Ibn Battuta

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Introduction to Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325-1354

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SOURCE: Gibb, H. A. R. Introduction to Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325-1354, translated and selected by Robert M. McBride, pp. 1-42. New York: Robert M. McBride and Company, 1929.

[In the following excerpt, Gibb describes Ibn Battuta's travels and discusses the value of his work.]

1. IBN BATTúTA AND HIS WORK

To the world of today the men of medieval Christendom already seem remote and unfamiliar. Their names and deeds are recorded in our history-books, their monuments still adorn our cities, but our kinship with them is a thing unreal, which costs an effort of the imagination. How much more must this apply to the great Islamic civilization, that stood over against medieval Europe, menacing its existence and yet linked to it by a hundred ties that even war and fear could not sever. Its monuments too abide, for those who may have the fortune to visit them, but its men and manners are to most of us utterly unknown, or dimly conceived in the romantic image of the Arabian Nights. Even for the specialist it is difficult to reconstruct their lives and see them as they were. Histories and biographies there are in quantity, but the historians, for all their picturesque details, seldom show the ability to select the essential and to give their figures that touch of the intimate which makes them live again for the reader. It is in this faculty that Ibn Battúta excels. Of the multitudes that crowd upon the stage in the pageant of medieval Islam there is no figure more instinct with life than his. In his book he not only lays before us a faithful portrait of himself, with all his virtues and his failings, but evokes a whole age as it were from the dead. These travels have been ransacked by historians and geographers, but no estimate of his work is even faintly satisfactory which does not bear in mind that it is first and foremost a human diary, in which the tale of facts is subordinated to the interests and preoccupations of the diarist and his audience. It is impossible not to feel a liking for the character it reveals to us, generous to excess, humane in an age when life was at its cheapest, bold (did ever medieval traveller fear the sea less?), fond of pleasure and uxorious to a degree, but controlled withal by a deep vein of piety and devotion, a man with all the makings of a sinner, and something of a saint.

Of the external events of Ibn Battúta's life we know little beyond what he himself tells us. The editor of the travels, Ibn Juzayy, notes that he was born at Tangier on 24th February, 1304, and from a brief reference in a later book of biographies we know that after his return to Morocco he was appointed qádí or judge in one of the Moroccan towns, and died there in 1368 or 1369. His own name was Muhammad son of Abdalláh, Ibn Battúta being the family name, still to be found in Morocco. His family had apparently been settled in Tangier for some generations and belonged to the Berber tribe of the Luwáta, which first appears in history as a nomadic tribe in Cyrenaica and on the borders of Egypt. For the rest he divulges incidentally in a passage relating to his appointment as qádí in Delhi, that he came of a house which had produced a succession of qádís, and later on he mentions a cousin who was qádí of Rondah in Spain. He belonged, in consequence, to the religious upper-class, if the term may be used, of the Muhammadan community, and must have received the usual literary and scholastic education of the theologians. On one occasion he quotes a poem of his own composition, but the other verses quoted here and there obviously bear a more popular character than the elaborate productions of the best Arabic poetic schools. His professional interest in men and matters religious may be seen on nearly every page of his work. It is evident from the list of qádís and other theologians whom he saw in every town on his travels (sometimes to the exclusion of all other details), but above all from his eagerness to visit famous shaykhs and saints wherever he went, and the enthusiasm with which he relates instances of their miraculous gifts.

But to rate him, as some European scholars have done, for his “rigmaroles about Muhammadan saints and spiritualists” and for his “stupidity” in paying more attention to theologians than to details of the places he visited, is singularly out of place. Such religious details were matters in which he and his audience were most closely interested, and are by no means devoid of interest and value even to us. Out of them, moreover, spring some of the most lively passages of his narrative, such as his escape at Koel (the modern Aligarh), and his account of the Sharíf Abú Ghurra. But it is of far greater importance to remember that it was because he was a theologian and because of his interest in theologians that he undertook his travels at all and survived to complete them. When as a young man of twenty-one he set out from his native town with a light heart, and not much heavier purse, it was with no other aim than that of making the pilgrimage to Mecca and the holy places of his faith. The duty laid upon every Muslim of visiting Mecca at least once in his lifetime, so long as it lies within his power to do so, has been in all ages a stimulus to travel, far greater in degree than the stimulus of Christian pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. At the same time, it created the organization necessary to enable Muslims of every class from every country to carry out this obligation. The pilgrim on his journey travelled in a caravan whose numbers swelled at every stage. He found all arrangements made for his marches and his halts, and if the road lay through dangerous country, his caravan was protected by an escort of soldiers. In all large centres as well as many intermediate stations were rest houses and hospices where he was hospitably welcomed and entertained out of endowments created by generations of benefactors. When such was the lot of every pilgrim, the theologian received still greater consideration. His brethren in every town received him as one of themselves, furnished his wants, and recommended him to those at the next station. Under these circumstances the brotherhood of Islám, which knows no difference of race or birth, showed at its best, and provided an incentive to travel unknown in any other age or community.

