A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling
, but commonly known as The Rihla.
Ibn Battuta travelled more than any other explorer in pre-modern history, totalling around 117,000 km (73,000 mi), surpassing Zheng He with about 50,000 km (31,000 mi) and Marco Polo with 24,000 km (15,000 mi).[8][9][10] There have been doubts over the historicity of some of Ibn Battuta's travels, particularly as they reach farther East.
All that is known about Ibn Battuta's life comes from the autobiographical information included in the account of his travels, which records that he was of
madhhab (Islamic jurisprudence school), the dominant form of education in North Africa at that time.[18] Maliki Muslims requested that Ibn Battuta serve as their religious judge, as he was from an area where it was practised.[19]
Ibn Battuta Itinerary 1325–1332 (North Africa, Iraq, Iran, the Arabian Peninsula, Somalia, Swahili Coast)
First pilgrimage
On 2 Rajab in the Muslim year 725 Anno Hegirae (14 June 1325 Anno Domini on the Christian calendar), at the age of twenty-one, Ibn Battuta set off from his home town on a hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca, a journey that would ordinarily take sixteen months. He was eager to learn more about far-away lands and craved adventure. He would not return to Morocco again for 24 years.[20]
I set out alone, having neither fellow-traveller in whose companionship I might find cheer, nor caravan whose part I might join, but swayed by an overmastering impulse within me and a desire long-cherished in my bosom to visit these illustrious sanctuaries. So I braced my resolution to quit my dear ones, female and male, and forsook my home as birds forsake their nests. My parents being yet in the bonds of life, it weighed sorely upon me to part from them, and both they and I were afflicted with sorrow at this separation.[21]
He travelled to Mecca overland, following the North African coast across the sultanates of Abd al-Wadid and Hafsid. The route took him through Tlemcen, Béjaïa, and then Tunis, where he stayed for two months.[22] For safety, Ibn Battuta usually joined a caravan to reduce the risk of being robbed. He took a bride in the town of Sfax,[23] but soon left her due to a dispute with the father. That was the first in a series of marriages that would feature in his travels.[24]
In the early spring of 1326, after a journey of over 3,500 km (2,200 mi), Ibn Battuta arrived at the port of
Bahri Mamluk empire. He met two ascetic pious men in Alexandria. One was Sheikh Burhanuddin, who is supposed to have foretold the destiny of Ibn Battuta as a world traveller and told him, "It seems to me that you are fond of foreign travel. You must visit my brother Fariduddin in India, Rukonuddin in Sind, and Burhanuddin in China. Convey my greetings to them." Another pious man, Sheikh Murshidi, interpreted the meaning of a dream of Ibn Battuta as being that he was meant to be a world traveller.[25][26]
He spent several weeks visiting sites in the area, and then headed inland to
Mamluk Sultanate . After spending about a month in Cairo,[27] he embarked on the first of many detours within the relative safety of Mamluk territory. Of the three usual routes to Mecca, Ibn Battuta chose the least-travelled, which involved a journey up the Nile valley, then east to the Red Sea port of ʿAydhab.[b] Upon approaching the town, however, a local rebellion forced him to turn back.[29]
Ibn Battuta returned to Cairo and took a second side trip, this time to Mamluk-controlled
Syria.[30] The diversion held an added advantage; because of the holy places that lay along the way, including Hebron, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem, the Mamluk authorities kept the route safe for pilgrims. Without this help many travellers would be robbed and murdered.[31][c]
After spending the Muslim month of Ramadan, during August,[36] in Damascus, he joined a caravan travelling the 1,300 km (810 mi) south to Medina, site of the Mosque of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. After four days in the town, he journeyed on to Mecca while visiting holy sites along the way; upon his arrival to Mecca he completed his first pilgrimage, in November, and he took the honorific status of El-Hajji. Rather than returning home, Ibn Battuta decided to continue travelling, choosing as his next destination the Ilkhanate, a MongolKhanate, to the northeast.[37]
Iraq and Iran
On 17 November 1326, following a month spent in Mecca, Ibn Battuta joined a large caravan of pilgrims returning to
In Baghdad, he found Abu Sa'id, the last Mongol ruler of the unified Ilkhanate, leaving the city and heading north with a large retinue.[42] Ibn Battuta joined the royal caravan for a while, then turned north on the Silk Road to Tabriz, the first major city in the region to open its gates to the Mongols and by then an important trading centre as most of its nearby rivals had been razed by the Mongol invaders.[43]
