The spirit of the times is echoed in the tales of the Arabian Nights. In the tale ‘How Abu Hasan Broke Wind’ we are told of a wealthy Yemeni merchant who had become very rich by trading with India.17 Having loudly farted at his own wedding, he fled social embarrassment by sailing off to India where he settled in the port of Calicut (Kozhikode) in Kerala. We are informed that the local king, a Hindu, welcomed Arabs and that the port had a large community of Hadramawt Yemeni merchants. We are not concerned here with the storyline but the vivid description of medieval globalization.
