Ibn Battuta (February 25, 1304 – 1368 or 1369) was a
Moroccan Berber scholar and traveller who is known for the account of his travels and excursions called the
Rihla (Voyage). His journeys lasted for a period of nearly thirty years and covered almost the entirety of the known
Islamic world and beyond, extending from
North Africa,
West Africa,
Southern Europe and
Eastern Europe in the West, to the
Middle East,
Indian subcontinent,
Central Asia,
Southeast Asia and
China in the East, a distance readily surpassing that of his predecessors and his near-contemporary
Marco Polo.
Early life and his first Hajj
A 13th century book illustration produced in Baghdad by
al-Wasiti showing a group of pilgrims on a
hajj.
All that is known about Ibn Battuta's life comes from the autobiographical information included in the account of his travels. Ibn Battuta was born into a family of
Islamic
legal scholars in
Tangier, Morocco, on February 25, 1304 during the time of the
Marinid dynasty.
As a young man he would have studied the
Sunni Maliki "school" of
Muslim law which was dominant in North Africa at the time. In June 1325, when he was twenty one years old, Ibn Battuta set off from his hometown on a
hajj (pilgrimage) to
Mecca, a journey that would take 16 months, but he would not see Morocco again for 24 years.
His journey to Mecca was by land, and followed the North African coast crossing the sultanates of
Abd al-Wadid and
Hafsid. His route passed through
Tlemcen,
Béjaïa and then to
Tunis where he stayed for two months. As there was always a risk of being attacked, he usually chose to travel as part of a
caravan. In
Sfax, Ibn Battuta got married for the first of several occasions on his journeys.
In the early spring of 1326, after a journey of over , he arrived to the port of
Alexandria, then part of the
Bahri Mamluk empire. He spent several weeks visiting the sites and then headed inland to
Cairo, a large important city and capital of the
Mamluk kingdom, where he stayed for about a month. Within Mamluk territory, travelling was relatively safe and he embarked on the first of his many detours. Three commonly used routes existed to Mecca, and Ibn Battuta chose the least-travelled: a journey up the
Nile, then east by land to the
Red Sea port of
Aydhab. However, upon approaching the town he was forced to turn back due to a local rebellion.
Returning to Cairo, he took a second side trip, to
Damascus (then controlled by the Mamluks), having encountered a holy man during his first trip who prophesied that Ibn Battuta would only reach Mecca after a journey through
Syria. An additional advantage to the side journey was that other holy places were along the route—
Hebron,
Jerusalem, and
Bethlehem, for example—and the Mamluk authorities put special effort into keeping the journey safe for pilgrims.
After spending the
Muslim month of
Ramadan in Damascus, Ibn Battuta joined up with a caravan traveling the from Damascus to
Medina, burial place of the
Islamic prophet Muhammad. After four days, he journeyed on to Mecca. There he completed the usual rituals of a Muslim
pilgrim, and having graduated to the status of
al-Hajji as a result, now faced his return home. Upon reflection, he decided to continue journeying instead. His next destination was the
Ilkhanate in modern-day
Iraq and
Iran.
Iraq and Persia
On 17 November 1326, after a month in Mecca, Ibn Battuta joined a large caravan of pilgrims returning across the
Arabian Peninsula to
Mesopotamia. The caravan first went north to
Medina and then, travelling at night, headed northeastwards across the
Nejd plateau to
Najaf, a journey lasting approximately 44 days. In Najaf he visited the mausoleum of
Ali (Ali ibn Abi Talib), the fourth
Rashidun (rightly guided
Caliph), and son-in-law of Muhammad, a site venerated particularly by the
Shi’a community.
At this point, instead of continuing on to
Baghdad with the caravan, Ibn Battuta started a 6 month detour that took him into Persia. From Najaf he journeyed to
Wasit and then south following the
Tigris to
Basra. His next destination was the town of
Esfahān across the
Zagros Mountains in Persia. From there he headed south to
Shiraz, a large flourishing city which had been spared the destruction wrought by the
Mongol invasion on many more northerly towns. Finally, he headed back across the mountains to Baghdad arriving there in June 1327. Parts of the city were in ruins as it had been heavily damaged by the army of
Hulagu Khan.
