Al-Idrīsī’s twelfth-century description and map of Lincolnshire

[The following short piece was originally published in the Lincoln Record Society News Review, 18 (2021), pp. 2–4; the version presented below is the fully-referenced version of this text; a PDF of this article is available at Academia.edu]

The aim of the following note is to direct attention to an often-overlooked Arabic account and map of Lincolnshire found in the Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī khtirāq al-āfāq, ‘The book of pleasant journeys into faraway lands’, of the Muslim scholar al-Idrīsī, composed c. 1154 for Roger II of Sicily.(1)

The North Sea and the east coast of England on al-Idrīsī’s mid-twelfth-century Arabic map, from a mid-thirteenth- to early fourteenth-century copy. Note, north is at the top and south at the bottom; the river running across the centre of the image is the Witham with Boston on the left and Lincoln on the right, whilst Grimsby is shown on the coast to the north of the river (Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Arabe 2221, f. 338v–339r; Public Domain)

Al-Idrīsī was a descendant of the eleventh-century Ḥammūdid dynasty of Málaga in al-Andalus (Spain), a distant branch of the Idrīsid family that ruled Morocco from the late eighth to late tenth centuries, and his Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī khtirāq al-āfāq is one of the great geographical works of the medieval period.(2)  Preserved in ten manuscripts dating from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, this work was written in Sicily for Roger II (1112–54) and gathered together a vast array of information on the various regions of the world known to its author and was illustrated by a series of 70 maps. As part of this, al-Idrīsī included a brief description of eastern England that runs as follows:

Herein is the second section of the seventh climate, containing a portion of the Ocean wherein lies the island of lnqlṭrh [England, l’Angleterre]… From the town of ǧrnmūdh [Yarmouth, Gernemutha/Gernemuda] to the town of nrġīq [Norwich, Norwic] is ninety miles. The town of Norwich is distant ten miles from the sea, and from there to aġryms [Grimsby] is a hundred and fifty miles by sea. From the said town of Yarmouth the sea[-coast] curves round in a circle, but still tending northwards. From the said town of Grimsby to the town of afrwīk [York, Evrvic] is eighty miles. The latter lies at a distance from the Ocean, and on the border of the peninsula of sqwsyh [Scotia], which is contiguous with the island of England… From the town of York to the estuary of the river of bskh [Boston] is a hundred and forty miles, and Boston is a fortress (ḥiṣn) situated on this river twelve miles upstream from the sea. From the aforementioned of Grimsby to the town of nqwls [Lincoln, Nicolas] inland is a hundred miles; the river flows through the midst of it and flows out of it towards the town of Grimsby, but flows into the sea on the south of the latter, as we have mentioned before. From the inland Lincoln to the town of York is moreover ninety miles, and from thence to the town of dūnālma [Durham, Dunelme] eighty miles northwards.(3)

Al-Idrīsī was by no means the first author of an Arabic text to discuss and describe this island, as I have discussed elsewhere, but he was the first to name it Inqalṭāra, England (Angleterre), rather than Britain and the first to leave us a description of places in Lincolnshire.(4) In terms of his knowledge of this area, which has been considered to derive either from one or more informants or even from a visit to England by al-Idrīsī himself,(5) we can highlight several points of interest.

First, Lincoln appears as Nqwls,(6) reflecting the French name for the city, Nicole, that is recorded from early twelfth century through to the late fourteenth and which shows the Anglo-Norman interchange of n/l arising from dissimilation.(7) Lincoln is described in the text as being located on both sides of the River Witham, something that accurately reflects the twelfth-century situation with the old walled city to the north and the medieval suburb of Wigford to the south, and this is replicated on al-Idrīsī’s accompanying map of England, where Lincoln is the only city depicted straddling a river (see Fig. 1). Al-Idrīsī’s claim that this river both flows into the sea to the south of Grimsby and ‘flows through the midst of it [Lincoln] and flows out of it towards the town of Grimsby’ is similarly of interest. This has been described as ‘a major error’ and a result of confusion, but this need not be the case.(8) Rather, it could again reflect a degree of genuine knowledge of the Lincoln region in the first half of the twelfth century, as Lincoln and Grimsby were indeed connected by inland waterways in the twelfth century, with one being able to travel by boat from the Witham at Lincoln north-westwards along the Foss Dyke and then down the Trent and the Humber through to Grimsby after 1121, when the Foss Dyke was renovated and made navigable again by Henry I.(9) That al-Idrīsī (or his informant) was indeed aware of this route is confirmed by his statement that ‘from the inland Lincoln to the town of York is moreover ninety miles’, something that is certainly not true via road or sea, but is almost exactly true if one travelled to York by boat via the Foss Dyke, the Trent and then the Ouse.(10)

Second, Boston appears as Bskh/Bska(11) and is shown situated just inland of the sea and located on the same river as Lincoln on al-Idrīsī’s map of the east coast (Fig. 1). Interestingly, Boston is described as a ḥiṣn, a ‘fortress, stronghold, entrenchment’,(12) in contrast to Lincoln and Grimsby, which are each described as a madīna, a ‘town, city’.(13) The reason for this description is open to question, but it is worth noting that the Barditch around the town is thought to date from the eleventh–twelfth centuries and has been interpreted in the past as a ‘defensive ditch’; needless to say, al-Idrīsī’s comment may well add further weight to this interpretation.(14)

Third and finally, it seems clear from both al-Idrīsī’s text and his map that the area from Yarmouth to York, including Lincolnshire, was the part of the east coast of England in which he was most interested. There is, for example, nothing depicted or mentioned to the south of Yarmouth until one reaches the mouth of the Thames and, moreover, little evidence for any knowledge of any sites north of the Humber aside from Durham (which is wrongly mapped on the western side of England, not the east), with the northern bank of the Humber being omitted entirely so that York is consequently placed on the coast and close to the border with Scotland. Similarly, it is noteworthy that the only river depicted between the Thames and Scotland is the Witham. Quite why the Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī khtirāq al-āfāq was particularly interested in this area of England is unclear, but we might tentatively wonder whether Lincolnshire’s well-known role in the medieval wool trade from the pre-Conquest period onwards might not have somehow motivated this interest.(15) Certainly, the early fourteenth-century Taqwīm al-buldān, ‘Survey of the countries’ (1321), of Abū l-Fidāʾ, which makes explicit use of a thirteenth-century Arabic description of England by Ibn Saʿīd al-Maghribī (1213–86), praises the quality of English wool, noting that in England ‘is made the fine scarlet cloth from the wool of their sheep, which is fine like silk’.(16) The fame of English wool and the regard in which it was held in medieval Europe is well-known, but this reference and two further ones in the early fourteenth century from Rashīd al-Dīn and Banākatī to ‘exceedingly fine scarlet cloth’(17) from England imply that the renown of English wool products reached well beyond Europe and the Mediterranean in the medieval period.

'Plan of Boston, England', by Thomas Moule, 1837, slightly cropped, showing the Barditch around the town (Source: The Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library; licensed for reuse under a Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) licence via Flickr).

Footnotes

1. The only reference to it by a modern Lincolnshire historian that I am aware of is in Stephen H. Rigby’s Boston, 1086 –1225: A Medieval Boom Town (Lincoln, 2017), pp. 8, 19, 61, who encountered it via an earlier version of this paper posted on my academic blog at <https://www.caitlingreen.org/2016/03/al-idrisi-twelfth-century-map.html>.

2. For al-Idrīsī, see J.-C. Ducène, a'l-Idrīsī, Abū ʿAbdallāh', in Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, ed. K. Fleet, G. Krämer, D. Matringe, J. Nawas, and E. Rowson (Leiden, 2018), consulted online on 25 February 2021 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_32372>.

3. A. F. L. Beeston, 'Idrisi’s Account of the British Isles', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 13.2 (1950), 265–80 at pp. 278, 279–80, with minor modifications; note, I have included the transliterated Arabic names as read, discussed and identified by Beeston, pp. 273, 275–7. Grimsby is mentioned by name in the previous section by al-Idrīsī, although without any further details, see Recueil de Voyages et de Mémoires Publié par la Société de Géographie: Géographie d’Édrisi, ed. P. A. Jaubert (Paris, 1840), vol. 2, p. 374.

4. On the name of England in Arabic works, see also D. G. König, Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West: Tracing the Emergence of Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2015), pp. 277–8. For an earlier Arabic text that mentions Britain and gives more than just names, see C. Green, 'Britain, the Byzantine Empire, and the concept of an Anglo-Saxon ‘Heptarchy’: Hārūn ibn Yaḥyā’s ninth-century Arabic description of Britain', in Global Perspectives on Early Medieval England, ed. K. L. Jolly and B. Brooks (Woodbridge, 2022), pp. 94–114. See also D. N. Dunlop, 'The British Isles according to medieval Arabic authors', Islamic Quarterly 4 (1957), 11–28.

5. For the latter suggestion, see C. Loveluck, Northwest Europe in the Early Middle Ages, c. AD 600–1150: A Comparative Archaeology (Cambridge, 2013), p. 323, who accepts that al-Idrīsī ‘had visited England prior to his arrival in Sicily in c. 1138’; for the former, see Beeston, 'Idrisi’s Account', p. 280.

