Maghrebi traveller and scholar (1304–1368/1369)
For other uses, see Ibn Battuta (disambiguation).
Ibn Battuta (; 24 February 1304 – 1368/1369),[a] was a Maghrebi traveller, explorer and scholar.[7] Over a period of thirty years from 1325 to 1354, Ibn Battuta visited much of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Iberian Peninsula. Near the end of his life, he dictated an account of his journeys, titled A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling, but commonly known as The Rihla.
Ibn Battuta travelled more than any other explorer in pre-modern history, totalling around 117,000 km (73,000 mi), surpassing Zheng He with about 50,000 km (31,000 mi) and Marco Polo with 24,000 km (15,000 mi).[8][10]
"Ibn Battuta" is a patronymic, literally meaning 'son of the duckling'.[11] His most common full name is given as AbuAbdullahMuhammad ibn Battuta.[12] In his travelogue, The Rihla, he gives his full name as "Shams al-Din Abu’Abdallah Muhammad ibn’Abdallah ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Yusuf Lawati al-Tanji ibn Battuta".[13][14][15]
All that is known about Ibn Battuta's life comes from the autobiographical information included in the account of his travels, which records that he was of Berber descent, born into a family of Islamic legal scholars (known as qadis in the Muslim traditions of Morocco) in Tangier on 24 February 1304, during the reign of the Marinid dynasty.[16] His family belonged to a Berber tribe clan known as the Lawata.[17] As a young man, he would have studied at a SunniMaliki school, the dominant form of education in North Africa at that time.[18] Maliki Muslims requested that Ibn Battuta serve as their religious judge, as he was from an area where it was practised.[19]
On 2 Rajab 725 AH (14 June 1325 AD), Ibn Battuta set off from his home town at the age of 21 to perform a hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, a journey that would ordinarily take sixteen months. He was eager to learn more about far-away lands and craved adventure. He would not return to Morocco again for 24 years.
I set out alone, having neither fellow-traveler in whose companionship I might find cheer, nor caravan whose part I might join, but swayed by an overmastering impulse within me and a desire long-cherished in my bosom to visit these illustrious sanctuaries. So I braced my resolution to quit my dear ones, female and male, and forsook my home as birds forsake their nests. My parents being yet in the bonds of life, it weighed sorely upon me to part from them, and both they and I were afflicted with sorrow at this separation.[21]
He travelled to Mecca overland, following the North African coast across the sultanates of Abd al-Wadid and Hafsid. The route took him through Tlemcen, Béjaïa, and then Tunis, where he stayed for two months.[22] For safety, Ibn Battuta usually joined a caravan to reduce the risk of being robbed. He took a bride in the town of Sfax,[23] but soon left her due to a dispute with the father. That was the first in a series of marriages that would feature in his travels.[24]
In the early spring of 1326, after a journey of over 3,500 km (2,200 mi), Ibn Battuta arrived at the port of Alexandria, at the time part of the Bahri Mamluk empire. He met two ascetic pious men in Alexandria. One was Sheikh Burhanuddin, who is supposed to have foretold the destiny of Ibn Battuta as a world traveller and told him, "It seems to me that you are fond of foreign travel. You must visit my brother Fariduddin in India, Rukonuddin in Sind, and Burhanuddin in China. Convey my greetings to them." Another pious man, Sheikh Murshidi, interpreted a dream of Ibn Battuta as being that he was meant to be a world traveller.[25][26]
He spent several weeks visiting sites in the area, and then headed inland to Cairo, the capital of the Mamluk Sultanate. After spending about a month in Cairo,[27] he embarked on the first of many detours within the relative safety of Mamluk territory. Of the three usual routes to Mecca, Ibn Battuta chose the least-traveled, which involved a journey up the Nile valley, then east to the Red Sea port of ʿAydhab.[b] Upon approaching the town, however, a local rebellion forced him to turn back.[29]
Ibn Battuta returned to Cairo and took a second side trip, this time to Mamluk-controlled Damascus. During his first trip he had encountered a holy man who prophesied that he would only reach Mecca by travelling through Syria.[30] The diversion held an added advantage; because of the holy places that lay along the way, including Hebron, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem, the Mamluk authorities kept the route safe for pilgrims. Without this help many travellers would be robbed and murdered.[c]
After spending the Muslim month of Ramadan, during August,[36] in Damascus, he joined a caravan travelling the 1,300 km (810 mi) south to Medina, site of the Mosque of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. After four days in the town, he journeyed on to Mecca while visiting holy sites along the way; upon his arrival to Mecca he completed his first pilgrimage, in November, and he took the honorific status of El-Hajji. Rather than returning home, Ibn Battuta decided to continue travelling, choosing as his next destination the Ilkhanate, a MongolKhanate, to the northeast.
On 17 November 1326, following a month spent in Mecca, Ibn Battuta joined a large caravan of pilgrims returning to Iraq across the Arabian Peninsula.[38] The group headed north to Medina and then, travelling at night, turned northeast across the Najd plateau to Najaf, on a journey that lasted about two weeks. In Najaf, he visited the mausoleum of Ali, the Fourth Caliph.[39]
Then, instead of continuing to Baghdad with the caravan, Ibn Battuta started a six-month detour that took him into Iran. From Najaf, he journeyed to Wasit, then followed the river Tigris south to Basra. His next destination was the town of Isfahan across the Zagros Mountains in Iran. He then headed south to Shiraz, a large, flourishing city spared the destruction wrought by Mongol invaders on many more northerly towns. Finally, he returned across the mountains to Baghdad, arriving there in June 1327.[40] Parts of the city were still ruined from the damage inflicted by Hulagu Khan's invading army in 1258.
