 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 titleA Masterpiece to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling, is thetravelogue written byIbn Battuta, documenting his lifetime of travel and exploration, which according to his description covered about 73,000 miles (117,000 km).Rihla is theArabic word for a journey or the travelogue that documents it.
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 1325 CE, inMorocco, when the 21 year old set out on hisHajj, the religious pilgrimage toMecca expected of all followers ofIslam. During this time period, it would normally take pilgrims a year to a year and a half to complete the Hajj. However, Ibn Battuta found he loved travel during the experience, and reportedly encountered aSufi mystic who told him that he would eventually visit the entireIslamic world. Ibn Battuta spent the next two decades exploring much of the known world. Twenty-four years after departing Morocco, he finally returned home to write about his travels.
He travelled toMecca overland, following the North African coast across the sultanates ofAbd al-Wadid andHafsid. He took a bride in the town ofSfax,[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 theport of Alexandria, at the time part of theBahri Mamluk empire. He met two ascetic pious men inAlexandria. One was Sheikh Burhanuddin who is supposed to have foretold the destiny of Ibn Battuta as a world traveller saying "It seems to me that you are fond of foreign travel. You will visit my brother Fariduddin inIndia, Rukonuddin inSind and Burhanuddin inChina. Convey my greetings to them". Another pious man Sheikh Murshidi interpreted the meaning of a dream of Ibn Battuta that he was meant to be a world traveller.[3][4]
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 toCairo, the capital of theMamluk Sultanate and an important city. Of the three usual routes toMecca, Ibn Battuta chose the least-travelled, which involved a journey up theNile valley, then east to theRed Seaport of Aydhab.[a] Upon approaching the town, however, a local rebellion forced him to turn back.[6]
He returned toCairo and took a second side trip, this time toMamluk-controlledDamascus. He described travelling on a complicated zig-zag route acrossPalestine in which he visited more than twenty cities.
After spending the Muslim month ofRamadan inDamascus, he joined a caravan travelling the 1,300 km (810 mi) south toMedina, site of theMosque of the Islamic prophetMuhammad. After four days in the town, he journeyed on toMecca, where upon completing his pilgrimage he took the honorific status ofEl-Hajji. Rather than returning home, Ibn Battuta decided to continue traveling, choosing as his next destination theIlkhanate, aMongolKhanate, to the northeast.[7]
Ibn Battuta then started back towardIraq,[8] but got diverted on a six-month detour that took him intoPersia. Finally, he returned across toBaghdad, arriving there in 1327.[9]
InBaghdad, he foundAbu Sa'id, the lastMongol ruler of the unifiedIlkhanate, leaving the city and heading north with a large retinue.[10] Ibn Battuta joined the royal caravan for a while, then turned north on theSilk Road toTabriz.
Ibn Battuta left again forBaghdad, probably in July, but first took an excursion northwards along the riverTigris. He visitedMosul, where he was the guest of theIlkhanate governor,[11] and then the towns ofCizre (Jazirat ibn 'Umar) andMardin in modern-dayTurkey. At a hermitage on a mountain nearSinjar, he met aKurdish mystic who gave him some silver coins.[b][14] Once back in Mosul, he joined a "feeder" caravan of pilgrims heading south to Baghdad, where they would meet up with the main caravan that crossed theArabian Desert toMecca. Ill with diarrhoea, he arrived in the city weak and exhausted for his secondhajj.[15]
FromAden Ibn Battuta embarked on a ship heading forZeila on the coast ofSomalia. Later he would visitMogadishu, the then pre-eminent city of the "Land of the Berbers" (بلد البربرBilad al-Barbar, the medieval Arabic term for theHorn of Africa).[16][17][18]
