Ibn Battuta

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Ibn Battuta on Women's Travel in the Dar al-Islam

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SOURCE: Tolmacheva, Marina A. “Ibn Battuta on Women's Travel in the Dar al-Islam.” In Woman and the Journey: The Female Travel Experience, edited by Bonnie Frederick and Susan H. McLeod, pp. 119-40. Pullman, Wash.: Washington State University Press, 1993.

[In the following essay, Tolmacheva examines the situation of Islamic women in the fourteenth century through Ibn Battuta's accounts of women's travel.]

Studies of Islamic culture have not explored the subject of travel by medieval women. It has been recently noted that, in general, “the role of travel in Muslim societies and in Islamic doctrine is not a topic which has been systematically explored by historians or social scientists.”1 The few studies undertaken on travel by modern Islamic women have focused on religious pilgrimage or journeys to the West; legal aspects of travel have not been addressed at all. Yet the issue of women's spatial mobility under Islam is sufficiently important to studies of both gender and modernization that a widely read work on male-female relations in modern Muslim society defines itself as “a book about sexual space boundaries.”2

In the current sweep of reaction against social freedoms gained by contemporary Muslim women in some areas of life, tradition-inspired restrictions on women's public life and physical mobility play such an important role that it may be difficult to imagine pre-modern women of the Abode of Islam leading a life not subject to strict confinement. In addition, the Western stereotype of the heavily veiled, male-dominated Muslim female becomes overlaid and complicated by Western preconceptions concerning female travel. Yet a simple consideration of the long tradition of nomadic lifestyle historically prominent among Islamic societies reveals that these stereotypes are not merely simplistic but erroneous. The reality, when explored in historical perspective and with due attention to evidence, is complex. Although travel by Muslims was common, travel per se was not assigned positive value even for males. Discomfort, invasion of privacy, and physical dangers concomitant with travel were given serious consideration both socially and legally. It was well known, for example, that pilgrim caravans were in constant danger of attack by Bedouins. Travel by women was legally subject to control by males; the woman's safety and that of her children were of paramount concern.3 Recent scholarship has shown that seclusion, too, was legitimized under the Sharia (Holy Law) as a positive value.4 Nevertheless, it is not difficult to discover in medieval sources evidence of physical mobility and travel by Islamic women or women residing in areas governed by Islamic law. To provide examples of these phenomena I have chosen to focus on the eyewitness testimony of the Arab traveler of North African origin Abu ‘Abdallah Muhammad ibn ‘Abdallah al-Lawati al-Tanji, better known to the West as Ibn Battuta (1304-1377).

The greatest traveler of the Middle Ages, Ibn Battuta traveled about three times as far as Marco Polo5 and left an extensive and invaluable record of visits to numerous places in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Still not fully available in English,6 Ibn Battuta dictated this account to a secretary in 1355-56 in Fez (Morocco). The resulting book Tuhfat al-nuzzar fi ghara‘ib al-amsar wa ‘aja‘ib al-asfar (Gift to those eager to observe the wonders of cities and marvels of journeys, commonly referred to as Travels) is a straightforward narrative, distinguished by literary qualities that make it an outstanding example of Rihla, the genre of Arab travel literature.7 What makes Ibn Battuta's book an important source on women's travel is the fortuitous combination in his character of a lively interest in all aspects of travel with an acknowledged enjoyment of keeping company with women. Ibn Battuta was an unusually self-aware traveler: the subject of travel led him to inquire about itineraries, transport, seasons, and schedules. He decided early on never to travel by the same road twice if he could help it,8 and so observed the terrain, economy, and population from diverse routes. He traveled by camel, horse, mule, litter, wagon and boat, never failing to describe the mode of transportation for himself, his companions, and his hosts.

It is important that his are the observations of an expert witness: Ibn Battuta had received training as a legal scholar in the Maliki school9 of Islamic law and served as a judge on several occasions. It is all the more significant then, that very few of his remarks are openly critical or disparaging of women or of society's “permissiveness” in regard to their social manner or mobility in public space. A few practices are judged “bad,” and unclothed bodies of Indian or African women10 or competitive bargaining for jewelry by Turkish women in Tabriz11 scandalize him. But much more often, Ibn Battuta uses restrained words like “interesting” or “strange” in reference to local custom, or gushes compliments to women's “extraordinary” or “surpassing” beauty, physical grace, modesty, virtue, hospitality, generosity, and so on.

