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Taken from : R.H. Mayor : India in the fifteenth century.
Afanasy Nikitin was a Russian merchant from Tver and one of the first Europeans (after Niccolo de’ Conti) to document his visit to India. He described his trip in a narrative known as The Journey Beyond Three Seas. On his way back from India, Nikitin visited Muscat, the Arabian sultanate of Somalia and Trabzon, and in 1472 arrived at Feodosiya by crossing the Black Sea. On his way to Tver, Nikitin died not far from Smolensk in the autumn of that year.
Note: Athnasius always uses the word Ethiopia to speak about East-Africa in general.We sailed from Dabul (1) three months before the great day of the Mohammedan Lent, and were at sea a whole month, during which I saw nothing. On the following month we descried the mountains of Ethiopia, and then those on board exclaimed : God our Lord, O God, O God, king of Heavens, righteously hast Thou devoted us to destruction.
I remained five days in that country, and by the mercy of God, met with no evil, but distributed among the natives a quantity of brynetz, pepper, and bread, in order that they might not plunder the ship. From there I reached Muscat (2) in 12 days, and there I held the sixth great holiday. (3)
Note: sailing 12 days at a speed of 185 Km a day (as Idris estimates) will give him a starting point of close to present day Obbia is southern Somalia.
(1) Dabul: see my webpage Note of Daibal (710).
(2) Muscat: Oman’s port capital, sits on the Gulf of Oman surrounded by mountains and desert.
(3)This story is very similar to the story about Affan the tailor in Egypt: The one who bought a Zinj boy: Al-Sakhawi (1497). The same story can be found in Abu Hamid Al-Garnati : Tuhfat al-Albab (The gift of the spirits) (1080-1169). And a not so nice variation of it in Buzurg (955). It is the ideology of slavery. Through slavery they get in contact with Islam. Similar stories but not connected to justification of slavery are: Bahktyar Nama (end 14th) and an extreme weird and horrible version is found in Mudjmal al -Tawarikh wa-l-qisas (1126). And Athanasius Nikitin (1475) who was actually blown by the wind to the coast of Somalia.