#zabaj

Alright, so this took me a while mainly because my edition refers to the Island of Zanj instead of the Island of Zabaj, and that threw me off. It's only one dot that makes it a different word - زنج versus زبج, see. Zabaj seems to be correct though, Zanj is traditionally in Africa, but this is an island in the China Sea.

Anyway! Let's see what Al-Qazwini has to say about Zabaj. Punctuation added for my sanity, this is all one long unpunctuated sentence.

"Ibn al-Faqih says that there are inhabitants similar to men, but their nature is like that of wild beasts and they speak incomprehensibly. And there are trees from which the inhabitants leap from tree to tree. And there is a kind of cat that has wings like the wings of a bat extending from its ears to its tail."

[Pictured: winged cat. At first I thought that was what you were referring to! Perhaps it's a colugo? The wings from the ears to the tail sounds like a description of one.]

"And there are goats like mountain cattle that are red spotted with white in color, their tails are like the tails of antelopes and their flesh is sour. And there are civets which look like cats and civet is obtained from them. And there are musk rats.

And there is a mountain called the Nusban where there are enormous serpents, some of which can swallow a man and a cow and a buffalo, and some of which can swallow an elephant.

And there are white monkeys that look partly like buffaloes and partly like rams, and is another kind that has a white chest and a black back.

[...]

And there is a creature that looks like a man and speaks incomprehensibly, it eats like men do, they can be white or black or green, and they have wings which they use to fly."

[Pictured: the two types of monkey, the giant snake, and the flying man.]