In Baghdad he found that
Abu Sa'id, the last
Mongol ruler of the unified
Ilkhanid state was leaving the city and heading north with a large retinue. Ibn Battuta travelled with the royal caravan for a while, then turned north to
Tabriz on the
Silk Road. It had been the first major city in the region to open its gates to the Mongols and had become an important trading centre after most of its nearby rivals were razed.
On returning again to Baghdad, probably in July, he took an excursion northwards following the Tigris, visiting
Mosul, then
Cizre and
Mardin, both in modern
Turkey. On returning to Mosul he joined a "feeder" caravan of pilgrims heading south for Baghdad where they met up with the main caravan that crossed the
Arabian Desert to Mecca. Ibn Battuta was ill with diarrhea on this crossing and arrived back in Mecca weak and exhausted for his second
hajj.
East Africa
Ibn Battuta then stayed for some time in Mecca. He suggests in the
Rihla that he remained in the town for three years: from September 1327 until autumn 1330. However, because of problems with the chronology, commentators have suggested that he may have spent only one year and left after the
hajj of 1328.
Leaving Mecca after the
hajj in 1328 (or 1330) he made his way to the port of
Jeddah on the coast of the Red Sea and from there caught a series of boats down the coast. His progress was slow as the vessels had to beat against the south easterly winds. Arriving in the
Yemen he visited
Zabīd, and then the highland town of
Ta'izz where he met the
Rasulid Malik (king)
Mujahid Nur al-Din Ali. Ibn Battuta also mentions visiting
Sana'a, but whether he actually did is doubtful. It is more likely that he went directly from Ta'izz to the port of
Aden, arriving at around the beginning of 1329 (or 1331). Aden was an important transit centre in the
trade between
India and
Europe.
In Aden, he embarked on a ship heading first to
Zeila on the African shore of the
Gulf of Aden and then on around
Cape Guardafui and down the East African coast. Spending about a week in each of his destinations, he visited
Mogadishu,
Mombasa,
Zanzibar, and
Kilwa, among others. With the change of the
monsoon, he returned by ship to Arabia and visited
Oman and the
Strait of Hormuz. He then returned to Mecca for the
hajj of 1330 (or 1332).
Byzantine Empire, Golden Horde, Anatolia, Central Asia and India
After spending another year in Mecca, Ibn Battuta resolved to seek employment with the Muslim
Sultan of Delhi,
Muhammad bin Tughluq. Needing a guide and translator for his journey, he set off in 1330 (or 1332) to
Anatolia, then under the control of the
Seljuqs, to join up with one of the caravans that went from there to India. A sea voyage from Damascus on a
Genoese ship landed him in
Alanya on the southern coast of modern-day Turkey. From Alanya he traveled by land to
Konya and then to
Sinope on the
Black Sea coast.
Crossing the Black Sea, Ibn Battuta landed in Caffa (now
Feodosiya), in the Crimea, and entered the lands of the
Golden Horde. He bought a wagon and fortuitously was able to join the caravan of
Ozbeg, the Golden Horde's
Khan, on a journey as far as
Astrakhan on the
Volga River.
Upon reaching Astrakhan, the Khan allowed one of his pregnant wives,
Princess Bayalun, supposedly an illegitimate daughter of
Byzantine Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos, to return to her home city of
Constantinople to give birth. Ibn Battuta talked his way into this expedition, his first beyond the boundaries of the Islamic world.
Arriving in Constantinople towards the end of 1332 (or 1334), he met the
Byzantine emperor
Andronikos III Palaiologos and saw the outside of the great church of
Hagia Sophia. After a month in the city, he retraced his route to Astrakhan, then continued past the
Caspian and
Aral Seas to
Bukhara and
Samarkand. From there, he journeyed south to
Afghanistan, the mountain passes of which he used to cross into India.
