An Arab's Journey to Colonial Spanish America: The Travels of Elias al-Mûsili in the Seventeenth Century

by Caesar E. Farah (Translator), إلياس حنا الموصلي, Elyas al Mawsili

In 1905, the Jesuit scholar Ant�n Rabb�t discovered the writings of Elias al-M�sili in a Jacobite diocese in Aleppo, Syria. Al-M�sili, a seventeenth-century Arab and a priest of the Chaldean Church, traveled widely across colonial Spanish America, becoming the first person to visit the Americas from Baghdad. Rabb�t transcribed into Arabic and published those portions relating to al-M�sili's travels.

Surrounded by a world seemingly filled with exotic miracles, al-M�sili shares his perceptions of native peoples and their customs, beliefs, and treatment by Spanish conquistadors. Because of the uniqueness and significance of his journey, al-M�sili was supported by the pope and authorized by the queen regent of Spain. He provides thoughtful descriptions of high-level officials and clerics in the New World and rare insight on a voyage that would turn into a twelve-year adventure.

Acclaimed Middle Eastern historian Farah is the first to make these writings available in English translation, providing an invaluable document for scholars of Middle Eastern history and of the church in Latin America.

Genres: History

117 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1906

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was recently reading about a book about the city of Potosí in present-day Bolivia, and there was a reference to a visit to the city made in the 17th century by a Catholic priest from Baghdad. That’s what led me to this book. I like reading these historical travelogues.

Rev. Elias was a priest of the Chaldean Catholic Church, born in Baghdad, though he starts this journey from Aleppo in present-day Syria, and that’s also where his manuscript was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century. The introductory material to the book describes Rev. Elias as having “little knowledge of Arabic composition or literary style.” Evidently this is a polite way of saying the original is badly written. It is suggested that his first language may have been “Syriac”. An Internet search suggested to me that Syriac may be a dialect of Aramaic, but I personally have no knowledge of the subject.

Starting in 1668, Rev Elias travelled to Venice, Genoa, France, Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sicily and then back to Spain. He doesn’t say exactly what he was doing but he may have been seeking to raise funds for his church. In 1675 he makes a journey to Spanish America. Arriving first in Venezuela he travels through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia before returning to Lima, sailing to Panama and then travelling through Central America as far as Mexico City.

Despite the length of his journey his account is a very short one. There are 160 pages in this book, but the account of the journeys is only around 100 pages. Once again he doesn’t specify why he was in the Americas, but it seems he was on some sort of official mission, either from the Papacy or the Spanish Crown. He is treated with great deference everywhere he goes. On one occasion he goes to a prison and orders the release of seven inmates, on the basis of an appeal from a local bishop. When the local governor heard of this he merely said “May it be an offering on your behalf, for you have honoured us with your presence.” I doubt that the governor would normally have accepted his authority being undermined by a mere priest, and that he only did so because this one had the backing of the highest authorities. An even bigger clue comes with Rev Elias’ return to Lima, when he becomes involved in a dispute between the Viceroy of Peru and the Bishop of Lima, taking the side of the former. In a conversation with the Bishop, the latter asks Elias when he plans to return to his own country, adding “The order you received and the permission granted you are valid for four years, which are completed.”

As might be imagined from the brevity of the text, descriptions are not very detailed. Rev Elias seems to be interested in economic matters. Apart from the silver mines of Potosí he visits the notorious mercury mines of Huancavelica; comments on the growing of cocoa beans; and notes the export of high quality vicuña wool. Whilst sailing to Venezuela they have a (friendly) encounter with an English ship carrying 700 slaves to the Caribbean. The slaves hadn’t been brought direct from Africa though. They had been purchased in Brazil for resale in the Caribbean, indicating to me that the Atlantic slave trade was quite a wide ranging network. Where Rev Elias does describe a city, he is mostly generous in his remarks.