6. Beeston, 'Idrisi’s Account', pp. 269, 277.

7. K. Cameron, The Place-Names of Lincolnshire: Part One, The Place-Names of the County of the City of Lincoln (Nottingham, 1982), pp. 2–3, and see, for example, A Survey of the Antiquities of the City of Lincoln (Lincoln, 1848), pp. 23–4.

8. M. Ferrar, 'Al-Idrisi; The Book of Roger The description of L’Angleterre', Cartography Unchained, website, December 2020, consulted online on 25 February 2021 <https://www.cartographyunchained.com/pdfs/cgid1.pdf>, p. 10.

9. F. M. Stenton, 'The road system of medieval England', Economic History Review, 7 (1936), 1–21 at p. 20; M. J. Jones, D. Stocker and A. Vince, The City by the Pool: Assessing the Archaeology of the City of Lincoln (Oxford, 2003), pp. 116, 241; Simeon of Durham, Historia Regum, s.a. 1121: ‘In the same year, king Henry cut a large canal from Torksey to Lincoln and by causing the river Trent to flow into it, he made it navigable for vessels’, trans. J. Stevenson, Simeon of Durham: A History of the Kings of England (Felinfach, 1987), p. 188.

10. Interestingly, the distance given from Grimsby to Lincoln is approximately correct too, in this case if one sailed down the east coast of Lincolnshire and up the Witham via Boston.

11. See Beeston, 'Idrisi’s Account', p. 277 n. 55 and Arabic text at p. 269, line 55; Géographie d’Édrisi, ed. Jaubert, vol. 2, p. 425. The form here suggests that the name encountered may have been one in which the town’s name had already been shortened to Boston or similar, rather than the original Botuluestan etc., although according to Victor Watts this form is only recorded in England from 1235: V. Watts, The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names (Cambridge, 2004), p. 71. With further regard to the name as given by al-Idrīsī, it may also be worth noting that Boston was ‘established within lands belonging to Skirbeck’, just to its south, which derives from Old Norse skirr + bekkr, ‘the clear stream’: K. Cameron, A Dictionary of Lincolnshire Place-Names (Nottingham, 1998), p. 111; N. Grayson, Lincolnshire Extensive Urban Survey: Boston, Historic England/LCC project no. 2897 (Lincoln, 2019), p. 4; Rigby, Boston, pp. 4, 20. The name ‘Boston’ does, of course, appear in a variety of forms on early maps—for example, on the map of England attributed to the Genoese cartographer Pietro Vesconte in Marino Sanudo Torsello’s Liber secretorum fidelium crucis of c. 1321, Boston is Sanbetor whilst the Wash is labelled as the Gulffo de Sanbetor (British Library, Additional 27376 f. 181).

12. H. Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, ed. J. Milton Cowan, 4th edn (Wiesbaden, 1979), p. 214.

13. Wehr, Dictionary, p. 1055.

14. D. M. Owen, 'The beginnings of the port of Boston', in A Prospect of Lincolnshire, ed. N. Field and A. White (Lincoln, 1984), pp. 42–5 at p. 43; Grayson, Boston, p. 5; Rigby, Boston, p. 14.

15. On the early medieval roots of the Lincolnshire wool trade, see for example R. Faith, 'The structure of the market for wool in early medieval Lincolnshire', Economic History Review 65.2 (2012), 674–700. Note, in about 1200 Boston was second only to London in the scale of its overseas trade, with its trading activity being initially largely based around the wool trade, for which it was England’s most important port at that time: Rigby, Boston, pp. 1–2; S. H. Rigby, Boston and Grimsby in the Middle Ages (University of London PhD Thesis, 1982), pp. 175–6, 195–6.

16. Dunlop, 'The British Isles', p. 25; M. Reinaud, Géographie d'Aboulféda, 2 vols (Paris: A L'Imprimerie Nationale, 1848), vol. 2, p. 266.

17. Dunlop, 'The British Isles', p. 26.

The text content of this post and page is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2022, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

Some interesting early maps of Cornwall

This post is primarily intended to share images of some of the interesting early maps of Cornwall that still exist, dating from the medieval era through until the early seventeenth century, following on from a similar post on early maps of Lincolnshire. Details of each map and a brief discussion of the principal points of interest are provided in the captions to the following image gallery, which I aim to add to over time.

Detail from the Anglo-Saxon world map from Cotton MS Tiberius B V/1, dated c. 1025–50, probably drawn at Canterbury; click for a larger view. The map is in an unusual rectangular format and is believed to have been based on a model made during the Roman period. Many medieval mappa mundi don't offer any real indication of the Cornish peninsula, but this map clearly depicts it; the British Library notes that the size of the Cornish peninsula is exaggerated' and suggests that this is 'probably reflecting the importance of its copper and tin mines in the ancient world'. The image drawn on the Cornish peninsula is uncertain: it could be two figures fighting, possibly a reference to conflicts between the Britons of that area and the Anglo-Saxon kings of Wessex, as the BL suggests? (image: British Library).

Al-Idrīsī's mid-twelfth-century Arabic map of Britain, from a late sixteenth-century copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the map is split across three different drawings which have been combined together here so that the whole island can be seen (Bodleian Library MS. Pococke 375 folios 281b-282a, 308b, 310b-311a)—click for a larger view. The map is orientated with south at the top, rather than north; the south coast of England runs right-to-left along the top of the map and then down to the bottom right corner. As with the Anglo-Saxon Cotton Map, which may be based on a lost Roman original, the Cornish peninsula is exaggerated and very obvious as the sharp-pointed finger of land on the right of the image, though no towns or rivers are named and the peninsula is noted only as 'the extremity of England'. For more on this map, see my note 'Al-Idrisi's twelfth-century map and description of eastern England', which includes Konrad Miller's redrawn and transliterated version of al-Idrīsī's map, and 'Islamic gold dinars in late eleventh- and twelfth-century England', which maps the towns al-Idrīsī depicts along the south coast, the most westerly of these being Dorchester, Dorset. (Image: Bodleian Library).

Map of Cornwall and the South-West, extracted from the map of England by Matthew Paris, c. 1250; click for a larger view. The names Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset are large labels written in blue and red ink, with Dorset written in red ink; Dorset is oddly placed north of Somerset and Devon is curiously to the north of both of these and slightly to the east of Dorset. The place-name on the far west of Cornwall is Bodmin, with Tintagel then to the north-east of this (above the label for Cornwall), whilst the next name to the east, on the south coast, is Dartmouth, with a river separating it from Totnes and the Scilly Isles then being depicted as an island immediately to the south of these names; the Corpus Christi College Library, Cambridge, version of this map (top half only) also mentions St Michael's Mount in Cornwall on its scale legend, but this is not depicted on this map. Note, the name next to the 'Cornwall' label and on the west of a bend of the river is Exeter, with Portsmouth written vertically below this to the east of Totnes. (Image: BL Cotton MS Claudius D VI, fol. 12v, via Wikimedia Commons).

A portolan chart of south-western England and southern Wales by Genoese cartographer Pietro Vesconte with north on the right, c. 1331, based on his earlier portolan sailing charts and mariners' reports; click for a larger view. The Cornish peninsula is clearly visible, as is the Bristol Channel, and various place-names are readable, including Mousehole, St Michael's Mount, Lizard, Falmouth, Fowey and Plymouth. Note, there is significantly more detail shown of the south coast of Cornwall than there is of the north (Image: British Library).

Close up of Cornwall and Devon on the fourteenth-century Gough Map (c. 1360), which has east at the top and north on the left, showing major roads, rivers and settlements. Cornwall and Devon are written in red on the map, along with a single routeway marked in red moving from the top of the map (east) and ultimately London through to the tip of Cornwall. Important places are marked by drawings of buildings/churches of varying sizes; the names are very difficult to decipher, but the road is believed to terminate at Iwes, St Ives, which is potentially a point of some interest with regard to St Ives's local import. Other places on the map have been identified as Bodmin, Boscastle, Camelford, Fowey, ?Launceton, Liskeard, Looe, Lostwithiel, Padstow, Penzance, Redruth, St Buryan, St Colomb, St Germans, St Michael's Mount, ?Stratton, ?Tintagel, Tregony, and Truro. (Image: Wikimedia Commons).

A redrawn version of the Gough Map showing more clearly the details of the Devon and Cornwall; note, only a few of the names are transcribed on this; click image for a larger view. (Image: Ordnance Survey, 1875).

A portolan sailing chart of Cornwall drawn by Grazioso Benincasa of Ancona, Italy, dated 1466, showing numerous places including Mousehole, Falmouth, Fowey and Portsmouth. It is worth comparing this to the c. 1331 chart by Pietro Vesconte, above, as there is slightly more detail of the north coast, with two bays shown, perhaps St Ives Bay and Padstow/the Camel Estuary. (Image: BnF).

Another, slightly later portolan sailing chart of Cornwall drawn by Visconte Maggiolo of Genoa, Italy, dated 1510; a comparison with the previous portolans of c. 1331 and 1466 shows that there had been further development of the north coast of Cornwall and Devon. (Image: British Library, Egerton MS. 2803 f. 6v).

