Once again, there is more to the tales of Sindbad than mere myth. His tales are undoubtedly based on the real voyages of merchants trading with the East Indies and China in the period of the Abbasid dynasty (see "Who was Caliph Harun al-Rashid?"). The type of craft that sailors such as Sindbad would have used is fully examined in "The Sinbad Voyage" by Tim Severin, who made a reconstruction of an Arab sailing ship of the time and took it on a voyage. Having said this, one should be very wary of any claims that the great mariner came from Sohar in Oman. I have no wish to offend the Omani tourist authority. Sindbad’s name, correctly spelled with the ‘d’, means ‘native of India’, or ‘traveller in Sind’ . This indicates the possibility of an Indian origin to the stories, however it is worth noting that a certain King Sindbad makes a fleeting appearance in ‘The Tale of the Fisherman and the Demon’, one of the core tales of the Nights, indicating that the name was not uncommon. In all the versions of the stories that I am familiar with, Sindbad comes from Baghdad; and so does his father. He takes a river boat from Baghdad down the Tigris to Al Basrah, from where he sets forth into the wide ocean. It is possible that these locations could have been amended when the stories were added to the Nights, but Robert Irwin (who presumably had access to far more reference material than me when writing his work) shatters that theory by actually ascertaining the date of the stories by their location. He tells us that the Sindbad tales were ‘certainly composed in the Abassid period, when Basra served as Baghdad’s port on the Gulf.’ Despite all its claims, to my knowledge the country of Oman does not feature in the Nights at all. According to one of my e-mail correspondents, the Yemenites also claim Sindbad as forefather. Yemen at least has the distinction of featuring in one of the stories of the Nights, or be it just a mere joke that was added to the Bulaq version at a late stage in the Nights called "The Historic Fart".
Sindbad’s stories provide great examples of the usefulness of the Arabian Nights to historians - there is a list of minerals and foodstuffs that Sindbad imported into Baghdad. It is also true that there is more to the tales of wonderful creatures and hideous monsters that the adventurer has to endure on his journey.
Tales two and five tell of a massive bird called a roc, so large that an egg appeared as a tremendous dome to Sindbad.
"Methought a cloud had come over the sun, but it was the season of summer, so I marvelled at this and, lifting my head, looked steadfastly at the sky, when I saw that the cloud was none other than an enormous bird, of gigantic girth and inordinately wide of wing, which as it flew through the air veiled the sun and hid it from the island. At this sight my wonder redoubled and I remembered a story I had heard aforetime of pilgrims and travellers, how in a certain island dwelleth a huge bird, called the "roc," which feedeth its young on elephants, and I was certified that the dome which caught my sight was none other than a roc's egg. As I looked and wondered at the marvellous works of the Almighty, the bird alighted on the dome and brooded over it with its wings covering it and its legs stretched out behind it on the ground, and in this posture it fell asleep. (Glory be to Him who sleepeth not!)"
Not only does the roc feature in another of the tales of the Nights (which, don’t forget, had a completely different ancestry to the tales of Sindbad); but Marco Polo’s associate Rustigiello of Pisa had written about a very similar creature, in particular in the section of his classic travelogue concerning the island of Madagascar:
"The people of the island report that at a certain season of the year, an extraordinary kind of bird, which they call a rukh, makes its appearance from the southern region. In form it is said to resemble the eagle, but it is incomparably greater in size; being so large and strong as to seize an elephant with its talons, and lift it into the air, from whence it lets it fall to the ground, in order that when dead it may prey upon the carcase. Persons who have seen this bird assert that when the wings are spread they measure sixteen paces in extent, from point to point; and that the feathers are eight paces in length, and thick in proportion. Messer Marco Polo, conceiving that these creatures might be griffins, such as are represented in paintings, half birds and half lions, particularly questioned those who reported their having seen them as to this point; but they maintained that their shape was altogether that of birds, or, as it might be said, of the eagle."
Marco Polo had a reputation for exaggeration, and it should be said that in the Middle Ages he was known as 'Il Milione' ("Marco Million") because of his dextrous manipulation of figures. However, he travelled the very same routes of the traders who created and spread the story of Sindbad the Sailor, and must have heard the same stories that the author of Sindbad the Sailor alludes to. Indeed the roc or rukh was part of ancient Persian folklore, and is mentioned in the Jatakas (a collection of Indian folklore dating from the 4th century BC) - but, as they say, truth is stranger than fiction. It has been suggested to me that the roc may have been inspired by the moa, a real bird, native to New Zealand. As the Encyclopaedia Britannica says, "There were about 25 species ranging in size from that of a turkey to larger than that of an ostrich; some stood up to 3 metres (10 feet) high". There was also a bird called the Aepyornis, or "Elephant Bird", which became extinct soon after the first humans set forth on Madagascar. The eggs of this bird are the largest ever found.