He originally planned to return via the famous “Manila Galleon” from Acapulco, and thence via India and Persia to his own country. However a new Governor of The Philippines was also due to board and he clashed with Elias. The latter is then forced to return back across the Atlantic. Arriving at Cadiz, he describes an extraordinary incident in which his ship sails between two fleets, French and Spanish, who are engaged in a battle. The two fleets allow the ship to sail between them, and not only stop the battle but provide a salute. After the ship has passed they resume fighting. The account ends with Rev Elias being granted an audience with the Pope. Once again, we are left to wonder why this simple priest seemed to have access to the very highest levels of society.

I found this quite a decent read.

[Steve]

From a seventeenth century engraving


Tired of domestic chores but not ready for some heavy reading, I cast about for something light and way off the beaten track: Un irakien en Amérique au XVIIe siècle (1668-1683) (2011) by Elias al-Mawsili, probably born close to Mosul around 1630 and died in Rome some time after 1692.(*) Though a scion of a family of clerics in the Nestorian Catholic church, he became a fervent Roman Catholic and apparently rubbed shoulders with the highest dignitaries at the Vatican. He also came into the graces of the Queen of Spain, who provided him with a passe partout for all of the Spanish colonial empire in the Americas, which made possible the central interest of this text - a trip to the Caribbean and Central and South America from 1675 to 1683 during which he spent time in most of the countries south of the Rio Grande. However, this text is an account of the entire trajectory from Baghdad in 1668 to Jerusalem, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, the trip to the Americas, and the return to Rome in 1683.

A text of only one hundred pages cannot provide the wealth of detail I would have loved to have read; the portions concerning his years in Europe were primarily lists of cities passed through and dignitaries who received him "with all honors". Nevertheless, al-Mawsili did report that upon arrival in Europe at the port of Venice he and his fellows were placed in a quarantine for forty-one days (!) to be certain that they weren't carrying a plague, and it is evident from the text that this was standard practice.

Fortunately, the details flow more generously in America, and notwithstanding the occasional excursion into the remarkable, not to say literally incredible, here I was engaged by the reports about the travails of the journey, the commercial activities and populous cities, the flora and fauna, and the habits of the colonial Spaniards and the Indians. At last, after reading as a boy that the Indians believed the mounted Spaniards to be creatures on the order of centaurs, I found that al-Mawsili interviewed an ancient Indian and one of the nuggets he retrieved confirmed the old claim that never failed to set me on a long reverie whenever I thought of it!

Al-Mawsili spent more than a year in the provincial capital of Lima, where he composed much of this text, so the information about that city and its environs is particularly rich. We learn much, from the notable fact that seven monasteries and four convents were located at Lima (each allegedly containing a thousand inhabitants) to how one went about mining and extracting mercury in seventeenth century Peru. As poisonous as mercury is, those poor miners must have had a miserably short life, but al-Mawsili is silent on this. He wasn't always silent about the bad treatment of the Indians by the Spanish, however; the massacre of a village is described, as is the forced labor of the Indians in the mines.

Al-Mawsili might have traveled a bit into what are now called Argentina and Chile, but he certainly traveled up the west coast of Central America and crossed over to Mexico City, and made a stop at Havana on the way back across the Big Water, but I'll suppress the interesting details (including an assault on the port of Vera Cruz by pirates during al-Mawsili's six month sojourn in Mexico City) to keep this relatively short.

Curiously, at no point does al-Mawsili say why he undertook such a long and perilous journey, though the editor of this text does suggest that al-Mawsili returned to Europe stinking rich.(**) If he composed some kind of report for some sovereign or other, there is apparently no sign of it. This text he wrote in Arabic for an audience eager for stories of far away and remarkable places, which had been brought up on such books as Abû Hâmid al-Gharnâtî's 12th century report on his decades of wanderings from Grenada to the Middle East and beyond: De Grenade à Bagdad, La relation de voyage d'Abû Hâmid al-Gharnâtî , 1080-1168. It is amusing therefore to find a river in Ecuador compared to the Tigris and the sands in Peru compared to those in Egypt. Even the standard preamble of classic Arabic texts in which Allah, the Prophet and various saints are praised is present in this text, with the obvious necessary amendments. This book is a pleasant, diverting read well suited for the unredeemably curious.


