Ibn Battūta, Abu ‘Abdallah

(1304–ca. 1377)

   Though less famous in the West than his predecessor MARCO POLO, Ibn Battūta is almost certainly the most inexhaustible traveler in the medieval world. In his Rihlah (Book of Travels) he narrates his 27-year trek of some 75,000 miles across Africa, the Middle East, Asia Minor, Central Asia, India, and into China. More than any other traveler in the premodern world, Ibn Battūta fulfilled the pledge he is said to have made to himself: That he would never travel the same road twice. Ibn Battūta was born in Tangier in Morocco in 1304.He was raised and educated in a family of legal scholars until, at age 21, he decided to fulfill one of the five pillars (spiritual requirements) of Islam and make his pilgrimage to Mecca.Moreover he hoped to further his education by studying with some of the eastern sages.He set out in 1325 and, after crossing North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, he arrived in the holy city ofMecca a year and a half later. His journey had apparently instilled in him a passion for travel, and from a base in Mecca, Ibn Battūta explored both coasts of the Red Sea and traveled down the East African coast as far south as modern-day Tanzania. He returned through the Persian Gulf and Oman, ultimately returning to Mecca by an overland caravan route that took him through central Arabia.

   His wanderlust undiminished, Battūta conceived (about 1330) a plan to visit the Muslim ruler of Delhi, and he set out on a new journey to India. But rather than traveling to Delhi directly, Battuta took ship for the Byzantine capital of Constantinople and then pressed on across Asia Minor, crossing the Black Sea and exploring the Crimea and some of Central Asia. He journeyed through the Asian steppes and Afghanistan, and finally arrived at Delhi in 1333. Here, making use of his legal education, Battūta served the sultan for eight years as a jurist, ultimately becoming the chief justice of Delhi. Then in 1341, the sultan chose Battuta to act as emissary to the Chinese emperor. Doubtlessly relishing this new opportunity for travel, Ibn Battūta started out for Beijing, but quickly suffered a setback when he was shipwrecked. Undeterred, Battuta visited Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and the Maldive Islands. From southern India he set out again for China, exploring Bengal, Burma, Sumatra, and Canton on the way to the Chinese city of Quonzhou (Zaytun) and, possibly, Beijing. In any case he then decided to make another pilgrimage to Mecca, where he returned in 1347. From here he finally made his return trip to Morocco, arriving home in 1349–24 years after he had left. Even after such a prodigious journey, however, Ibn Battūta was not content, and he was curious to see the celebrated Muslim culture of Andalusian Spain. In 1350, he visited Granada. In 1353, he took his final trip—a caravan across the Sahara to visit the Muslim empire of the Mandingos in Mali, in the area of the Niger River.

   It was apparently upon his return to Morocco in 1354 that the Marinid Sultan, Abu ’Inan, commissioned the Andalusian scribe Ibn Jazayy to help Battuta write his memoirs. Battuta dictated the story of his adventures to the young literary scholar, who completed his text in 1357. After that date Ibn Battūta fades into obscurity, probably acting as a judge in a town somewhere in Morocco. No one knows the details of his final years, but he is purported to have died in either 1368 or 1377. The story of Ibn Battūta’s travels was very popular in the Arab world, and was copied and reproduced regularly over the four centuries following its first appearance. In the 19th century, translations made the book popular in the West as well as in Japan and Iran. It is clear at times that Ibn Battūta, relying on his memory of events sometimes long past, occasionally embellishes or gets things muddled, and it is sometimes difficult to put his journeys into a proper chronological sequence. It is also clear that sometimes Ibn Jazayy uses his own imagination and may exaggerate certain accounts. Still Ibn Battūta’s record provides an invaluable historical source for everyday life in virtually every Muslim society in the 14th century, including everything from the Ottoman Empire to Muslim India to sub-Saharan Africa.

   Bibliography

   ■ Dunn, Ross. The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the 14th Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

   ■ Gibb, H. A. R., trans. The Travels of Ibn Battuta, A.D. 1325–1354. Cambridge: Published for the Hakluyt Society at the University Press, 1971.

   ■ Hamdun, Said, and Noel King. Ibn Battuta in Black Africa. Princeton N.J.: M.Wiener, 1994.