Ibn Battuta left again for Baghdad, probably in July, but first took an excursion northwards along the river Tigris. He visited
diarrhoea, he arrived in the city weak and exhausted for his second hajj.[48]
Arabia
Old City of Sana'a
, Yemen
Ibn Battuta remained in Mecca for some time (the Rihla suggests about three years, from September 1327 until autumn 1330). Problems with chronology, however, lead commentators to suggest that he may have left after the 1328 hajj.[e]
After the hajj in either 1328 or 1330, he made his way to the port of
Sana'a, but whether he actually did so is doubtful.[49] In all likelihood, he went directly from Ta'izz to the important trading port of Aden, arriving around the beginning of 1329 or 1331.[50]
Land of the Berbers" (بلد البربر Balad al-Barbar, the medieval Arabic term for the Horn of Africa).[51][52][53]
When Ibn Battuta arrived in 1332, Mogadishu stood at the zenith of its prosperity. He described it as "an exceedingly large city" with many rich merchants, noted for its high-quality fabric that was exported to other countries, including
Somali Sultan, Abu Bakr ibn Shaikh 'Umar.[55][56] He noted that Sultan Abu Bakr had dark skin complexion and spoke in his native tongue (Somali), but was also fluent in Arabic.[57][56][58] The Sultan also had a retinue of wazirs (ministers), legal experts, commanders, royal eunuchs, and other officials at his beck and call.[56]
Ibn Battuta continued by ship south to the Swahili coast, a region then known in Arabic as the Bilad al-Zanj ("Land of the Zanj")[59] with an overnight stop at the island town of Mombasa.[60] Although relatively small at the time, Mombasa would become important in the following century.[61] After a journey along the coast, Ibn Battuta next arrived in the island town of Kilwa in present-day Tanzania,[62] which had become an important transit centre of the gold trade.[63] He described the city as "one of the finest and most beautifully built towns; all the buildings are of wood, and the houses are roofed with dīs reeds".[64]
Ibn Battuta recorded his visit to the
Palace of Husuni Kubwa and a significant extension to the Great Mosque of Kilwa, which was made of coral stones and was the largest mosque of its kind. With a change in the monsoon winds, Ibn Battuta sailed back to Arabia, first to Oman and the Strait of Hormuz then on to Mecca for the hajj of 1330 (or 1332).[65]
After his third pilgrimage to Mecca, Ibn Battuta decided to seek employment with the
Nile valley and then headed north to Cairo. From there he crossed the Sinai Peninsula to Palestine and then travelled north again through some of the towns that he had visited in 1326. From the Syrian port of Latakia, a Genoese ship took him (and his companions) to Alanya on the southern coast of modern-day Turkey.[67]
He then journeyed westwards along the coast to the port of Antalya.[68] In the town he met members of one of the semi-religious fityan associations.[69][verification needed] These were a feature of most Anatolian towns in the 13th and 14th centuries. The members were young artisans and had at their head a leader with the title of Akhil.[70] The associations specialised in welcoming travellers. Ibn Battuta was very impressed with the hospitality that he received and would later stay in their hospices in more than 25 towns in Anatolia.[71] From Antalya Ibn Battuta headed inland to Eğirdir which was the capital of the Hamidids. He spent Ramadan (June 1331 or May 1333) in the city.[72]
From this point his itinerary across Anatolia in the Rihla becomes confused. Ibn Battuta describes travelling westwards from Eğirdir to Milas and then skipping 420 km (260 mi) eastward past Eğirdir to Konya. He then continues travelling in an easterly direction, reaching Erzurum from where he skips 1,160 km (720 mi) back to Birgi which lies north of Milas.[73] Historians believe that Ibn Battuta visited a number of towns in central Anatolia, but not in the order in which he describes.[74][f]
When Ibn Battuta arrived in
Iznik, it had just been conquered by Orhan, Sultan of the nascent Ottoman Empire. Orhan was away and his wife was in command of the nearby stationed soldiers, Ibn Battuta gave this account of Orhan's wife: "A pious and excellent woman. She treated me honourably, gave me hospitality and sent gifts."[77]
The greatest of the kings of the Turkmens and the richest in wealth, lands and military forces. Of fortresses, he possesses nearly a hundred, and for most of his time, he is continually engaged in making a round of them, staying in each fortress for some days to put it in good order and examine its condition. It is said that he has never stayed for a whole month in any one town. He also fights with the infidels continually and keeps them under siege.
Ibn Battuta had also visited Bursa which at the time was the capital of the Ottoman Beylik, he described Bursa as "a great and important city with fine bazaars and wide streets, surrounded on all sides with gardens and running springs".
