The Muslim world had grown so large that it was very hard for them to know all parts of their own lands, let alone the rest of the world. Around 1355, a Moroccan named Ibn Battuta dictated and published his travel notes, titled A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling (in short, “Travels,” Arabic Rihla). He had made three long journeys through the Muslim lands, reaching as far as Indonesia to the east and Mali to the southwest. He became the Marco Polo of the Arabic world.
For a long time, his book was not available to Europeans. It was only translated even partially into German in 1819, and English in 1829. (I’m working from the 1829 translation.) Since this was an era of expanding European horizons, too, there was great interest in his book. Like Marco Polo’s book, it existed in multiple versions that had been hand-copied and translated, so they had to compare texts and create one authoritative version, which came out in French in 1853. The final authoritative unabridged volume did not appear in English until 1994!
I’m going to take the time to tell his stories, since we’re coming to the end of the Middle Ages and these are the last close-up pictures of many places we’ve touched on.
Ibn Battuta’s journeys were originally conceived as pilgrimages; his first trip at age 21 was intended to be a Hajj. He did go to Mecca, perhaps more than once, and he may have stayed there for some time. But he also wanted to visit Muslim saints, living and dead. His readers wanted to hear about the holy men (sheikhs) and shrines, so that’s a lot of what he documented. Then, on every trip, some opportunity would present itself, and he’d go off on long, sometimes dangerous jaunts—-still managing to catch any available Muslim saints.
EAST AFRICA
Leaving North Africa, he traveled through Syria and Iraq, visiting many Shi’ite shrines to Ali and his family, and he saw many ruins caused, probably, by the Mongol invasions. Turning south, he toured Yemen and crossed into Africa. The highlight of his visit to Mogadishu was its strange food (roast plantains, pickled peppers, and green ginger) and fat people, each of whom ate “as much as a congregation.” Ibn Battuta claims to have seen “the island of Mombasa” and perhaps Zanzibar, but scholars doubt him: he probably just wrote what people told him. But if he even went around the Horn of Africa to Mogadishu, that’s pretty impressive.
Ibn Battuta returned through Yemen and wrote that he saw two great wonders in the town of Zafar: the people there fed fish to their sheep and goats (there was no grass); further they never injured anyone unless he hurt them first, a custom the North African traveler could scarcely believe. However, their town stank terribly and was filled with flies, on account of their sole food products, fish and dates. It’s details like this that give the work charm beyond the simple catalog of towns, sheikhs, and tombs.
Going toward the Indian Sea, Ibn Battuta saw the betel-nut and the coconut, both unfamiliar to westerners like himself. He was amazed at how many products were made from the coconut: rope, milk, “olive” oil, and honey. He also described the customs of Arab pearl-divers around Bahrain, noting that the Persian merchants gave 1/5 of the pearls to the king, but after they took their own cut, little was left and the actual divers, who risked their lives, lived in a state of chronic debt.
WESTERN CENTRAL ASIA
When he traveled through Anatolia among Turks, Ibn Battuta was shown a “stone that fell from heaven.” It was black and smooth, and so hard that four smiths hammering on it made no impression. In Konya, he heard a twisted version of the life of Rumi: This man was an esteemed teacher, they told him, but one day a candy-vendor sold him a piece that he ate in the classroom. Then he grew agitated and walked out. He was found wandering the countryside in a demented state, reciting Persian verses. Following him around, his students copied out the verses, and that’s how we got Rumi’s book Masnavi. It was all from candy laced with LSD or something. Um, yeah.
Ibn Battuta was generally treated like a high dignitary, close to royalty. He met the last Ilkhan of Persia, Abu Said Bahadur Khan, and also the King of the Golden Horde, Öz Beg (or Uzbek). Öz Beg’s Golden Horde territory in Russia fielded one of the largest armies of the time and left Ibn Battuta very impressed with his grandeur. Also, this Sultan’s wives went about unveiled! It was disturbing.
