The Rihla
![]() Historic copy of selected parts of the Travel Report by Ibn Battuta, 1836 CE, Cairo | |
Author | Ibn Battuta |
---|---|
Original title | تحفة النظار في غرائب الأمصار وعجائب الأسفار Tuḥfat an-Nuẓẓār fī Gharāʾib al-Amṣār wa ʿAjāʾib al-Asfār |
Language | Arabic |
Subject | Geography |
Genre | Travelogue |
Publication place | Morocco |
Website | Arabic text at wdl.org, English translation at archive.org |
The Rihla, formal title A Masterpiece to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling, is the travelogue written by Ibn Battuta, documenting his lifetime of travel and exploration, which according to his description covered about 73,000 miles (117,000 km). Rihla is the Arabic word for a journey or the travelogue that documents it.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/TumbaIbnBatuta.jpg/220px-TumbaIbnBatuta.jpg)
Battuta's travels
Ibn Battuta may have travelled significantly farther than any other person in history up to his time; certainly his account describes more travel than any other pre-jet age explorer on record.
Ibn Battuta's first voyage began in 1,325 CE, in
The Hajj
He travelled to Mecca overland, following the North African coast across the sultanates of Abd al-Wadid and Hafsid. He took a bride in the town of Sfax,[1] the first in a series of marriages that would feature in his travels.[2]
In the early spring of 1326, after a journey of over 3,500 km (2,200 mi), Ibn Battuta arrived at the
At this point he began a lifelong habit of making side-trips instead of getting where he was going. He spent several weeks visiting sites in the area and then headed inland to
He returned to
in which he visited more than twenty cities.After spending the Muslim month of
Ibn Battuta then started back toward Iraq,[8] but got diverted on a six-month detour that took him into Persia. Finally, he returned across to Baghdad, arriving there in 1327.[9]
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.[10] Ibn Battuta joined the royal caravan for a while, then turned north on the Silk Road to Tabriz.
Second pilgrimage to Mecca
Ibn Battuta left again for
From Aden Ibn Battuta embarked on a ship heading for Zeila on the coast of Somalia. Later he would visit Mogadishu, the then pre-eminent city of the "Land of the Berbers" (بلد البربر Bilad al-Barbar, the medieval Arabic term for the Horn of Africa).[16][17][18]
Ibn Battuta arrived in
Ibn Battuta continued by ship south to the
Byzantium
After his third pilgrimage to Mecca, Ibn Battuta decided to seek employment with the Muslim Sultan of Delhi, Muhammad bin Tughluq. In the autumn of 1330 (or 1332), he set off for the Seljuk controlled territory of Anatolia with the intention of taking an overland route to India.[31]
From this point the itinerary across Anatolia in the Rihla is 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.[32] Historians believe that Ibn Battuta visited a number of towns in central Anatolia, but not in the order that he describes.[33][c]
When they reached
Arriving in
After this I proceeded to the city of
India
Ibn Battuta and his party reached the Indus River on 12 September 1333.[42] From there, he made his way to Delhi and became acquainted with the sultan, Muhammad bin Tughluq.
On the strength of his years of study in Mecca, Ibn Battuta was appointed a qadi, or judge, by the sultan.[43] However, he found it difficult to enforce Islamic law beyond the sultan's court in Delhi, due to lack of Islamic appeal in India.[44]
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 treason for a variety of offences. His plan to leave on the pretext of taking another hajj was stymied by the Sultan. The opportunity for Battuta to leave Delhi finally arose in 1341 when an embassy arrived from Yuan dynasty China asking for permission to rebuild a Himalayan Buddhist temple popular with Chinese pilgrims.[d][48]
China
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 bandits.[49] Separated from his companions, he was robbed and nearly lost his life.[50] Despite this setback, within ten days he had caught up with his group and continued on to Khambhat in the Indian state of Gujarat. From there, they sailed to Calicut (now known as Kozhikode), where Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama would land two centuries later. While in Calicut, Battuta was the guest of the ruling Zamorin.[43] While Ibn Battuta visited a mosque on shore, a storm arose and one of the ships of his expedition sank.[51] The other ship then sailed without him only to be seized by a local Sumatran king a few months later.
In 1345 Ibn Battuta travelled on to Samudra Pasai Sultanate in present-day Aceh, Northern Sumatra, where 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.[52]
The
Ibn Battuta first sailed to Malacca on the Malay Peninsula which he called "Mul Jawi". He met the ruler of Malacca and stayed as a guest for three days.
