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Ibn Battuta
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Ibn Battuta (1304 – 1368 or 1369) was a Muslim Berber, scholar and traveller who is known for the account of his travels and excursions called the Rihla. His journeys lasted for a period of nearly thirty years and covered almost the entirety of the known Islamic world and beyond, extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in the West, to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China in the East, a distance readily surpassing that of his predecessors and his near-contemporary Marco Polo.
that is known about Ibn Battuta's life comes from the autobiographical information included in the account of his travels.
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Ibn Battuta (1304 – 1368 or 1369) was a Muslim Berber, scholar and traveller who is known for the account of his travels and excursions called the Rihla. His journeys lasted for a period of nearly thirty years and covered almost the entirety of the known Islamic world and beyond, extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in the West, to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China in the East, a distance readily surpassing that of his predecessors and his near-contemporary Marco Polo.
Early life and his first Hajj
All that is known about Ibn Battuta's life comes from the autobiographical information included in the account of his travels. Ibn Battuta was born into a family of Muslim legal scholars in Tangier, Morocco, on February 25, 1304 during the time of the Merinid dynasty. As a young man growing up in Tangier he would have studied the Sunni Maliki "school" of Muslim law which was dominant in North Africa at the time. In June 1325, when he was twenty one years old, Ibn Battuta set off on a hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca. The journey to Mecca would take him 16 months, but he would not see Morocco again until November 1349, 24 years later.
His journey to Mecca was by land, and followed the North African coast crossing the rival Abd al-Wadid and Hafsid sultanates. His route passed through Tlemcen, Bijaya and then onto Tunis where he stayed for a couple of months. As there was always a risk of being attacked, for safety he usually chose to travel as part of a caravan. In Sfax he got married for the first of several occasions on his journeys but Ibn Battuta tells us nothing about his wife and she is not mentioned again.
In the early spring of 1326 he arrived in the port of Alexandria, then part of the Bahri Mamluk empire. Ibn Battuta spent several weeks visiting the sites and then headed inland to Cairo, a large important city and capital of the Mamluk kingdom, where he stayed for about a month. Within Mamluk territory, travelling was relatively safe and he embarked on the first of his detours. Three commonly used routes existed to Mecca, and Ibn Battuta chose the least-travelled: a journey up the Nile, then east by land to the Red Sea port of Aydhab. However, upon approaching that city he was forced to turn back due to a local rebellion.
Returning to Cairo, he took a second side trip, to Damascus (then also controlled by the Mamluks), having encountered a holy man during his first trip who prophesied that Ibn Battuta would only reach Mecca after a journey through Syria. An additional advantage to the side journey was that other holy places were along the route—Hebron, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem, for example—and the Mamluk authorities put special effort into keeping the journey safe for pilgrims.
After spending Ramadan in Damascus, Ibn Battuta joined up with a caravan traveling the 800 miles from Damascus to Medina, burial place of Muhammad. After four days, he then journeyed on to Mecca. There he completed the usual rituals of a Muslim pilgrim, and having graduated to the status of al-Hajji as a result, now faced his return home. Upon reflection, he decided to continue journeying instead. His next destination was the Il-Khanate in modern-day Iraq and Iran.
To Iran and the Silk Road
Once again joining up with a caravan he crossed the border into Mesopotamia and visited al-Najaf, the burial place of the fourth Caliph Ali. From there he journeyed to Basra, then Isfahan, which was only a few decades away from being nearly destroyed by Timur. Next were Shiraz and Baghdad, the latter of which was in poor condition after being heavily damaged by Hulagu Khan.
There he met Abu Sa'id, the last ruler of the unified Il-Khanate. Ibn Battuta travelled with the royal caravan for a while, then turned north to Tabriz on the Silk Road. The first major city in the region to open its gates to the Mongols, it had become an important trading centre after most of its nearby rivals were razed.
Second Hajj and East Africa
After this trip, Ibn Battuta stopped in Mecca before embarking on a second great trek, this time down the Red Sea and the Eastern African coast. His first major stop was Aden, where his intention was to make his fortune as a trader of the goods that flowed into the Arabian Peninsula from around the Indian Ocean. Before doing so, however, he determined to have one last adventure and signed on for a trip down the coast of Africa.
Spending about a week in each of his destinations, he visited Mogadishu, Mombassa, Zanzibar, and Kilwa, among others. With the change of the monsoon, he and the ship he was aboard then returned to Arabia. Having completed his final adventure before settling down, he then immediately decided to go visit Oman and the Straits of Hormuz. This done, he journeyed to Mecca again.