In Astrakhan and Sarai, the traveler heard tales about the “lands of darkness” where there was nothing but snow and people had to travel in sledges pulled by dogs, since other animals slipped on the ice. They described to him how there was a certain place forty days’ journey north, where a merchant could leave his trade goods overnight and the locals would take what they wanted, leaving furs in their place. The implication was that they never met the mysterious trappers. Ibn Battuta says wished to see this, and he did go as far north as the city of Bulghar on the Volga River; but scholars don’t believe him. He’d probably be more believable if he told some quirky detail he’d seen at Bulghar.
CONSTANTINOPLE
Then Ibn Battuta heard that King Öz Beg was planning a trip to Constantinople for one of his wives. She was the (illegitimate) daughter of Emperor Andronikos, and she kept begging to give birth to her baby back home in Constantinople with better medical care. Reluctantly, Öz Beg hired Ibn Battuta to lead her expedition, which gave him an expenses-paid trip to Constantinople.
Mrs. Öz Beg and Ibn Battuta began a three-week journey with a large retinue. At a halfway point, her escort changed from her husband’s Emir to her father’s General. Ibn Battuta was shocked to see that she stopped bothering with her traveling mosque, no more muezzin calls. She started drinking wine and even—if it can be believed—eating swine’s flesh! There was nothing the good Moroccan trip leader could do about it, since they were now trailed by 5000 Byzantine troops in armor. At their destination, he reported that the Byzantine Emperor asked him a lot of questions about the Holy Land and let him tour the city, including Hagia Sofia (from the outside; he could not go in without passing a big cross that he’d have to bow to). Mrs. Öz Beg now made it clear that she was not going back to Sarai with the baby. She sent the Turkish servants home, with Ibn Battuta again as leader.
CENTRAL ASIA AND NORTH INDIA
The traveler went on to Khwarezm, where he saw a watermelon: hard green shell, bright red inside, “perfectly sweet.” He said they cut it into oblongs and dried it, sending cases of dried melon as gifts for kings in China and India.
Traveling in 1333, Ibn Battuta heard stories about the “Tartar” conquest as though a century had not passed. He saw ruined cities still not rebuilt, including Bokhara and Balkh. They were still telling legends about Genghis Khan. But Balkh still had a Muslim saint’s tomb, so it was all good. Ibn Battuta crossed into Afghanistan, and over the Hindu Kush passes to India. Guides told him that the mountains’ name meant Hindu-killer, since slaves brought from India generally died. He met many hermits and saw many exotic fruits, which he happily described. Then he arrived in Delhi, the capital, and unfortunately he met the current Sultan, Mohammed bin Tugluk.
DELHI
That was a turning-point in his journey, because the Sultan appointed him to be the chief Islamic judge, the Qadi, in Delhi. He was stuck in this job for six years, and he found it frustrating. He had Maliki Sharia-law training among Hanafis, and he could not speak the language. Delhi’s court had limited influence, since it was a Muslim island in a Hindu sea. But he was a trophy for the Delhi Sultan: an Arabic-speaker, trained in Islamic law, from the other side of the Muslim world. He was a real celebrity and Mohammed bin Tugluk was not giving that up.
Delhi under Mohammed bin Tugluk was a sorry place. Like King Philip in France, the Sultan had decided to mix base metals into gold and silver coins without altering their face value. One result had been an eruption of counterfeiting, since now a half-copper coin was already in legal circulation. People lost trust in all coins and the economy collapsed. There were famines in northern India, and much of Delhi’s population fled. Ibn Battuta found a city with eerily vacant streets.
Worse, the Sultan had a terrible temper and no patience. There were many rebellions and attempted assassination, but he suspected even more, sometimes including Ibn Battuta. It was very dangerous. Ibn Battuta tells that he witnessed the execution of some would-be assassins: they were tossed and trampled by elephants who had been shod with sharp iron shoe-knives. Sometimes the victim was cut in pieces, sometimes flayed and then fed to dogs.
In Delhi, he witnessed miracles done by Yogis. They were not Muslims, of course, but the Sultan was on very good terms with them and asked them to demonstrate their powers. Ibn Battuta says that one yogi turned himself into a cube and floated in the air, which astonished him so much that he fainted and later suffered heart palpitations. After that demonstration, he believed whatever he heard about yogis who could take the shape of animals or kill someone with just a look. Battuta loved them anyway; they were holy men, object of his governing passion.