Extract from the Angliae Figura showing Cornwall and Devon (click image for a larger view), a vellum map probably created in the 1530s and perhaps hanging at Hampton Court as the property of Henry VIII; both this map and the Gough Map are thought to derive from a common source map dating from around 1290. The coastline of Cornwall and Devon is included in this extract, with Devon, Cornwall and Exeter labelled in red. A significant number of place-names in Cornwall are also labelled, including St Just, St Buryan, St Ives, Lelant, St Michael's Mount, St Columb, Falmouth, Padstow, Bodmin, Tintagel, St Austell and Looe; there are also reasonable depictions of the Hayle Estuary, the Fal Estuary, and the Tamar river. (Image: British Library).

The Cornish section of a detailed, ten-foot-long map of south-west coast of England from Exeter to Lands End, dated 1539-40; click here for a zoomable version. According to the British Library, this map is the result of an order by Thomas Cromwell in 1539 for the coasts to be surveyed by local people, with these then being edited and compiled and then presented to King Henry VIII and displayed in Whitehall; the intent was to show where foreign invaders might land, with forts and intended-but-unmade forts marked. The following images consist of details taken from this map. (Image: British Library, Cotton Augustus I. i. 35).

St Ives Bay and the Hayle Estuary on the above 1539-40 map of Cornwall, showing St Ives' church, medieval harbour and the fortification built in 1490 known as 'The Castle' (perhaps modern Quay House on the harbour beach), Phillack Church in the Towans (sand-dunes) of St Ives Bay, and Lelant; click image for a larger view (Image: British Library, Cotton Augustus I. i. 35).

Mount's Bay in around 1540 under a hypothetical invasion scenario, showing Mousehole on the top right, Penzance on the bottom right, St Michael's Mount in the bay, and Chapel Rock between the Mount and Marazion still with its chapel upon it. (Image: British Library, Cotton MS Augustus I i 34)

The Cornish peninsula on the France page of Mercator's Atlas of Europe, which was based on his 1554 wall map of Europe (p. 10). (Image: British Library, Maps C.29.c.13)

Gerard Mercator's engraving of a map of Cornwall, originally produced in 1564 and put together into atlas form in the 1570s; north is on the right hand side for this map, which is thought to have been simply engraved by Mercator from an English original, possibly produced by John Elder to assist the French or Spanish in planning an invasion to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I. It is worth noting that the map offers more detail than many earlier maps, but also has a notable number of inaccuracies, such as the placement of St Michael's Mount as inland rather than in Mount's Bay and St Ives on the east of the Hayle Estuary. (Image: British Library, Maps C.29.c.13).

A section from the detailed Map of Cornwall by William Saxton, dated 1576, included in the atlas of Lord Burghley, first published 1579; click the image for a larger view of this section and here for zoomable version of the entire map. (Image: British Library, Royal MS. 18. D.III, f.8r).

A full view of a different copy of the Map of Cornwall by William Saxton, dated 1576; click the image for a larger view of this map. (Image: British Library).

A map of Falmouth Haven from the atlas of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, dated 1595. It takes the form of a bird's eye view of Falmouth Haven, with St Mawes and its larger sister castle, Pendennis at the mouth. (Image: British Library, Royal MS. 18. D.III, f.16).

Proof version of John Speed's 1611/12 map of Cornwall, which closely followed the Saxton map of 1576 in offering a much more accurate and detailed depiction of the county, but includes additional settlements, rivers and other details; a zoomable version of this map is available here. Speed's map also includes a plan of Launceston and drawings of some stones, including The Hurlers. (Image: Cambridge University).

A map of Cornwall and Devon with places and rivers represented anthropomorphically, drawn by William Hole and used to illustrate Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion, from a copy dated 1622; click the image for a closer view or here for a zoomable version. The maps from Poly-Olbion are particularly interested in the rivers of Cornwall and the other counties of England, and depict a nymph for each major river; these are shown 'disporting themselves in a variety of engaging poses', as the Society of Antiquaries puts it. (Image: David Rumsey).

The text content of this post and page is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2020, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

Missing Lincs? Some lost islands along the Lincolnshire coast

The following post offers a quick survey of some of the lost islands off the medieval and earlier Lincolnshire coast. As has been discussed in a number of previous posts, the coastline of Lincolnshire has changed considerably in both the historic and prehistoric eras, and part of this change has involved the creation and subsequent loss of a number of coastal islands to both the sea and the land.

The coastline of Lincolnshire in the thirteenth century, drawn by C. R. Green after S. Pawley, Lincolnshire Coastal Villages and the Sea c. 1300–1600: Economy and Society (University of Leicester PhD thesis, 1984), with slight modifications. This map includes one depiction of the possible number and extent of both the offshore barrier islands that are often thought to have protected the coast of Lincolnshire through until the thirteenth century and the calmer, lagoonal conditions that they are suggested to have created to their west, protecting the Lincolnshire coast from the full erosive force of the North Sea.

The offshore barrier islands

The melting of the ice-sheets after the last glaciation saw the North Sea basin—a landscape now usually termed Doggerland—gradually, and occasionally not-so-gradually, inundated by the rising tide. Over the course of several thousand years, the steadily advancing coastline moved towards that of modern-day Lincolnshire until it reached something close to it in around 6000 BC (approximately the same time that the glacial-era land-bridge between Britain and the Continent was finally severed). For the Lincolnshire coast, one major effect of this was the drowning of the Mesolithic forests that once covered the region—the remains of the submerged forest are still visible along the coast at very low tides and its inundation has been dated to 6174–5961 cal BC at Theddlethorpe, for example. Even more significantly from the present perspective, the marine flooding also created offshore islands from the slightly higher ground that once lay to the east and north of the modern Lincolnshire and Norfolk coastlines (probably originally part of a glacial moraine left by the retreating ice-sheets on what was then the land surface). These islands extended south-eastwards from Spurn Point and are believed to have shielded the Lincolnshire seaboard from the full ferocity of the storms and tides of the North Sea, creating a sheltered tidal lagoon between themselves and the main coastline that was characterised in part by saltmarsh, wide sand and mud flats, and tidal creeks and estuaries.(1) As was discussed in a previous post, this protection appears to have finally failed during the 1200s when the offshore islands were finally destroyed by an unprecedented series of storms and floods in that century. The debris that resulted from their destruction is usually thought to have been cast up along the foreshore of the Lincolnshire Outmarsh as broad 'storm beaches' and sand dunes, as at North Somercotes.

The Lincolnshire Marshes in the pre-Viking period (drawn by C. R. Green, contains British Geological Survey materials © NERC 2014). Louth is marked on the map to aid with location. Light blue represents freshwater wetlands and saltmarsh, whilst dark blue is used for the sea and main creeks/rivers in this region; note, the extensive areas of sand, silts and channels shown on the previous map are not depicted here but would have been present. Key sources of information used in its creation include the British Geological Survey's maps of this region; D. N. Robinson's map of Lincolnshire's 'Saxon Shoreline' from The Book of the Lincolnshire Seaside (Buckingham, 1981); H. Fenwick, The Lincolnshire Marsh: Landscape Evolution, Settlement Development and the Salt Industry (PhD Thesis, University of Hull, 2007); N. G. Berridge and J. Pattison, Geology of the Country Around Grimsby and Patrington (London, 1994); and the 1628 (Mercator) and 1645 (Blaeu) maps of Lincolnshire.

The geology of Stain Hill and the surrounding area, set against a present-day streetmap, showing the island of Stain Hill surrounded by marine alluvium; click image to view a larger version. Yellow represents marine alluvium; green Devensian glacial till, and purple Devensian glaciofluvial deposits. Image taken from the BGS Geology of Britain Viewer, licensed under an Open Government Licence 2.0: contains British Geological Survey materials © NERC 2014.

Stain Hill and other 'islands' in the pre-Viking coastal zone

The post-glacial marine inundation did not simply cease when it reached the area of the modern coastline of eastern Lincolnshire in around 6000 BC, but rather continued to press inland for millennia to come. The Mesolithic land surface that it encountered was comprised of a thick undulating layer of glacial till that had been deposited as the ice sheets retreated northwards at the end of the last 'Ice Age', around 15,000 years ago. This glacial till still forms the surface of the Middle Marsh of Lincolnshire, between the Wolds and the present-day flat coastal plain, but it is buried by marine deposits up to 17 metres or so thick on the coastal Outmarsh. As this undulating landscape underneath the present-day flat Outmarsh was gradually flooded by the sea, some former high points and minor hills were eventually surrounded and became 'islands' and peninsulas of dry land in this new coastal zone. Many of these were subsequently drowned in turn by the rising tide, but some were sufficiently elevated to have remained dry right through until the maximum extent of the inland penetration of the sea was reached in around the fourth- to sixth-centuries AD, when land up to 4.22 to 4.52m above present-day sea-level was flooded in southern Lincolnshire and Romano-British sites on the coastal marshes of the eastern Lincolnshire were buried under two to three metres of marine silt.

One of these coastal zone 'islands' surrounded by the upper levels of the marine silts was Stain Hill near Mablethorpe (depicted on the British Geological Society map included above). This small island of glacial till and gravel rises from the surrounding marine alluvium to reach a maximum height of 9m above sea-level and has been the site of a number of interesting finds, not least a large group of Late Roman coins and a locally notable grouping of Anglo-Saxon material that is perhaps indicative of the presence of some sort of significant settlement or estate centre located on this elevated point in the coastal marshes. Further south are found other small islands of higher glacial till standing above the marine alluvium of the flat Outmarsh, which can probably be identified as the original locations for Sutton-in-the-Marsh/Sutton-on-Sea (given that this is an Anglo-Saxon name meaning the 'southern farm' or similar, perhaps named in relation to the possible central place at Stain Hill and part of its estate?) and Hannah (another Anglo-Saxon name which involves Old English ēg, 'island', plus hana, here either 'a cock, rooster' or a related personal name).

