Battuta, Ibn

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Hajji Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta (Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد ابن بطوطة‎), or simply Ibn Battuta (February 25, 1304–1368 or 1369), was a Moroccan Berber Islamic 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. With this extensive account of his journey, Ibn Battuta is often considered one of the greatest travellers ever.^[1]

[edit] Early life and his first hajj

A 13th century book illustration produced in Baghdad by al-Wasiti showing a group of pilgrims on a 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 Berber family of Islamic legal scholars in Tangier, Morocco, on February 25, 1304 during the reign of the Marinid dynasty.^[2] As a young man he would have studied the Sunni Maliki madhhab of Muslim law, which was dominant in North Africa at the time.^[3] In June 1325, when he was twenty one years old, Ibn Battuta set off from his hometown on a hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, a journey that would take 16 months, but he would not see Morocco again for 24 years.

His journey to Mecca was by land, and followed the North African coast crossing the sultanates of Abd al-Wadid and Hafsid. His route passed through Tlemcen, Béjaïa and then to Tunis where he stayed for two months.^[4] He usually chose to join a caravan to reduce the risk of being attacked by wandering Arab bedouin. In the town of Sfax, he got married for the first of several occasions on his journeys.^[5]

In the early spring of 1326, after a journey of over 3,500 km (2,200 mi), Ibn Battuta arrived at the port of Alexandria, then part of the Bahri Mamluk empire.^[6] He 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.^[7] Within Mamluk territory, travelling was relatively safe and he embarked on the first of his many detours. Three commonly used routes existed to Mecca, and Ibn Battuta chose the least-travelled: a journey up the Nile valley, then east to the Red Sea port of Aydhab.^[8] However, upon approaching the town he was forced to turn back due to a local rebellion.^[9]

Returning to Cairo, Ibn Battuta took a second side trip to Damascus (then controlled by the Mamluks), having encountered a holy man , Shaykh Abul Hasan al Shadili, during his first trip who prophesied that he would only reach Mecca after a journey through Syria. An additional advantage to the side journey was that other holy places lay along the route—Hebron, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem—and the Mamluk authorities made great efforts to keep the routes safe for pilgrims.

After spending the Muslim month of Ramadan in Damascus, he joined up with a caravan travelling the 1,500 km (930 mi) from Damascus to Medina, burial place of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. After 4 days in the town, he journeyed on to Mecca. There he completed the usual rituals of a Muslim pilgrim, and having graduated to the status of al-Hajji, faced his return home but instead decided to continue journeying. His next destination was the Ilkhanate situated in modern-day Iraq and Iran.

[edit] Iraq and Persia

An interactive display about Ibn Battuta in Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai, United Arab Emirates

On 17 November 1326, after a month in Mecca, Ibn Battuta joined a large caravan of pilgrims returning across the Arabian Peninsula to Iraq.^[10] The caravan first went north to Medina and then, travelling at night, headed northeastwards across the Nejd plateau to Najaf, a journey lasting approximately 44 days. In Najaf he visited the mausoleum of Ali (Ali ibn Abi Talib), the first Imam and fourth Rashidun and son-in-law of Muhammad, a site venerated particularly by the Shi’a community.

At this point, instead of continuing on to Baghdad with the caravan, Ibn Battuta started a 6 month detour that took him into Persia. From Najaf he journeyed to Wasit and then south following the Tigris to Basra. His next destination was the town of Esfahān across the Zagros Mountains in Persia. From there he headed south to Shiraz, a large flourishing city which had been spared the destruction wrought by the Mongol invasion on many more northerly towns. Finally, he headed back across the mountains to Baghdad arriving there in June 1327.^[11] Parts of the city were in ruins as it had been heavily damaged by the army of Hulagu Khan.

In Baghdad he found that Abu Sa'id, the last Mongol ruler of the unified Ilkhanid state was leaving the city and heading north with a large retinue.^[12] Ibn Battuta travelled with the royal caravan for a while, then turned north to Tabriz on the Silk Road. It had been the first major city in the region to open its gates to the Mongols and had become an important trading centre after most of its nearby rivals were razed.

