Stop 12 - Gravestone
This gravestone was erected to remember a man called Abu Hassan. Abu Hassan was buried in Aden, an important port at the mouth of the Red Sea on the way to Egypt and Mecca. But the gravestone wasn't made in Aden, it was made in India. Carved from fine white marble, this gravestone was made at another port called Kambai in northwestern India. Gravestones were ordered to be made in Kambai by Muslim people living all around the Indian Ocean, from Tanzania in Africa to Aceh in Indonesia. The changing monsoon winds and the long sea journeys would have meant that the gravestones might take many months, perhaps years, to arrive after they'd first been ordered.