Ibn Battuta’s habit of visiting holy men in huts and caves was his near undoing. The Sultan suddenly mistrusted his favorite cave-living hermit; he arrested the sheikh and everyone who had visited him. Ibn Battuta waited for four days to know his sentence, fasting and repeating the Koran. In the end, he was the only person not executed. This narrow escape persuaded him that he had to leave Delhi.
SOUTH INDIA
He finally got away by leading a high-profile embassy to China, loaded down with extremely expensive and large gifts: 100 horses, 1oo Mamluks, 100 slave-girls, and a vast number of silk and jeweled garments. He set off with a very large party that included soldiers and Chinese officials. On the way to the western coast, to take ship from southern India, he met with some pretty bad setbacks.
In one city, there was a Hindu uprising against the Muslim rulers, and Ibn Battuta’s large, well-armed party joined the fray. Several key men were killed, and Battuta himself got lost for a week, captured then abandoned in the countryside. Somehow they pulled through all this and kept going, by land and sea.
Absolute disaster awaited him when he finally arrived at the Malabar Coast port where he was to sail for China. First, he saw that the largest ships in port were the Chinese junks that had woven-reed sails and looked, to him, like they were carrying whole towns on board. Second, they had to wait three months before anyone consider making shipping arrangements. Finally, when they started to board, even the huge junks appointed for them were not enough to fit the 100 slave-girls, so Ibn Battuta had to overnight on shore, waiting to see if another smaller ship could be sent. A storm blew into the harbor during the night. Several ships were smashed up against the shore, and sank; some Chinese and Indian officials drowned. The ship carrying most of the expensive gifts (including the horses and Mamluks?) disappeared, perhaps sailed out of port to avoid foundering. Ibn Battuta never saw any of it again, and just like that, his embassy had failed. He was terrified to go back to the unreasonable Sultan.
Ibn Battuta stayed on in southern India until Hindu revolts caught up with his host and he had to leave fast. All through India, this was the case: chronic local wars between “infidels” and Muslims. In places where some famous Muslim holy man had worked miracles, more had converted; and in some places they had reinforcements from the stronger outside Muslim world. In other places, the Hindus were stronger (and nearly always more numerous), and sometimes Muslim rulers bought peace with tribute to them. The pattern of religious conflict that continues today was already well-established.
His next stop was in the Maldives Islands, south of Sri Lanka. But the Muslim Sultan of the Maldives pressed him into service, again, as a Qadi. Think, though, about what you know about Moroccan Maliki Muslims, and what you know about the Buddhist-Hindu cultures of places like Sri Lanka and Indonesia. It was a really bad fit for Battuta: he had been shocked at the Golden Horde’s unveiled women, but these Indian women bared a lot of skin! He was supposed to make them into good Muslims? Sadly, they didn’t want to hear it. He lasted nearly a year and found a way to leave.
After leaving the Maldives, he traveled more in India because there were still more Muslim hermits to meet. One hermit made a huge impression by predicting the future in uncanny detail. He was wearing a goat-hair robe that Ibn Battuta admired, wishing it were his but saying nothing. The hermit immediately took it off and put it on Ibn Battuta, with a prediction: the robe was actually a gift for another holy man in China, but an infidel Indian king would take it from Ibn Battuta and give it to the holy man. When it all came true, Battuta was more astonished than ever. The last chapter of the goat’s hair coat, he said, happened in Khanbalik (Beijing)! There he met the new and final owner of the coat in a hermit’s cell.
EAST ASIA AND CHINA
Finally, he decided to go on to China. He sailed to Sumatra, where there was a coastal Muslim Sultanate. As he crossed the island to take another ship at an infidel port, he carefully observed all of the trees and shrubs famous in the west for their spices. Moroccans would want to know that the clove was the blossom on the nutmeg fruit, and that camphor only forms inside a reed if an animal is sacrificed at the roots.
Ships carried him mostly safely with a stopover in Vietnam, where he met a ruling princess who greeted him in Turkish, then to China. In every major Yuan Chinese city there was a community of Muslim traders. Ibn Battuta found people from Egypt and Persia; he stayed with them, visited their mosques, and of course inquired after their local holy men and tombs. He was up for visiting Buddhist hermits and touring all kinds of temples. Going north to Beijing, he presented himself as the ambassador of Delhi. It’s difficult to know exactly where Ibn Battuta went in China, because he transcribed place names that he heard in Arabic. Few of the places match with any modern city or even river names. In 1340, the Khan’s capital city was called Khanbalik by the Mongols and Dadu by the Chinese; it may have been called something else by the Muslim merchants.
