Book review: Elizabeth A. Lambourn,Abraham’s Luggage: A Social Life of Things in the Medieval Indian Ocean World

Elizabeth Lambourn’s Abraham’s Luggage is part of Cambridge University Press’ Asian Connections Series that aims to bring forth works on transregional connections and circulations within and beyond Asia. Abraham’s Luggage has enjoyed much praise and encouraged further discussions among scholars of medieval Indian Ocean, material culture and the Cairene genizah. The monograph finely encapsulates the rare expertise of Lambourn on the material world of the medieval Indian Ocean (primarily 1000–1500s)—a period that has stirred interest among scholars in the recent decades and yet remains significantly understudied. The documents from the Cairo genizah have significantly shaped our understanding of the medieval Indian Ocean as a lived space and not merely a site of disembodied commercial exchange. Lambourn too builds upon these genizah documents but dares to attempt an interdisciplinary study by drawing from a broad range of fields such as anthropology, material culture studies, food history, histories of religion, and medicine and maritime archaeology. It is this methodological approach that facilitates Lambourn’s brilliant contribution towards our understanding of the material world of the Jewish merchants trading in India, histories of travel and inhabitation of twelfth-century western Indian Ocean, the skills and technologies that were developed to thrive in this environment.

At the heart of Lambourn’s monograph is a list of luggage written in Judaeo-Arabic on scrap paper. It is not a formal inventory but a draft that lies in the Special Collections of Cambridge University Library (p. 8). However, it is a remarkable piece of evidence: the only known list of luggage and travel provisions that have survived from the pre-modern Indian Ocean. On palaeographic grounds S. D. Goitein assigned it to the twelfth-century North African Jewish trader Abraham Ben Yiju who was one of many Middle Eastern traders engaged in the long-distance Indian Ocean trade. More specifically, it was associated with Abraham’s final journey to Aden from Malibarat in 1149 ce. In hindsight, he is perhaps the most recognizable of the Indian traders owing to his correspondence and other documents that were recovered from the Ben Ezra Synagogue of Old Cairo. Based on these documents, the writings of Goitein, M. A. Friedman and Amitav Ghosh are successful in illuminating Abraham’s life, the time he spent in northern Malabar and his various commercial ventures. The luggage list is far from being a stand-alone piece of evidence from the genizah. As Lambourn argues, the list is ‘nested’ within the larger corpus of documents associated with Abraham and his contemporaries in the India trade—what Goitein referred to as the ‘India Book’ (pp. 31–32). This in turn highlights another crucial methodological approach explored in Abraham’s Luggage. Lambourn configures the immediate context of the everyday material world of Jewish India traders from the luggage list through the lens of a micro-historical approach. In doing so, she is also attentive to the macro-historical perspective of interregional trade in the Indian Ocean World and its wider sociocultural milieu.

The book has two parts—Part I: A Mediterranean Society in Malibarat and Part II: A Mediterranean Society at Sea. The first section relies heavily on the India Book documents and occasionally draws from other textual sources like the Rihla of Ibn Battuta. It presents the story of Abraham’s life in Malibarat and more broadly the domestic cultures of Mediterranean Jews sojourning in Malibarat through an exploration of the social life of things in the luggage list. It is important to note Lambourn’s preference to use ‘Malibarat’ (the Malabars) for the south-western coast of India, instead of the usual Malabar. By using the plural form, she stressed on the region’s political complexity and its cultural diversity (p. 9). However, Lambourn does not foreground this argument in Abraham’s Luggage. The regional dynamic of Malabar is peripheral here and is surveyed only through the central figure of Abraham. Sebastian Prange in Monsoon Islam (2018) too shares a similar argument while delving into the issue further. He argues for the political fragmentation of Malabar in this period, its orientation towards the sea and its characteristic multipolar structure of maritime trade. ¹

Lambourn builds effectively on Arjun Appadurai’s fundamental argument in The Social Life of Things (1986). He stressed on the idea of commodity as a phase in the different social lives of things that ultimately correspond to their shift in value and meaning. ² This is indeed a fresh outlook towards medieval Indian Ocean maritime history, the focus of which until now has mostly been on commodity trade. In course of Abraham’s long stay in Malibarat (almost 12 years), he attempted to make a home in Malibarat and for which household goods were often dispatched to him, free of any charges at times by his business partners and friends in Aden. Alongside these there were other household essentials that were charged for, and which formed part of the wider ‘transoceanic shopping’ (p. 80). Interestingly, there were overlaps in these two groups of goods such as sugar, raisins, soap and leather mat. These goods along with the rest of the household essentials seemed ordinary but might have proved difficult to acquire locally. These were also distinguishable from their small quantities. Their value, however, lay in their contribution towards aiding a Mediterranean Jewish trader build a semblance of home in Malibarat. Lambourn peruses through the India Book documents to prepare two tables that prove very helpful to explain her argument (Tables 1 and 2, pp. 71–78, 82–85). The luggage list itself bears clues to understand the complex processes of homemaking. This involved gradual acculturation and the imprints of which were left in the list. For example, the typically Indian foodstuffs such as rice, coconuts, mangoes and dried fish that were part of the contingencies he packed for the transoceanic journey from Malibarat to Aden. Abraham’s Luggage is thus an important entry point to discuss the ways in which identities were translated and negotiated through material things in the medieval western Indian Ocean.

