The Secret History of the Flying Carpet

The Friday Documentary

2010-09-05T03:27:00.000-07:00

Tune in to the BBC World Service on Friday 24 September, 0905 to listen to a radio program that includes my interview and excerpts from my story/essay "The Secret History of the Flying Carpet".

Sir Richard Burton on flying carpets

2008-08-22T14:37:00.000-07:00

The great prototype of the Flying Carpet is that of Sulayman bin Daud (i.e. King Solomon), a fable which the Koran (chap. xxi. 81) borrowed from the Talmud, not from "Indian fictions". It was of green sendal embroidered with gold and silver and studded with precious stones, and its length and breadth were such that all the Wise King's host could stand upon it, the men to the left and the Jinns to the right of the throne; and when all were ordered, the Wind at royal command, raised it and wafted it whither the Prophet would, while an army of birds flying overhead canopied the host from the sun.

In the Middle Ages, the legend assumed another form. Duke Richard, surnamed 'Richard sans peur', walking with his courtiers one evening in the forest of Moulineaux, near one of his castles on the banks of Seine, hearing of a prodigious noise coming towards him, sent one of his esquires to know what was the matter, who brought him word that it was a company of people under a leader or King. Richard, with five hundred of his bravest Normans, went out to see a sight which the peasants were so accustomed to that they viewed it two or three times a week without fee. The sight was of the troop, preceded by two men, who spread a cloth on the ground, made all the Normans run away, and leave the Duke alone. He saw the strangers form themselves into a circle on the cloth, and on asking who they were, was told that they were the spirits of Charles V, King of France, and his servants, condemned to expiate their sins by fighting all night against the wicked and the damned. Richard desired to be of their party, and receiving a strict charge not to quit the cloth, was conveyed with them to Mount SInai, where, leaving them without quitting the cloth, he said his prayers in the Church of St. Catherine's Abbey there, while they were fighting, and returned with them. In proof of the truth of this story, he brought back half the wedding-ring of a knight in that convent, whose wife, after six years, concluded him dead, and was going to take a second husband.

Note in the Lucknow Edition of The Nights, p. 425

Burton, Richard F., Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand Nights and Night

Volume XIV, Eaton Press, Norwalk, Connecticut.

Eyewitness accounts of flying carpets

2008-08-22T14:29:00.000-07:00

Reference: Zahir al-Din Mansuri, Jehan-nama, Isfahan 1632/1954. Several incidents are recorded in this excellent book:

'We saw a strange whirling disc in the sky, which flew over our village [Nishapur] trailing fire and sulphur.' - Abbas M. Husain, p. 373

'A band of djinns appeared over our caravan, heading towards the Straits of Ormuz.' - Mir Bakir Sodagher, p. 375

Bibliography of characters

2008-08-22T14:15:00.000-07:00

The existence of two persons noted in the Secret History is confirmed in another rare book, Beitraege zur Geschichte Iraks unter dem Islam, by Christian Von den Linden, Oberhausen 1937. These are:

Karim Beg Isfahani, the great mathematician-royal of Samarkand. He is known for having discovered equations in which time and distance become independent entities - meaning that under certain conditions, time and distance are no longer directly proportional. The works of Isfahani were destroyed in the Mongol purges of 1226 AD; the achievement never repeated.

Ryu Taro Koike (1153-1240?), Sensei, seventh Dan, of the Nichiren School of Archery, from Kyoto, Japan. Disciples of the Nichiren School devoted their entire lives to the art of archery. There are recorded incidents when master Japanese archers shot coin sized targets fifty yards away in pitch darkness. They never missed, even when blindfolded. The older Sensei were believed to be able to guide an arrow's path in mid-flight by performing mental exercises known as Getsumi no Michi - paths of the moon. Sensei Koike lived in Persia until a very advanced age. He is said to have later gone to Tibet, where he became enlightened.

On Ben Sherira

2008-08-15T19:43:00.000-07:00

According to state archives of the Seljuks, preserved at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Ben Sherira studied at the medresseh of Nizam Khalid Khilji for seven years before vanishing without a trace. Wasim ibne Ghani believes that he joined the order of the Assassins and lived the rest of his life in their strongholds. He is mentioned in fifteenth century Ismaili chronicles as a worthy historian who perished in the Mongol attack on Alamut in AD 1256.

