Journey Beyond Three Seas

4 ideas

1. The Stallion Seized at Junnar

   Afanasy Nikitin, a Tver merchant, brought a stallion across the Arabian Sea to India to sell. At Junnar, in the Bahmani Sultanate, the local governor Asad Khan confiscated the horse and told Nikitin he would return it, with a large sum of gold added, only if he converted to Islam; otherwise he would keep the horse and fine him. Nikitin kept his faith and got the horse back only after a Khorasani named Muhammad interceded on his behalf, showing how a lone foreign trader's property and religion could both become bargaining chips for local power.

2. Distant Markets Are Overrated From Afar

   Nikitin went to India because he had heard it was rich in goods for Russian traders, and he concluded that the reports were false. The goods that were cheap in India, such as pepper and dyes, lost their margin to heavy customs duties and to pirates on the sea route. What a distant market is worth depends on the whole cost of getting goods home, not on the low prices at the source.

3. Faith Erodes Through Lost Calendars

   Stranded among Muslims and Hindus with no books, Nikitin lost track of the Orthodox calendar and could no longer work out when Easter fell. He began keeping fasts alongside the Muslims and wrote prayers that mixed Russian with Persian, Arabic and Turkic. His religion was worn down less by a direct challenge than by losing the shared timekeeping and language that let him practise it.

4. Debt Turns Loss Into Forward Flight

   Tatars robbed Nikitin near Astrakhan, and because he had bought his goods on credit he could not go home without facing his creditors. Going back meant ruin, so he pressed on into Persia and India looking for a way to recover. Being unable to return can push a person much further than they ever meant to go.

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