Ibn Battuta arrived inMogadishu in 1331, at the zenith of its prosperity. He described Mogadishu as "an exceedingly large city" with many rich merchants, which was famous for its high qualityfabric that it exported toEgypt, among other places.[19][20] He also describes the hospitality of the people of Mogadishu and how locals would put travelers up in their home to help the local economy.[21] Battuta added that the city was ruled by a Somalisultan, Abu Bakr ibn Shaikh 'Umar,[22][23] who had aBarbara origin, an ancient term to describe the ancestors of theSomali people. He spoke theMogadishan Somali or Banadiri Somali (referred to by Battuta asBenadir) language as well as Arabic with equal fluency.[23][24] The sultan also had a retinue ofwazirs (ministers), legal experts, commanders, royaleunuchs, and other officials at his beck and call.[23]
Ibn Battuta continued by ship south to theSwahili Coast, a region then known in Arabic as theBilad al-Zanj ("Land of the Zanj"),[25] with an overnight stop at the island town ofMombasa.[26] Although relatively small at the time, Mombasa would become important in the following century.[27] After a journey along the coast, Ibn Battuta next arrived in the island town ofKilwa in present-dayTanzania,[28] which had become an important transit centre of the gold trade.[29] 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 withdīs reeds".[30]
After his third pilgrimage toMecca, Ibn Battuta decided to seek employment with the MuslimSultan of Delhi,Muhammad bin Tughluq. In the autumn of 1330 (or 1332), he set off for theSeljuk controlled territory ofAnatolia with the intention of taking an overland route toIndia.[31]
From this point the itinerary acrossAnatolia in theRihla is confused. Ibn Battuta describes travelling westwards fromEğirdir toMilas and then skipping 420 km (260 mi) eastward past Eğirdir toKonya. He then continues travelling in an easterly direction, reachingErzurum from where he skips 1,160 km (720 mi) back toBirgi which lies north of Milas.[32] Historians believe that Ibn Battuta visited a number of towns incentral Anatolia, but not in the order that he describes.[33][c]
When they reachedAstrakhan,Öz Beg Khan had just given permission for one of his pregnant wives, Princess Bayalun, a daughter ofByzantine emperorAndronikos III Palaiologos, to return to her home city ofConstantinople to give birth. Ibn Battuta talked his way into this expedition, which would be his first beyond the boundaries of theIslamic world.[36]
Arriving inConstantinople towards the end of 1332 (or 1334), he met theByzantine emperorAndronikos III Palaiologos. He visited the great church ofHagia Sophia and spoke with anEastern Orthodox priest about his travels in the city ofJerusalem. After a month in the city, Ibn Battuta returned toAstrakhan, then arrived in the capital citySarai al-Jadid and reported the accounts of his travels to SultanÖz Beg Khan (r. 1313–1341). Then he continued past theCaspian andAral Seas toBukhara andSamarkand, where he visited the court of anotherMongolian king,Tarmashirin (r. 1331–1334) of theChagatai Khanate.[37] From there he journeyed south toAfghanistan, then crossed intoIndia via the mountain passes of theHindu Kush.[38] In theRihla, he mentions these mountains and the history of the range in slave trading.[39][40] He wrote,
After this I proceeded to the city ofBarwan, in the road to which is a high mountain, covered with snow and exceedingly cold; they call it the Hindu Kush, that isHindu-slayer, because most of the slaves brought thither fromIndia die on account of the intenseness of the cold.
Ibn Battuta and his party reached theIndus River on 12 September 1333.[42] From there, he made his way toDelhi and became acquainted with the sultan,Muhammad bin Tughluq.
On the strength of his years of study inMecca, Ibn Battuta was appointed aqadi, or judge, by the sultan.[43] However, he found it difficult to enforceIslamic law beyond the sultan's court inDelhi, due to lack of Islamic appeal inIndia.[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 anotherhajj was stymied by the Sultan. The opportunity for Battuta to leaveDelhi finally arose in 1341 when an embassy arrived fromYuan dynasty China asking for permission to rebuild aHimalayanBuddhist temple popular withChinese pilgrims.[d][48]
Ibn Battuta was given charge of the embassy but en route to the coast at the start of the journey toChina, 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 toKhambhat in theIndian state ofGujarat. From there, they sailed toCalicut (now known as Kozhikode), wherePortuguese explorerVasco da Gama would land two centuries later. While in Calicut, Battuta was the guest of the rulingZamorin.[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 localSumatran king a few months later.
