Then we journeyed to the Bamboo Pool, from which Abu ‘Abdallah b. Khafif took the two rubies he gave to the Sultan of this island, as we have related in the first journey.(1) We continued our journey to a place called ‘The Old Woman’s Hut’, which is the end of the inhabited part, and went on to the cave of Baba Tahir, who was a devotee, and then to the cave of al-Sabik. This al-Sabik was a Sultan of the infidels, who became an anchorite in that place.(2)
(178) Account of the flying leeches. In this place we saw the flying leech, which they call zulu.(3) It is found in trees and in the vegetation near water. When a man approaches, it jumps out at him, and wheresoever it alights on his body the blood flows. The inhabitants keep a lemon in readiness for it; they squeeze this over it and it falls off them; then they scrape the place on which it alighted with a wooden knife which they have for the [853] purpose. It is related that as a certain traveller was passing by this place the leeches fastened on him. He took no notice and did not squeeze lemons on them but he lost so much blood that he died. His name was Baba Khuzi, and there is a cave there which is called by his name. We continued our journey to the seven caves, then to the pass of Iskandar,(4) the grotto of Al-Isfahani (179) and a spring and an uninhabited castle, below which is a hollow called the Hollow of Gah-i-‘Arifan [Place of Mystics]. At the same place is the cave of the bitter orange and the cave of the Sultan and close by is the darwaza of the mountain, that is the place of access to it.(5)
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)1) See II, p. 315.

(2) Identified in William Skeen, Adam’s Peak, Colombo, 1870, p. 176; relying on Samuel Lee’s translation Skeen calls the king Sibak.

(3) A Persian word. Mzik (p. 361, n. 14) identifies as Haemobdella ceylanica, one of the smallest and most common leeches, which can become dangerous. Robert Knox (An Historical Relation of the island Ceylon, 1681, ch. vi) writes: ‘Some therefore will tie a piece of Lemon and Salt in a rag and fasten it unto a stick, and ever and anon strike it upon their Legs to make the Leeches drop off: others will scrape them off with a reed cut flat and sharp in the fashion of a knife’.

(4) Identified by Skeen, p. 227.
(5)A Persian word.