On returning again to Baghdad, probably in July, he took an excursion northwards following the Tigris, visiting Mosul, then Cizre and Mardin, both in modern Turkey. On returning to Mosul he joined a "feeder" caravan of pilgrims heading south for Baghdad where they met up with the main caravan that crossed the Arabian Desert to Mecca. Ibn Battuta was ill with diarrhea on this crossing and arrived back in Mecca weak and exhausted for his second hajj.^[13]

[edit] Arabian Peninsula

Ibn Battuta then stayed for some time in Mecca. He suggests in the Rihla that he remained in the town for three years: from September 1327 until autumn 1330. However, because of problems with the chronology, commentators have suggested that he may have spent only one year and left after the hajj of 1328.^[14]

Leaving Mecca after the hajj in 1328 (or 1330) he made his way to the port of Jeddah on the coast of the Red Sea and from there caught a series of boats down the coast. His progress was slow as the vessels had to beat against the south easterly winds. Arriving in the Yemen he visited Zabīd, and then the highland town of Ta'izz where he met the Rasulid Malik (king) Mujahid Nur al-Din Ali. Ibn Battuta also mentions visiting Sana'a, but whether he actually did is doubtful.^[15] It is more likely that he went directly from Ta'izz to the port of Aden, arriving at around the beginning of 1329 (or 1331).^[16] Aden was an important transit centre in the trade between India and Europe.

[edit] Somalia

In Aden, Battuta embarked on a ship heading first to Zeila on the Somali littoral of the Gulf of Aden. He then moved to Cape Guardafui and further down the Somali seaboard. Spending about a week in each of his destinations, Battuta would later visit Mogadishu, the pre-eminent city in the بلد البربر Bilad al Barbar ("Land of the Berbers"), which was the medieval Arabic term for the Horn of Africa.^[17][18][19] By the time of his appearance on the Somali coast in 1331, the city was at the zenith of its prosperity. Battuta described Mogadishu as "an exceedingly large city" with many rich merchants, which was famous for its high quality fabric that it exported to Egypt, among other places.^[20][21] He added that the city was ruled by a Somali Sultan originally from Berbera in northern Somalia who spoke both Somali (referred to by Batutta as Mogadishan, the Benadir dialect of Somali) and Arabic with equal fluency.^[22][23] The Sultan also had a retinue of wazirs (ministers), legal experts, commanders, royal eunuchs, and assorted hangers-on at his beck and call.^[22]

[edit] Swahili Coast

Ibn Battuta continued south to the Swahili Coast, a region then known in Arabic as the Bilad al-Zanj ("Land of the Zanj").^[24] The ship stopped for one night at the island town of Mombasa.^[25] Although relatively small at the time, it would become important in the following century.^[26] He then continued along the coast to the island town of Kilwa in present day Tanzania^[27] which had become an important transit centre in the gold trade.^[28] Battuta described the city as "one of the most beautiful and well-constructed towns in the world."^[29]

With the change of the monsoon, Battuta returned by ship to Arabia. He visited Oman and the Strait of Hormuz and then returned to Mecca for the hajj of 1330 (or 1332).

[edit] Byzantine Empire, Golden Horde, Anatolia, Central Asia and India

After spending another year in Mecca, Ibn Battuta resolved to seek employment with the Muslim Sultan of Delhi, Muhammad bin Tughluq. Needing a guide and translator for his journey, he set off in 1330 (or 1332) 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 the Syrian port of Latakia on a Genoese ship landed him in Alanya on the southern coast of modern-day Turkey. From Alanya, he travelled by land to Konya and then to Sinope on the Black Sea coast.^[30]

Crossing the Black Sea, Ibn Battuta landed in Caffa (now Feodosiya), in the Crimea, and entered the lands of the Golden Horde. He bought a wagon and fortuitously was able to join 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, supposedly an illegitimate daughter of Byzantine Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos, to return to her home city of Constantinople to give birth. Ibn Battuta talked his way into this expedition, his first beyond the boundaries of the Islamic world.^[31]

Arriving in Constantinople towards the end of 1332 (or 1334), he met the Byzantine emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos and saw the outside of the great church of Hagia Sophia. After a month in the city, he retraced his route to Astrakhan, then continued past the Caspian and Aral Seas to Bukhara and Samarkand. From there, he journeyed south to Afghanistan, the mountain passes of which he used to cross into India.^[32]

The Delhi Sultanate was a new addition to Dar al-Islam, and Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq had resolved to import as many Muslim scholars and other functionaries as possible to consolidate his rule. On the strength of his years of study while in Mecca, Ibn Battuta was employed as a qazi ("judge") by the sultan.