Byzantine Empire, Golden Horde, Anatolia, Central Asia and India
Spending another year there, he then resolved to seek employment with the Muslim Sultan of Delhi. Needing a guide and translator if he was to travel there, he went to Anatolia, then under the control of the Seljuqs, to join up with one of the caravans that went from there to India. A sea voyage from Damascus on a Genoese ship landed him in Alanya on the southern coast of modern-day Turkey. From there he traveled by land to Konya and then Sinope on the Black Sea coast.
Crossing the Black Sea, Ibn Battuta landed in Caffa (now Theodosia), in the Crimea, and entered the lands of the Golden Horde. There he bought a wagon and fortuitously joined the caravan of Ozbeg, the Golden Horde's Khan, on a journey as far as Astrakhan on the Volga River.
Upon reaching Astrakhan, the Khan allowed one of his pregnant wives Princess Bayalun to go give birth back in her home city—Constantinople. It is perhaps of no surprise to the reader that Ibn Battuta talked his way into this expedition, his first beyond the boundaries of the Islamic world.
Arriving there towards the end of 1332, he met the emperor Andronicus III Palaeologus and saw the outside of Hagia Sophia. After a month in the city, he retraced his route to Astrakhan, then carried on past the Caspian and Aral Seas to Bokhara and Samarkand. From there, he journeyed south to Afghanistan, the mountain passes of which he used to cross into India.
The Sultanate of Delhi was a new addition to Dar al-Islam, and Sultan Muhammed Tughlaq had resolved to import as many Muslim scholars and other functionaries as possible to consolidate his rule. On the strength of his years of studies while in Mecca, Ibn Battuta was employed as a qadi ("judge") by the sultan.
Tughlaq was erratic even by the standards of the time, and Ibn Battuta veered between living the high life of a trusted subordinate, and being under suspicion for a variety of treasons against the government. Eventually he resolved to leave on the pretext of taking another hajj, but the Sultan offered the alternative of being ambassador to China. Given the opportunity to both get away from the Sultan and visit new lands, Ibn Battuta took it.
Southeast Asia and China
In route to the coast, he and his party were attacked by Hindus, and, separated from the others, he was robbed and nearly lost his life. Nevertheless, he managed to catch up with his group within two days and continued the journey to Cambay. From there, they sailed to Calicut (two centuries later, Vasco da Gama also landed at the same place). While Ibn Battuta visited a mosque on shore, however, a storm blew up, and two of the ships of his expedition were sunk. The third then sailed away without him and ended up seized by a local king of Samudera Pasai in today Aceh of Sumatra island a few months later. In his travel log, he mentioned about the ruler of Samudera, Malik ul Salih, who was a Muslim and performed his religious duties in his utmost zeal. The madh'hab was Imam Shafi'i, and it reminded him of similar customs he had seen in India.
Fearful of returning to Delhi as a failure, he stayed for a time in the south of India under the protection of Jamal al-Din. Jamaluddin was ruler of a small but powerful Nawayath sultanate on the banks of the river Sharavathi on the Arabian Sea coast. This place is presently known as Hosapattana and is located in the Honnavar taluka of Uttara Kannada district. When the sultanate was overthrown, it became necessary for Ibn Battuta to leave India altogether. He resolved to carry on to China, with a detour near the beginning of the journey to the Maldives.
He spent nine months in the Maldive Islands, much longer than he had intended. As a qadi, his skills were highly desirable in these formerly Buddhist islands that had been recently converted to Islam, and he was half-bribed, half-kidnapped into staying. Appointed chief judge and marrying into the royal family, he became embroiled in local politics and ended up leaving after wearing out his welcome by imposing strict judgments in the laissez-faire island kingdom. In the Rihla he mentions his dismay at the local women going about with no clothing above the waist, and remarking his criticism of this practice, but being ignored by the locals. From there, he carried on to Ceylon for a visit to Sri Pada (Adam's Peak).
Setting sail from Ceylon, his ship nearly sank in a storm, then the ship that rescued him was attacked by pirates. Stranded on shore, Ibn Battuta once again worked his way back to Calicut, from where he then sailed to the Maldives again before getting on board a Chinese junk and trying once again to get to Yuan Dynasty China.
This time he succeeded, reaching in quick succession Chittagong, Sumatra, Vietnam, The Philippines and then finally Quanzhou in Fujian Province, China. From there, he went north to Hangzhou, not far from modern-day Shanghai. He also traveled even further north, through the Grand Canal to Beijing, although there has been some doubt about whether this actually occurred.