Nor was the Pilgrimage the only institution which smoothed the traveller's path. Throughout the Middle Ages the trade routes of Africa and Asia and the sea-borne trade of the Indian Ocean were almost exclusively in the hands of the Muslim merchants. The travels of Ibn Battúta are but one of many sources which reveal how widespread were their activities. Though their caravans were exposed to greater dangers in times of lawlessness and disorganization than were the pilgrim caravans, they offered at least a measure of security to the casual traveller. It is evident from our narratives that in the great majority of cases they were animated by the same spirit of kindliness and generosity that has always marked the mutual relations of Muslims, and readily shared their resources with their fellow-travellers in case of need. Later on Ibn Battúta had more than once occasion to appreciate their services, but at the outset he had no thought of what the future held for him.

On his arrival in Egypt, with his mind still wholly set on Mecca, he received the first premonitions of his future from two of the illuminati, or saints who had attained a high rank in the hierarchy of the Muslim orders. From this point we see his vague desires gradually crystallize into a definite ambition, though he still hesitates from time to time, especially when his contacts with persons of saintly life awaken all his instincts of devotion. Foiled in his first intention of taking the direct route to Mecca through Upper Egypt (the usual route of the pilgrim caravans from the West), he determined to join instead the pilgrim caravan from Damascus, and on his way thither tasted for the first time the joys of travel for its own sake. As time was not pressing, he wandered at leisure through the whole of Syria as far as the borders of Asia Minor, before returning to Damascus to join the caravan as it set out for the Holy Cities.

Hardly was this first Pilgrimage over than he set out again to visit ‘Iráq, but turned back sharply before reaching Baghdád, and made a long detour through Khuzistán. By now, he tells us, he had taken the resolve never to cover the same ground twice, as far as possible. His mind was still set on the Pilgrimage, however, and he planned his journey to cover the interval before returning to Mecca at the end of the year. This time he renounced further travelling for a space of three years and gave himself up to study and devotion at Mecca. For the theologian the Pilgrimage meant not only the performance of one of the principal obligations of the Faith, but an opportunity of putting himself in touch with the activities of the religious centre of Islam. Mecca was the ideal centre of religious study, in the company of many of the most eminent doctors of the day. All this, no doubt, was in Ibn Battúta's mind. But we may, I think, discern a further purpose. He had already made up his mind to seek his fortune in India, to which the boundless munificence of the reigning Sultan of Delhi was then attracting large numbers of scholars and theologians from other countries. The years spent at Mecca would confer on him a better status, and render him eligible for a higher post than he could otherwise hope for.

On completing his years of study he made a tour with a retinue of followers to the trading stations on the east coast of Africa, returning as before to Mecca, then turned his back on the Holy City and set out for India. But the journey was to be longer and more adventurous than he anticipated. At Jedda there was no ship to be had bound for India, whereupon moved by some obscure impulse he turned northwards instead and began his great tour. As we follow him through the cities of Asia Minor, where he received an enthusiastic welcome from the local religious brotherhoods, across the Black Sea to the territories of the Mongol Khán of the Golden Horde, and after taking advantage of an opportunity to visit Constantinople, striking across the steppes to Central Asia and Khurásán, we find him becoming an increasingly important personage, attended by a swelling throng of followers, and becoming possessed of such means that he “dare not mention the number of his horses in case some sceptic should accuse him of lying.”

