, merchants of the following nations used to accompany the Gujaratis there in their ships, and some of them used to settle in the place, sending off the merchandise, while others took it in person... and many people from the kingdom of the Deccan used to take up their companies in Cambay.
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Glossary Vermilion: a pigment of a vivid reddish orange color used to paint and in cosmetics |
Document 5
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Author |
Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (1737–1813) |
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Date and location |
1781, France |
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Source type |
Primary source – manuscript |
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Description |
The next source may be partly responsible for the phrase: You want fries with that? Antoine-Augustin Parmentier is most famously remembered for encouraging the French to eat more potatoes, which were originally from the Americas. In this excerpt from his book, he argues that the potato is far superior to grains. |
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Citation |
Parmentier, Antoine Augustin. Observations on Such Nutritive Vegetables as May Be Substituted in the Place of Ordinary Food. J. Murray, 1783. http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/5991841. |
… [I]n the most populous provinces of Germany many millions of men subsist almost entirely on this food;
THE vegetable kingdom affords no food more wholesome, more easily procured, or less expensive, than the Potatoe [sic]. It is well known with what resources it furnished the Irish in 1740; many families would have been swept away without this supply... In the last German war these roots were the resource of many soldiers, who... would have fallen sacrifices to fatigue and hunger, if they had not met with Potatoes, which they eat in excessive quantities after simple boiling, and with no other seasoning than a good appetite: gratitude induced several of them to import the plant into their own country, where it was unknown: they cultivated it with skill, and set an example which was soon imitated. At present there is scarce an elegant repost where Potatoes are not introduced with emulation in various disguises; and the great consumption in the Capital, proves that they are no longer despised there.
THE excessive price to which grain has been advanced of late years, forms a remarkable area at which the beneficial qualities of Potatoes have been began to be tried in many places...
IF we consider all the properties of Potatoes, we shall be forced to acknowledge, that if there really exits a medicinal food, it is to be found in these roots.
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Glossary Subsist: to stay alive or obtain the necessities of life |