Return home and the Black Death
Returning to Quanzhou, Ibn Battuta decided to return home—though exactly where "home" was a bit of a problem. Returning to Calicut once again, he pondered throwing himself on the mercy of Muhammed Tughlaq but thought better of it and decided to carry on to Mecca once again. Returning via Hormuz and the Il-Khanate, he saw that state dissolved into civil war, Abu Sa'id having died since his previous trip there.
Returning to Damascus with the intention of retracing the route of his first hajj, he learned that his father had died. Death was the theme of the next year or so, for the Black Death had begun, and Ibn Battuta was on hand as it spread through Syria, Palestine, and Arabia. After reaching Mecca, he decided to return to Morocco, nearly a quarter century after leaving it. During the trip he made one last detour to Sardinia, then returned to Tangier to discover that his mother had also died, a few months before.
Andalus and North Africa
Having settled in Tangier for all of a few days, Ibn Battuta then set out for a trip to al-Andalus—Muslim Iberia. Alfonso XI of Castile was threatening the conquest of Gibraltar, and Ibn Battuta joined up with a group of Muslims leaving Tangier with the intention of defending the port. By the time he arrived, the Black Death had killed Alfonso, and the threat had receded, so Ibn Battuta decided to visit for pleasure instead. He travelled through Valencia and ended up in Granada.
Leaving al-Andalus, he decided to travel through one of the few parts of the Muslim world that he had never explored: Morocco. On his return home, he stopped for a while in Marrakesh, which was nearly a ghost town after the recent plague and the transfer of the capital to Fez.
Once more he returned to Tangier, and once more he moved on. Two years before his own first visit to Cairo, the Malian king Mansa Musa had passed through the same city on his own hajj and had caused a sensation with his extravagant riches—West Africa contained vast quantities of gold, previously unknown to the rest of the world. While Ibn Battuta never mentions this specifically, hearing of this during his own trip must have planted a seed in his mind, for he decided to set out and visit the Muslim kingdom on the far side of the Sahara Desert.
The Sahara Desert to Mali and Timbuktu
In the fall of 1351, Ibn Battuta set out from Fez, reaching the last Moroccan town (Sijilmasa) a bit more than a week later. There he bought some camels and stayed for four months. He set out with a caravan in February 1352 and after 25 days, they arrived at the settlement Taghaza. Taghaza was actually a dry salt lake bed, and its buildings were constructed from slabs of salt by slaves of the Massufa tribe, who cut the salt in thick slabs for transport by camel. Taghaza was a profitable commercial center and awash with Malian gold, though Ibn Battuta did not have a favorable impression of the place - the water was brackish and and the place was plagued with flies.
A long and difficult journey lay ahead, requiring special advance guides or takshif with local experience to arrange a passage. When the takshif became lost, the entire caravan usually disappeared without a trace. Traversing the open wastes of the Sahara Desert was therefore terrifying to many travelers, and Ibn Battuta noted the difficulty of navigating without landmarks, writing that there was "no visible road or track in these parts, nothing but sand blown here and there by the wind." After another 900 harrowing km through the worst part of the desert, Ibn Battuta finally arrived at the oasis town of Iwalatan (Walata) which had recently become part of the Mali Empire.
From there, he traveled southwest along a river he believed to be the Nile (it was actually the Niger River) until he reached the capital of the Mali Empire. There he met Mansa Suleyman, king since 1341. Dubious about the miserly hospitality of the king, he nevertheless stayed for eight months. Ibn Battuta disapproved that female slaves, servants and even the daughters of the sultan went about stark naked. He left the capital in February and journeyed overland by camel to Timbuktu. Though in the next two centuries it would become the most important city in the region, at the time it was small and unimpressive, and Ibn Battuta soon moved on by boat to Gao where he spent a month. While at the oasis of Takedda on his journey back across the desert, he received a message from the Sultan of Morocco commanding him to return home. He set off for Sijilmasa in September 1353 accompanying a large caravan transporting 600 black female slaves and arrived back in Morocco early in 1354.
The Rihla
After returning from his travels in 1354 and at the instigation of the Sultan of Morocco, Abu Inan Faris, Ibn Battuta dictated an account of his journeys to a scholar named Ibn Juzayy, whom he had previously met while in Granada. This account, recorded by Ibn Juzayy and interspersed with the latter's own comments, is the only source of information on his adventures. The title of the manuscript ???? ?????? ?? ????? ??????? ?????? ??????? may be translated as A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling but is often simply referred to as the Rihla ??????, or "The Journey".