So at last he entered India by the north-western gateway, being received with honour and escorted to Delhi, where, though he obtained a full share of the Sultan's bounty and was appointed to a rich sinecure as Málikite qádí of Delhi, he was but one figure, and in no way specially remarkable among many. For seven years or so Ibn Battúta remained in this position, sometimes accompanying the Sultan on his expeditions, sometimes engaged in his occupations at Delhi, storing up in his memory all the while those acute observations which he afterwards wove into one of the most remarkable descriptions we possess of any medieval Muslim court. Little did Sultan or courtiers think that six centuries afterwards their reputations would depend on the notes and reminiscences of the obscure and spendthrift qádí from the West. At last the inevitable rupture occurred, whose consequences were usually swift and fatal to the victim of the royal displeasure. Ibn Battúta took refuge in his last resort, the adoption of the ascetic life, resigning all his offices and giving away all his possessions. It was a genuine act of world-renuncaition, such as always lay near to the heart of the medieval theologian, and seems to have convinced Sultan Muhammad of the traveller's real integrity and devotion. At all events, when he required shortly afterwards a trustworthy person to send as his envoy to China, it was Ibn Battúta whom he summoned. Ibn Battúta, for his part, it would seem, was reluctant to doff his hermit's garments and “become entangled in the world again.” But the bribe was too great, and in 1342 he set off in semi-regal state at the head of the mission to the most powerful ruler in the world of his time, the Mongol Emperor of China.

Scarcely had he left the walls of Delhi when his adventures began. For eight days he was a hunted fugitive, and though he escaped to rejoin his embassy in its progress through India, it was only to be left with nothing but the clothes he stood up in and his prayer-mat on the shore at Calicut. To go on with his mission in the circumstances was impossible; to return to Dehli was to incur the wrath of Sultan Muhammad. He chose instead to indulge his love of adventure with the independent rulers of the Malabar coast, and eventually found himself at the Maldive Islands, once again a qádí and a personage of importance. Here too after eighteen months of lotos-eating his reforming zeal made of him an object of suspicion and dislike, and he found it expedient to leave the islands. The devotee in him again asserted itself, and his first object was to make a pilgrimage to the “Foot of Adam” on the highest peak of Ceylon. This done he returned to the Coromandel and Malabar coasts, paid another brief visit to the Maldive Islands and prepared in earnest for his journey to China. Some months had still to elapse before the sailing season, however, and he chose to spend them in a voyage to Bengal, for no other reason, apparently, than to visit a famous shaykh living in Assam. He then intercepted the “Chinese” vessels—really vessels owned by Muhammadan merchants, with Chinese and Malay crews—at Sumatra and went by a route that has taxed the ingenuity of his commentators to the “Shanghai” of China in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the port of Ts'wan-chow-fu, or Zaytún, as it was known to the foreign merchants. For this journey Ibn Battúta reassumed his role of ambassador, though it may strike us as curious that no one seemed to entertain any suspicions of an ambassador who travelled without embassy or credentials. It was, however, his only device for making his way through China, though his theological reputation stood him in good stead amongst his fellow-Muslims in the trading ports. In every city on his progress to and from Peking he was received with full honours, but at Peking itself he was disappointed of seeing the Emperor, owing to his absence from the capital.

Returning to Zaytún, he took ship again for Sumatra, and thence for Malabar, but decided not to expose himself a second time to the treacherous splendours of Delhi, and made westwards instead. He was in Syria at the outbreak of the first “Black Death” in 1348, and in a few terse sentences reveals its frightful ravages. At this time he seems to have had no definite plans for the future, and was aiming only at completing yet another Pilgrimage, his seventh, to Mecca. What eventually led him to return to his native land is not clear. His own narrative places more weight on the rapid access of strength and prosperity which Morocco enjoyed under Sultan Abu'l-Hasan and his son Abú ‘Inán, than on those ties of family and kindred which appear to us so much more natural a reason. Possibly allowances should be made for the part of exaggeration and flattery, but the brevity of his stay in Tangier, and the unemotional, almost brusque, manner in which he mentions it, scarcely witness to an overmastering homesickness, which, in any case, was hardly to be expected in a society so cosmopolitan as that of medieval Islam.