The
Delhi Sultanate was a new addition to
Dar al-Islam, and Sultan
Muhammad bin Tughluq had resolved to import as many Muslim scholars and other functionaries as possible to consolidate his rule. On the strength of his years of study while in Mecca, Ibn Battuta was employed as a
qadi ("judge") by the sultan.
Tughlaq was erratic even by the standards of the time, and Ibn Battuta veered between living the high life of a trusted subordinate, and being under suspicion for a variety of treasons against the government. Eventually he resolved to leave on the pretext of taking another
hajj, but the Sultan asked him to become his ambassador to
Yuan Dynasty China. Given the opportunity to both get away from the Sultan and visit new lands, Ibn Battuta took the opportunity.
Southeast Asia and China
En route to the coast, he and his party were attacked by
Hindus, and, separated from the others, he was robbed and nearly lost his life. Nevertheless, he managed to catch up with his group within two days and continued the journey to
Khambhat (Cambay). From there, they sailed to
Kozhikode (Calicut) (two centuries later,
Vasco da Gama also landed at the same place). However, while Ibn Battuta visited a
mosque on shore, a storm came up, and two of the ships of his expedition were sunk. The third then sailed away without him and ended up seized by a local king in
Sumatra a few months later.
Fearful of returning to Delhi as a failure, he stayed for a time in the south of India under the protection of Jamal-ud-Din. Jamal-ud-Din was ruler of a small but powerful
Nawayath sultanate on the banks of the
Sharavathi River on the
Arabian Sea coast. This place is presently known as Hosapattana and is located in the
Honavar tehsil of
Uttara Kannada district. When the sultanate was overthrown, it became necessary for Ibn Battuta to leave India altogether. He resolved to carry on to China, with a detour near the beginning of the journey to the
Maldives.
He spent nine months in the Maldive Islands, much longer than he had intended. As a
qadi, his skills were highly desirable in these formerly
Buddhist islands that had been recently
converted to Islam, and he was half-bribed, half-kidnapped into staying. Appointed chief judge and marrying into the royal family of
Omar I, he became embroiled in local politics and ended up leaving after wearing out his welcome by imposing strict judgments in the laissez-faire island kingdom. In the
Rihla he mentions his dismay at the local women going about with no clothing above the waist, and remarking his criticism of this practice, but being ignored by the locals. From there, he carried on to
Sri Lanka for a visit to
Adam's Peak (Sri Pada).
Setting sail from Sri Lanka, his ship nearly sank in a storm, then the ship that rescued him was attacked by pirates. Stranded on shore, Ibn Battuta once again worked his way back to Kozhikode, from where he then sailed to the Maldives again before getting on board a Chinese
junk and trying once again to get to
Yuan Dynasty China.
This time he succeeded, reaching in quick succession
Chittagong, Sumatra,
Vietnam, the
Philippines and then finally
Quanzhou in
Fujian Province, China. From there, he went north to
Hangzhou, not far from modern-day
Shanghai. He is also reported to have traveled even further north, through the
Grand Canal to
Beijing, although there has been some doubt about whether this actually occurred.
Return home and the Black Death
Returning to Quanzhou, Ibn Battuta decided to return home to Morocco. Returning to Kozhikode once again, he considered throwing himself at the mercy of Muhammed Tughlaq but thought better of it and decided to carry on to Mecca. Returning via Hormuz and the Ilkhanate, he saw that the state had dissolved into civil war with Abu Sa'id having died since his previous trip there.
Returning to Damascus with the intention of retracing the route of his first
hajj, he learned that his father had died. Death was the theme of the next year or so, for the
Black Death had begun, and Ibn Battuta was on hand as it spread through Syria,
Palestine, and Arabia. After reaching Mecca, he decided to return to Morocco, nearly a quarter century after leaving it. During the trip he made one last detour to
Sardinia, then returned to Tangier to discover that his mother had also died, a few months before.