In Baghdad, he found Abu Sa'id, the last Mongol ruler of the unified Ilkhanate, leaving the city and heading north with a large retinue.[42] Ibn Battuta joined the royal caravan for a while, then turned north on the Silk Road to Tabriz, the first major city in the region to open its gates to the Mongols and by then an important trading centre as most of its nearby rivals had been razed by the Mongol invaders.[43]
Ibn Battuta left again for Baghdad, probably in July, but first took an excursion northwards along the river Tigris. He visited Mosul, where he was the guest of the Ilkhanate governor, and then the towns of Cizre (Jazirat ibn 'Umar) and Mardin in modern-day Turkey. At a hermitage on a mountain near Sinjar, he met a Kurdish mystic who gave him some silver coins.[d][47] Once back in Mosul, he joined a "feeder" caravan of pilgrims heading south to Baghdad, where they would meet up with the main caravan that crossed the Arabian Desert to Mecca. Ill with diarrhoea, he arrived in the city weak and exhausted for his second hajj.[48]
Ibn Battuta remained in Mecca for some time (the Rihla suggests about three years, from September 1327 until autumn 1330). Problems with chronology, however, lead commentators to suggest that he may have left after the 1328 hajj.[e]
After the hajj in either 1328 or 1330, he made his way to the port of Jeddah on the Red Sea coast. From there he followed the coast in a series of boats (known as a jalbah, these were small craft made of wooden planks sewn together, lacking an established phrase) making slow progress against the prevailing south-easterly winds. Once in Yemen he visited Zabīd and later the highland town of Ta'izz, where he met the Rasulid dynasty king (Malik) Mujahid Nur al-Din Ali. Ibn Battuta also mentions visiting Sana'a, but whether he actually did so is doubtful.[49] In all likelihood, he went directly from Ta'izz to the important trading port of Aden, arriving around the beginning of 1329 or 1331.[50]
From Aden, Ibn Battuta embarked on a ship heading for Zeila on the coast of Somalia. He then moved on to Cape Guardafui further down the Somali seaboard, spending about a week in each location. Later he would visit Mogadishu, the then pre-eminent city of the "Land of the Berbers" (بلد البربر Balad al-Barbar, the medieval Arabic term for the Horn of Africa).[51][52][53]
When Ibn Battuta arrived in 1332, Mogadishu stood at the zenith of its prosperity. He described it as "an exceedingly large city" with many rich merchants, noted for its high-quality fabric that was exported to other countries, including Egypt.[54] Battuta added that the city was ruled by a Somali sultan, Abu Bakr ibn Shaikh 'Umar.[55][56] He noted that Sultan Abu Bakr had dark skin complexion and spoke in his native tongue (Somali), but was also fluent in Arabic.[57][56][58] The Sultan also had a retinue of wazirs (ministers), legal experts, commanders, royal eunuchs, and other officials at his beck and call.[56]
Ibn Battuta continued by ship south to the Swahili coast, a region then known in Arabic as the Bilad al-Zanj ("Land of the Zanj")[59] with an overnight stop at the island town of Mombasa.[60] Although relatively small at the time, Mombasa would become important in the following century.[61] After a journey along the coast, Ibn Battuta next arrived in the island town of Kilwa in present-day Tanzania,[62] which had become an important transit centre of the gold trade.[63] He described the city as "one of the finest and most beautifully built towns; all the buildings are of wood, and the houses are roofed with dīs reeds".[64]
Ibn Battuta recorded his visit to the Kilwa Sultanate in 1330, and commented favourably on the humility and religion of its ruler, Sultan al-Hasan ibn Sulaiman, a descendant of the legendary Ali ibn al-Hassan Shirazi. He further wrote that the authority of the Sultan extended from Malindi in the north to Inhambane in the south and was particularly impressed by the planning of the city, believing it to be the reason for Kilwa's success along the coast. During this period, he described the construction of the Palace of Husuni Kubwa and a significant extension to the Great Mosque of Kilwa, which was made of coral stones and was the largest mosque of its kind. With a change in the monsoon winds, Ibn Battuta sailed back to Arabia, first to Oman and the Strait of Hormuz then on to Mecca for the hajj of 1330 (or 1332).[65]
After his third pilgrimage to Mecca, Ibn Battuta decided to seek employment with the Sultan of Delhi, Muhammad bin Tughluq. In the autumn of 1330 (or 1332), he set off for the Seljuk controlled territory of Anatolia to take an overland route to India. He crossed the Red Sea and the Eastern Desert to reach the Nile valley and then headed north to Cairo. From there he crossed the Sinai Peninsula to Palestine and then travelled north again through some of the towns that he had visited in 1326. From the Syrian port of Latakia, a Genoese ship took him (and his companions) to Alanya on the southern coast of modern-day Turkey.
He then journeyed westwards along the coast to the port of Antalya.