In 1345 Ibn Battuta travelled on toSamudra Pasai Sultanate in present-dayAceh,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. Theisland of Sumatra, according to Ibn Battuta, was rich incamphor,areca nut,cloves, andtin.[52]
Themadh'hab he observed was ImamAl-Shafi‘i, whose customs were similar to those he had previously seen incoastal India, especially among theMappila Muslims, who were also followers of Imam Al-Shafi‘i. At that time Samudra Pasai marked the end ofDar 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 ownjunks toChina.[52]
Ibn Battuta first sailed toMalacca on theMalay 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 atQuanzhou inChina'sFujian province, then under the rule of theMongols. One of the first things he noted was that Muslims referred to the city as "Zaitun" (meaningolive), 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 theirsilk andporcelain; as well as fruits such as plums and watermelons and the advantages of paper money.[53]
He then travelled south along theChinese coast toGuangzhou, where he lodged for two weeks with one of the city's wealthy merchants.[54]
Ibn Battuta travelled fromBeijing toHangzhou and then proceeded toFuzhou. Upon his return toQuanzhou, he soon boarded aChinese junk owned by theSultan ofSamudera 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]
After a few days inTangier, Ibn Battuta set out for a trip to the Muslim-controlled territory ofal-Andalus on theIberian Peninsula. KingAlfonso XI of Castile and León had threatened to attackGibraltar; so in 1350, Ibn Battuta joined a group of Muslims leaving Tangier with the intention of defending theport.[56] By the time he arrived, theBlack Death had killed Alfonso and the threat of invasion had receded, so he turned the trip into a sight-seeing tour, travelling throughValencia and ending up inGranada.[57]
After his departure fromal-Andalus he decided to travel throughMorocco. On his return home, he stopped for a while inMarrakech, which was almost a ghost town following the recent plague and the transfer of the capital toFez.[58]
In the autumn of 1351, Ibn Battuta leftFez and made his way to the town ofSijilmasa on the northern edge of theSahara in present-dayMorocco.[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 ofTaghaza 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 withMalian 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]
After a ten-day stay inTaghaza, 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 ofOualata, 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 thetrans-Saharan trade route and had recently become part of theMali Empire. Altogether, the caravan took two months to cross the 1,600 km (990 mi) of desert fromSijilmasa.[62]
From there Ibn Battuta travelled southwest along a river he believed to be theNile (it was actually the riverNiger), until he reached the capital of theMali Empire.[f] There he metMansaSuleyman, king since 1341. Ibn Battuta disapproved of the fact that female slaves, servants and even the daughters of the sultan went about exposingparts of their bodies not befitting a Muslim.[64] He left the capital in February accompanied by a localMalian merchant and journeyed overland by camel toTimbuktu.[65] 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.[66] It was during this journey that Ibn Battuta first encountered ahippopotamus. The animals were feared by the local boatmen and hunted with lances to which strong cords were attached.[67] After a short stay in Timbuktu, Ibn Battuta journeyed down the Niger toGao in a canoe carved from a single tree. At the time Gao was an important commercial center.[68]
After spending a month in Gao, Ibn Battuta set off with a large caravan for the oasis ofTakedda. On his journey across the desert, he received a message from theSultan of Morocco commanding him to return home. He set off forSijilmasa in September 1353, accompanying a large caravan transporting 600 female slaves, and arrived back inMorocco early in 1354.[69]
Ibn Battuta's itinerary gives scholars a glimpse as to whenIslam first began to spread into the heart ofwest Africa.[70]
After returning home from his travels in 1354, and at the suggestion of theMarinid ruler ofMorocco,Abu Inan Faris, Ibn Battuta dictated an account inArabic of his journeys toIbn Juzayy, a scholar whom he had previously met inGranada. The account is the only source for Ibn Battuta's adventures. The full title of the manuscript may be translated asA 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).[71][g] However, it is often simply referred to asThe Travels (الرحلة,Rihla),[73] in reference to astandard 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.[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 describingDamascus,Mecca,Medina and some other places in theMiddle East, he clearly copied passages from the account by theAndalusianIbn Jubayr which had been written more than 150 years earlier.[75] Similarly, most of Ibn Juzayy's descriptions of places inPalestine were copied from an account by the 13th-century travellerMuhammad al-Abdari.[76]