To the east of Alford there is another, much larger island of glacial till surrounded by the marine deposits of the Outmarsh according to the British Geological Survey, now occupied by the villages of Thurlby, Mumby, Anderby, Huttoft and Cumberworth. Once again there is evidence for Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon-era activity here, not only from the names Huttoft and Cumberworth (which are Old English in origin, with the first element of the latter being potentially OE Cumbre, 'the Britons, Welsh'), but also from metal-detected finds and archaeological excavations too. Thus chance finds from Cumberworth parish include part of a Late Roman crossbow brooch, indicative of the presence of the Late Roman military in the very late fourth or early fifth centuries; a Late Roman clipped silver siliqua of Arcadius, struck at Milan in c. 395–402; and an Anglo-Saxon silver coin of c. 680–710. At the same time, excavations at St Helen's Church in the village of Cumberworth itself have seen the recovery of 26 burials from a mid- to late Anglo-Saxon cemetery that was in turn overlain by a timber church that was probably demolished by the end of the tenth century. Finally, to the south-east of this large island were a scattering of smaller dry glacial till islands in the coastal marshes heading out towards the open sea, including one now occupied by the village of Hogsthorpe. Again, these seem to have seen activity in the Anglo-Saxon period, with finds of metalwork and even high-status gold pieces.

The former islands east of Alford; click here for a larger version of this image. The green and purple colours represent glacial deposits standing above the surrounding marine alluvium, coloured yellow. The main former island is presently home to the villages of Thurlby, Mumby, Anderby, Huttoft and Cumberworth, with a scatter of lesser islands in the old coastal marshes (that is, former high points in the underlying post-glacial landscape that were never inundated by the sea) then strung out eastwards towards the open sea. Image taken from the BGS Geology of Britain Viewer, licensed under an Open Government Licence 2.0: contains British Geological Survey materials © NERC 2017.

An Early Anglo-Saxon gold disc pendant of the  seventh-century, decorated with applied filigree beading. Found on an island in the coastal marsh in the 'Skegness area' of Lincolnshire (image: PAS).

A 1541 map of the Humber estuary, which seems to show dry islands around Spurn Head and in the middle of the Humber; click here for a larger, zoomable version of this map (image: British Library). It seems that the islands depicted are intended to be read as dry islands, rather than low-water sand banks and other features; certainly, this is the impression that their colouration gives, which is that of the land rather than the sand (a large area of sand is shown and labelled on the southern bank of the Humber, opposite Spurn Head). Moreover, if this map were a purely low water map showing sand banks and the like, then we would expect it to show considerably more features in the Humber estuary than it does—a comparison of this map with the only slightly later 1595 Cecil map supports this contention, as this is a low water map and shows the Humber estuary full of such features. 

Ravenserodd, Burcom, the Bull, and Sunk Island: former islands at the mouth of the Humber

Looking northwards to the mouth of the Humber, a number of islands are recorded, some more ephemeral than the others. Perhaps the most famous, or infamous, of these is the medieval pirate island of Ravenserodd, which thirteenth-century witnesses describe being thrown up by the waves in the mid-thirteenth century somewhere in the vicinity of Spurn Point:

By the casting up of the sea, a certain small island was born, which is called Ravenserodd, which is distant from the town of Grimsby by the space of one tide. And afterwards fishers dried their nets there, and men little by little first began to dwell and stay there, and afterwards ships laden with divers kinds of merchandise began to unload and sell there...

By 1251, a charter for a market and a fair at Ravenserodd had been obtained, and by 1290 the town and port of Ravenserodd had begun to seriously threaten the trade of nearby Grimsby, with contemporary Grimsby folk declaring it a pirate island at the mouth of Humber, preying on passing shipping. Indeed, the demise of this town (which received its borough charter in 1299) during the following century was widely attributed to its evil character—as one fourteenth-century chronicler put it, 'by its wicked works and piracies, it provoked the wrath of God against its self beyond measure' and was consequently swallowed by the sea. This reclamation of the island and town of Ravenserodd by the waves seems to have begun in the 1330s, with over 200 buildings and properties lost by the mid-1340s, and by 1362 the once-prosperous town was 'destroyed to its foundations' and lay derelict, with its exact former location nowadays being uncertain.

The 1595 Cecil map of the Humber and the east coast of Yorkshire, showing all the sand banks and 'dry sands' then within the estuary; 'The Bull' is described as a 'dry sand' on this map and Burcom appears simply as a sand bank. Click here for a larger version of this section of the image or here for a zoomable version of the entire map (image: British Library).

Another, less dramatic case is that of Burcom, which now exists as a sand bank close to the south shore of the Humber near Grimsby. The name itself may be old and has been thought likely to reflect OE *burg-cyme or *burg-cuma, meaning either 'arrival at the town' or 'arriver at the town''—the latter involving the personification of the sand or island—in reference to its close proximity to the medieval borough (burgh) of Grimsby. Its exact status is open to some question, as whilst it is presently a sand bank and is described as such on the 1595 Cecil map of the Humber, on some nineteenth- and early twentieth-century maps and charts it seems to be shown as a dry sand or even an island, suggesting that its character may well have fluctuated over the centuries.

Similarly worthy of note is 'The Bull' or Bull Sand, a sand bank in the middle of the Humber mouth. This is shown as an island and labelled on the 1541 map of the Humber included above and is described as a 'dry sand' on the 1595 map, but it conversely isn't plotted on those nineteenth-century maps that show Burcom as an island or dry sand and the Bull isn't shown as a dry sand in 1707 either; it is currently the site of Bull Sand Fort, a four storey steel and concrete fortification originally armed with four 6-inch guns and built 1915–1919. Finally, mention ought to be made of Sunk Island, a parish on the north bank of the Humber. This initially developed as another dry sandbank in the middle of the estuary before it was embanked and reclaimed from the mid-seventeenth century onwards, becoming first an island before the channel between it and the mainland silted up in the eighteenth century and was also subsequently reclaimed. Sunk Island became a parish in 1831 and further reclamations extended the land here through until 1970.

Samuel Thornton's 1702-1707 chart of the Humber, showing Sunk Island when it was still an island and Burcom as what appears to be a partially dry sand, or nearly so; conversely, Bull Sand appears to have ceased to be a dry sand by this point. Click here for a larger version of this chart (image: New York Public Library).

An Ottoman Turkish map of the Humber, dated 1803/04, showing Sunk Island joined to the north bank and what seems to be Burcom shown as a semi-island. Click here for a larger version of this map (image: Library of Congress).

Map of the Humber in Élisée Reclus's Universal Geography IV: The British Isles (London, 1876), p. 235. This shows Burcom as an island in the Humber to the north of Grimsby and Sunk Island attached to the north bank.  Click here for a larger version of this map (image: Internet Archive).

Marshchapel, Conisholme and Somercotes: salt making and sand islands on the north-eastern Lincolnshire coast

The final set of lost islands are located in north-eastern Lincolnshire, in the Outmarsh around Marshchapel and Somercotes, and perhaps the most recent and interesting of these are the saltern mounds of this area. By the tenth century AD, the edge of the coastal zone had clearly moved eastwards from its earlier inland maximum to somewhere in the vicinity of Marshchapel, given that a Late Saxon saltern has been excavated a little to the south-west of the church that was processing sea-water brought to the site by an artificial channel. Over the medieval period, salt making continued in this area and gradually moved eastwards, as saltern mounds were created from the waste products of the process and the land in between them was reclaimed, pushing the coastline and its salt-making industry eastwards. These saltern mounds, some 6m high and 20m across, initially acted as dry islands in the coastal marshes, and as each generation of mounds were reclaimed they became part of an odd, hilly landscape on the landward edge of the coastal zone, although over time the majority have been reduced by ploughing and remain visible only from the air. The industry here was still in operation in 1595, when William Haiwarde's drew a detailed map of Fulstow and Marshchapel, reproduced below, and described the eastwards movement of the mounds as follows:

The round groundes at the Easte end of Marshchappell are called mavres and are firste framed by layinge together of great quantities of moulde for the making of Salte. When the mavres grow greate the Salt makers remove more easte and come nearer to the Sea and then the former mavres become in some fewe years good pasture groundes. Those that have the Cottages nowe upon them are at the presente in use for salt.

Extract from  William Haiwarde's 1595 map of Marshchapel, showing the saltern mounds still operational in the east at that time and being gradually reclaimed as one moved further from the sea; click here for a larger version of this map.

Lidar map of the same area of Marshchapel, showing the surviving saltern mounds, which matches up remarkably well with the 1595 mapping of Haiwarde. Click here for a larger version of this picture (image: Lidar data © Environment Agency, provided under Open Government Licence; rendering by houseprices.io lab, CC BY 4.0).

