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Cambay and the Bead Trade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

A. J. Arkell
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Extract

In ‘ A note on certain Agate Beads ’, printed in the Antiquaries Journal (x, 149), Mr H. C. Beck drew attention to their obscure origin. In addition to a recent distribution of 500 to 1000 roughly made agate beads, which may have come from the sale of the belongings of an old sea-captain, Mr Beck gave fourteen finds unconnected with this recent distribution, which included a comparatively small example found by Woolley at Ur in a layer confidently pronounced to date from before the ‘ Flood ’, one bead from Algeria, a string from Jerusalem, one bead from an Irish bog, a string from near Frankfort, one bead from a Merovingian grave, a string from Brittany associated with the dolmen period, others from Nantes, Orleans and elsewhere in France, and four finds from the Sudan, two being from Omdurman, where it is stated that they are occasionally dug up, and one from the 25th Dynasty treasury of Sanam at Dongola.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 10 , Issue 39 , September 1936 , pp. 292 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1936

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References

1 MrHarden, D.B. Google ScholarAssistant Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, informs me that there are four beads of grey mottled agate, well worn, of similar type to the above in Taunton Castle museum, which bear the following label : ‘Agate beads similar to old Arab beads, said to have been found on Ham Hill, Somerset’. Presented by Mr E. Lovett. 1915

2 Nearly all itinerant bead-merchants (or rather pedlars) in the Sudan are the socalled Fellilta, i.e., natives of northern Nigeria and occasionally Senegal. Bead pedlars are usually Hausa, and sometimes Fulani.

3 Several such pedlars expressed the intention of selling carnelian beads of the type of FIG. 26 at Onitsha in southern Nigeria, where it is said they are cut up into smaller beads 1 by Yoruba.

4 Compare a footnote to the chapter of the Ant in Sale’s edition of the Koran, where a story is quoted from A1 Beidawi of how the Queen of Sheba, in order to try whether Solomon was a prophet or no, sent him among other things an onyx drilled with a crooked hole, and Solomon solved the difficulty by ordering a worm to pass a thread through the onyx.

5 There is a different type of agate bead, whose prototype occurs at Mohenjo–daro in the 3rd millennium B.c., which is still being made at Idar near Oberstein in Germany from agate of Brazilian origin, and being imported into the Sudan, together with imitations in glass from Czechoslovakia ; on which I hope to publish a note later.

6 The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, trans. by Schoff., W.H. 1912.Google Scholar

7 The Book of Duarte Barbosa, trans. and ed. by Dames., M.L. (Hakluyt Society, 1918).Google Scholar

8 The Arab trade-names used by Ghulam Ahmed for the beads are as follows :- SEMLAK: of doubtful meaning ; Ghulam Ahmed thinks it is a Barabra word meaning ‘long ’, but I have not been able to confirm this. RAQAB:A ‘neck’, and so ‘necklace’. MAKARRAR: ‘repeated’, and so ‘similar’, ‘well-matched’. MAGHRAB: Is o called because its best sale is to Maghraba of Kano.

9 These beads are on the average about 1½ inches in length, with maximum diameter of about I inch at one end, and a minimum diameter of about ½ inch at the other. They have really a square cross-section with the corners shaped off.

10 The site of old Zamfara has several times been mentioned to me by pedlars as being a source of these beads. According to Hogben, The Mohammadan Emirates of Northern Nigeria, p. 107, Zamfara was only founded in the 18th century A.D.

11 There is an apparent allusion to the working of agate and carnelian by Indians in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana, written A.D. 217 (p. 291 of vol. I in the Loeb edition), bk. III, ch. 27:— ‘Now the precious stones imported from India are employed in Greece for necklaces and rings because they are so small, but among the Indians they are turned into decanters and wine coolers, because they are so large, and into goblets of such size that from a single one of them four persons can slake their thirst at midsummer’.

12 Hakluyt Society edition, pp. 106, 107.

13 loc. cit., vol. I, pp. 6, 12, 15, 33, 136, 137, 142–45.

14 Previous to Portuguese interference, merchandize from the East was landed at Suez, and taken by camel to Cairo, where other merchants took it to Alexandria, and sold it to Venetians.

15 There is no reason to think that glass beads are indicated. This description fits well enough the beads exported from Cambay today.

16 i.e. Aden, on whose trade with India Ibn Batuta had expatiated two centuries before.

17 Blue probably means blue-grey, one of the shades of agate. Here again I see no reason to think the reference is to glass beads, of which the export from Cambay is never mentioned.

18 This probably explains why many chipped and so ancient looking beads are to be found in the Sudan.

19 Further confirmation of this theory, if any is required, is provided by some agate and carnelian beads in the Tradescant collection at the Ashmolean, of which FIGS. 17 and 18 are examples. See my article ‘Some Tuareg Ornaments and their Connection with India’ in J.R.A.I., LXV, 302. From their technique these beads appear to have come from Cambay, and since they appear to be respectively one of items 111 to 115, and item 116, in the original catalogue of 1685, in which Cambay is actually named as the source of some granati (red stones), the probability that they did come from Cambay is increased ; and becomes a practical certainty when they are compared with FIGS 5, 9 and 21, and some spherical beads of banded agate, which are occasionally imported from Cambay by Ghulam Ahmed, but of which I am unfortunately unable to represent an example.