Ibn Battuta was very surprised at some Chinese customs. Even in the 14th century, the Chinese were notable for their rich men dressing in simple colors, looking much like poor men. Their wealth was shown only in gold rings that specified their net worth. Further, the rich men dressed in cotton, because silk was so cheap that the poor could wear it. In a different vein, he got the shock of his life when he saw a portrait of himself hanging on a city wall. It had been drawn without his knowledge and served as a sort of hostage in case he broke some law, they could issue a Wanted poster. Personal property had to be accounted for to the smallest item: anything found on a ship that had not been listed in the ship’s manifest became the king’s. But there was no theft; merchants could travel anywhere with any sums and find no danger, because at each town, a magistrate made property lists and locked up foreigners overnight for safekeeping.
At Guangzhou (Canton), he met a 200 year old holy man who never ate, and who could make himself disappear. Everyone said he was a Muslim, but nobody saw him pray. Spooky! Hangzhou, the city of canals, was presented to him as the Emperor’s capital city. Ibn Battuta tells us that it was larger than any other city he’d seen on his travels. He got to see a magic show in which a boy climbed a rope hanging in mid-air, and was then cut to pieces with a knife and reassembled, perfectly alive. Ibn Battuta had heart palpitations, but his host, a Qadi (Islamic judge), whispered that nobody had been cut up, it was all just tricks.
His Chinese stories and names become tangled at this point: There was a short civil war, with the Khan’s death and burial. But the details better match the story of a high-ranking official, Bayan, who was replaced by his nephew in 1340. In any case, it became too dangerous to remain. A few years later, in 1351, a major rebellion would break out that would lead to the Mongol Yuan Dynasty’s replacement with the native-Chinese Ming Dynasty.
Ibn Battuta left in 1346. He saw Mecca again, and then went straight to Morocco. He managed to be in the Middle East in 1348, the heart of the plague season. However, perhaps he had been exposed to similar germs in other places—-he had been very sick any number of times, in his travels. He did not get the plague, and he got home to Fez.
WEST AFRICA
Ibn Battuta crossed part of the Sahara Desert and went to Sudan. He was shocked by the behavior of the sub-Saharan Africans and nearly packed up to leave. Black men frightened him; he felt they were hostile to “white men,” of whom he was one. He traveled along the Niger River in Mali, at one point meeting the great Mansa who controlled the gold market. After even minor kings had showered him with expensive gifts all over Asia, he was surprised that the Mansa gave him a simple meal and no more. He was even more shocked at the undress of the women: worse than in India, these girls went naked until they were married! And yet the society was very devout in their Muslim faith; every boy was forced to memorize the Koran.
In the Niger River, Ibn Battuta saw a hippopotamus herd. He thought at first they were elephants in size, but then they looked more like horses, only much larger. He was told they were “sea horses,” which is the literal meaning of their Greek name: river horses. Also in the Niger area, they warned him of cannibals who only ate black men, thinking men with paler skin were not ripe. The farthest south Ibn Battuta claims to have reached was the town we call Gao, which he knew as Kawkaw. Then he circled back up through Sijilmassa, and home.
FAMILY
Ibn Battuta had been traveling for 30 years. His parents had died while he was away, and he was now about 50. He probably married and fathered a few children in Fez. All through his travel notes, though, we hear of wives and children. Each time he stayed somewhere for more than a month, he took a concubine or married a local woman. In Delhi, his wife was related to the Sultan’s family; in the Maldive Islands, he also married into the king’s family. He may have married as many as four girls in the Maldives, all of them from the richest families. The king’s Vizier began to suspect him of plotting to overthrow the government, but he’d had his fill of drama in Delhi. He divorced all of the women except one who had given him a baby during his 9 months’ stay. He went back later to visit the child, leaving the mother with money. He had several more children, all left behind with their mothers when he moved on.