Reading City of Djinns, by William Dalrymple

City of Djinns by William Dalrymple, 1993, 350pp

I first read this many years ago and decided to re-read it again after I finished Rudyard Kipling's Kim with my book club. 

The subtitle, A Year in Delhi tells you pretty much exactly what you get - an account of Dalrymple and his wife's time in Delhi. Like most travelogues, this book features a few of the  trials and tribulations associated with travel and living in a new place, but it offers much more than that. During his stay, Dalrymple delved into the history of the city, and the reader is treated to a book that weaves back and forth in time, telling us what the city as like way back when, an then revealing it again in 1993. 

He covers a wide variety of topics, from historic people and places to the state of modern eunuchry, partridge fighting, and sufism. And the book has some great characters, like partridge aficionado Punjab Singh (whose name is surely an Indian version of Indiana Jones) and the archaeologist B.B. Lal. For a GM like me who likes to infuse their made up worlds with the verisimilitude of the real world, these characters are inspiration gold. It's these characters and some of the situations they find themselves in that I'd like to share with you here today.

One of the more interesting characters in the book is Pir Syed Mohammed Sarmadi, a very successful fraudulent dervish. Dalrymple describes him as -

"A hugely fat sufi with a mountainous turban, and elephantine girth, and a great ruff of double chins, he operates one of the most profitable faith healing businesses in India. One of Sarmadi's forebears was beheaded by the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb after he wandered into the imperial presence stark naked, shrieking out sufi poetry."

"Everyday, Sarmadi sits cross-legged in his surgery between ten and five, with a short break for a kebab at lunch. It is a small room, and Sarmadi fills a great deal of it. Its walls are lined with powders and sacred texts, framed monograms of Arabic calligraphy and pictures of the Ka'ba at Mecca. There is a continuous queue of folk waiting to see him, and Sarmadi keeps the queue moving. Each petitioner gets about two minutes of his time. Sarmadi will listen, breaking his concentration only to clean his fingernails or to gob into his golden spittoon. When finished, Sarmadi will wave his peacock fan and blow over the petitioner, recite a bit of the Quran, write out a charm or a sacred number, and place it in an amulet. He will then dismiss the supplicant, having first received his fee of fifty rupees, a week's wage for an Indian labourer."

Sarmadi seems to come from a long line of such Sufis, so with a little research, one could round fill out a full faction of them: https://reflectionsofindia.com/2014/07/22/sufisarmad/

Dalrymple also relates some of the stories of past visitors, like Dargah Quli Khan, who visited the city between 1737 and 1741 and reports on the local orgies:

"Hand in hand, the lovers roam the streets, while [outside] the drunken and debauched revel in all kinds of perversities. Groups of winsome lads violate the faith of the believers with acts which are sufficient to shake the very roots of piety. There are beautiful faces as far as the eye can see. All around prevails a world of impiety and immorality. Both nobles and plebeians quench the thirst of their lust here."

Dalrymple later reflects on the modern city: 

"Modern Delhi is thought of either as a city of grey bureaucracy, or as the metropolis of hard-working nouveau riche Punjabis. It is rarely spoken of as a lively city, and never as a promiscuous one. Yet, as I discovered that in December, the bawdiness of Safdar Jung's Delhi does survive, kept alive by one particular group of Delhi-wallahs. You can still find them in the dark gullies of the old city, if you know where to look."

Through Dalrymple, we are  exposed to the 17th Century writings of Niccolau Manucci, son of a Venetian trader who ran away from home at 14 to become a con artist, trickster, and artilleryman in 1660's India. It is partly through his eyes that we learn of Shah Jahan and his in-fighting children Dara, Aurangzeb, Jaharana, and Roshanara.

Of Aurangzeb, he says:

" Although Aurangzeb was held to be bold and valiant, he was capable of great dissimulation and hypocrisy. Pretending to be an ascetic, he slept while in the field on a mat of straw that he had himself woven . . . He ate food that cost little and let it be known that he underwent severe penances and fasting. All the same, under cover of these pretenses he led a secret and jolly life of it. His intercourse was with certain holy men addicted to sorcery, who instructed him how to bring over to his side as many friends as he could with witchcraft and soft speeches. He was so subtle as to deceive even the quickest witted people."

 And Dalrymple tells us of Ibn Battutah, who resided for 8 years in Delhi in the 1330's and 40's with Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluk as a patron. Now, the sultan was a complete bastard (in a pique of anger at the citizens of Delhi, he once gave the entire citizenry 3 days to completely remove themselves to another city 40-days walk away, and when a blind man and a cripple were found still in the city, he had one ejected by catapult, and the other dragged to the new city behind a horse (only his leg arrived). But the sultan liked Battutah (mostly) and at one point decided to send him on a diplomatic mission to China.

Battutah found himself at the head of an entourage of 1000 mounted bodyguards and a long train of camels carrying gifts, such as 100 concubines, 100 Hindu dancing girls, gold candelabras, brocades, swords, and gloves embroidered with pearls. Behind the camels came the most valuable gift of all - a thousand thoroughbred horses from Turkestan.

But only 100 miles into his journey, his train was attacked by Hindu rebels (the country was full of rebels) and Battutah was separated from his group and captured. He managed to escape and re-join his party. At Calicut on the Malabar coast, he loaded everything onto four dhows to sail to China, but lingered on shore for Friday prayers. A sudden storm blew up, grounding and breaking up the boats. The slaves, troops, and horses all drowned. Not daring to return to Delhi, he hightailed it to China on his own.