Looking south of the Marshchapel area, several more 'islands' can be noted. The first of these relates to the village of Conisholme, to the south-east of Grainthorpe. The name itself makes reference to its origins as an island in the Late Saxon coastal marshes, reflecting Scandinavian kunung + holmr, 'the king's island', and it lies between two branches of the River Lud (the northern outfall being the medieval port of 'Swine' and the southern one being 'Somercotes Haven'). There was clearly some sort of significant settlement activity at Conisholme by the late tenth or early eleventh century, as the head of an Anglo-Scandinavian standing cross of this date depicting Christ in low relief has been found in the churchyard here. Interestingly, Conisholme is still shown as located on a large island between the river outfalls on the Saxton map of 1576 and this situation is made even clearer on the John Speed map of 1611/12 and especially John Cowley's map of c. 1743–5, reproduced below. Both of the latter maps actually show two islands between the two outfalls of the Lud, the larger of which is Conisholme and the smaller, seaward island is probably the area of thirteenth-century storm beach and associated medieval to early modern saltern mounds visible on Lidar and geological maps of the area.

The Outmarsh 'island' of Conisholme on Christopher Saxton's 1576 map of Lincolnshire, showing a large 'island' of land between the northern and southern outfalls of the River Lud (image: British Library).

John Cowley's eighteenth-century map of Lincolnshire, dating from c. 1743–5,  showing a significant estuary for the Lud with two islands in it; the larger of the two is Conisholme and the smaller is probably a raised storm beach with salterns on it, with this still being partly visible on Lidar. 

Finally, there is an intriguing ancient sand island in this area running from North Somercotes to Saltfleet. As was discussed in a previous post, the land in this part of Lincolnshire began to be inundated by the sea from c. 6000 BC, and whereas the flooded landscape of glacial till further south had hills and larger islands of higher ground that remained above high tide right through into the post-Roman era, this was not the case here. Instead, the Mesolithic land surface in this part of Lincolnshire appears to have been completely flooded by c. 3000 BC, aside from one small short-lived island of glacial till at Grainthorpe (which was itself flooded during the following millennium). However, two persistent sand bodies did form here which were of some significance. The most important of these ran from Saltfleet to North Somercotes and seems to have formed during the original flooding of the region, as its base lies directly on the Mesolithic land surface. By c. 3000 BC it would appear to have been entirely surrounded by coastal marshes and the sea, forming an sandy island in the coastal zone that continued to build up and persist into the Anglo-Saxon period. By the medieval period, the areas to the west of this 'island' had largely ceased to be coastal marshes and the ancient sand body was itself subsequently covered by medieval storm beach deposits, thought to be made up of the remains of the offshore coastal barrier islands that were destroyed in the thirteenth century (see further above).

The coastline of north-eastern Lincolnshire and south-eastern Holderness at the start of the first century AD, showing the ancient, persistent sand body between North Somecotes and  Saltfleet and another stretching down from Cleethorpes to the Marshchapel area. The Somercotes body is thought to have remained in place through the Late Roman and Anglo-Saxon eras as a sand 'island' in the coastal zone before being largely buried under storm beaches in the medieval period; the Cleethorpes to Marshchapel sand body looks to have been largely swamped by the Late/post-Roman marine transgression, which covered it over with a thin layer of marine silt (around a metre thick at North Cotes and rather less than this at Marshchapel), to judge from borehole records, with only a few sections of the former sand bank probably being left exposed to the east of Marshchapel (image drawn by C. R. Green, after a map in Berridge & Pattison, 1994, with some modifications). The present-day coastline from approximately Saltfleet in Lincolnshire to Easington in the East Riding of Yorkshire is shown in grey. Note, this map shows the approximate position of the coastline in this period; however, there would also have been an extensive zone of coastal marshes, inter-tidal flats and the like too on the seaward side of this coastline; these are not mapped here, but they clearly saw a significant degree activity in the Roman period.

Geological map of the Conisholme and North Somercotes area, showing the storm beach deposits in purple, thought to be formed from the remains of the offshore barrier islands destroyed in the thirteenth century, surrounded by deposits of marine alluvium in yellow; the Somercotes to Saltfleet sand body largely lies below the medieval storm beach. Note, the separate area of storm beach to the north of Somercotes probably represents the second island between the River Lud outfalls shown on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century maps. Image taken from the BGS Geology of Britain Viewer, licensed under an Open Government Licence 2.0: contains British Geological Survey materials © NERC 2017.

Notes

1.     These coastal barrier islands were first suggested by H. H. Swinnerton in 'The post-glacial deposits of the Lincolnshire coast', Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 87 (1931), 360–75. See also D. N. Robinson, The Book of the Lincolnshire Seaside (Buckingham, 1981), pp. 13, 17 (map), 20; S. Pawley, Lincolnshire Coastal Villages and the Sea c. 1300–1600: Economy and Society (University of Leicester PhD thesis, 1984), pp. 69–70, 73–5, 80; S. Bennett & N. Bennett (edd.), An Historical Atlas of Lincolnshire (Hull, 1993), p. 8; Institute of Estuarine and Coastal Studies, Humber Estuary & Coast (Hull, 1994), p. 33; H. Fenwick, The Lincolnshire Marsh: Landscape Evolution, Settlement Development and the Salt Industry (University of Hull PhD Thesis, 2007), pp. 54, 160, 174, 181–2, 189, 199, 202, 267, 304; and Natural England, NA 101: Bridlington to Skegness Maritime Natural Area Profile (Sheffield, 2013), pp. 11, 21.

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2017, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

Sasanian finds in early medieval Britain and beyond: another global distribution from Late Antiquity?

A previous post mapped and discussed the spread of early Byzantine finds across both Eurasia and Africa, ranging from Britain to Japan and Sweden to Tanzania. The following one expands upon this by turning to look at the global distribution of finds from the fifth- to seventh-century Sasanian Empire, the early Byzantine Empire's eastern neighbour and rival, starting with an examination of Sasanian coins found in Britain. This Late Antique empire, with its capital at Ctesiphon near to modern Baghdad, controlled an extensive area stretching from Iraq in the west to Pakistan in the east, and items produced within this territory are once again found spread across both Eurasia and Africa. Needless to say, the extensive distribution of Late Sasanian material shown here is of interest for a number of reasons from the perspective of this blog, not least the light that it sheds on trade and movement in this era and Britain's place within the wider global community.

Distribution of Sasanian finds of the fifth to seventh centuries AD found outside of the boundaries of the late sixth-century Sasanian Empire, along with a depiction of the empire during the late sixth century. For a larger version of this map, click here. Note, the map is based on the sources listed in fn. 1 and is not exhaustive; rather, it is intended to offer an impression of the wide distribution of fifth- to seventh-century Sasanian objects across Eurasia and Africa. Image: C. R. Green.

Britain and the west

The degree to which the Sasanian Empire was aware of the existence of Britain is uncertain: whilst an inscription of the third century AD refers to Spain and a number of other provinces of the Roman Empire, the earliest surviving reference to Britain from this region belongs to the ninth century AD, as was discussed in a previous post. Nonetheless, in recent years a number of Late Sasanian coins have been recorded from this island that sixth-century authors described as lying 'virtually at the end of the world towards the west and north-west' (Gildas, De Excidio Britanniae, §3, c. AD 500–540). Two of these coins have been published and discussed in print previously:

• A Sasanian coin of Khosrow I, minted in AD 565/6 at Susa in modern Iran and found at Winchelsea, East Sussex, in 1930.(2)
• A Sasanian coin of Khosrow II, minted in c. AD 628 at Weh-Andiyok-Shapur (Gundeshapur, Iran) and found on the coast of the Island of Anglesey, Wales, in 2001.(3)

A further four Late Sasanian coins can now be added to this list that were either missed in the original catalogue or discovered after it was published:

• A seventh-century Sasanian coin, presumably of Khosrow II (590–628), found at Beverley, East Yorkshire, in 1982.(4)
• A sixth- or seventh-century Sasanian coin found at Barford, Warwickshire, in 1994.(5)
• A Sasanian coin of Khosrow II, 590–628, minted at Ram Hormuz in southwestern Iran and found at Thamesfield, London; it was recorded by the PAS in 2017.(6)
• A Sasanian coin of Khosrow II, probably minted c. AD 618 at either Veh-Kavat or Veh-Ardashir (both in modern Iraq); possibly, although not certainly, found in the East Midlands in or before 2009.(7)

A Sasanian coin of Khosrow II, 590–628, found on the coast of the Island of Anglesey, Wales, in 2001 (image: PAS, CC BY 2.0, kindly modified by Yngve Karlsson).

