In the Fama Fraternitatis as well as the Confessio Fraternitatis there is a mysterious Arabic city called Damcar that Frater C.R. travels to. In the Vaughan translation (1652) the names Damascus (sometimes written "Damasco") and Damcar get confused, but this confusion appears to be due to the close proximity and similarity of the names of the two cities, and the reader ought to be able to sort out the intended city. Obviously this confusion is properly designated in the McIntosh translation (2016).
So what is this mysterious City of Damcar? Frater C.R. is reported in the Fama to have learned of this city while he was recovering from an illness in Damascus. He learns of it from some Turkish physicians, whom he has impressed with his own knowledge of medicine. It should be noted that the use of the terms "Turk" and "Arab" were more or less synonymous in the 16th and 17th centuries, though today they have different designations of the peoples who speak dialects of Turkish and Arabic. From reports, Frater C.R. learns that it is a city of wise men who study nature directly — a Paracelsian approach — and he wishes to learn from them. Thus, he pays them a handsome sum of money to get him to Damcar, arriving there at the age of sixteen. When he arrives they already know who he is and his name. He learns Arabic while there, furthers is knowledge in physics and mathematics, copies their Book M. and translates it into Latin. He would remain in Damcar for three years.
In the Confessio, the city is called Damar. This may bring us closer to actual name of the city, at least in pronunciation. While perusing the footnotes of the McIntosh translation of the Fama, no guesses are made as to what this city could be, but in the Confessio (note 3), Damar is said to be in Yemen. Likely this is the modern-day city of Dhamar in Yemen. Dhamar was indeed an important cultural center in the Islamicate world, notably in the 7th and 8th centuries.
The Confessio gives a similar description of the city as given in the Fama, namely as a city where wise men congregate, and the city became an inspiration to Father Christian. In Damar, the king permits the wise men to establish laws in addition to the king's. Father Christian decided this same legislative system should be implemented in Europe (Chapter 5, Reason 14).
If it is true that Damar is indeed Dhamar, Yemen, then where did the name Damcar come from?
Likely it is an older European name for the same city. Two 16th century maps illustrate this. In 1561 Giacomo Gastaldi publishes an illustrated map of the Arabian Peninsula in which the name Damcar is clearly seen in the approximate location of Dhamar. In 1570 Abraham Ortelius publishes his map of the Arabian Peninsula, more or less copying Gastaldi, in which he also shows the name Damcar in the approximate location of Dhamar. Thus, we have two maps that were less than fifty years old when the Fama was published. Gastaldi's map was likely not circulated widely in Germany, but Ortelius's map certainly was — Gastaldi being Italian and Ortelius being Brabantian (Belgian). Original prints of Ortelius's map can still be purchased today by collectors.
Two possibilities exist for why Dhamar was selected as the city of wisdom in the Fama and Confessio. First possibility is the writers of the manifestos knew of its history as an Islamicate cultural center and selected it for its obscurity amongst the 17th century German populace. The second possibility, and the theory I lean toward, is the Rosicrucian authors had a copy of Ortelius's map and threw a dart at it, landing on Damcar.
Besold: "I got Damcar."
Hess: "It sounds kind of close to Damascus, don't you think?"
Andraea: "Eh, who cares. Use it."
Perhaps this is the reason for the name change in the manifestos. In 1614 the Fama calls it Damcar and a year later in the Confessio it becomes Damar. Certainly the authors were looking at map, not a history book. Perhaps over the succeeding year they found the map they used to throw a dart at was inaccurate, and thus used the more contemporary name for the City of Dhamar.
The history of Dhamar is a bit obscure. Certainly we know a lot of scientific developments were made there, as may be gathered by the number of Arab scientists reportedly born there, as well its massive dam, a fine work of ancient engineering. However, the fact that I have trouble finding much on the cultural and scientific history of Dhamar with Google at my fingertips, I must wonder what a few Germans in their twenties could find on the city in their library. I suspect Dhamar was selected at random, probably just to illustrate that Frater C.R. traveled very far to gain wisdom.
No comments:
Post a Comment