Many scholars of theOriental studies do not believe that Ibn Battuta visitedall the places he described, arguing that in order to provide a comprehensive description of places in theMuslim 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 theVolga River fromNew Sarai to visitBolghar,[77] and there are serious doubts about a number of other journeys such as his trip toSana'a inYemen,[78] his journey fromBalkh toBistam inKhorasan[79] and his trip aroundAnatolia.[80]
Ibn Battuta's claim that aMaghrebian called "Abu'l Barakat the Berber [ar]" converted theMaldives to Islam is contradicted by an entirely different story which says that theMaldives were converted to Islam after miracles were performed by aTabrizi named Maulana Shaikh Yusuf Shams-ud-din according to the Tarikh, the official history of the Maldives.[81]
Some scholars have also questioned whether he really visitedChina.[82] Ibn Battuta may have plagiarized entire sections of his descriptions of China lifted from works by other authors like "Masalik al-absar fi mamalik al-amsar" byShihab al-Umari,Sulaiman al-Tajir, and possibly fromAl Juwayni,Rashid-al-Din Hamadani and anAlexander romance. Furthermore, Ibn Battuta's description andMarco Polo's writings share extremely similar sections and themes, with some of the same commentary, e.g. it is unlikely that the 3rd CaliphUthman ibn Affan had someone with the exact identical name in China who was encountered by Ibn Battuta.[83]
However, even if theRihla 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 inDelhi.[74]: 111–13, 137, 141, 238 [84] He wedded several women, divorced at least some of them, and inDamascus,Malabar, Delhi,Bukhara, and theMaldives had children by them or by concubines.[85] Ibn Battuta insultedGreeks as "enemies ofAllah", drunkards and "swine eaters", while at the same time inEphesus he purchased and used a Greek girl who was one of his many slave girls in his "harem" throughByzantium,Khorasan,Africa, andPalestine.[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 experiencedculture shock in regions he visited where the local customs of recently converted peoples did not fit in with his orthodox Muslim background. Among theTurks andMongols, 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 theMaldives and somesub-Saharan regions in Africa, were too revealing.
Little is known about Ibn Battuta's life after completion of hisRihla in 1355. He was appointed a judge inMorocco and died in 1368 or 1369.[89]
Ibn Battuta's work was unknown outside theMuslim world until the beginning of the 19th century, when the German traveller-explorerUlrich Jasper Seetzen (1767–1811) acquired a collection of manuscripts in theMiddle East, among which was a 94-page volume containing an abridged version of Ibn Juzayy's text. Three extracts were published in 1818 by the German orientalistJohann Kosegarten.[90] A fourth extract was published the following year.[91] French scholars were alerted to the initial publication by a lengthy review published in theJournal de Savants by the orientalistSilvestre de Sacy.[92]
Three copies of another abridged manuscript were acquired by the Swiss travellerJohann Burckhardt and bequeathed to theUniversity of Cambridge. He gave a brief overview of their content in a book published posthumously in 1819.[93] TheArabic text was translated into English by the orientalistSamuel Lee and published in London in 1829.[94]
In the 1830s, during theFrench occupation of Algeria, theBibliothèque Nationale (BNF) inParis acquired five manuscripts of Ibn Battuta's travels, in which two were complete.[i] One manuscript containing just the second part of the work is dated 1356 and is believed to be Ibn Juzayy's autograph.[99] The BNF manuscripts were used in 1843 by the Irish-French orientalistBaron de Slane to produce a translation into French of Ibn Battuta's visit toSudan.[100] They were also studied by the French scholarsCharles Defrémery and Beniamino Sanguinetti. Beginning in 1853 they published a series of four volumes containing acritical edition of the Arabic text together with a translation into French.[101] 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.[j]
In 1929, exactly a century after the publication of Lee's translation, the historian and orientalistHamilton Gibb published an English translation of selected portions of Defrémery and Sanguinetti's Arabic text.[103] Gibb had proposed to theHakluyt Society in 1922 that he should prepare an annotated translation of the entireRihla into English.[104] 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.[105] Gibb died in 1971, having completed the first three volumes. The fourth volume was prepared by Charles Beckingham and published in 1994.[106] Defrémery and Sanguinetti's printed text has now been translated into number of other languages.[citation needed]
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.