Andalus and North Africa
After a few days in Tangier, Ibn Battuta set out for a trip to
al-Andalus—Muslim
Iberia.
Alfonso XI of Castile and León was threatening the conquest of
Gibraltar, and Ibn Battuta joined up with a group of Muslims leaving Tangier with the intention of defending the port. By the time he arrived, the Black Death had killed Alfonso, and the threat had receded, so Ibn Battuta decided to visit for pleasure instead. He travelled through
Valencia and ended up in
Granada.
Leaving al-Andalus, he decided to travel through one of the few parts of the Muslim world that he had never explored: Morocco. On his return home, he stopped for a while in
Marrakech, which was nearly a ghost town after the recent plague and the transfer of the capital to
Fez.
Once more he returned to Tangier, and once more he moved on. Two years before his own first visit to Cairo, the
Malian
Mansa (king of kings)
Musa had passed through the same city on his own
hajj and had caused a sensation with his extravagant riches—West Africa contained vast quantities of gold, previously unknown to the rest of the world. While Ibn Battuta never mentions this specifically, hearing of this during his own trip must have planted a seed in his mind, for he decided to set out and visit the Muslim kingdom on the far side of the
Sahara desert.
The Sahara Desert to Mali and Timbuktu
A 13th century book illustration produced in Baghdad by
al-Wasiti showing a slave-market in the town of
Zabid in
Yemen.
In the autumn of 1351, Ibn Battuta set out from Fes, reaching the Moroccan town of
Sijilmasa a bit more than a week later. There he bought some
camels and stayed for four months. He set out again with a caravan in February 1352 and after 25 days, arrived at the settlement of
Taghaza which was situated in a dry
salt lake bed. The buildings were constructed from slabs of salt by
slaves of the Massufa tribe, who cut the salt in thick slabs for
transport by camel. Taghaza was a profitable commercial center and awash with
Malian gold, though Ibn Battuta did not have a favorable impression of the place: the water was brackish and the place was plagued with flies.
A long and difficult journey lay ahead, requiring special advance guides or
takshif with local experience to arrange a passage. When the
takshif became lost, the entire caravan could disappear without a trace. Traversing the open wastes of the Sahara was therefore terrifying to many travelers, and Ibn Battuta noted the difficulty of navigating without landmarks, writing that there was "no visible road or track in these parts, nothing but sand blown here and there by the wind." After another harrowing through the worst part of the desert, Ibn Battuta finally arrived at the
oasis town of Iwalatan (
Oualata), the southern terminus of the
trans-Saharan trade route, which had recently become part of the Mali Empire.
From there, he traveled southwest along a river he believed to be the Nile (it was actually the
Niger River) until he reached the capital of the Mali Empire. There he met
Mansa Suleyman, king since 1341. Dubious about the miserly hospitality of the king, he nevertheless stayed for eight months. Ibn Battuta disapproved that female slaves, servants and even the daughters of the sultan went about stark naked. He left the capital in February and journeyed overland by camel to
Timbuktu. Though in the next two centuries it would become the most important city in the region, at the time it was small and unimpressive, and Ibn Battuta soon moved on by boat to
Gao where he spent a month. While at the oasis of
Takedda on his journey back 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 black female slaves. He arrived back in Morocco early in 1354.
The Rihla
After returning home from his travels in 1354 and at the instigation of the Sultan of Morocco,
Abu Inan Faris, Ibn Battuta dictated an
account of his journeys to
Ibn Juzayy, a scholar whom he had met previously in Granada. The account, recorded by Ibn Juzayy and interspersed with the latter's own comments, is the only source of information on his adventures. The title of the manuscript تحفة النظار في غرائب الأمصار وعجائب الأسفار may be translated as
A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling but is often simply referred to as the
Rihla الرحلة, or "The Journey".