[79]
He also visited the
Balikesir. The conspicuous evidence of his wealth and prestige continued to grow.[80]
Mount Beshtau. From there he made a journey to Bolghar, which became the northernmost point he reached, and noted its unusually short nights in summer (by the standards of the subtropics). Then he returned to the Khan's court and with it moved to Astrakhan.[citation needed
]
Ibn Battuta recorded that while in Bolghar he wanted to travel further north into the land of darkness. The land is snow-covered throughout (
northern Siberia) and the only means of transport is dog-drawn sled. There lived a mysterious people who were reluctant to show themselves. They traded with southern people in a peculiar way. Southern merchants brought various goods and placed them in an open area on the snow in the night, then returned to their tents. Next morning they came to the place again and found their merchandise taken by the mysterious people, but in exchange they found fur-skins which could be used for making valuable coats, jackets, and other winter garments. The trade was done between merchants and the mysterious people without seeing each other. As Ibn Battuta was not a merchant and saw no benefit of going there he abandoned the travel to this land of darkness.[81]
Öz Beg Khan
When they reached Astrakhan,
Öz Beg Khan had just given permission for one of his pregnant wives, Princess Bayalun, a daughter of Byzantine emperorAndronikos III Palaiologos, to return to her home city of Constantinople to give birth. Ibn Battuta talked his way into this expedition, which would be his first beyond the boundaries of the Islamic world.[82]
Arriving in Constantinople towards the end of 1332 (or 1334), he met the
Öz Beg Khan (r. 1313–1341). Then he continued past the Caspian and Aral Seas to Bukhara and Samarkand, the latter of which he praised as "one of the grandest and finest cities, and the most perfect of them". Here he visited the court of another Mongol khan, Tarmashirin (r. 1331–1334) of the Chagatai Khanate.[83] He also noted the ruined state of the city walls, a result of the Mongol invasion in 1220 and subsequent infighting.[84] From there, he journeyed south to Afghanistan, then crossed into India via the mountain passes of the Hindu Kush.[85] In the Rihla, he mentions these mountains and the history of the range in slave trading.[86][87]
He wrote,
After this I proceeded to the city of Barwan, in the road to which is a high mountain, covered with snow and exceedingly cold; they call it the Hindu Kush, that is Hindu-slayer, because most of the slaves brought thither from India die on account of the intenseness of the cold.
— Ibn Battuta, Chapter XIII, Rihla – Khorasan[87][88]
Ibn Battuta and his party reached the Indus River on 12 September 1333.[89] From there, he made his way to Delhi and became acquainted with the sultan, Muhammad bin Tughluq.
South Asia
Tomb of Feroze Shah Tughluq, successor of Muhammad bin Tughluq in Delhi. Ibn Battuta served as a qadi or judge for six years during Muhammad bin Tughluq's reign.
Muhammad bin Tughluq was renowned as the wealthiest man in the Muslim world at that time. He patronized various scholars, Sufis, qadis, viziers, and other functionaries in order to consolidate his rule. On the strength of his years of study in Mecca, Ibn Battuta was appointed a qadi, or judge, by the sultan.[90] However, he found it difficult to enforce Islamic law beyond the sultan's court in Delhi, due to lack of Islamic appeal in India.[91]
It is uncertain by which route Ibn Battuta entered the
Sutlej river near the city of Pakpattan,[94] in modern-day Pakistan, where he paid obeisance at the shrine of Baba Farid,[92] before crossing southwest into Rajput country. From the Rajput kingdom of Sarsatti, Battuta visited Hansi in India, describing it 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 non-Muslim kings, called Tara".[95] Upon his arrival in Sindh, Ibn Battuta mentions the Indian rhinoceros that lived on the banks of the Indus.[96]
The Sultan was erratic even by the standards of the time and for six years Ibn Battuta veered between living the high life of a trusted subordinate and falling under suspicion of
Ibn Battuta was given charge of the embassy but en route to the coast at the start of the journey to China, he and his large retinue were attacked by a group of
Zamorin.[90] While Ibn Battuta visited a mosque on shore, a storm arose and one of the ships of his expedition sank.[103] The other ship then sailed without him only to be seized by a local Sumatran
king a few months later.
Afraid to return to Delhi and be seen as a failure, he stayed for a time in southern India under the protection of
better source needed
]
He spent nine months on the islands, much longer than he had intended. When he arrived at the capital,
converted to Islam were looking for a chief judge, someone who knew Arabic and the Qur'an. To convince him to stay they gave him pearls, gold jewellery, and slaves, while at the same time making it impossible for him to leave by ship. Compelled into staying, he became a chief judge and married into the royal family of Omar I
.
Ibn Battuta took on his duties as a judge with keenness and strived to transform local practices to conform to a stricter application of Muslim law. He commanded that men who did not attend Friday prayer be publicly whipped, and that robbers' right hand be cut off. He forbade women from being topless in public, which had previously been the custom.[105] However, these and other strict judgments began to antagonize the island nation's rulers, and involved him in power struggles and political intrigues. Ibn Battuta resigned from his job as chief qadi, although in all likelihood it was inevitable that he would have been dismissed.
