Ibn Battuta (AD 1304–1368)

Ibn Battuta was the greatest medieval traveler and author of an extensive travel account. His full recorded name reflects his North African origin: Shams al-Din Abu ‘Abdallah Muhammad ibn ‘Abdallah al-Lawati al-Tanji. He was born in Tangier to a family of Islamic jurists and ended his days as a judge (qadi) in rural Morocco.

The story of his travels, which took place between 1325 and 1355, was dictated in Fez to the young court writer Ibn Juzayy (1321–1356) on the orders of the Marinid Sultan of Morocco Abu ‘Inan. Ibn Battuta traveled routes extending 3 times those of Marco Polo, but he mostly stayed within the countries under Muslim rule. He was not a learned geographer and made no claims to academic learning, but he was a keen observer of people, places, local cultures, and elites, and his narrative provides rich, vivid, and usually reliable information about the places visited, individuals encountered, and stories heard.

His odyssey started in 1325 with a pilgrimage to Mecca; however, he soon developed a passion for travel and sought new destinations and new routes. At the time of his journeys, Islam was undergoing a massive expansion in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Eurasia. Ibn Battuta's account, usually simply called The Rihla (Travels), offers unique glimpses into the process of expansion of the frontiers of the Dar al-Islam (Abode of Islam) in the mid 14th century. The full title of this book, an important and original example of the rihla genre of Arabic travel literature, is Tuhfat al-nuzzar fi ghara'ib al-amsar wa ‘aja'ib al-asfar (A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travels).

The chronology of Ibn Battuta's travels is not always clear; after completing his first pilgrimage, he continued to travel, mostly in Asia, spending many years in India and visiting Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and China before deciding in 1349 to return to Morocco. This was about the time of the Black Death epidemic, which carried away his mother and eventually himself. On state missions and on his own initiative, he then traveled again (in 1350 to Spain and in 1351–1355 to West Africa). By contemporary count, Ibn Battuta visited the equivalent of 44 countries. Staying either within the territories governed by the Muslim rulers or among the Muslim communities abroad in non-Islamic states, he pursued the company of religious teachers, pious sheikhs, and legists and gained most of his employment and patronage as a raconteur and an expert in the Maliki school of law, common in North Africa. He had an interest in mysticism and miracles and periodically returned to Mecca for repeat pilgrimages (sometimes to escape court intrigue and persecution).

Travel was fraught with danger, and Ibn Battuta suffered the hardships of weather, discomfort, shipwreck, piracy, and robbery. He was an unusually self-aware traveler, inquiring about [Page 1520]itineraries, transport, seasons, and schedules. Early on, he decided never to travel by the same road twice if he could help it and so observed the terrain, economy, and population from diverse routes. He traveled by camel, horse, mule, litter, wagon, and boat and never failed to describe the mode of transportation for himself, his companions, and his hosts. His encounters with queens and princesses provided occasional patronage and protection; he married and divorced the daughters of his learned friends and colleagues, or female relatives of patrons in the service. Such women often declined to accompany him on his journeys, and he resorted to the company of slave girls, purchased or presented to him. A devout Muslim who benefited from the expansionist jihad against non-Muslims, Ibn Battuta admired the piety and learning of some Muslim women (in Mecca and in India) and openly deplored others’ free socialization with men (in Africa) or refusal to cover up (in India and Africa). He was impressed with the high status of women among the Turks and Mongols and distressed by the Hindu custom of widow self-immolation (suttee or sati).

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