There is no indication that Ibn Battuta made any notes during his 29 years of travelling, so, when he came to dictate an account of his adventures, he had to rely on his memory and to make use of manuscripts produced by earlier travelers. When describing Damascus, Mecca, Medina and some other places in the Middle East, Ibn Juzayy clearly copied passages from the 12th century account by
Ibn Jubayr. Similarly, most of Ibn Juzayy’s descriptions of places in Palestine were copied from an account by the 13th century traveller
Muhammad al-Abdari.
House in the Medina of
Tangier perhaps lodging Ibn Battuta's grave
Western
Orientalists do not believe that Ibn Battuta visited all the places that he described and argue that in order to provide a comprehensive description of places in the Muslim world Ibn Battuta relied on hearsay evidence and made 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 and there are serious doubts about a number of other journeys such as his trip to Sana'a in Yemen, his journey from
Balkh to
Bistam in
Khorasan and his trip around Anatolia. Some orientalists have also questioned whether he really visited China. Nevertheless, whilst apparently fictional in places, the
Rihla provides an important account of many areas of the world in the 14th century.
Ibn Battuta often experienced
culture shock in regions he visited where local customs of recently converted peoples did not fit his orthodox Muslim background. Among Turks and Mongols, he was astonished at the way women behaved, (he remarked that on seeing a Turkish couple, and noting the woman's freedom of speech, he had assumed that the man was the woman's servant, but he was in fact her husband) and he felt that dress customs in the Maldives, and some
sub-Saharan regions in Africa, were too revealing.
After the completion of the
Rihla in 1355, little is known about Ibn Battuta's life. He was appointed a judge in Morocco and died in 1368 or 1369.
For centuries his book was obscure, even within the Muslim world, but in the early 1800s extracts were published in German and English based on manuscripts discovered in the Middle East containing abridged versions of Ibn Juzayy’s
Arabic text. When French forces occupied
Algeria in the 1830’s they discovered five manuscripts in
Constantine including two that contained more complete versions of the text. These manuscripts were brought back to the
Bibliothèque Nationale in
Paris and studied by the French scholars, Charles Defrémery and Beniamino Sanguinetti. Beginning in 1853, they published a series of four volumes containing the Arabic text, extensive notes and a translation into French. Defrémery and Sanguinetti’s printed text has now been translated into many other languages. Ibn Battuta has grown in fame and is now a well-known figure.
Places visited by Ibn Battuta
Ibn Battuta travelled almost 75,000 miles in his lifetime. Here is a list of places he visited.
MoroccoAlgeriaTunisia- Tunis - At that time, Abu Yahya (son of Abu Zajaria) was the sultan of Tunis.
EgyptSyriaArabian Peninsula- Jeddah - A major port for pilgrims to Mecca.
- Mecca - The original plan of his journey was to pilgrimage to Mecca.
- Rabigh - Small city north of Jeddah on the Red Sea.
Turkey and Eastern EuropeLibyaPakistan and Central AsiaIndiaBangladeshOther places in Asia- Brahmaputra River - Ibn Battuta visited the area on his way to China. This place is in Bangladesh.
- Philippines - Ibn Battuta visited the Kingdom of Sultan Tawalisi, arguably Tawi-Tawi, the country's southernmost province.
China- Quanzhou - as he called in his book the city of donkeys
- Hangzhou — Ibn Battuta referred to this city in his book as "Madinat Alkhansa" مدينة الخنساء. He also mentioned that it was the largest city in the world at that time; it took him three days to walk across the city, which is huge even by today's standards.
- Beijing - Ibn Battuta mentioned in his journey to Beijing how neat the city was.
SomaliaEast AfricaMaliMauritaniaDuring most of his journey in the Mali Empire, Ibn Battuta traveled with a retinue that included slaves, most of whom carried goods for trade but would also be traded as slaves. On the return from Takedda to Morocco, his caravan transported 600 female slaves, suggesting that slavery was a substantial part of the commercial activity of the empire.
See also
- Xuanzang, Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator, who traveled around the same region of the Silk Road and India.