Nasr-ud din Tusi, a Shi'ite mathematician who witnessed the destruction of Alamut (he was imprisoned there at the time) gives a detailed account of the sacking in his Tazkira fi Alamut:

"Tapestries hanging from the walls were pulled down and trampled upon. Cushions and silks and rugs of the most priceless variety were scattered like cotton balls in the wind. Alchemical crucibles were filled with dung. Cabinets full of elixirs were thrown down the ramparts. The most wondrous curiosities - the cup of Socrates, Noah's rib, the slippers of Ismail, the sword and shield of Ardeshir, a robe worn by Plato, the golden mask of Muqanna (may Allah curse him), trunks filled with gold and silver, swords encrusted with emeralds and daggers chiselled from single diamonds - all of these things were plundered and carted away. A pendulum, which was said to be swinging since the time of Alexander, was weighed down with rocks.

They boiled their cauldrons over the bonfire of books from the library, one of the greatest collections of divinities and heresies in the world of Islam. Among its collection were the dialogues of Aristotle on the impossibility of truth, a history of Atlantis by Plato, and a book known as Kitab al-Iblis, which was the defence of Satan when he was exiled from Paradise; it was said to have held within its pages, the essence of all evil. Most of the works of Al-Biruni were lost here. The only copy of the Koran dictated by Ali bin Abu Talib was destroyed.

The heresies of all the secret movements that flourished in the early period of Islam also perished. Here we may name the manuals of the Awali, the Ghulat, the Mufazalyah, the Kharijies, the Karamthas and the Mustealia, the Kesaniyah, the Mukhtaryah and the Mughiriyah to list a few. The philosophical tracts of Al-Farabi, his only copy of "The Perfect State" which is the sequel of the well known "Perfect City", the treatises on alchemy and philosophy by Al-Razi, all the treatises of Al-Kindi, the maps of Al-Idrisi, the "Great Book of Music" of Al-Farabi, various commentaries of Ibne-Sina and Averroes, the life's work of Al-Battani, many examples of poetry and profanities, historical annals that were copies of copies, which in turn were older copies, Hindu empices, dictionaries of Lamas, Assyrian tablets, and a manual on the construction of pyramids, by the chief builder of the Pharaoh Khufu - all these treasures perished here."

On Assassins

2008-08-15T18:50:00.000-07:00

Our story beings in 1271, when Marco Polo passed through Oxiana on his way to the court of Kublai Khan. There he heard stories of the Old Man of the Mountain and his assassins. These were the hashishya of the Syrians, the dreaded assissini of the Crusaders and he was the le vieux de la montagne. A militant sect of Ismaili Muslims who believed that the rightful caliphate belonged to the descendants of the seventh Imam, the Assassins occupied various fortresses in Persia and Syria and rid themselves of their enemies by assassintation. They followed the orders of a grand master, the Old Man of the Mountain, who lived in the fortress of Alamut in Persia and admitted novices by intoxicating them with hashish and letting them into a garden made in the likeness of the Mohammedan paradise. In his Travels, Marco Polo writes a breathless description of his garden:

"He caused to be made in a valley between two mountains the biggest and most beautiful garden ever seen, ornamented with gold and with likenesses of all that is beautiful on earth, and also four conduits, one flowing with wine, one with milk, one with honey and one with water. Fair ladies were there and damsels, the loveliest in the world, unsurpassed at playing every sort of instrument and at singing and dancing. And he gave his men to understand that this garden was paradise. This was why he made it after this pattern because Mohammed assured the Saracens that those who go to Paradise will have beautiful women to their hearts' content to do their bidding and will find there rivers of wine and milk and honey and water...'

When the drug wore off, the novices awoke in a court of great magnificence and splendour, presided over by no other than the Old Man of the Mountain himself. Marco Polo writes:

'When he asked them whence they came, they would answer that they came from Paradise, and that this was in truth the Paradise which Mohammed had told their ancestors; and they would tell their listeners all that they had found there. And others who heard this and had not been there were filled with a great longing to go to this Paradise; they longed for death so that they might go there, and looked eagerly to the day of their going.'

After this ecstatic state, they were persuaded to do any deed to return to its portals, knowing fully well that if they died, martyrdom assured them of Paradise and if they lived, a brief sojourn in Paradise nevertheless awaited them as reward. 'Away they went and did all they were commanded,' Marco Polo surmises. 'Thus it happened that no one ever escaped when the Sheik of the Mountain desired his death.'