Throughout his travels, Ibn Battuta kept close company with women, usually taking a wife whenever he stopped for any length of time at one place, and then divorcing her when he moved on. While in the Maldives, Ibn Battuta took four wives. In his Travels he wrote that in the Maldives the effect of small
dowries
and female non-mobility combined to, in effect, make a marriage a convenient temporary arrangement for visiting male travellers and sailors.
From the Maldives, he carried on to
Sri Pada and Tenavaram temple. Ibn Battuta's ship almost sank on embarking from Sri Lanka, only for the vessel that came to his rescue to suffer an attack by pirates. Stranded onshore, he worked his way back to the Madurai kingdom in India. Here he spent some time in the court of the short-lived Madurai Sultanate under Ghiyas-ud-Din Muhammad Damghani,[106] from where he returned to the Maldives and boarded a Chinese junk
, still intending to reach China and take up his ambassadorial post.
He reached the port of Chittagong in modern-day Bangladesh intending to travel to Sylhet to meet Shah Jalal, who became so renowned that Ibn Battuta, then in Chittagong, made a one-month journey through the mountains of Kamaru near Sylhet to meet him. On his way to Sylhet, Ibn Battuta was greeted by several of Shah Jalal's disciples who had come to assist him on his journey many days before he had arrived. At the meeting in 1345 CE, Ibn Battuta noted that Shah Jalal was tall and lean, fair in complexion and lived by the mosque in a cave, where his only item of value was a goat he kept for milk, butter, and yogurt. He observed that the companions of the Shah Jalal were foreign and known for their strength and bravery. He also mentions that many people would visit the Shah to seek guidance. Ibn Battuta went further north into Assam, then turned around and continued with his original plan.[citation needed]
Samudra Pasai Sultanate (called "al-Jawa") in present-day Aceh, Northern Sumatra, after 40 days voyage from Sunur Kawan.[107][108] He notes in his travel log that the ruler of Samudra Pasai was a pious Muslim named Sultan Al-Malik Al-Zahir Jamal-ad-Din, who performed his religious duties with utmost zeal and often waged campaigns against animists in the region. The island of Sumatra, according to Ibn Battuta, was rich in camphor, areca nut, cloves, and tin.[109]
The
Mappila Muslims, who were also followers of Imam Al-Shafi‘i. At that time Samudra Pasai marked the end of Dar al-Islam, because no territory east of this was ruled by a Muslim. Here he stayed for about two weeks in the wooden walled town as a guest of the sultan, and then the sultan provided him with supplies and sent him on his way on one of his own junks to China.[109]
Ibn Battuta first sailed for 21 days to a place called "Mul Jawa" (island of Java or Majapahit Java) which was a center of a Hindu empire. The empire spanned 2 months of travel, and ruled over the country of Qaqula and Qamara. He arrived at the walled city named Qaqula/Kakula, and observed that the city had war junks for pirate raiding and collecting tolls and that elephants were employed for various purposes. He met the ruler of Mul Jawa and stayed as a guest for three days.[110][111][112]
Ibn Battuta then sailed to a state called Kaylukari in the land of
Guangdong Province, China. However, Sir Henry Yule and William Henry Scott consider both Tawalisi and Urduja to be entirely fictitious. (See Tawalisi for details.) From Kaylukari, Ibn Battuta finally reached Quanzhou in Fujian
Province, China.
China
Ibn Battuta provides the earliest mention of the Great Wall of China with regard to medieval geographic studies, although he did not see it.
In the year 1345, Ibn Battuta arrived at
watermelons and the advantages of paper money.[115]
He described the manufacturing process of large ships in the city of Quanzhou.[116] He also mentioned Chinese cuisine and its usage of animals such as frogs, pigs, and even dogs which were sold in the markets, and noted that the chickens in China were larger than those in the west. Scholars however have pointed out numerous errors given in Ibn Battuta's account of China, for example confusing the Yellow River with the Grand Canal and other waterways, as well as believing that porcelain was made from coal.[117]
In Quanzhou, Ibn Battuta was welcomed by the head of the local Muslim merchants (possibly a fānzhǎng or "Leader of Foreigners" simplified Chinese: 番长; traditional Chinese: 番長; pinyin: fānzhǎng) and Sheikh al-Islam (Imam), who came to meet him with flags, drums, trumpets, and musicians.[118] Ibn Battuta noted that the Muslim populace lived within a separate portion in the city where they had their own mosques, bazaars, and hospitals. In Quanzhou, he met two prominent Iranians, Burhan al-Din of Kazerun and Sharif al-Din from Tabriz[119] (both of whom were influential figures noted in the Yuan History as "A-mi-li-ding" and "Sai-fu-ding", respectively).[120] While in Quanzhou he ascended the "Mount of the Hermit" and briefly visited a well-known Taoist monk in a cave.