The second part of the book confronts issues of pre-modern transoceanic voyages, travel practices, technologies and how ships can be studied as lived places. The six-weeks’ long voyage between the Red Sea port of Aden and southwestern coast of India could have ideally been an important opportunity to study ships as inhabited places. Owing largely to lack of data from the field of maritime archaeology and silences in travel literature, life on-board a ship has eluded historians of the medieval Indian Ocean. Abraham’s luggage list thus offers a rare occasion to understand in Lambourn’s words, ‘… paradoxical immobility in mobility’, and ‘rhythms of daily life’ on-board (p. 189). It lists over 173 different items, some of which were meant specifically for use on the ship. For example, a trap for rats was also included in the list. Rats and mice were common on ships. They were threats to food provisions and were possible transmitters of a variety of diseases. Lambourn’s eye for the details makes her work stand out. A chest of fishermen’s gear stands out in the list. Crews and passengers must have engaged in fishing along their journey that added to their rations (p. 215). This is an important observation on the passengers’ diet on-board. They did carry their own provisions for food, but it might not have lasted for the entire duration of their journey, especially if the voyage got extended due to unfavourable weather. This also might add to the economic utilisation of space on a ship. These were probably overcrowded, especially on such an active route between Malibarat and Aden—passengers (including pilgrims) with their luggage, trading commodities and the ship’s own crew. Fishing at sea could also be a leisure activity that relieved the passengers from the monotony of the voyage. The nuanced observation of daily life on-board a ship is certainly one of Lambourn’s finest contributions in Abraham’s Luggage.

Lambourn presents almost a graphic description of life at sea, cabin furniture and postural cultures on a ship. It is to her credit for closely studying the luggage list of things for the cabin and bringing in references from other textual evidence. Abraham probably carried with him a cabin door and planks for the makeshift construction of a compartment on-board the ship (p. 202). Similarly, he had with him three planks and four legs for a bed, and which could be easily turned into a charpoy-style rope bed. Issues of safety and privacy would have been matters of concern on a ship. There were certainly different kinds of passengers and sailors on-board the ship. Hence, there could have been differences in their daily life experience on the ship. Yet, a pre-modern ship did not offer much scope for luxurious travel experience or segregation among passengers unlike a modern-day passenger vessel. Texts like the Kitab ajaib al-Hind share stories of sea-storms and shipwrecks, underlining the hazardous and rather uncomfortable voyage across the sea. Thus, the provisions for privacy and safety, as mentioned in Abraham’s luggage list, hinted towards his affluence and the fact that he travelled with his unmarried daughter, Sitt al-Dar. Abraham was an observant Jew and the privacy of his cabin might have also provided him a space to observe Sabbath and other Jewish holidays (p. 218).

Lambourn must be congratulated for initiating a much-needed conversation on issues of life at sea especially in the context of the India Book documents and more broadly the medieval Indian Ocean. She seeks inspiration from distinct but related fields of food history, medieval medical literature and even adopts a biological-nutritional approach. For instance, Abraham’s luggage list proves valuable regarding dietary practices among travellers undertaking a voyage across the seas. Lambourn treads carefully in this regard—the overview of food provisions on a ship does not fail to note the very subjective and circumstantial nature of preference, prohibition and observance (p. 166). Water and carbohydrates such as cereals and grains were the necessities that sustained the human body in a transoceanic voyage. As Lambourn argues, access to potable water was limited on-board and affluent travellers like Abraham would have preferred to carry their own water supplies. This guaranteed its ritual purity as well (p. 172). As a Mediterranean Jew, Abraham’s preferred source of carbohydrate would have been wheat. Indeed, during his stay in Malibarat, Abraham ensured a supply of wheat (probably ritually sanctioned) through his business networks in Aden. Yet, the core carbohydrate in the luggage list was rice. As Lambourn argues, rice was a staple in a large part of South Asia (p. 182). Although it was an impractical choice of food on-board a ship with limited access to water. Its importance in Abraham’s luggage list indicated a very South Asian character of the luggage. I think this decision was partly taken keeping in mind the two children accompanying Abraham. Rice was their staple diet as they had grown up in Malibarat under the care of their mother, a Tulu woman.

Abraham’s Luggage is certainly one of the most ambitious and intellectually provocative recent publications on the material culture of the medieval Indian Ocean. Lambourn has a penchant for handling different types of sources, something already visible in her previous publications. This enables her to explore research areas that scholars shy away from venturing into, often citing paucity of sources. I believe her work will inspire new research in maritime archaeology particularly along the western coast of India and fresh engagements with the material histories of the region. It is this regional perspective from the southwestern coast of India that is missing in Lambourn’s story of the social life of things in the medieval Indian Ocean World. It certainly leaves room for new scholarly intervention in this direction.