I'll return to Ibn Battutah in a future post, and maybe we'll also look at another travel writer - Tim Mackintosh Smith - who not only wrote an annotated translation of The Travels of Ibn Battutah, but also Travels With a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah.

As for Dalrymple,  he's an evocative writer and I found this book a pleasure to read. It won two awards, has been adapted into a play, and (I'm quite sure, though it doesn't say so on Wikipedia) was turned into a television series in the UK. Here's the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Djinns

Book Reviews - Two Books by Brian Bates About Anglo-Saxon England

And a game in which to play them!

This post collects two short book reviews about Anglo-Saxon mystical thought by University of Sussex professor of psychology and shamanic studies, Brian Bates, a respected authority in the field. 

More about Brian Bates from Wikipedia 

The Real Middle Earth: Magic and Mystery in the Dark Ages 

by Brian Bates, 2003, 292 pages

This is a survey-level book about the mystical aspect of Anglo-Saxon culture and it is just loaded with interesting little bits of mythical Saxon lore. Here's a look at some of what it covers:

• Saxon cosmology
• The people of the dark ages (the author sees the Celts, Germanic tribes, and Norse as part of a pan-European culture)
• How they lived
• Their perception of forests
• Their reaction to what the Romans left behind
• Dragon and their lairs
• Treasure hoards
• Elf shot
• Herbalism
• Spirits
• Wells and waterways
• Corvids
• Omens
• Shape changers
• Voyaging to the spirit world
• Wyrd, and those who weave it and can read it.
• Giants
• Dwarven craftsmanship
• Magical bonds
• Shamanic initiation (and spiders)
• The journey of the dead.

That's a lot of ground, as you can see, but it's given to us in lively and pleasant prose and is quite accessible. It also appears to be well researched - there's an extensive bibliography at the end. The book takes the approach of trying to define Anglo-Saxon culture from all sides, looking at the writings of Romans (especially Tacitus), Christian monks, and later Scandinavian and Icelandic texts, and of course Anglo-Saxon texts, too. From this, we get a rather broad but impressionistic feel for the zeitgeist of the time. It takes some liberties with history, as many more knowledgeable reviewers than I have pointed out on Amazon and elsewhere - but if what your interested in is the stuff not captured by history - a peek into the mind of a Saxon shaman , there's a lot to chew on. 

If your a gamer looking to play, for example, Mythic Britain: Logres - you'll probably find this book to be a wonderful companion. If you're familiar with the Mythras game system, you'll find yourself nodding your head a lot as the author describes the ways of the Shaman, and you'll find some new things to think about too. I can also see it being useful to Ars Magica players interested in older magic traditions, perhaps for giving your Ex Miscellanea mage or a local hedge wizard a bit of flavour. 

If you're coming to this book because of a love of Tolkien, however, I should provide a few words of caution. The title is clearly a gimmick to tap in on the popularity of the movies, which were being released when this book was published. The author does mention Tolkien and how he was inspired by Saxon lore, but maybe only once every 2 chapters - just enough to make sense of the title. Tolkien is obviously not the thrust of the book, though Tolkien fans would still find it interesting, I think, as long as their expectations are properly set.

I recommend it as a starting point for anyone interested in reading up on the spiritual thinking of past people. Lastly, it strays from time to time into self-indulgence, enough to make me wince, but not enough to mar the overall book. As a companion to running a mythic role-playing game, it's just about perfect.


The Way of Wyrd: Tales of an Anglo-Saxon Sorcerer 

by Brian Bates, 1983, 237 pages

This book was recommended to me by my friend Paul as a follow-up on The Real Middle Earth.

The Way of the Wyrd is a fiction that follows the fortunes of Wat Brand, a scribe in a Christian mission in Saxon-era Mercia, as he is sent into deepest, darkest Sussex to learn the ways of the pagan Saxons who live there. He's told that a guide will meet him, and that guide is Wulf, a Saxon sorcerer, who takes him under his wing and teaches him to open himself to the spirit world.

It's easy to see how this book influenced the later Real Middle Earth, which is much more like a concrete survey of Anglo-Saxon mystical thinking. In this book we encounter many of the same ideas, but here presented in a much more dreamlike story format. It is very much as if the teaching in this earlier book is intended to be from heart to heart, while that in the latter book is from mind to mind. Personally, I respond much more strongly to the latter, and TWoW had me often asking myself "why is this happening, exactly?", but Bates is an eloquent writer and the prose zips along so, despite confounding the rationalist in me, it was a pleasant read.

Recommended for anyone into spiritual customs. Prepare to be baffled if you run mostly on logic, though.

As an aside, this book has inspired several pieces of music, including the thrash metal album Dreamweaver by Sabbat and many much more mellow pieces. There's definitely something to be said for a book that can inspire so much creativity.

Mythic Britain: Logres

Since I mentioned this above as a sourcebook for playing a Saxons campaign, I thought I'd say a few more words about this product.

Mythic Britain: Logres is a supplement by Paul Mitchener for the Mythic Britain setting (itself written by Lawrence Whitaker) for the Mythras game system. It takes the setting of Mythic Britain, rolls it over, and gives it back to us from the viewpoint of the Saxons. Logres, by the way, is the Brythonic name for the "lost lands" that the Saxons now control.

The book contains chapters on Saxon culture, spirits and magic, character creation, Saxon lands and settlements, and key personages acting in the Saxon lands. There're are also 4 scenarios that link together into a short campaign for 4-8 sessions of play (or, if your group is like mine, 12 sessions of play).