With regard to the presence of these sixth- to seventh-century Sasanian coins in Britain, several points can be made. First, there seems little obvious reason to assume that they are all modern losses by careless antiquarian coin collectors. As has been observed in earlier posts, 'the proverbial absent-minded college don or cathedral canon, dropping items of his collection here, there and everywhere... has never seemed a very convincing character' (as Martin Biddle memorably put it), and the nature and circumstances of the finds under consideration here supports this.(8) Not only have these Sasanian coins all been found in widely distant locales, but they have also been discovered over an extensive period of time—1930 to 2017—yet appear to have been all minted near-contemporaneously too (in the later sixth to early seventh centuries), circumstances which arguably better fit with these coins being genuinely ancient losses and imports arriving due to a specific set of circumstances, rather than random modern losses or hoaxes. Indeed, a useful comparison might be made with the increasingly large quantity of sixth- to early seventh-century Byzantine coins now known from Britain, which were once viewed with hyper-scepticism by some but are now generally accepted as genuine imports to early medieval Britain.(9) Furthermore, potential Sasanian imports to early medieval Britain are not, in fact, limited to these coins alone, but also include a small number of Sasanian engraved gems which have been found in excavated Anglo-Saxon graves, something that is obviously of considerable interest and relevance in the present context.(10)

Second, with regard to the mechanism by which these coins might have arrived in Britain, Gareth Williams has suggested that they could have travelled alongside the above-mentioned Byzantine coins from North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean that are found in sixth- to seventh-century Britain.(11) Such a scenario would undoubtedly make a great deal of sense. There are, after all, clear connections between the Sasanian Empire's western neighbour, the Byzantine Empire, and both western Britain and Anglo-Saxon England in this era. For example, not only are significant numbers of early Byzantine coins found across the island, but there is also a considerable quantity of eastern Mediterranean pottery known from sites in the west, and isotopic and textual evidence moreover indicates that people who probably grew up in Byzantine North Africa were living and dying in seventh-century South Wales, Northumbria, East Anglia and Kent too.(12) The material in western Britain has long been seen as resulting from direct maritime contact with the eastern Mediterranean and that in the east can probably be at least partly seen in this light too, with finds of late sixth- to early seventh-century Byzantine coins from the Anglo-Saxon royal site of Rendlesham, Suffolk, having recently been interpreted as evidence for 'direct mercantile contacts' with the Byzantine world by Chris Scull et al.(13) As such, it seems perfectly credible that the Sasanian coins could have travelled directly to Britain alongside Byzantine imports, especially in light of the fact that Sasanian silks and gems were definitely imported into the Byzantine Empire and Sasanian coins are recorded from at least parts of the Byzantine Levant.(14) Indeed, it is worth noting that the Levant, parts of Anatolia and Egypt were all actually briefly under Sasanian control for a period in the early seventh century, something that may be of relevance here, especially given that, for example, the seventh-century Byzantine Life of St John the Almsgiver tells of a ship from Alexandria that visited Britain around that time and exchanged a cargo of corn for one of tin.(15)

A Sasanian coin of Khosrow II, 590–628, minted at Ram Hormuz in southwestern Iran and found at Thamesfield, London; it was recorded by the PAS in 2017 (image: PAS, CC BY 2.0).

A garnet intaglio of a lion mounted in an seventh-century Anglo-Saxon gold pendant from grave 172, Sibertswold Down, Kent; the gem has most recently been identified by Jeffrey Spier as a Sasanian original in his Late Antique and Early Christian Gems (Wiesbaden, 2007), p. 87. Image: Public Domain, drawn and engraved by F. W. Fairholt for B. Faussett, Inventorium Sepulchrale (London, 1856), plate IV, no. 17.

Looking south and east: Sasanian artefacts in Africa and East Asia

If the distribution of fifth- to seventh-century Sasanian extended to the north-western edge of the then-known world, it also reached equally far in the other directions. In East Africa, for example, Sasanian beads and pottery occur down the east coast from Ras Hafun, Somalia, to Kivinja, Tanzania (a site radiocarbon dated to the fifth to sixth centuries AD), and then on to Chibuene, southern Mozambique. The probably seventh-century Persian glass beads found on this last site are associated with a small amount of Sasanian pottery of the type found at Ras Hafun and are believed to attest to pre-Islamic direct trade links via the Persian Gulf that stretched right down into the south of Africa. Needless to say, this is particularly intriguing, especially as Chibuene is around 1,900km further south along the coast than the southernmost East African sites that have produced fifth- to seventh-century Byzantine artefacts! Even more interestingly, it also now appears that these beads, made with glass produced somewhere in the region east of the Euphrates, were subsequently traded inland from Chibuene, with three sites in Botswana now known to produce them, including Nqoma in far western Botswana, 1,500km from Chibuene and closer to the south-western coast of Africa than the east.(16) It is worth noting, incidentally, that Nqoma is not the only part of western Africa receiving Sasanian beads around this time—further north yet more beads manufactured east of the Euphrates are found in fifth- to seventh-century graves at Kissi, Burkina Faso, although these beads are thought to have arrived via a different route, through the Saharan Garamantian kingdom along with early Byzantine artefacts exported from the Mediterranean.(17)

Looking eastwards of the Sasanian Empire, the situation is equally interesting. As might be expected, there are significant quantities of Sasanian coins known from Central Asian Sogdiana, which bordered the Sasanian Empire in the north-east. However, there are also large numbers of Late Sasanian coins known from China too which almost certainly arrived there via Sogdiana and the Silk Road. The Sui–Tang period tombs of Astana (Xinjiang, China), for example, contain a significant number of these coins, which are notably more common than Byzantine pieces there, and Sasanian coins and glassware are additionally found at a significant number of sites further east too, as can be seen on the map included above—indeed, over 1,300 coins of Khosrow II alone have been found in China according to a recent survey.(18) In addition to these finds in the north, a number of sites in Guangdong in the south of China have also produced fifth- to seventh-century Sasanian coins, which presumably reflects maritime trade along the southern 'Silk Road of the sea' rather than the land route, an extension of the connections that brought Sasanian torpedo jars, seals and coins to India, Sri Lanka and even Thailand.(19) There is certainly documentary evidence for Persian activity and maritime trading in and around India, Sri Lanka and China in the Late Sasanian era and immediately after, and it has recently been suggested that this activity may well have extended as far as Korea and Japan in the fifth to seventh centuries. Thus not only is at least some Sasanian glass present in the late fifth- to early sixth-century AD royal tombs at Silla, South Korea, but a notable quantity of fifth- to seventh-century Sasanian glassware is also known from several sites in Japan, including Nara, Kyoto and Osaka. For example, the tomb of the 27th Emperor of Japan, Emperor Ankan, who died c. AD 536, contained a complete cut-glass Sasanian bowl of the fifth or sixth century, whilst the late fifth-century tomb 126 at Nara contained a blue glass Roman dish that had been painted in Sasanian Persia before being transported on to Japan. Although certainty is difficult, Seth Priestman has argued that these and other Persian finds in Japan are best seen as resulting from direct maritime contact with the Sasanian Empire, rather than indirect contact via the overland Silk Road, and in this light it is at the very least intriguing to note that documentary evidence has recently emerged of a Persian official or teacher living in eighth-century Japan.(20)

A repaired complete Sasanian glass bowl excavated from the sixth-century AD tumulus of Emperor Ankan in Osaka, Japan (image: Wikimedia Commons).

A selection of beads found at Kissi, Burkina Faso. Carnelian beads like those shown here were found in the fifth- to seventh-century grave 10 at Kissi 3 and are believed to have been manufactured in the Byzantine Near East/Egypt; chemical analysis of the glass beads indicates that they were made using glass from the Near and Middle East, with the majority being made within the Sasanian Empire. (Image: B. Voss/Afriques, CC)