Battuta also visited Hansi in India from the Kingdom of Sarsatti. He described the former as "among the most beautiful cities, the best constructed and the most populated; it is surrounded with a strong wall, and its founder is said to be one of the great infidel kings, called Tara".^[33]

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 asked him to become his ambassador to Yuan Dynasty China. Given the opportunity to both get away from the Sultan and visit new lands, Ibn Battuta took the opportunity.

[edit] Southeast Asia and China

En route to the coast, Battuta and his party were attacked by a group of Hindus,^[34] and, separated from the others, he was robbed and nearly lost his life.^[35] Nevertheless, he managed to catch up with his group within ten days and continued the journey to Khambhat (Cambay). From there, they sailed to Kozhikode (Calicut) (two centuries later, Vasco da Gama also landed at the same place). However, while Ibn Battuta visited a mosque on shore, a storm came up, and one of the ships of his expedition was sunk.^[36] The other then sailed away without him and ended up being seized by a local king in Sumatra a few months later.

Fearful of returning to Delhi as a failure, he stayed for a time in the south of India under the protection of Jamal-ud-Din. Jamal-ud-Din was ruler of a small but powerful Nawayath sultanate on the banks of the Sharavathi River on the Arabian Sea coast. This place is presently known as Hosapattana and is located in the Honavar tehsil 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 of Omar I, 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 Sri Lanka for a visit to Adam's Peak (Sri Pada).

Setting sail from Sri Lanka, 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 Kozhikode, from where he then sailed to the Maldives again before getting on board a Chinese junk and trying once again to get to the Mongol Yuan Dynasty China.

This time he succeeded, reaching in quick succession: Chittagong; but changed direction for Sylhet and added an extra 170 miles just to meet Shah jalal(R) who will later be famous for converting Bangladesh into a muslim majority country. He went another 2 miles further north to Assam where he met followers of Shah Jalal Shekh Giyes Uddin Aiwlia of Hajo(Sujabad); then turning around and back to his original travel plan Sumatra Indonesia; 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 described travelling further north, through the Grand Canal to Beijing, although it is considered unlikely that he actually did so.^[37]

[edit] Return home and the Black Death

Returning to Quanzhou, in 1346 Ibn Battuta begins his journey back to Morocco.^[38] On reaching Calicut (Kozhikode) once again, he considered throwing himself at the mercy of Muhammed Tughlaq but thought better of it and decided to carry on to Mecca. Returning via Hormuz and the Ilkhanate, he saw that the state had dissolved into civil war with Abu Sa'id having died since his previous visit.^[39]

Returning to Damascus in 1348 with the intention of retracing the route of his first hajj, he learned that his father had died 15 years earlier.^[40] 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.^[41] During the trip he made one last detour to Sardinia, then in 1349 returned to Tangier by way of Fez to discover that his mother had also died a few months before.^[42]

[edit] Andalus and North Africa

After a few days in Tangier, Ibn Battuta set out for a trip to al-Andalus—Muslim Iberia. Alfonso XI of Castile and León was threatening the conquest of Gibraltar, and in 1350 Ibn Battuta joined up with a group of Muslims leaving Tangier with the intention of defending the port.^[43] 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.^[44]

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 Marrakech, which was nearly a ghost town after the recent plague and the transfer of the capital to Fez.^[45]

Once more Battuta returned to Tangier, and once more he moved on. In 1324, two years before his own first visit to Cairo, the Malian Mansa (king of kings) Musa had passed through the same city on his own hajj and had caused a sensation with his extravagant riches—West Africa contained large quantities of gold. While Ibn Battuta never mentions this specifically, hearing of this during his own trip could 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.

