Swamibu
Baby elephant
We encountered this cute baby elephant in Thailand, an animal whose ancestors took part in diplomatic missions!
In 798 AD Charlemagne dispatched an embassy to Baghdad with orders to seek an alliance with the ruler of the Muslim empire,Caliph Harun al-Rashid. Interested in negotiation he decided to send Charlemagne a very special gift—a gift, he said in his note to the Imperial Council, that few in Europe had seen since Hannibal and his Carthaginians marched across the Alps - an elephant.
There are no details on where the Caliph's animal trainer found the elephant or how he got it to Europe. But find it and get it there he did. In the spring of 801 the huge creature lumbered patiently down the streets of Aachen, an old Roman town in western Germany near today's border between Belgium and Holland—a town newly prosperous since Charlemagne, ruling King of the Franks and recently crowned Holy Roman Emperor, had chosen it as his residence a few years earlier.
To Aachen, the arrival of the elephant was an exciting event. Crowds turned out to meet it. Boys, running and slipping over the cobblestone streets, shouted excitedly to their friends to come see. Adults, gathered in taverns or working in shops, turned out to point and stare at this gray beast with the stubby tail and the long trailing nose.
As for the alliance that Charlemagne wanted, it never came off. Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid achieved no more than a vague understanding on trade and communications. Charlemagne, however, did keep the elephant and, later, even took him into battle where he frightened enemy horses. By the time he died in 810, his name—Abul Abbas—had become a household name in France and Germany and even the laconic historian of the Royal Frankish Annals, normally concerned only with kings and wars and eclipses, was sufficiently moved by that event to break into his narrative in 811 and add, "... the elephant which Harun, King of the Saracens sent, suddenly died." So passed one of the more curious episodes in the history of European-Middle Eastern relations
[Extracted from an article by Jon Mandaville, associate professor of history and Middle East studies at Portland State University]
Baby elephant
We encountered this cute baby elephant in Thailand, an animal whose ancestors took part in diplomatic missions!
In 798 AD Charlemagne dispatched an embassy to Baghdad with orders to seek an alliance with the ruler of the Muslim empire,Caliph Harun al-Rashid. Interested in negotiation he decided to send Charlemagne a very special gift—a gift, he said in his note to the Imperial Council, that few in Europe had seen since Hannibal and his Carthaginians marched across the Alps - an elephant.
There are no details on where the Caliph's animal trainer found the elephant or how he got it to Europe. But find it and get it there he did. In the spring of 801 the huge creature lumbered patiently down the streets of Aachen, an old Roman town in western Germany near today's border between Belgium and Holland—a town newly prosperous since Charlemagne, ruling King of the Franks and recently crowned Holy Roman Emperor, had chosen it as his residence a few years earlier.
To Aachen, the arrival of the elephant was an exciting event. Crowds turned out to meet it. Boys, running and slipping over the cobblestone streets, shouted excitedly to their friends to come see. Adults, gathered in taverns or working in shops, turned out to point and stare at this gray beast with the stubby tail and the long trailing nose.
As for the alliance that Charlemagne wanted, it never came off. Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid achieved no more than a vague understanding on trade and communications. Charlemagne, however, did keep the elephant and, later, even took him into battle where he frightened enemy horses. By the time he died in 810, his name—Abul Abbas—had become a household name in France and Germany and even the laconic historian of the Royal Frankish Annals, normally concerned only with kings and wars and eclipses, was sufficiently moved by that event to break into his narrative in 811 and add, "... the elephant which Harun, King of the Saracens sent, suddenly died." So passed one of the more curious episodes in the history of European-Middle Eastern relations
[Extracted from an article by Jon Mandaville, associate professor of history and Middle East studies at Portland State University]