Notes

1.     The following sources were used for areas other than Britain when putting together the map included here; it should, incidentally, be noted that Sasanian coins found in association with Islamic coinage—as all finds in Scandinavia, for example, seem to be—are not mapped here as they are believed to represent post-Sasanian trade. Map sources: I. Smirnov (ed.), Vostochnoe Serebro (St Petersburg, 1909); F. E. Day, 'Silks of the Near East', Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 9.4 (1950), 108–17; J. P. Oleson, 'An unpublished Sassanian seal, with a comment on the deportation of Armenians to Cyprus in AD 578', Levant, 8 (1976), 161–4; J. A. Lerner, 'Sasanian seals in the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities of the British Museum', Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 35 (1976), 183–7; P. O. Harper & P. Meyers, Silver Vessels of the Sasanian Period. Volume One: Royal Imagery (New York, 1981); H. M. Malek, 'A survey of research on Sasanian numismatics', The Numismatic Chronicle, 153 (1993), 227–69; P. Urbańczyk (ed.), Origins of Central Europe (Warsaw, 1997); E.A. Smagulov, 'Finds of Sasanian gems in the Otrar Oasis', Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia, 3.2 (1997), 253–9; J. K. Skaff, 'The Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian silver coins from Turfan: their relationship to international trade and the local economy', Asia Major, 11.2 (1998), 67–115; S. D. Sears & D. T. Ariel, 'Finds of Late Sasanian and Early Muslim drachms in historical Palestine', ‘Atiqot, 40 (2000), 139–50; A. M. Maeir, 'Sassanica Varia Palaestiniensia: a Sassanian seal from T. Iṣtaba, Israel, and other Sassanian objects from the Southern Levant', Iranica Antiqua, 35 (2000), 159–83; M. Compareti, 'The Sasanians in Africa', Transoxiana, 4 (2002), online at http://www.transoxiana.org/0104/sasanians.html; T. Daryaee, 'The Persian Gulf trade in Late Antiquity', Journal of World History, 14 (2003), 1–16; R. K. Kovalev, 'Commerce and caravan routes along the Northern Silk Road (sixth-ninth centuries) – Part I: the western sector', Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 14 (2005), 55–105; S. Li, 'The distribution and significance of Sassanid silver currency in China', Chinese Archaeology, 6 (2006), 190–4; M-L. Chen, 'The importation of Byzantine and Sasanian glass into China during the fourth to sixth centuries', in A. Harris (ed.), Incipient Gobalization? Long-Distance Contacts in the Sixth Century (Oxford, 2006), pp. 47–52; R. Tomber, 'Rome and Mesopotamia – importers into India in the first millennium AD', Antiquity, 81 (2007), 972–88; B. Borell, 'The early Byzantine lamp from Pong Tuk', Journal of the Siam Society, 96 (2008), 1–26; S. Magnavita, 'Sahelian crossroads: some aspects on the Iron Age sites of Kissi, Burkina Faso', in S. Magnavita et al (eds.), Crossroads / Carrefour Sahel: Cultural and Technological Developments in First Millennium BC/AD West Africa (Frankfurt, 2009), pp. 79–104; N. Schindel, Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum Israel (Wien, 2009); F. Curta & A. Gândilă, 'Hoards and hoarding patterns in the Early Byzantine Balkans', Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 65–66 (2011–2012), 45–111; T. Power, The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate: AD 500–1000 (Oxford, 2012); M. Wood et al, 'The glass of Chibuene, Mozambique: new insights into early Indian Ocean trade', The South African Archaeological Bulletin, 67 (2012), 59–74; S .Liu et al, 'Silk Road glass in Xinjiang, China: chemical compositional analysis and interpretation using a high-resolution portable XRF spectrometer', Journal of Archaeological Science, 39 (2012), 2128–42; G. I. Bijovsky, Gold Coin and Small Change: Monetary Circulation in Fifth-Seventh Century Byzantine Palestine (Trieste, 2012); J. Spier, Byzantium and the West: Jewelry in the First Millennium (London, 2012); L. Baratova & N. Schindel, Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum Usbekistan (Wien, 2012); A. Giumlía-Mair, 'Metallurgy and technology of the Hunnic gold hoard from Nagyszéksós', The Silk Road, 11 (2013), 12–35; E. Petac & A. Ionescu, 'Some Sassanian silver coins discovered at Axiopolis (Cernavoda, Constanta County, Romania)', Iranica Antiqua, 48 (2013), 355–60; S. Lee & D. P. Leidy, Silla: Korea's Golden Kingdom (New York, 2013); M. Kazanski, 'The Middle Dnieper area in the seventh century: an archaeological survey', in C. Zuckerman (ed.), Constructing the Seventh Century (Paris, 2013), pp. 769–864; N. Boivin et al, 'East Africa and Madagascar in the Indian Ocean world', Journal of World Prehistory, 26 (2013), 213–81; T. Gesztelyi, 'Sasanian seals in Hungarian collections', Acta Classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debreceniensis, 50 (2014), 179–83; J. Denbow et al, 'The glass beads of Kaitshaa: new insights on early Indian Ocean trade into the far interior of southern Africa', Antiquity, 89 (2015), 1–17; M. Wood, 'Divergent patterns in Indian Ocean trade to East Africa and southern Africa between the 7th and 17th centuries CE: the glass bead evidence', Afriques, 6 (2015), online at http://afriques.revues.org/1782; J. Then-Obluska, 'Cross-cultural bead encounters at the Red Sea port site of Berenike, Egypt. Preliminary assessment (seasons 2009 - 2012)', Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean, 24 (2015), 735–77 at p. 764; M. Gasparini, 'Sino-Iranian textile patterns in Trans-Himalayan areas', The Silk Road, 14 (2016), 84–96. The depiction of the Sasanian Empire in the late sixth century is based on P. Sluglett & A. Currie, Atlas of Islamic History (Routledge: London, 2014), pp. 13–15, maps 1 and 2.
2.     R. Abdy & G. Williams, 'A catalogue of hoards and single finds from the British Isles c. AD 410–675', in B. J. Cook & G. Williams (eds.), Coinage and History in the North Sea World, c. AD 500–1250: Essays in Honour of Marion Archibald (Leiden, 2006), pp. 11–74 at p. 57.
3.     Portable Antiquities Scheme, LVPL2174; R. Abdy & G. Williams, 'A catalogue of hoards and single finds from the British Isles c. AD 410–675', in B. J. Cook & G. Williams (eds.), Coinage and History in the North Sea World, c. AD 500–1250: Essays in Honour of Marion Archibald (Leiden, 2006), pp. 11–74 at p. 57. Information on the mint site kindly provided by Yngve Karlsson.
4.     M. P. T. Didsbury, Aspects of Late Iron Age and Romano-British Settlement in the Lower Hull Valley (University of Durham PhD thesis, 1990), vol. 2, p. 15 (dated broadly fifth to seventh century); Humber Historic Environment Record, 8734 (dated to the seventh century).
5.     Warwickshire Historic Environment Record, MWA9909.
6.     Portable Antiquities Scheme, LON-B2F5CF.
7.     Portable Antiquities Scheme, LEIC-BF6164. Note, this coin was discovered for purchase at a car boot sale in the Leicester area and no firm details are known of its find circumstances; as such, it needs to be used only very cautiously.
8.     Quotation from M. Biddle, 'Ptolemaic coins from Winchester', Antiquity, 49 (1975), 213–15.
9.     See, for example, S. Moorhead, 'Early Byzantine copper coins found in Britain – a review in light of new finds recorded with the Portable Antiquities Scheme', in O. Tekin (ed.), Ancient History, Numismatics and Epigraphy in the Mediterranean World (Istanbul, 2009), pp. 263–74; C. Morrisson, 'Byzantine coins in early medieval Britain: a Byzantinist's assessment', in R. Naismith et al (ed.), Early Medieval Monetary History: Studies in Memory of Mark Blackburn (London, 2014), pp. 207–42; E. S. Georganteli, 'Byzantine coins', in M. Biddle (ed.), The Winchester Mint and Coins and Related Finds from the Excavations of 1961-71, Winchester Studies 8 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 669–78; G. Williams, 'Anglo-Saxon gold coinage, part 1: the transition from Roman to Anglo-Saxon coinage', British Numismatic Journal, 80 (2010), 51–75; C. Scull et al, 'Social and economic complexity in early medieval England: a central place complex of the East Anglian kingdom at Rendlesham, Suffolk', Antiquity, 90 (2016), 1594-1612.
10.     J. Spier, 'Late Antique and Early Christian gems: some unpublished examples', in C. Entwistle & N. Adams (eds.), ‘Gems of Heaven’: Recent Research on Engraved Gemstones in Late Antiquity, c. AD 200–600 (London, 2011), pp. 193–207 at p. 199 ('A small number of... engraved Sasanian gems, have been found in other Anglo-Saxon graves, a notable indication of the great distance such prized objects could travel.'); J. Spier, Late Antique and Early Christian Gems (Wiesbaden, 2007), p. 87 (identifies the gems from Sibertswold, Kent, grave 172, and Alfriston, Sussex, grave 28, as Sasanian originals). See also P. W. Rogers, Costume in the Early Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Saltwood, Kent: Part 1, Women's Costume Accessories (2014), finds report, available online here, p. 30; H. Geake, The Use of Grave-Goods in Conversion-Period England, c.600–c.850 (Oxford, 1997), p. 39.
11.     G. Williams, 'Anglo-Saxon gold coinage, part 1: the transition from Roman to Anglo-Saxon coinage', British Numismatic Journal, 80 (2010), 51–75 at p. 58. An alternative scenario might be to associate them with the Viking impact on Britain in the ninth century, as Sasanian coins are found alongside later Arab-Sasanian coins and Islamic dirhams in Viking-era hoards in Scandinavia (see, for example, R. K. Kovalev, 'When and what regions of the Islamic world exported Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian silver coins to early Viking-Age Northern Lands?', in T. Talvio & M. Wijk (eds.), Myntstudier (Stockholm, 2015), pp. 68–83); however, Gareth Williams does not do this and it is important to note that the distribution of Sasanian coins from Britain catalogued here does not match well with that of Islamic dirhams in Britain thought to have been imported during the Viking-era, as mapped in C. R. Green, 'The distribution of Islamic dirhams in Anglo-Saxon England', 16 December 2014, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2014/12/distribution-of-islamic-dirhams-in-england.html., nor do any of the known Viking-era hoards of dirhams found in Britain contain Sasanian coins. As such, it is not adopted or pursued in the present post.
