A Medieval Muslim Traveler Remembered
By Dr. Syed Amir
Bethesda, MD
Some seven centuries have passed since the celebrated medieval Muslim traveler, Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta embarked, at the age of 21, on an epic journey to perform Hajj in 1326. When he finally returned home to Tangier, Morocco, some twenty-five years later, he had travelled 75,000 miles, a distance greater than Marco Polo or any other traveler before him had ever covered. According to today’s world map, he visited close to 40 countries. His record remained unbroken until the advent of modern means of transportation. Ibn Battuta’s travelogue, Rihla, has remained a source of unique insights into the culture, religious and secular practices prevalent in the Islamic world in the late middle ages.
Interestingly, the book was not authored by him in the conventional sense, nor is it clear that he even intended to write it. Aware that Ibn Battuta had a remarkable story to tell, the Sultan of Morroco, Abu Inan Faris, commissioned one of his courtiers, a young Andalusian poet and scholar, Ibn Juzayy, to record Battuta’s reminiscence before they were lost. Ibn Juzayy spent almost two years documenting, compiling and refining the oral recollections of the illustrious traveler until they conformed to the literary style of the time. The project was completed in 1355, and even though Ibn Battuta lived for another thirteen years, nothing much is known about his later life.
For a long time, Ibn Battuta remained an unknown figure and the contents of Rihla inaccessible not only in the West, but to most of the Arab and Islamic world. However, with the publication of the abridged editions of his travelogue in English and German in the late eighteenth century, the fascinating details of his exotic journeys became more widely known. Since then, the book has been rendered into virtually every modern language and its contents studied and analyzed by scholars and academicians, and enjoyed by lay people.
In recent years, the recognition of Ibn Battuta’s contributions to world history has steadily grown. To commemorate the seventh century of his birth, a number of events were organized this year in the US. The International Astronomical Union named a crater in moon after him. In Washington, the famous Smithsonian Museum of Natural History sponsored several educational events in February and March to focus on his trip to Mecca. Among them was the showing of a movie, Journey to Mecca, in the footsteps of Ibn Battuta, on a giant screen.
The 40-minute film recreates life as it existed in 14th century Morocco and the Arab world. The museum, responding to the heightened interest in the subject, also sponsored a seminar and a panel discussion on the history and significance of Hajj.
Ibn Battuta set out on his remarkable journey at a felicitous time in the early fourteenth century, as a transformational phase in the history of Islamic world was underway. These countries were slowly emerging from under the dark shadow of decades of devastation and desolation wrought by Mongol invasions, and a period of renaissance, marked by fluoresce of scholarship, art and culture, was unfolding. Scholars, in search of knowledge, were travelling to famed centers of learning, Damascus, Medina and Mecca. Some, on returning home, would record their observations for the guidance of others. Rihla, thus, came to represent a new genre of literature, especially applied to accounts of the pilgrimage.
Unlike the fanatic extremism of the present-day Taliban, the fourteenth century was distinguished by universal religious tolerance in the Islamic world. Travelers like Ibn Battuta could freely move from one corner of what was described as the Darul Islam to the other, secure in the knowledge that they would receive shelter, protection and, not infrequently, rich rewards. Visitors from far off lands were rare, and their insight and wisdom was much prized by Muslim rulers and potentates. Ibn Battuta lived nearly nine years in Delhi, his longest stay anywhere, during the Sultanate of Mohammed bin Tughluq, whom he described when he first saw him as “tall, robust and white-skinned man, seated on a gold-plated throne.”
He provided meticulous eyewitness account of the daily life at the Sultan’s court, and detailed the magnificence of the royal parades and processions, as well as the harsh punishments meted out to those fallen out of royal favor. Although he was trained in the Maliki jurisprudence in his native Morocco, it did not prove any disadvantage in his quest for a position in Delhi. He was appointed a Qazi or judge to adjudicate cases in a city where the population overwhelmingly followed the Hanafi Fiqh. The appointment was mostly ceremonial, with nominal workload, especially as the official court language was Persian and Ibn Battuta had scant knowledge of it.
Rihla reveals little evidence that he had any significant contacts with the common folks in the realms he visited, confining himself to a close circle of scholars and the elite. However, Ibn Battuta was quite unhesitating about expressing his disapproval of those people and practices that he found deficient in some manner. While listening to the sermon at the Friday prayer in a Basra mosque, he was distressed that the Imam committed frightful errors of Arabic grammar. In the Maldives Island, where he briefly served as a judge, he strongly excoriated women for not covering their bodies as fully as he thought appropriate.
At a time when few people ventured outside their own towns, the travel stories in Rihla were treated with some skepticism by the contemporary learned men. Allama Ibn Khaldun, who never met Ibn Battuta, in his Muqaddimah expressed qualms about the veracity of its contents. It has been suggested that the account at places may be fictional. Recent attempts to evaluate their authenticity in the light of modern day knowledge have revealed some discrepancies in the chronology of events and description of places. Such dissonance, however, is not surprising, since there was a gap of many years between the time Ibn Battuta undertook the trips and recounted them to the chronicler. Nevertheless, all the scrutiny spanning seven centuries has not unearthed any discernable falsifications in Rihla.