He then travelled south along the Chinese coast to Guangzhou, where he lodged for two weeks with one of the city's wealthy merchants.[121]
From Guangzhou he went north to Quanzhou and then proceeded to the city of Fuzhou, where he took up residence with Zahir al-Din and met Kawam al-Din and a fellow countryman named Al-Bushri of Ceuta, who had become a wealthy merchant in China. Al-Bushri accompanied Ibn Battuta northwards to Hangzhou and paid for the gifts that Ibn Battuta would present to the Emperor Huizong of Yuan.[122]
Ibn Battuta said that Hangzhou was one of the largest cities he had ever seen,[123] and he noted its charm, describing that the city sat on a beautiful lake surrounded by gentle green hills.[124] He mentions the city's Muslim quarter and resided as a guest with a family of Egyptian origin.[122] During his stay at Hangzhou he was particularly impressed by the large number of well-crafted and well-painted Chinese wooden ships, with coloured sails and silk awnings, assembling in the canals. Later he attended a banquet of the Yuan administrator of the city named Qurtai, who according to Ibn Battuta, was very fond of the skills of local Chinese conjurers.[125] Ibn Battuta also mentions locals who worshipped a solar deity.[126]
He described floating through the Grand Canal on a boat watching crop fields, orchids, merchants in black silk, and women in flowered silk and priests also in silk.[127] In Beijing, Ibn Battuta referred to himself as the long-lost ambassador from the Delhi Sultanate and was invited to the Yuan imperial court of Emperor Huizong (who according to Ibn Battuta was worshipped by some people in China). Ibn Batutta noted that the palace of Khanbaliq was made of wood and that the ruler's "head wife" (Empress Qi) held processions in her honour.[128][129]
Ibn Battuta also wrote he had heard of "the rampart of
Dhul-Qarnayn to contain Gog and Magog as mentioned in the Quran.[130] However, Ibn Battuta, who asked about the wall in China, could find no one who had either seen it or knew of anyone who had seen it.[131]
Ibn Battuta travelled from Beijing to Hangzhou, and then proceeded to Fuzhou. Upon his return to Quanzhou, he soon boarded a Chinese junk owned by the Sultan of Samudera Pasai Sultanate heading for Southeast Asia, whereupon Ibn Battuta was unfairly charged a hefty sum by the crew and lost much of what he had collected during his stay in China.[132]
Battuta claimed that the Emperor Huizong of Yuan had interred with him in his grave six slave soldiers and four girl slaves.[133] Silver, gold, weapons, and carpets were put into the grave.[134]
Return
After returning to Quanzhou in 1346, Ibn Battuta began his journey back to Morocco.[135] In Kozhikode, he once again considered throwing himself at the mercy of Muhammad bin Tughluq in Delhi, but thought better of it and decided to carry on to Mecca. On his way to Basra he passed through the Strait of Hormuz, where he learned that Abu Sa'id, last ruler of the Ilkhanate Dynasty had died in Iran. Abu Sa'id's territories had subsequently collapsed due to a fierce civil war between the Iranians and Mongols.[136]
In 1348, Ibn Battuta arrived in Damascus with the intention of retracing the route of his first hajj. He then learned that his father had died 15 years earlier
Fez, only to discover that his mother had also died a few months before.[141]
After a few days in Tangier, Ibn Battuta set out for a trip to the Muslim-controlled territory of al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula. King Alfonso XI of Castile and León had threatened to attack Gibraltar, so in 1350, Ibn Battuta joined a group of Muslims leaving Tangier with the intention of defending the port.[142] By the time he arrived, the Black Death had killed Alfonso and the threat of invasion had receded, so he turned the trip into a sight-seeing tour ending up in Granada.[143]
After his departure from al-Andalus he decided to travel through Morocco. On his return home, he stopped for a while in
After a ten-day stay in Taghaza, the caravan set out for the oasis of Tasarahla (probably Bir al-Ksaib)[147][h] where it stopped for three days in preparation for the last and most difficult leg of the journey across the vast desert. From Tasarahla, a Masufa scout was sent ahead to the oasis town of Oualata, where he arranged for water to be transported a distance of four days travel where it would 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.[148]
From there, Ibn Battuta travelled southwest along a river he believed to be the Nile (it was actually the river
parts of their bodies not befitting a Muslim.[150] He wrote in his Rihla that black Africans were characterised by "ill manners" and "contempt for white men", and that he "was long astonished at their feeble intellect and their respect for mean things."[151] He left the capital in February accompanied by a local Malian merchant and journeyed overland by camel to Timbuktu.[152] Though in the next two centuries it would become the most important city in the region, at that time it was a small city and relatively unimportant.[153] It was during this journey that Ibn Battuta first encountered a hippopotamus. The animals were feared by the local boatmen and hunted with lances to which strong cords were attached.[154] After a short stay in Timbuktu, Ibn Battuta journeyed down the Niger to Gao in a canoe carved from a single tree. At the time Gao was an important commercial center.[155]
After spending a month in Gao, Ibn Battuta set off with a large caravan for the oasis of Takedda. On his journey 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 female slaves, and arrived back in Morocco early in 1354.[156]
Ibn Battuta's itinerary gives scholars a glimpse as to when Islam first began to spread into the heart of west Africa.[157]
Purported Mausoleum of Ibn Battuta in TangierHistoric copy of selected parts of the Travel Report by Ibn Battuta, 1836 CE, Cairo
After returning home from his travels in 1354, and at the suggestion of the
Marinid ruler of Morocco, Abu Inan Faris, Ibn Battuta dictated an account in Arabic of his journeys to Ibn Juzayy, a scholar whom he had previously met in Granada. The account is the only source for Ibn Battuta's adventures. The full title of the manuscript may be translated as A Masterpiece to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling (تحفة النظار في غرائب الأمصار وعجائب الأسفار, Tuḥfat an-Nuẓẓār fī Gharāʾib al-Amṣār wa ʿAjāʾib al-Asfār).[158][j] However, it is often simply referred to as TheTravels (الرحلة, Rihla),[160] in reference to a standard form of Arabic literature
.