The journey from Alexandria to the Barbary coast was not without its alarms. Twice Ibn Battúta narrowly escaped capture by Christian corsairs, and in addition his party was threatened by a robber band almost within sight of Fez. Even yet his ambition was not appeased. There were still two Muslim countries which he had not visited—Andalusia and the Negrolands on the Niger. Once again he took up the staff of travel, not to lay it down again until some three years later he could claim with justice the title of “The Traveller of Islam.” He was in fact the only medieval traveller who is known to have visited the lands of every Muhammadan ruler of his time, quite apart from such infidel countries as Constantinople, Ceylon, and China, which were embraced in his journeys. The mere extent of his wanderings is estimated by Yule at not less than 75,000 miles, without allowing for deviations, a figure which is not likely to have been surpassed before the age of steam.

Unfortunately no account of Ibn Battúta has come down to us (so far as is known) from anyone who saw him on his journeys. There appear to be only two known references to him in the writings of contemporaries, and both are concerned chiefly with the credibility of his stories, which was hotly disputed. What they thought of him personally we are not told, but are able to infer occasionally from his own candid statements. Twice we find him, after receiving a cordial welcome, becoming an object of dislike or suspicion, at Delhi and again in the Maldive Islands. In the first case the cause was his extravagance, in the second it was fear of his growing influence and resentment at his haughty independence. There can be no question that he expected of princes and ministers a lavish exercise of the virtue of generosity, which was indeed in his eyes—as in those of his age and community generally—their principal claim to respect. It may be taken as a general rule that when Ibn Battúta says of this or the other prince that he is “a good sultan” or “one of the best of rulers,” he means only that he is scrupulous in the performance of his religious duties and openhanded in his dealings, especially with theologians. We can well understand that this attitude was apt to pall on his patrons and lead at length to unpleasant incidents, or at least mutual dislike. Apart from these rare cases, however, he appears to have been liked and respected wherever he went.

In attempting to estimate the value of Ibn Battúta's work, some description must be given of the book itself. Ibn Battúta may have taken notes of the places that he visited, but the evidence is rather against it. Only once does he refer to notes, when he says that at Bukhárá he copied a number of epitaphs from the tombs of famous scholars, but afterwards lost them when the Indian pirates stripped him of all that he had. These epitaphs were of special interest to men of letters and theologians because they contained lists of the writings of the deceased. Ibn Battúta was not himself a man of letters who was likely to regard his experiences as material for a book; on the contrary, he seems to have entertained no idea of writing them down.

On his return to Fez he had related his adventures to the sultan and the court, where they were received with general incredulity, as we know from a passage in the works of his great contemporary, the historian Ibn Khaldún. He found, however, a powerful supporter in the wazír, at whose instigation possibly the sultan gave instructions to one of the principal secretaries, Muhammad ibn Juzayy, to commit them to writing. Ibn Juzayy accordingly compiled the work which we possess at the dictation of Ibn Battúta. The result is a book of somewhat composite character. The writer was not always content to take down Ibn Battúta's narratives as they were delivered. He shows commendable care in registering the exact pronunciation of every foreign name (a matter of some importance in view of the nature of the Arabic script), but in some other respects his editing is open to criticism. By his own statement the work is an abridgment, which possibly accounts for the brevity of one or two of the later sections. The bulk of the narrative has been left with but little touching-up in the simple, straight-forward style of the narrator, but at points Ibn Juzayy has embellished it in the taste of the age, with passages of rhetorical prose and extracts from poems, which seldom add much of interest. His interpolation of incidents from his own experience may be excused, but another of his proceedings is more questionable. He had before him the narrative of the travels of Ibn Jubayr, an Andalusian scholar who visited Egypt, the Hijáz, and Syria in the twelfth century, and wrote an account of his experiences which enjoyed a great reputation in the West. Where Ibn Battúta covers the same ground, Ibn Juzayy has often substituted (possibly at Ibn Battúta's desire or with his permission) an abridgment of Ibn Jubayr's work, notably in the account of the ceremonies observed at Mecca during the Pilgrimage and at other seasons of the year. We have consequently to bear in mind that the book is not entirely Ibn Battúta's work; there are indeed indications (for example, in the transcriptions and translations of Persian phrases) that the reputed author did not himself read the book at all, or if he did, read it negligently.

