In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale

Ghosh begins by stating, “The Slave of MS H.6 first stepped upon the stage of modern history in 1942” (13), in an obscure academic article. This article contained translations of several medieval documents. One 1148 letter, with the catalogue number MS H.6, was from an Iraqi merchant named Khalaf ibn Ishaq, who was writing from the Yemeni city of Aden to his friend and business partner, Abraham Ben Yiju, who was living in Mangalore, on the South-western coast of India. That same summer, the Second Crusade was moving through the Middle East, on its way to its eventual defeat at Damascus.

Khalaf ibn Ishaq’s letter is described as a “trapdoor” (15) into the lives that continued, largely uninterrupted, during these pivotal historical events. Khalaf would surely have known about the crusade, but the letter is focused on personal news and business. The letter concludes with Khalaf asking Ben Yiju to pass on “plentiful greetings” (16) to his enslaved person. Ghosh says that this is a rare insight into the lives of people normally left out of the historical record. The usual historical protagonists are the rich and consequential individuals, but this letter— and the enslaved person it mentions—shows the lives of the ordinary.