[edit] The Sahara Desert to Mali and Timbuktu

A 13th century book illustration produced in Baghdad by al-Wasiti showing a slave-market in the town of Zabid in Yemen.

In the autumn of 1351, Ibn Battuta left Fes and made his way to the town of Sijilmasa on the northern edge of the Sahara desert in present day Morocco.^[46] There he bought some camels and stayed for four months. He set out again with a caravan in February 1352 and after 25 days, arrived at the salt mines of Taghaza which were situated in the bed of a dry salt lake. The buildings were constructed from slabs of salt by slaves of the Masufa tribe, who cut the salt in thick slabs for transport by camel. Taghaza was a commercial centre and awash with Malian gold, though Ibn Battuta did not have a favourable impression of the place: the water was brackish and the place was plagued with flies.

After a 10 day stay in Taghaza the caravan set out for the oasis of Tasarahla (probably Bir al-Ksaib)^[47] where it stopped for 3 days to prepare for the last and most difficult leg of the journey across a vast sand desert. From Tasarahla a Masufa scout was sent ahead to the oasis town of Oualata to arrange for a party to bring water a distance of four days travel to meet the thirsty caravan. Oualata was the southern terminus of the trans-Saharan trade route and had recently become part of the Mali Empire. Altogether, the caravan took two months to cross the 1,600 km (990 mi) of desert from Sijilmasa.^[48]

From there, he travelled 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.^[49] 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 completely naked. He left the capital in February and journeyed overland by camel to Timbuktu.^[50] 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. He arrived back in Morocco early in 1354.

[edit] The Rihla

After returning home 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 Ibn Juzayy, a scholar whom he had met previously in Granada. The 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 تحفة الأنظار في غرائب الأمصار وعجائب الأسفار 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 الرحلة, or "The Journey".

There is no indication that Ibn Battuta made any notes during his 29 years of travelling, 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 travellers. When describing Damascus, Mecca, Medina and some other places in the Middle East, Ibn Juzayy clearly copied passages from the 12th century account by Ibn Jubayr.^[51] Similarly, most of Ibn Juzayy’s descriptions of places in Palestine were copied from an account by the 13th century traveller Muhammad al-Abdari.^[52]

House in the Medina of Tangier perhaps lodging Ibn Battuta's grave

Western Orientalists do not believe that Ibn Battuta visited all the places that he described and argue that in order to provide a comprehensive description of places in the Muslim world Ibn Battuta relied on hearsay evidence and made use of accounts by earlier travellers. For example, it is considered very unlikely that Ibn Battuta made a trip up the Volga River from New Sarai to visit Bolghar^[53] and there are serious doubts about a number of other journeys such as his trip to Sana'a in Yemen,^[54] his journey from Balkh to Bistam in Khorasan^[55] and his trip around Anatolia.^[56] Some orientalists have also questioned whether he really visited China.^[57] Nevertheless, whilst apparently fictional in places, the Rihla provides an important account of many areas of the world in the 14th century.

Ibn Battuta often experienced culture shock in regions he visited where local customs of recently converted peoples did not fit his orthodox Muslim background. Among Turks and Mongols, he was astonished at the way women behaved (he remarked that on seeing a Turkish couple, and noting the woman's freedom of speech, he had assumed that the man was the woman's servant, but he was in fact her husband) and he felt that dress customs in the Maldives, and some sub-Saharan regions in Africa were too revealing.

After the completion of the Rihla in 1355, little is known about Ibn Battuta's life. He was appointed a judge in Morocco and died in 1368 or 1369.^[58]

For centuries his book was obscure, even within the Muslim world, but in the early 19th century 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 1830s they discovered five manuscripts in Constantine including two that contained more complete versions of the text.^[59] These manuscripts were brought back to the Bibliothèque 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.^[60] 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.

[edit] Places visited by Ibn Battuta

Ibn Battuta travelled almost 75,000 miles in his lifetime. Here is a list of places he visited.

[edit] Itinerary 1325-1332

Tangiers