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Ma Huan
Muslim interpreter from Kuaiji who sailed on three of Zheng He's voyages and described the lands they visited in the Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores
On a coastal mountain path, a loaded camel walks toward a traveller in a wide hat with a staff farther along; a bamboo pack frame with two scrolls and a gourd leans on a rock in front, a sailing ship lies on the sea at the right, and constellations and a moon fill the sky.
Also known as Zi Zongdao · Hao Hui Ji Shan Qiao
Ma Huan, courtesy name Zongdao, styled the Woodcutter of Kuaiji, came from Kuaiji, present-day Shaoxing in Zhejiang; a Muslim, he knew Arabic and Persian. He sailed as an interpreter on Zheng He's fourth voyage, which left in 1413, and again on the sixth, of 1421, and the seventh, in the Xuande reign, visiting Champa, Java, Palembang, Siam, Malacca, Ceylon, Calicut and Hormuz, and on the last voyage he went with a detachment as far as Mecca. He recorded the territory, products, customs and religion of each country in the Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores (Yingya shenglan), whose preface is dated 1416 and which he went on revising for years. His accounts of Hormuz, Mecca and the other Muslim lands are the fullest in the voyage literature, and modern reconstructions of Zheng He's routes lean heavily on the book.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; sailed with Zheng He from 1413