In the year 1345 Ibn Battuta arrived at Quanzhou in China's Fujian province, then under the rule of the Mongols. One of the first things he noted was that Muslims referred to the city as "Zaitun" (meaning olive), but Ibn Battuta could not find any olives anywhere. He mentioned local artists and their mastery in making portraits of newly arrived foreigners; these were for security purposes. Ibn Battuta praised the craftsmen and their silk and porcelain; as well as fruits such as plums and watermelons and the advantages of paper money.[53]
He then travelled south along the Chinese coast to Guangzhou, where he lodged for two weeks with one of the city's wealthy merchants.[54]
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.[55]
Al-Andalus
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.[56] 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, travelling through Valencia and ending up in Granada.[57]
After his departure from al-Andalus he decided to travel through Morocco. On his return home, he stopped for a while in Marrakech, which was almost a ghost town following the recent plague and the transfer of the capital to Fez.[58]
In the autumn of 1351, Ibn Battuta left Fez and made his way to the town of Sijilmasa on the northern edge of the Sahara in present-day Morocco.[59] There he bought a number of camels and stayed for four months. He set out again with a caravan in February 1352 and after 25 days arrived at the dry salt lake bed of Taghaza with its salt mines. All of the local buildings were made from slabs of salt by the 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 form a favourable impression of the place, recording that it was plagued by flies and the water was brackish.[60]
Mali Empire
After a ten-day stay in Taghaza, the caravan set out for the oasis of Tasarahla (probably Bir al-Ksaib)[61][e] 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.[62]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c4/Bilma-Salzkarawane1.jpg/220px-Bilma-Salzkarawane1.jpg)
From there Ibn Battuta travelled southwest along a river he believed to be the
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.[69]
Ibn Battuta's itinerary gives scholars a glimpse as to when Islam first began to spread into the heart of west Africa.[70]
The travelogue
After returning home from his travels in 1354, and at the suggestion of the
There is no indication that Ibn Battuta made any notes or had any journal during his twenty-nine years of travelling.[h] 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 Andalusian Ibn Jubayr which had been written more than 150 years earlier.[75] Similarly, most of Ibn Juzayy's descriptions of places in Palestine were copied from an account by the 13th-century traveller Muhammad al-Abdari.[76]
Many scholars of the Oriental studies do not believe that Ibn Battuta visited all the places he described, arguing that in order to provide a comprehensive description of places in the Muslim world, he relied at least in part on hearsay evidence, making 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,[77] and there are serious doubts about a number of other journeys such as his trip to Sana'a in Yemen,[78] his journey from Balkh to Bistam in Khorasan[79] and his trip around Anatolia.[80]
Ibn Battuta's claim that a
Some scholars have also questioned whether he really visited
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.[74]: 111–13, 137, 141, 238 [84] 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.[85] 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.[86] It was two decades before he again returned to find out what happened to one of his wives and child in Damascus.[87]
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 Turkish couple in a bazaar one might assume that the man was the woman's servant when he was in fact her husband.[88] He also felt that dress customs in the Maldives and some sub-Saharan regions in Africa, were too revealing.
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.[89]
Ibn Battuta's work was unknown outside the
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.[93] The Arabic text was translated into English by the orientalist Samuel Lee and published in London in 1829.[94]
In the 1830s, during the
In 1929, exactly a century after the publication of Lee's translation, the historian and orientalist
Notes
- ^ Aydhad was a port on the west coast of the Red Sea at 22°19′51″N 36°29′25″E / 22.33083°N 36.49028°E.[5]
- ^ 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".[34] 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.[33] Gibb still admits that he found it difficult to believe that Ibn Battuta actually travelled as far east as Erzurum.[35]
- ^ In the Rihla the date of Ibn Battuta's departure from Delhi is given as 17 Safar 743 AH or 22 July 1342.[45][46] 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.[47]
- ^ Bir al-Ksaib (also Bir Ounane or El Gçaib) is in northern Mali at 21°17′33″N 5°37′30″W / 21.29250°N 5.62500°W. The oasis is 265 km (165 mi) south of Taghaza and 470 km (290 mi) north of Oualata.