There is no indication that Ibn Battuta made any notes or had any journal during his twenty-nine years of travelling.[k] When he came to dictate an account of his experiences he had to rely on memory and manuscripts produced by earlier travellers. Ibn Juzayy did not acknowledge his sources and presented some of the earlier descriptions as Ibn Battuta's own observations. When describing Damascus, Mecca, Medina, and some other places in the Middle East, he clearly copied passages from the account by the AndalusianIbn Jubayr which had been written more than 150 years earlier.[162] Similarly, most of Ibn Juzayy's descriptions of places in Palestine were copied from an account by the 13th-century traveller Muhammad al-Abdari.[163]
Maldives were converted to Islam after miracles were performed by a Tabrizi named Maulana Shaikh Yusuf Shams-ud-din according to the Tarikh, the official history of the Maldives.[168]
Some scholars have also questioned whether he really visited China.
Uthman ibn Affan had someone with the identical name in China who was encountered by Ibn Battuta.[170]
However, even if the Rihla is not fully based on what its author personally witnessed, it provides an important account of much of the 14th-century world.
Concubines were used by Ibn Battuta such as in Delhi.[161]: 111–113, 137, 141, 238 [171] He wedded several women, divorced at least some of them, and in Damascus, Malabar, Delhi, Bukhara, and the Maldives had children by them or by concubines.[172] Ibn Battuta insulted Greeks as "enemies of Allah", drunkards and "swine eaters", while at the same time in Ephesus he purchased and used a Greek girl who was one of his many slave girls in his "harem" through Byzantium, Khorasan, Africa, and Palestine.[173] It was two decades before he again returned to find out what happened to one of his wives and child in Damascus.[174]
Ibn Battuta often experienced culture shock in regions he visited where the local customs of recently converted peoples did not fit in with his orthodox Muslim background. Among the Turks and Mongols, he was astonished at the freedom and respect enjoyed by women and remarked that on seeing a Turkic couple in a bazaar one might assume that the man was the woman's servant when he was in fact her husband.[175] He also felt that dress customs in the Maldives, and some sub-Saharan regions in Africa were too revealing.[citation needed]
Little is known about Ibn Battuta's life after completion of his Rihla in 1355. He was appointed a judge in Morocco and died in 1368 or 1369.[176]
Ibn Battuta's work was unknown outside the Muslim world until the beginning of the 19th century, when the German traveller-explorer
Three copies of another abridged manuscript were acquired by the Swiss traveller Johann Burckhardt and bequeathed to the University of Cambridge. He gave a brief overview of their content in a book published posthumously in 1819.[180] The Arabic text was translated into English by the orientalist Samuel Lee and published in London in 1829.[181]
In the 1830s, during the French occupation of
critical edition of the Arabic text together with a translation into French.[188] In their introduction Defrémery and Sanguinetti praised Lee's annotations but were critical of his translation which they claimed lacked precision, even in straightforward passages.[m]
In 1929, exactly a century after the publication of Lee's translation, the historian and orientalist
Hamilton Gibb published an English translation of selected portions of Defrémery and Sanguinetti's Arabic text.[190] Gibb had proposed to the Hakluyt Society in 1922 that he should prepare an annotated translation of the entire Rihla into English.[191] His intention was to divide the translated text into four volumes, each volume corresponding to one of the volumes published by Defrémery and Sanguinetti. The first volume was not published until 1958.[192] Gibb died in 1971, having completed the first three volumes. The fourth volume was prepared by Charles Beckingham and published in 1994.[193]
Defrémery and Sanguinetti's printed text has now been translated into number of other languages.