There is no indication that Ibn Battuta made any notes during his 29 years of traveling so when he came to dictate an account of his adventures he had to rely on his memory and to make use of manuscripts produced by earlier travelers. When describing Damascus, Mecca, Medina and some other places in the Middle East, Ibn Juzayy clearly copied passages from the twelfth century account by Ibn Jubayr. Similarly, most of Ibn Juzayy’s descriptions of places in Palestine were copied from an account by the thirteenth century traveler Muhammad al-Abdari.
Modern commentators do not believe that Ibn Battutta visited all the places that he described and argue that in order to provide a comprehensive description of places in the Moslem world Ibn Battutta relied on hearsay evidence while Ibn Juzayy made use of accounts by earlier travelers. For example, it is considered very unlikely that Ibn Battuta made a trip up the Volga river from New Saray to visit Bolghar and there are serious doubts about a number of other journeys such as his trip to Sana'a in Yemen, his journey from Balkh to Bistam in Khorasan and his trip around Anatolia. Some commentators have also questioned whether he really visited China. Nevertheless, whilst apparently fictional in places, the Rihla provides an important account of many areas of the world in the 14th century.
Ibn Batuta often experienced culture shock in regions he visited where local customs did not fit his straight-laced background. Among Turks and Mongols recently converted to Islam, he was astonished at the freedom that women had, and he felt that dress customs in the Maldives, and some sub-Saharan regions in Africa, were too revealing. He tended to be somewhat irritating to locals, and eventually to be sent on his way after a time from such regions, with gifts that seemed applicable to his social status.
After the completion of the Rihla in 1355, little is known about Ibn Battuta's life. He may have been appointed a qadi in Morocco. Ibn Battuta died in Morocco in 1368 or 1369.
For centuries his book was obscure, even within the Muslim world, but in the early 1800s extracts were published in German and English based on manuscripts discovered in the Middle East containing abridged versions of Ibn Juzayy’s Arabic text. When French forces occupied Algeria in the 1830’s they discovered five manuscripts in Constantine including two that contained more complete versions of the text. These manuscripts were brought back to the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris and studied by the French scholars, Charles Defrémery and Beniamino Sanguinetti. Beginning in 1853, they published a series of four volumes containing the Arabic text, extensive notes and a translation into French. Defrémery and Sanguinetti’s printed text has now been translated into many other languages. Ibn Battuta has grown in fame and is now a well-known figure.
Places visited by Ibn Battuta
Ibn Battuta travelled almost 75,000 miles in his lifetime. Here is a list of places he visited.
Morocco
Algeria
Tunisia
Egypt
Syria
Arabian Peninsula
Turkey and Eastern Europe
Libya
Central Asia
India
Bangladesh
- Sonargaon
- Sylhet - Ibn Battuta met Muslim saint Hazrat Shah Jalal Yamani, commonly known as Shah Jalal in this place.
Other places in Asia
China
- Quanzhou - as he called in his book the city of donkeys
- Hangzhou -- Ibn Battuta referred to this city in his book as "Madinat Alkhansa" ????? ???????. He also mentioned that it was the largest city in the world at that time; it took him three days to walk across the city, which is huge even by today's standards. Ibn Battuta was the first Agorhosa in the muslim world.
- Beijing - Ibn Batuta mentioned in his journey to Beijing how neat the city was.
Somalia
East Africa
Mali
During most of his journey in the Mali Empire, Ibn Battuta traveled with a retinue that included slaves, most of whom carried goods for trade but would also be traded as slaves. On the return from Takedda to Morocco, his caravan transported 600 female slaves, suggesting that slavery was a substantial part of the commercial activity of the empire.
See also
Further reading
- Gordon, Stewart. When Asia was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks who created the "Riches of the East", Da Capo Press, Perseus Books, 2008. ISBN 0-306-81556-7.
External links
- — Saudi Aramco World article by by Tim Mackintosh-Smith (March/April 2006).
- — Saudi Aramco World article by Douglas Bullis (July/August 2000).
- — excerpts from H.A.R. Gibb's 1929 translation.
- — link to a 2004 reissue of Gibb's 1929 translation.
- — educational site of Harcourt School Publishers.
- — excerpts from the book by Ross Dunn on the San Francisco Unified School District site.
- — A movie on Ibn Battuta.
- The Defrémery and Sanguinetti (1853-1858) French/Arabic edition is available from Google books. , , , .
- French text from Defrémery and Sanguinetti (1853-1858) with an introduction and footnotes by Stéphane Yérasimos published in 1982:, ,.
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