(*) In the Introduction of this French edition the existence of an English translation of this text by Paul Lendy is mentioned, but a web search turned up no trace of it. There is, however, apparently a recent Spanish translation: Un viaje poco conocido: la visita de Elias al-Mawsili: sacerdote caldeo iraquí, a la América Colonial (1669?-1680).

(**) The text mentions on the side some gifts received and some business activities carried through. These must have been lucrative indeed.

[Yann · Rating 5 out of 5]

El Diluvio - Le Déluge -Catedral de Puebla

Cet ouvrage est la relation d'un voyage effectué au XVIIème siècle par un arabe chrétien originaire de Bagdad non seulement dans plusieurs pays du couchant de l'Europe, mais également dans les colonies Espagnoles des Indes occidentales, en particulier au Pérou et en Nouvelle Espagne, l'actuel Mexique. L'auteur n'était pas qu'un simple particulier: son rang d’ecclésiastique lui valait l'amitié du pape et des têtes couronnées catholiques d'Europe, si bien que son voyage, en dehors des difficultés inhérentes aux conditions matérielles de l'époque, étaient tout simplement idéales. Envoyé par la reine d'Espagne, il est partout accueilli avec les plus grands égards par les puissants, lesquels se disputent l'honneur de l'obliger, et lui-même en retour se pique de faire profiter ses hôtes de sa diplomatie pour éteindre les inimitiés. L'aura qui se dégage d'un homme venant de Jérusalem, parlant l'araméen, la langue du Christ, et officiant des messes dans cette langue, est éblouissante, au sein des communautés chrétiennes du Nouveau Monde.

Le récit de voyage est écrit dans un style exempt des apprêts et des fioritures auxquels quelques récits orientaux m'avaient habitués: pas de ronflantes formules, ni de vocabulaire recherché, ni d'images poétiques, le style est au contraire précis, clair, nerveux et rapide; le regard pénétrant, le jugement droit, même si l'auteur laisse une certaine part au merveilleux et au miracle. C'est donc une lecture non seulement aisée et très agréable, mais aussi instructive et édifiante. Outre le récit des péripéties de son voyage, de l'accueil de ses hôtes et des bons offices qu'ils s'échangent, Al-Mawsilî porte beaucoup d'intérêt à la culture, aux exploitations, aux mines, à la botanique, aux arts mécaniques, c'est un esprit sensible aux sciences de la nature et à l'économie. C'est ainsi qu'on apprend comment sont cultivés l'indigo et le cacao, comment sont extraits l'or et l'argent des entrailles de la terre, par quels procédés chimiques ils sont isolés, quels sont les plantes avec lesquelles on peut se nourrir.

Il ne manque pas non plus d'observer les mœurs des Indiens, de discuter avec eux, et toutes les anecdotes qu'il remonte sont infiniment intéressantes. En effet, il porte un regard extérieur plutôt neutre, sensible aux injustices faites à certains indiens, mais qui reste bienveillant et juste à l'égard des espagnols, loin des clichés et des mensonges véhiculés par la légende noire, née de l'envie et de la jalousie des nations européennes rivales de l'Espagne à cette époque. Le soin pris par l'auteur à aplanir les différents et les aigreurs le fait estimer non seulement par ses hôtes, mais aussi par le lecteur. Une lecture très profitable et instructive.

[Sophia Nuñez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciate the translator's footnotes offering clarifications of terminology, details the author mistook, and historical clarifications. The travel narrative itself is concise, but offers an intriguing window into a Christian Arab's perception of the New World. Alas, when reading the appendix it was not always clear to me what was the translator's words, what was al-Mûsili's (the traveler), and what was Rabbât's (a 1905 editor of the text). I shall have to take another, closer look.

[Alex H · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the least painful travel account I read all semester. Probably because it was the shortest. Now I have to write a paper on it due in 13 hours :)

[Q]

Interesting. I can see how the original was boring. The translator did a great job making it more interesting. Good insights into both Europe and Spanish America in the 17th century.

[Jana|جنى · Rating 1 out of 5]

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