- ^ 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.[63]
- ^ Dunn gives the clunkier translation A Gift to the Observers Concerning the Curiosities of the Cities and the Marvels Encountered in Travels.[72]
- ^ Though he mentions being robbed of some notes[74]
- ^ Neither de Slane's 19th century catalogue[95] nor the modern online equivalent provide any information on the provenance of the manuscripts.[96] Dunn states that all five manuscripts were "found in Algeria"[97] 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.[98]
- ^ French: "La version de M. Lee manque quelquefois d'exactitude, même dans des passage fort simples et très-faciles".[102]
References
- ^ "Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa 1325–1354". Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis. Indiana University Bloomington. Archived from the original on 20 August 2017. Retrieved 6 December 2017.
- ^ Dunn 2005, p. 39; Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1853, p. 26 Vol. 1
- ^ The Travels of Ibn Battuta, A.D. 1325-1354: Volume I, translated by H.A.R Gibb, pp. 23-24
- ^ Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1853, p. 27 Vol. 1
- ^ Peacock & Peacock 2008.
- ^ Dunn 2005, pp. 53–54
- ^ Dunn 2005, pp. 66–79.
- ^ Dunn 2005, pp. 88–89; Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1853, p. 404 Vol. 1; Gibb 1958, p. 249 Vol. 1
- ^ Dunn 2005, p. 97; Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1854, p. 100 Vol. 2
- ^ Dunn 2005, pp. 98–100; Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1854, p. 125 Vol. 2
- ^ Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1854, pp. 134–39 Vol. 2.
- ^ Mattock 1981.
- ^ Dunn 2005, p. 102.
- ^ Dunn 2005, p. 102; Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1854, p. 142 Vol. 2
- ^ Dunn 2005, pp. 102–03; Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1854, p. 149 Vol. 2
- ^ Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Career and Legend of Vasco Da Gama, (Cambridge University Press: 1998), pp. 120–21.
- ^ 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.
- ^ P. L. Shinnie, The African Iron Age, (Clarendon Press: 1971), p.135
- ISBN 978-0844407753.
- ISBN 9780330418799.
- ISBN 978-9004144767.
- ^ a b c David D. Laitin, Said S. Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, (Westview Press: 1987), p. 15.
- ^ Chapurukha Makokha Kusimba, The Rise and Fall of Swahili States, (AltaMira Press: 1999), p.58
- ^ Chittick 1977, p. 191
- ^ Gibb 1962, p. 379 Vol. 2
- ^ Dunn 2005, p. 126
- ^ Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1854, p. 192 Vol. 2
- ^ Dunn 2005, pp. 126–27
- ^ Gibb 1962, p. 380 Vol. 2; Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1854, p. 193, Vol. 2
- ^ Dunn 2005, pp. 137–39.
- ^ Gibb 1962, pp. 424–28 Vol. 2.
- ^ a b Dunn 2005, pp. 149–50, 157 Note 13; Gibb 1962, pp. 533–35, Vol. 2; Hrbek 1962, pp. 455–62.
- ^ Gibb 1962, pp. 533–35, Vol. 2.
- ^ Gibb 1962, p. 535, Vol. 2.
- ^ Dunn 2005, pp. 169–71
- ^ "The_Longest_Hajj_Part2_6". hajjguide.org. Archived from the original on 24 September 2014. Retrieved 13 June 2015.
- ^ "Khan Academy". Khan Academy. Archived from the original on 6 December 2017. Retrieved 6 December 2017.
- ^ Dunn 2005, pp. 171–78
- ^ ISBN 978-1-60520-621-9, pp. 97–98
- ^ Lee 1829, p. 191.
- ^ Gibb 1971, p. 592 Vol. 3; Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1855, p. 92 Vol. 3; Dunn 2005, pp. 178, 181 Note 26
- ^ a b Aiya 1906, p. 328.
- ^ Jerry Bently, Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 121.
- ^ Gibb & Beckingham 1994, p. 775 Vol. 4.
- ^ Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1858, p. 4 Vol. 4.
- ^ Dunn 2005, p. 238 Note 4.
- ^ "The Travels of Ibn Battuta: Escape from Delhi to the Maldive Islands and Sri Lanka: 1341–1344". orias.berkeley.edu. Archived from the original on 16 January 2017. Retrieved 12 January 2017.