Historicity
German Islamic studies scholar Ralph Elger views Battuta's travel account as an important literary work but doubts the historicity of much of its content, which he suspects to be a work of fiction compiled and inspired from other contemporary travel reports.[194] Various other scholars have raised similar doubts.[195]
In 1987, Ross E. Dunn similarly expressed doubts that any evidence would be found to support the narrative of the Rihla, but in 2010, Tim Mackintosh-Smith completed a multi-volume field study in dozens of the locales mentioned in the Rihla, in which he reports on previously unknown manuscripts of Islamic law kept in the archives of Al-Azhar University in Cairo that were copied by Ibn Battuta in Damascus in 1326, corroborating the date in the Rihla of his sojourn in Syria.[196]
Present-day cultural references
Borj en-Nâam barracks in Tangier, repurposed as Ibn Battuta Memorial Museum
The largest themed mall in
UAE, the Ibn Battuta Mall is named for him and features both areas designed to recreate the exotic lands he visited on his travels and statuary tableaus depicting scenes from his life history.[197][198]
A giant semblance of Battuta, alongside two others from the history of Arab exploration, the geographer and historian
: ابن بطوطة; fully: Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Yūsuf al-Lawātī al-Ṭanji; Arabic: شمس الدين أبو عبد الله محمد بن عبد الله بن محمد بن إبراهيم بن محمد بن إبراهيم بن يوسف اللواتي الطنجي
^Ibn Battuta left Cairo on around 16 July 1326 and arrived in Damascus three weeks later on 9 August 1326.[32] He described travelling on a complicated zig-zag route across Palestine in which he visited more than twenty cities. Such a journey would have been impossible in the allotted time and both Gibb (1958) and Hrbek (1962) have argued that Ibn Battuta conflated this journey with later journeys that he made in the region.[33][34] Elad (1987) has shown that Ibn Battuta's descriptions of most of the sites in Palestine were not original but were copied (without acknowledgement) from the earlier rihla by the traveller Mohammed al-Abdari. Because of these difficulties, it is not possible to determine an accurate chronology of Ibn Battuta's travels in the region.[35]
^Ibn Battuta states that he stayed in Mecca for the hajj of 1327, 1328, 1329 and 1330 but gives comparatively little information on his stays. After the hajj of 1330 he left for East Africa, arriving back again in Mecca before the 1332 hajj. He states that he then left for India and arrived at the Indus river on 12 September 1333; however, although he does not specify exact dates, the description of his complex itinerary and the clues in the text to the chronology suggest that this journey to India lasted around three years. He must have therefore either left Mecca two years earlier than stated or arrived in India two years later. The issue is discussed by Gibb 1962, pp. 528–537 Vol. 2, Hrbek 1962 and Dunn 2005, pp. 132–133.
^This is one of several occasions where Ibn Battuta interrupts a journey to branch out on a side trip only to later skip back and resume the original journey. Gibb describes these side trips as "divagations".[75] The divagation through Anatolia is considered credible as Ibn Battuta describes numerous personal experiences and there is sufficient time between leaving Mecca in mid-November 1330 and reaching Eğirdir on the way back from Erzurum at the start of Ramadan (8 June) in 1331.[74] Gibb still admits that he found it difficult to believe that Ibn Battuta actually travelled as far east as Erzurum.[76]
^In the Rihla the date of Ibn Battuta's departure from Delhi is given as 17 Safar 743 AH or 22 July 1342.[97][98] Dunn has argued that this is probably an error and to accommodate Ibn Battuta's subsequent travels and visits to the Maldives it is more likely that he left Delhi in 1341.[99]
^The location of the Malian capital has been the subject of considerable scholarly debate but there is no consensus. The historian, John Hunwick has studied the times given by Ibn Battuta for the various stages of his journey and proposed that the capital is likely to have been on the left side of the Niger River somewhere between Bamako and Nyamina.[149]
^Dunn gives the clunkier translation A Gift to the Observers Concerning the Curiosities of the Cities and the Marvels Encountered in Travels.[159]
^Though he mentions being robbed of some notes[161]
^Neither de Slane's 19th century catalogue[182] nor the modern online equivalent provide any information on the provenance of the manuscripts.[183] Dunn states that all five manuscripts were "found in Algeria"[184] but in their introduction Defrémery and Sanguinetti mention that the BNF had acquired one manuscript (MS Supplément arabe 909/Arabe 2287) from M. Delaporte, a former French consul to Morocco.[185]
^French: "La version de M. Lee manque quelquefois d'exactitude, même dans des passage fort simples et très-faciles".[189]
. After outlining the extensive route of Ibn Battuta's Journey, Nehru notes: "This is a record of travel which is rare enough today with our many conveniences. ... In any event, Ibn Battuta must be amongst the great travellers of all time."