Taking the work, then, as a whole, we must regard it as primarily intended to present a descriptive account of Muhammadan society in the second quarter of the fourteenth century. Ibn Battúta's interest in places was, as we have seen, subordinate to his interest in persons. He is the supreme example of le géographe malgré lui, whose geographical knowledge was gained entirely from personal experience and the information of chance acquaintances. For his details he relied exclusively on his memory, a memory, it is true, which had been highly cultivated by the ordinary system of theological education, involving the memorizing of large numbers of works, but still liable to slips and confusions, more or less great. In his itineraries he sometimes misplaces the order of towns, and twice at least leaves himself in the air, as it were, with a gap of hundreds of miles. He gives wrong names at several points, especially when he is dealing with non-Muslim countries, where his knowledge of Arabic and Persian was of little service to him. In his historical narratives, which are generally trustworthy, similar mistakes are found. It is indeed remarkable that the errors are comparatively few, considering the enormous number of persons and places he mentions. The most serious difficulty is offered by the chronology of the travels, which is utterly impossible as it stands. Many of the dates give the impression of having been inserted more or less at haphazard, possibly at the editor's request, but the examination and correction of them offers a task so great that it has not been attempted in this selection.

There is finally the question of his veracity. There can be no doubt that in his narratives of the Muslim countries, notwithstanding errors of exaggeration and misunderstanding, Ibn Battúta faithfully relates what he believes to be true. Some critics have, however, regarded his claim to have visited Constantinople and China with considerable dubiety. The principal difficulties as regards the visit to Constantinople are the vagueness of his route and his claim to have met the ex-Emperor, when by his own chronology the ex-Emperor had been dead for over a year. The first can be explained by the difficulties of an Arabic-speaking traveller in such unfamiliar surroundings, the second by an error in dating. The account of the city itself is so full and accurate that it cannot be other than the narrative of an eye-witness, who enjoyed exceptional facilities such as Ibn Battúta had, and his interview with the ex-Emperor in particular bears the unmistakable stamp of truth.

The difficulties contained in the narrative of the journeys to and in China are generally of the same order, and will be more fully considered in their place. It need only be said here that to deny them raises even greater difficulties, and that by exactly the same kind of reasoning it can be “proved” that though Ibn Battúta undoubtedly was in India he never went there! Ibn Battúta is always unsatisfactory when he relies on second-hand information, and it is most unlikely that he could have put together so personal a narrative had the statements of others not been supplemented by his own observations. There are also some material arguments in favour of his claim to have visited China. He had, in his capacity as envoy from the Sultan of Delhi, very good reason for going there, and facilities for travel in China which were denied to the ordinary merchant. In the second place one obscure passage in the narrative of his doings at Khansa (Hang-chow) is cleared up by an earlier passage relating to his visit to Shaykh Jalál ad-Dín in Assam, with which the journey to China is closely connected. Thirdly, if his claim were false, he stood a reasonable chance of being exposed. He relates with some emphasis that in his journey through Northern China he met a merchant from Ceuta, the brother of a man living in Sijilmása, in Morocco, whom he subsequently met also. That this merchant should have had some communication with Morocco, even in those days, is not impossible, since Ibn Battúta himself had once transmitted a sum of money from India to Mequinez. On the whole, therefore, the narrative dealing with China seems to me to be genuine, though it is certainly related with greater brevity than usual, either because Ibn Battúta could not recall the Chinese names, if he learned them, with the same ease as the more familiar Arabic and Persian names, or because it was more drastically abridged by the editor. I can in fact see no alternative, except to suppose that he was hypnotized into the belief that he had gone there by one of the miracle-working saints whom he met in India.

Ibn Battúta was first brought into prominence by the translation of an abridged text by Dr. Samuel Lee in 1829. The complete text of the Travels, which was found in Algeria a few years later, was published with a French translation and critical apparatus by Defrémery and Sanguinetti in the middle of the century from a number of manuscripts, one of which, containing the second half of the work, is the autograph of the original editor, Ibn Juzayy. The French translation, though on the whole remarkably accurate, suffers from the absence of explanatory notes. Various sections of the book (chiefly from the French text) have been annotated by scholars familiar with the countries themselves, but a large amount still remains to be worked over.

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