12.     On the coins, see the references cited in fn. 9; references for the imported Byzantine pottery can be found in fn. 13, below. The isotopic results are discussed and summarized in C. R. Green, 'Some oxygen isotope evidence for long-distance migration to Britain from North Africa & southern Iberia, c.1100 BC–AD 800', 24 October 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/10/oxygen-isotope-evidence.html and C. R. Green, 'A note on the evidence for African migrants in Britain from the Bronze Age to the medieval period', 23 May 2016, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2016/05/a-note-on-evidence-for-african-migrants.html. The results discussed and analysed in these posts were published in K. A. Hemer et al, 'Evidence of early medieval trade and migration between Wales and the Mediterranean Sea region', Journal of Archaeological Science, 40 (2013), 2352–59; S. Lucy et al, 'The burial of a princess? The later seventh-­century cemetery at Westfield Farm, Ely', Antiquity, 89 (2009), 81–141; S. E. Groves et al, 'Mobility histories of 7th–9th century AD people buried at early medieval Bamburgh, Northumberland, England', American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 151 (2013), 462–76; and J. A. Evans et al, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation in archaeological human tooth enamel excavated from Britain', Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, 27 (2012), 754–64 and 'Supplementary Material I' (14 pp.). The textual evidence relates to the early eighth-century Historia Ecclesiastica IV.1, where Bede describes Hadrian, the later seventh- and eighth-century Abbot of St Augustine's, Canterbury, as 'a man of African race' (HE IV.1). Hadrian is thought to have grown up in Libya Cyrenaica before the mid-seventh-century Arab conquest of North Africa: B Bischoff & M. Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian (Cambridge, 1994), especially p. 92.
13.     For eastern Britain and East Anglia, see C. Scull et al, 'Social and economic complexity in early medieval England: a central place complex of the East Anglian kingdom at Rendlesham, Suffolk', Antiquity, 90 (2016), 1594-1612; for western Britain and Byzantine imported pottery, see for example M. Fulford, 'Byzantium and Britain: a Mediterranean perspective on post-Roman Mediterranean imports in western Britain and Ireland', Medieval Archaeology, 33 (1989), 1–6; E. Campbell, Continental and Mediterranean Imports to Atlantic Britain and Ireland, AD 400–800, Council for British Archaeology Research Report 157 (York, 2007); E. Campbell & C. Bowles, 'Byzantine trade to the edge of the world: Mediterranean pottery imports to Atlantic Britain in the 6th century', in M. M. Mango (ed.), Byzantine Trade, 4th-12th Centuries: The Archaeology of Local, Regional and International Exchange (Farnham, 2009), pp. 297–314; and T. M. Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, 350–1064 (Oxford, 2013), pp. 222–3. On Byzantine–British connections, we can also note, for example, the Penmachno Stone from North Wales, which has recently been persuasively interpreted as a late sixth-century monument declaring continuing British loyalty to the Byzantine Emperor Justin II: T. M. Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, 350–1064 (Oxford, 2013), pp. 234–8.
14.     For example, Procopius in the mid-sixth century mentioned that the Romans of the eastern empire (now usually termed the Byzantine Empire) 'buy silk from the Persians', although few potential examples now survive of these silk imports: see H. B. Feltham, 'Justinian and the international silk trade', Sino-Platonic Papers, 194 (2009), pp. 1–40; M. Compareti, 'The Sasanians in Africa', Transoxiana, 4 (2002), online at http://www.transoxiana.org/0104/sasanians.html; F. E. Day, 'Silks of the Near East', Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 9.4 (1950), 108–17; N. Oikonomides, 'Silk trade and production in Byzantium from the sixth to the ninth century: the seals of kommerkiarioi', Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 40 (1986), 35–53. On gems, coins and other Sasanian artefacts in the Byzantine Empire, see for example J. P. Oleson, 'An unpublished Sassanian seal, with a comment on the deportation of Armenians to Cyprus in AD 578', Levant, 8 (1976), 161–4; J. A. Lerner, 'Sasanian seals in the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities of the British Museum', Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 35 (1976), 183–7; S. D. Sears & D. T. Ariel, 'Finds of Late Sasanian and Early Muslim drachms in historical Palestine', ‘Atiqot, 40 (2000), 139–50; A. M. Maeir, 'Sassanica Varia Palaestiniensia: a Sassanian seal from T. Iṣtaba, Israel, and other Sassanian objects from the Southern Levant', Iranica Antiqua, 35 (2000), 159–83; N. Schindel, Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum Israel (Wien, 2009).
15.     Leontius, Life of St John the Almsgiver, chapter 10; C. A. Snyder, An Age of Tyrants: Britain and the Britons, AD 400–600 (Stroud, 1998), p. 152; C. J. Salter, 'Early tin extraction in the south-west of England: a resource for Mediterranean metalworkers of late antiquity', in M. M. Mango (ed.), Byzantine Trade, 4th–12th Centuries: The Archaeology of Local, Regional and International Exchange (Farnham, 2009), pp. 315–22 at p. 320; M. M. Mango, 'Tracking Byzantine silver and copper metalware, 4th–12th centuries', in Mango (ed.), Byzantine Trade, 4th–12th Centuries, pp. 221–36 at p. 223.
16.     On Late Antique trade down the East African coast, see especially N. Boivin et al, 'East Africa and Madagascar in the Indian Ocean world', Journal of World Prehistory, 26 (2013), 213–81 at pp. 244–5, for a good, recent summary. On Chibuene and Persian beads traded into Botswana, see M. Wood et al, 'The glass of Chibuene, Mozambique: new insights into early Indian Ocean trade', The South African Archaeological Bulletin, 67 (2012), 59–74; M. Wood, Interconnections: Glass beads and Trade in Southern and Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean – 7th to 16th centuries AD (Uppsala, 2011); M. Wood, 'Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean world in the first millennium CE: the glass bead evidence', in G. Campbell (ed.), Early Exchange between Africa and the Wider Indian Ocean World (Cham, 2016), pp. 173–94 at pp. 184–6; J. Denbow et al, 'The glass beads of Kaitshaa: new insights on early Indian Ocean trade into the far interior of southern Africa', Antiquity, 89 (2015), 1–17; M. Wood, 'Divergent patterns in Indian Ocean trade to East Africa and southern Africa between the 7th and 17th centuries CE: the glass bead evidence', Afriques, 6 (2015), online at http://afriques.revues.org/1782; A. M. Daggett, Early Iron Age Social and Economic Organization in Sowa Pan, Botswana (Michigan State University PhD Thesis, 2015), especially p. 322.
17.     On the Sasanian beads of Sub-Saharan West Africa, see S. Magnavita, 'Sahelian crossroads: some aspects on the Iron Age sites of Kissi, Burkina Faso', in S. Magnavita et al (eds.), Crossroads / Carrefour Sahel: Cultural and Technological Developments in First Millennium BC/AD West Africa (Frankfurt, 2009), pp. 79–104, and S. Magnavita, 'Initial encounters: seeking traces of ancient trade connections between West Africa and the wider world', Afriques, 4 (2013), online at https://afriques.revues.org/1145.
18.     See, for example, S. Li, 'The distribution and significance of Sassanid silver currency in China', Chinese Archaeology, 6 (2006), 190–4; M-L. Chen, 'The importation of Byzantine and Sasanian glass into China during the fourth to sixth centuries', in A. Harris (ed.), Incipient Gobalization? Long-Distance Contacts in the Sixth Century (Oxford, 2006), pp. 47–52; S .Liu et al, 'Silk Road glass in Xinjiang, China: chemical compositional analysis and interpretation using a high-resolution portable XRF spectrometer', Journal of Archaeological Science, 39 (2012), 2128–42; J. K. Skaff, 'The Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian silver coins from Turfan: their relationship to international trade and the local economy', Asia Major, 11.2 (1998), 67–115.
19.     For finds in southern China, see for example Li, 'The distribution and significance of Sassanid silver currency in China'; R. C. Houston, 'A note on two coin hoards reported in Kao Ku', Museum Notes (American Numismatic Society), 20 (1975), 153–60; T. Daryaee, 'The Persian Gulf trade in Late Antiquity', Journal of World History, 14 (2003), 1–16; T. Daryaee, Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (London, 2009), pp. 138–9. Note, Daryaee, 'The Persian Gulf trade in Late Antiquity', p. 13, suggests the coastal finds in east China may also result from the maritime trade route, rather than the overland Silk Road, and notes the discovery of a potential Zoroastrian fire-temple in southern China (p. 14). For finds in India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand (at Yarang) and documentary references to Persian maritime trade across to China, see, for example, R. Tomber, 'Rome and Mesopotamia – importers into India in the first millennium AD', Antiquity, 81 (2007), 972–88; B. Borell, 'The early Byzantine lamp from Pong Tuk', Journal of the Siam Society, 96 (2008), 1–26 at pp. 9 and 11; D. Whitehouse & A. Williamson, 'Sasanian maritime trade', Iran, 11 (1973), 29–49; Daryaee, 'The Persian Gulf trade in Late Antiquity'; and S. Faller, 'The world according to Cosmas Indicopleustes – concepts and illustrations of an Alexandrian merchant and monk', Transcultural Studies, 1 (2011), online at http://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/index.php/transcultural/article/view/6127/2962, although see now R. R. Darley, '"Implicit cosmopolitanism" and the commercial role of ancient Lanka', in Z. Biedermann & A. Strathern (eds.), Sri Lanka at the Crossroads of History (London, 2017), pp. 44-65, on the disputed character of Sri Lankan finds of Sasanian coins and also on textual references to Persian activity on the island.
20.     On the Korean finds, see C. Kwangshik, 'Silla art and the Silk Road', International Journal of Korean History, 19 (2014), 1–22 at p. 3; S. Lee & D. P. Leidy, Silla: Korea's Golden Kingdom (New York, 2013), p. 125. On the Japanese finds, see S. Priestman, 'The Silk Road or the sea? Sasanian and Islamic exports to Japan', Journal of Islamic Archaeology, 3 (2016), 1-35, who argues for these items having arrived via the sea rather than the overland Silk Road; there is also some discussion of these finds in the Encyclopædia Iranica, 'Japan XI: collections of Persian art in Japan' (2008), available online. The documentary evidence for a Persian official living in Japan was revealed in October 2016: 'Research uncovers evidence that ancient Japan was "more cosmopolitan" than previously thought', Japan Times, October 5 2016, online edition.

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