The Abode of Water: Shipwreck Evidence and the Maritime Circulation of Medicine Between Iran and China in the 9th Through 14th Centuries by Amanda Respess A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology and History) in the University of Michigan 2020 Doctoral Committee: Professor Kathryn Babayan, Chair Professor Miranda Brown Assistant Professor Jatin Dua Professor Carla Sinopoli, University of New Mexico Amanda Respess [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0003-4616-701X © Amanda Respess 2020 DEDICATION “...for by reason we have comprehended the manufacture and use of ships, so that we have reached unto distant lands divided from us by the seas; by it we have achieved medicine with its many uses to the body.” - al-Rāzī, The Spiritual Physick of Rhazes, Of the Excellence and Praise of Reason “Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate. According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment. For without exception the cultural treasures he surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries.” -Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History For my family. For Khwāja ʻAlāʼ al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī, whose gravestone in China gave the title to this work. And for all those who set out on journeys in hope or despair, may they find what they seek. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is impossible to imagine a more creative, kind, supportive, and brilliant scholar and mentor than Kathryn Babayan. It is my unbelievable good fortune to have benefited from her approach to students, to scholarship, and to life. A true human being. Thank you for believing in me and for the many conversations and insights that made this dissertation possible. Your support has meant the world to me, and I cannot say enough here. The emotion I feel at concluding this chapter as your student is profound. Setting foot in your classroom was a delight, and your approach to teaching is something I will always emulate. This dissertation would not have been possible without the extraordinary insight, expertise, mentorship, and friendship of Lisa Niziolek. You are the only person I know who loves shipwrecks as much as I do, and your passion for the Java Sea Shipwreck changed my life. Thank you. I think I owe you an email. I knew I was at home at Michigan when I walked into Carla Sinopoli’s office. Thank you for caring about and thinking about museums and ceramics in innovative ways and inspiring me to center material culture. Your support has enabled me to theorize my experiences of collections in essential ways, and your continued participation and feedback from New Mexico has been extraordinary. I owe great thanks to Jatin Dua for introducing me to thinkers whose engagement with the Indian Ocean World has framed my thinking about this project. Thank you for your kindness, insightful feedback and suggestions on my writing, your stimulating questions that have pointed my research in new directions, and your support. Miranda Brown’s guidance, kindness, and cool head throughout my time at Michigan have been an enormous source of support and learning. Thank you for your mentorship and masterful suggestions for who and what I should be thinking about next. The kindness and clarity you have shown me and your expert advice have mattered a great deal. Thank you. I am indebted to Frank Scott for his instruction at the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, and his guidance when I was only just starting to imagine this path. I have benefited from the insights and generosity of colleagues and scholars at the University of Michigan, The Field Museum, The Asian Civilizations Museum, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at my other research sites in the UK, China and Singapore during every stage of the development of this dissertation. Thanks, in particular, to Gary Feinman, Jamie Kelly, Michael Flecker, Stephen Murphy, Massumeh Farhad, Sheila Canby, Peggy McCracken, Helmut Puff, Isabelle Engel, and David Choberka. iii This research would not have been possible without the support of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. DGE 1256260, the Boone Scholars Internship Program in East Asian Studies at the Field Museum, the University of Michigan’s Institute for Humanities, Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, Graduate Program in Museum Studies, Center for the Education of Women, Joint Program in Anthropology and History, and the Rackham Graduate School. Thank you to my family for absolutely everything. I love you and you are on and in every page of this dissertation. Thank you, Aunt Jenny, for teaching me how to be a historian. Thank you Mom and Dad, for teaching me why. “There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with… a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply...” Thank you, Beth, for being my first anthropology teacher. Thank you to Sandra and Michele and Vinod and Ranjana and Terah, and to the many friends who accompanied me on this adventure. To Reza: thank you for going through this and every journey with me. You are my heart and my home. To everything that is behind us and to everything that’s ahead. