Ibn Battuta Reveals His World

IN THE year 1325, a young man set out from Tangier, Morocco, on the first of a number of journeys that would take him to some of the most distant parts of the then-known world, including China, India, Indonesia, Mali, Persia, Russia, Syria, Tanzania, Turkey, and all the Arab lands. The man was Abu Abdallah ibn Battuta, and he traveled some 75,000 miles (120,700 km)​—a feat unequaled before the age of steam.

Ibn Battuta has been called the traveler of Islam and the greatest traveler of premodern times. His memoirs, recorded on his final return home after nearly 30 years of travel, shed light on many facets of life and culture during the 14th century, especially in the medieval Muslim world.

Pilgrimage to Mecca

Ibn Battuta left Tangier to visit the holy places and to perform the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, which is required of every adult Muslim who is financially and physically able to travel. Mecca lies some 3,000 miles (4,800 km) east of Tangier. Like most pilgrims, for safety Ibn Battuta attached himself to caravans that would help him toward his destination.

Because his father was a qadi, or local judge, Ibn Battuta received a qadi’s education, the best Tangier could offer. Learning of this, his fellow travelers made him their judge to settle any disputes en route.

To Alexandria, Cairo, and the Upper Nile

The caravan followed the coast of North Africa to Egypt. Here, Ibn Battuta saw Alexandria’s famous lighthouse​—a wonder of the ancient world—​by then already partly in ruins. Cairo, he said, was “boundless in multitude of buildings, peerless in beauty and splendour, the meeting-place of comer and goer, the halting-place of feeble and mighty, whose throngs surge as the waves of the sea.” He greatly admired the boats, gardens, bazaars, religious establishments, and customs of this great city. As became his custom, in Egypt he sought and gained the patronage of clerics, scholars, and other influential people.

From Cairo he went up the Nile to Upper Egypt, along the way enjoying the hospitality of religious men, monasteries, and donation-supported hostels and colleges​—then common  in Muslim cities. His intention was to cross the desert to the Red Sea, sail to western Arabia, and then go to Medina, which was the home of the mosque of the prophet Muhammad, and on to Mecca. But war barred his way, so he returned to Cairo.

A Long Detour

Still determined to reach Medina and Mecca, Ibn Battuta went north to Gaza, then to Hebron, and then to the place believed to be the burial site of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. On his way to Jerusalem and its Dome of the Rock shrine, he stopped at Bethlehem, where he noted the veneration that professed Christians gave to Jesus’ birthplace.

Then Ibn Battuta went north to Damascus, where he studied with eminent Muslim scholars and obtained credentials certifying him as a teacher. The city’s Umayyad Mosque, he said, was the “most magnificent” in the world. Local bazaars sold jewelry, cloth, stationery, books, and glassware, while stalls of notaries public had “five or six witnesses in attendance and a person authorized by the qádí to perform marriage-ceremonies.” In fact, while in Damascus, Ibn Battuta got married. His bride, however, was just one of many wives and concubines who vanish from his story as quickly as they enter it.

In Damascus, Ibn Battuta joined other pilgrims bound for Mecca. Along the way, his group camped at a spring where water carriers used buffalo hides to make large cisterns, or tanks. From these, travelers watered their camels and filled their own waterskins before crossing the desert. Finally, he arrived in Mecca. This was the first of seven pilgrimages he made there. Most pilgrims went home after performing their rites. Not Ibn Battuta. He left for Baghdad “simply for the adventure of it,” says one biographer.

Globe-Trotting Begins in Earnest

In Baghdad, then the capital of Islam, Ibn Battuta was impressed by the public baths. “Each establishment has a large number of private bathrooms,” he noted, “every one of which has also a wash-basin in the corner, with two taps supplying hot and cold water.” Through the good offices of a friendly general, the young man gained an introduction to the sultan, Abu Sa’id. Ibn Battuta left that meeting with valuable gifts​—a horse, a ceremonial robe, and a letter of introduction requesting the governor of Baghdad to supply him with camels and provisions.

Ibn Battuta then sailed to the East African ports of Mogadishu, Mombasa, and Zanzibar before traveling on to Arabia and into the Persian Gulf. He later described the people, customs, and products he saw en route​—the hospitality extended to merchants in Somalia, betel-nut chewing and coconut cultivation in Yemen, and pearl diving in the Persian Gulf. He then took an extremely circuitous route to India​—traveling through Egypt, Syria, and Anatolia (Turkey); across the Black Sea; around the north of the Caspian Sea; and then down into what is today Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

From India to China

In India, Ibn Battuta served as qadi for the sultan of Delhi for eight years. Knowing Ibn Battuta’s love of travel, the sultan sent him as an ambassador to Togon-temür, the Mongolian emperor of China. On arrival, he was to convey a diplomatic gift consisting of “a hundred thoroughbred horses, a hundred white slaves, a hundred Hindu dancing- and singing-girls, twelve hundred pieces of various kinds of cloth, gold and silver candelabra and basins, brocade robes, caps, quivers, swords, gloves embroidered with pearls, and fifteen eunuchs.”

In the southern India port of Calicut, Ibn Battuta saw great merchant vessels called junks that plied the route he planned to take to China. The ships had as many as 12 sails, all made of plaited bamboo, and they had crews of up to 1,000​—600 sailors plus  400 men-at-arms. The sailors’ families lived aboard ship, where “they [cultivated] green stuffs, vegetables and ginger in wooden tanks,” said Ibn Battuta.

Shipwreck prevented Ibn Battuta from fulfilling his diplomatic mission to China. Instead, he took up service with a Muslim ruler in the Maldives and was the first to describe the local customs to the outside world. Eventually, he did enter China. Yet, along with all that he found agreeable there, he saw things that offended his religious sensibilities. The little he recorded of China leads some to doubt that he traveled as extensively there as he claims. Perhaps he reached only ports in southern China.

Sorrows on the Way Home

Back in Damascus, Ibn Battuta learned that a son he left there some 20 years earlier had been dead for 12 years and that his own father, who lived in Tangier, had been dead for 15. By now it was 1348, and the Black Death was ravaging the Middle East. In fact, Ibn Battuta reported that in Cairo 21,000 people were dying every day!

A year later, the 45-year-old traveler arrived in Morocco, only to find that his mother had died of the plague just months before. When he left, he was 21. Had 24 years of travel satisfied his craving for adventure? Evidently not, for he soon headed off to Spain. Three years later, he embarked on his last journey, which took him to the Niger River and Tombouctou (Timbuktu), a city in the African country now known as Mali.

Commissioned to Write His Memoirs

After learning of Ibn Battuta’s travels, the sultan of Fez, Morocco, ordered him to prepare a written account for the court’s pleasure and gave him a secretary, Ibn Juzayy. The finished work did not enjoy a wide circulation in Arabic, and translation into Western languages began only after the narrative was rediscovered by European scholars in the 19th century.

Ibn Juzayy describes the account as an abridgment of the traveler’s dictation, but the scribe evidently took some liberties with the narrative. Even so, the work offers unique insights into the life, commerce, customs, religion, and politics of the lands Ibn Battuta visited, especially those of the medieval Islamic world.

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A 13th-century illustration by al-Wasiti, showing medieval Islamic pilgrims on a hajj

[Credit Line]

Scala/​White Images/​Art Resource, NY

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The Catalan Atlas of 1375, showing a portion of the area traveled by Ibn Battuta

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Snark/​Art Resource, NY