^Mark, Joshua J. "Ibn Battuta". World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 7 February 2023. His full name, as given in the Rihla, was Shams al-Din Abu’Abdallah Muhammad ibn’Abdallah ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Lawati al-Tanji ibn Battuta and all that is known of his family comes from the Rihla which records references to his education and provides his lineage.
^"Ibn Battuta | Biography, History, Travels, & Map | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 7 February 2023. "Ibn Battuta, also spelled Ibn Baṭṭūṭah, in full Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Lawātī al-Ṭanjī ibn Baṭṭūṭah, (born February 24, 1304, Tangier, Morocco—died 1368/69 or 1377, Morocco), the greatest medieval Muslim traveler and the author of one of the most famous travel books, the Riḥlah (Travels)."
^Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Career and Legend of Vasco Da Gama, (Cambridge University Press: 1998), pp. 120–121.
^J. D. Fage, Roland Oliver, Roland Anthony Oliver, The Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge University Press: 1977), p. 190.
^George Wynn Brereton Huntingford, Agatharchides, The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: With Some Extracts from Agatharkhidēs "On the Erythraean Sea" (Hakluyt Society: 1980), p. 83.
^André Wink, Al-Hind, the Slave Kings and the Islamic Conquest, 11th–13th Centuries, Volume 2 of Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. The Slave Kings and the Islamic Conquest 11th–13th Centuries (Brill, 2002), p. 229.
^Balmaceda Guiterrez, Chit. "In search of a Princess". Filipinas Magazine. Archived from the original on 27 September 2013. Retrieved 26 September 2013.
^Noel King (ed.), Ibn Battuta in Black Africa, Princeton 2005, pp. 45–46. Four generations before Mansa Suleiman who died in 1360 CE, his grandfather's grandfather (Saraq Jata) had embraced Islam.
. He had a son to a Moroccan woman/wife in Damascus ... a daughter to a slave girl in Bukhara ... a daughter in Delhi to a wife, another to a slave girl in Malabar, a son in the Maldives to a wife ... in the Maldives at least he divorced his wives before he left.
Chittick, H. Neville (1977), "The East Coast, Madagascar and the Indian Ocean", in Oliver, Roland (ed.), Cambridge History of Africa Vol. 3. From c. 1050 to c. 1600, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 183–231,
Defrémery, C.; Sanguinetti, B.R., eds. (1853), Voyages d'Ibn Batoutah (Volume 1) (in French and Arabic), Paris: Société Asiatic. The text of these volumes has been used as the source for translations into other languages.
Elad, Amikam (1987), "The description of the travels of Ibn Baṭūṭṭa in Palestine: is it original?", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 119 (2): 256–272,
Gibb, H.A.R., ed. (1929), Ibn Battuta Travels in Asia and Africa (selections), London: Routledge. Reissued several times. Extracts are available on the Fordham University siteArchived 13 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine.
. First published in 1981. pp. 279–304 contain a translation of Ibn Battuta's account of his visit to West Africa.
Mattock, J.N. (1981), "Ibn Baṭṭūṭa's use of Ibn Jubayr's Riḥla", in Peters, R. (ed.), Proceedings of the Ninth Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants: Amsterdam, 1st to 7th September 1978, Leiden: Brill, pp. 209–218,
Peacock, David; Peacock, Andrew (2008), "The enigma of 'Aydhab: a medieval Islamic port on the Red Sea coast", International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 37 (1): 32–48,
Taeschner, Franz (1986) [1960]. "Akhī". The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Volume 1: A–B. Leiden: Brill. pp. 321–323.
Yule, Henry (1916), "IV. Ibn Battuta's travels in Bengal and China", Cathay and the Way Thither (Volume 4), London: Hakluyt Society, pp. 1–106. Includes the text of Ibn Battuta's account of his visit to China. The translation is from the French text of Defrémery & Sanguinetti (1858) Volume 4.
Chittick, H. Neville (1968). "Ibn Baṭṭūṭa and East Africa". Journal de la Société des Africanistes. 38 (2): 239–241.
Ferrand, Gabriel (1913), "Ibn Batūtā", Relations de voyages et textes géographiques arabes, persans et turks relatifs à l'Extrème-Orient du 8e au 18e siècles (Volumes 1 and 2) (in French), Paris: Ernest Laroux, pp. 426–437.
Gordon, Stewart (2008), When Asia was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks who created the "Riches of the East", Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, Perseus Books,
. Contains an introduction by Mackintosh-Smith and then an abridged version (around 40 per cent of the original) of the translation by H.A.R. Gibb and C.E. Beckingham (1958–1994).
Mackintosh-Smith, Tim (2005), Hall of a Thousand Columns: Hindustan to Malabar with Ibn Battutah, London: John Murray,
French text from Defrémery and Sanguinetti (1853–1858) with an introduction and footnotes by Stéphane Yérasimos published in 1982: Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3.