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii LIST OF FIGURES vii LIST OF APPENDICES ix ABSTRACT x PREFACE: Ghost Ships xii CHAPTER I. The Intellectual (After)lives of Things: Shipwreck Artifacts and Modern Museums 1 II. The Phoenix’s Body: Community, Collecting, and Resilience in Coastal China 44 III. At Sea: Risk, Illumination, and Initiation on the Waters 82 IV. Shipwreck Medicine: Analysis of Recovered Drugs and Medical Cargoes 123 V. What Circulates: Knowledge and Blame in Fourteenth-Century China and Iran 148 Conclusion 198 v Appendix I 203 Appendix II 209 Bibliography 231 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: 203 Changsha bowl from the Belitung Wreck, courtesy of the Asian Civilizations Museum. Figure 2: 203 Changsha bowl from the Belitung Wreck, courtesy of the Asian Civilizations Museum. Figure 3: 203 Changsha bowl from the Belitung Wreck, courtesy of the Asian Civilizations Museum. Figure 4: 204 Changsha bowl from the Belitung Wreck, courtesy of the Asian Civilizations Museum. Figure 5: 204 Changsha bowl from the Belitung Wreck, courtesy of the Asian Civilizations Museum. Figure 6: 203 Water jar excavated from Yangzhou grave, shows the back and front sides. Eighth or ninth century. From Changsha yao, Beijing: Zijincheng Chubanshe, 1996, Plate 87. Figure 7: 204 Broken tenth- or eleventh- century bowl with design. From Changsha yao, Beijing: Zijincheng Chubanshe, 1996, Plate 170. Figure 8: 205 Changsha bowl depicting scene of shipwreck, from Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds. Regina Krahl, John Guy, J. Keith Wilson, and Julian Raby, eds. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2010), 22. Figure 9: 205 Storage jars from the Belitung shipwreck, courtesy of the Asian Civilizations Museum. Anatomical image from the Tansūqnāma. Figure 10: Ilkhanid albarello shards, courtesy University of Michigan Museum of Art. 206 vii Figure 11: Anatomical image from the Tansūqnāma. 206 Figure 12: Anatomical image from the Tansūqnāma. 207 Figure 13: Taiji diagram from the Tansūqnāma. 207 Figure 14: Ḥū tū shú diagram from the Tansūqnāma. 208 viii LIST OF APPENDICES APPENDIX I: Figures 203 APPENDIX II: Selected Images and Textual Translation of the Tansūqnāma 209 ix ABSTRACT This dissertation traces the role of Persian travelers and physicians in the maritime exchange of medical goods and knowledge between Iran and China between the ninth through the fourteenth centuries, and the afterlife of that exchange in modern museums. The Maritime Silk Road was a cosmopolitan network of premodern trade arteries linking the Far East and Southeast Asia to the Middle East by sea. The long-standing cultural and economic exchange across these thoroughfares dramatically expanded the pharmaceutical ingredients and medicinal recipes available to physicians practicing across the littorals of the Indian Ocean and South China Sea and facilitated the intellectual engagement of scholars with medical theories from afar. Drawing from an archive of shipwreck artifacts that includes medical goods, herbs, trade wares, and the personal effects of seafarers interpreted alongside written accounts of sea travel, medical and philosophical texts, tomb inscriptions, and architecture in port cities, this dissertation explores how the maritime journey of Persian travelers to China influenced the epistemology and practice of Persian medicine. The first chapter addresses the current state of Southeast Asian shipwreck archaeology and traces the trajectories of medical, scientific, and related shipwreck and navigational artifacts within Western museum collections. Chapter two introduces the historical context in which Persian merchants moved in Middle Period China and initiates a discussion of hybridity and resilience. The burning and reconstruction of the Hangzhou Phoenix mosque provides the narrative frame in x which repeated outbreaks of violence in Tang and Song port cities are discussed as an analog to theories of the body and disease. Migration, hybridization, and medical collecting are examined as social and medical practices of resilience. The chapter uses archaeological evidence from port cities and the Belitung shipwreck with a narrative account of the massacre of foreign merchants in Guangzhou to situate the early maritime migration of Persian merchants to China within the changing tides of the Tang and Song periods.