The explanation may possibly be, that cinnamon, like coffee, was originally a native of the east angle of Africa; and that the same Arabian adventurers who carried coffee to Yemen, where it flourishes to the present day, may have been equally instrumental in introducing cinnamon into India and Ceylon.  In India its cultivation, probably from natural causes, proved unsuccessful; but in Ceylon the plant enjoyed that rare combination of soil, temperature, and climate, which ultimately gave to its qualities the highest possible development.]

The first authentic notice which we have of Singhalese cinnamon occurs in the voyages of Ibn Batuta the Moor, who, impelled by religious enthusiasm, set out from his native city Tangiers, in the year 1324, and devoted twenty-eight years to a pilgrimage, the record of which has entitled him to rank amongst the most remarkable travellers of any age or country.

On his way to India, he visited, in Shiraz, the tomb of the Imaum Abu Abd Allah, “who made known the way from India to the mountain of Serendib.”  As this saint died in the year of the Hejira 331, his story serves to fix the origin of the Mahometan pilgrimages to Adam’s Peak, in the early part of the tenth century.  When steering for the coast of India, from the Maldives, Ibn Batuta was carried by the south-west monsoon towards the northern portion of Ceylon, which was then (A.D. 1347) in the hands of the Malabars, the Singhalese sovereign having removed his capital southward to Gampola.  The Hindu chief of Jaffna was at this time in possession of a fleet in “which he occasionally transported his troops against the Mahometans on other parts of the coast;” where the Singhalese chroniclers relate that the Tamils at this time had erected forts at Colombo, Negombo, and Chilaw.

Ibn Batuta was permitted to land at Battala (Putlam) and found the shore covered with “cinnamon wood,” which “the merchants of Malabar transport without any other price than a few articles of clothing which are given as presents to the king.  This may be attributed to the circumstance that it is brought down by the mountain torrents, and left in great heaps upon the shore.”

This passage is interesting, though not devoid of obscurity, for cinnamon is not known to grow farther north than Chilaw, nor is there any river in the district of Putlam which could bear the designation of a “mountain torrent.”  Along the coast further south the cinnamon district commences, and the current of the sea may have possibly carried with it the uprooted laurels described in the narrative.  The whole passage, however, demonstrates that at that time, at least, Ceylon had no organised trade in the spice.