- ^ Dunn 2005, p. 215; Gibb & Beckingham 1994, p. 777 Vol. 4
- ^ Gibb & Beckingham 1994, pp. 773–82 Vol. 4; Dunn 2005, pp. 213–17
- ^ Gibb & Beckingham 1994, pp. 814–15 Vol. 4
- ^ a b "Ibn Battuta's Trip: Chapter 9 Through the Straits of Malacca to China 1345–1346". The Travels of Ibn Battuta A Virtual Tour with the 14th Century Traveler. Berkeley.edu. Archived from the original on 17 March 2013. Retrieved 14 June 2013.
- ^ Dunn 2005, p. 258.
- ^ Dunn 2005, p. 259.
- ^ Dunn 2005, pp. 259–61
- ^ Dunn 2005, p. 282
- ^ Dunn 2005, pp. 283–84
- ^ Dunn 2005, pp. 286–87
- ^ Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1858, p. 376 Vol. 4; Levtzion & Hopkins 2000, p. 282; Dunn 2005, p. 295
- ^ Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1858, pp. 378–79 Vol. 4; Levtzion & Hopkins 2000, p. 282; Dunn 2005, p. 297
- ^ Levtzion & Hopkins 2000, p. 457.
- ^ Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1858, p. 385 Vol. 4; Levtzion & Hopkins 2000, p. 284; Dunn 2005, p. 298
- ^ Hunwick 1973.
- ^ Jerry Bently, Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 131.
- ^ Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1858, p. 430 Vol. 4; Levtzion & Hopkins 2000, p. 299; Gibb & Beckingham 1994, pp. 969–970 Vol. 4; Dunn 2005, p. 304
- ^ Dunn 2005, p. 304.
- ^ Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1858, pp. 425–26 Vol. 4; Levtzion & Hopkins 2000, p. 297
- ^ Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1858, pp. 432–36 Vol. 4; Levtzion & Hopkins 2000, p. 299; Dunn 2005, p. 305
- ^ Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1858, pp. 444–445 Vol. 4; Levtzion & Hopkins 2000, p. 303; Dunn 2005, p. 306
- ^ 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.
- ^ M-S p. ix.
- ^ p. 310
- ^ Dunn 2005, pp. 310–11; Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1853, pp. 9–10 Vol. 1
- ^ ISBN 978-0-330-41879-9.
- ^ Dunn 2005, pp. 313–14; Mattock 1981
- ^ Dunn 2005, pp. 63–64; Elad 1987
- ^ Dunn 2005, p. 179; Janicsek 1929
- ^ Dunn 2005, p. 134 Note 17
- ^ Dunn 2005, p. 180 Note 23
- ^ Dunn 2005, p. 157 Note 13
- ISBN 978-1-4051-0062-5. Archivedfrom the original on 19 January 2017.
- ^ Dunn 2005, pp. 253, 262 Note 20
- ISBN 978-3-447-06250-3. Archivedfrom the original on 11 December 2017.
- ]
- ISBN 978-1-134-60959-8.
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.
- ISBN 978-1-101-12701-8.
- ^ Kate S. Hammer (1999). The Role of Women in Ibn Battuta's Rihla. Indiana University. p. 45.
- ^ Gibb 1958, pp. 480–81; Dunn 2005, p. 168
- ^ Gibb 1958, pp. ix–x Vol. 1; Dunn 2005, p. 318
- ^ Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1853, Vol. 1 pp. xiii–xiv; Kosegarten 1818.
- ^ Apetz 1819.
- ^ de Sacy 1820.
- ^ Burckhardt 1819, pp. 533–37 Note 82; Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1853, Vol. 1 p. xvi
- ^ Lee 1829.
- ^ de Slane 1883–1895, p. 401.
- ^ MS Arabe 2287; MS Arabe 2288; MS Arabe 2289; MS Arabe 2290; MS Arabe 2291.
- ^ Dunn 2005, p. 4.
- ^ Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1853, Vol. 1 p. xxiii.
- ^ de Slane 1843b; MS Arabe 2291
- ^ de Slane 1843a.
- ^ Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1853; Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1854; Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1855; Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1858
- ^ Defrémery & Sanguinetti 1853, Vol. 1 p. xvii.
- ^ Gibb 1929.
- ^ Gibb & Beckingham 1994, p. ix.
- ^ Gibb 1958.
- ^ Gibb & Beckingham 1994.
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- ISBN 978-1-55876-241-1. First published in 1981. pp. 279–304 contain a translation of Ibn Battuta's account of his visit to West Africa.
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- 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.