To this day nobody knows exactly what transpired in Selamon on that April night, in the year 1621, except that a lamp fell to the floor in ...
To this day nobody knows exactly what transpired in Selamon on that April night, in the year 1621, except that a lamp fell to the floor in the building where Martijn Sonck, a Dutch official, was billeted.
Selamon is a village in the Banda archipelago, a tiny cluster of islands at the far southeastern end of the Indian Ocean. The settlement is located at the northern end of Lonthor, which is also sometimes referred to as Great Banda (Banda Besar) because it is the largest island in the cluster. “Great” is a somewhat extravagant epithet for an island that is only two and a half miles in length and half a mile in width – but then, that isn’t an insignificant size in an archipelago so minute that on most maps it is marked only by a sprinkling of dots.
Yet here is Martijn Sonck, on April 21, 1621, halfway around the world from his homeland, in Selamon’s bale-bale, or meeting hall, which he has requisitioned as a billet for himself and his counsellors. Sonck has also occupied the settlement’s most venerable mosque – “a beautiful institution,” made of white stone, airy and clean inside, with two large urns of water positioned at...