As a source, the Travels reflect Ibn Battuta's foremost interest in the people of the Muslim world, with whom he shared the civilization of Islam, whose values he was taught and legally trained to uphold. Rose E. Dunn has recently argued that in his devotion to travel and persistence in exploring the Dar al-Islam,12 the Muslim cosmopolite approached the world not as discrete societies but as a global community whose men and women “shared not merely his doctrinal beliefs and religious rituals, but his moral values, his social ideals, his everyday manners.”13 But the Dar al-Islam included more than Muslims. Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians were legally allowed to maintain their faith and customs, and in the fringe areas—Africa, India, Southeast Asia—animistic religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, were tolerated out of necessity. On the whole, Ibn Battuta's tales are remarkably free of religious prejudice, although not of all Islamic sensibilities.

Ibn Battuta provides evidence of widespread physical mobility among women of the realm of Islam. Ibn Battuta had first-hand encounters mostly with three social classes of women: slave girls; daughters of his learned friends, colleagues, and patrons in the service; and—at the top of society—queens and princesses. Public and private lives are of equal interest to Ibn Battuta: the traveler describes distinctive features of their clothing, ornaments, hair styles, public behaviour, social position, and family roles. He particularly delights in noting piety (e.g., among Meccan women) and Islamic education (among the girls of South India14 or in regard to his own slave girls or wives.15) On a more pragmatic level, he discusses sexual customs of the places, comments on the possibilities of contracting a marriage, and, importantly for this essay, inquires into the social norm regarding women's travel away from home.

Ibn Battuta's undisguised interest in the “fair sex,” according to one commentator, makes the Travels a virtual encyclopedia on women of the Orient.16 Obviously, he considered information about women of interest to his readers, the majority of whom, it may be safely presumed, were male. Since restriction of women to the private domain did exist, it seems relevant to emphasize that our source gained much information first-hand: in the course of his travels Ibn Battuta repeatedly married and divorced, and fathered several children. It may seem strange to a careful reader that the women of his own family figure only marginally in his account, but Ibn Battuta's casual references to his wives testify not to callousness but to good Islamic manners of social and emotional restraint; occasionally, a fond reminiscence of a wife left behind or a preference for a particular slave girl slip in. Gentle fondness and warm feeling for his mother and daughters (one of whom he buried in India) are apparent.17 Physical cruelty to women caused him to faint, as when he witnessed the Hindu ritual of the widow's self-immolation on the husband's funeral pyre.18

It is a different matter that Ibn Battuta's family life cannot be characterized as “stable.” Marriage and divorce are the part of the Islamic social system that differs most dramatically from the Western norm: polygamy, although infrequent in practice, is allowed under Islamic law, and in the days of slavery a man could have an unlimited number of concubines. The ease of divorce for men made the system “admirably suited to a roving life,”19 and Ibn Battuta chronicles his divorces along the route, making it clear that the urge or imperative to travel often caused them.

Below, Ibn Battuta's information on travel opportunities open to Muslim women and the circumstances of their journeys is arranged according to categories of motivation (or lack of such) for permissible travel, with reference to mode of travel and transportation, and to the women's social and cultural background. The attempt here is not to plot out the geography of women's journeys, even when on Ibn Battuta's route,20 but rather to explore the range of women's spatial mobility as recorded by a legally minded witness who, in the role of spouse or owner, sometimes himself became a prime cause of the women's travel. The effort is directed at exploring the historical patterns of medieval Muslim women's journeys and redefining our own notions of female travel.

BRIDES, WIVES, AND SLAVES

The stereotype of female journey occasioned by male mobility21 is sustained in part by some phenomena observed or experienced by Ibn Battuta. The most prominent among these is the bridal journey. In the patriarchal, patrilocal Arab society women had to move to the site of their marriage covenant and, at the direction of their father or (male) guardian, travel, if need be, to their marital residence. Such was the case of Ibn Battuta's first two marriages:

I had made a contract of marriage at Safaqus (Sfax, in Tunisia) with the daughter of one of the Syndics at Tunis, and she was conducted to me at Atrabulus (Tripoli, in Libya). I then left Atrabulus, at the end of the month of Muharram of the year [seven hundred and] twenty-six (January 1326) taking my wife with me … to Qubbat Sallam. There we were overtaken by the body of the caravan who had stayed behind at Atrabulus, and I became involved in a dispute with my father-in-law which made it necessary for me to separate from his daughter. I then married the daughter of a talib (doctor of religion) of Fez, and when she was conducted to me at Qasr al-Za‘afiya I gave a wedding feast, at which I detained the caravan for a whole day, and entertained them all.22

Several of the princesses and queens encountered by Ibn Battuta are foreign to the lands where they reign: Turkish women from Khorasan (eastern Iran) he met in India and Central Asia, possibly even Indonesia, and the Greek princess in the Golden Horde on the Volga. Their bridal journeys have to remain presumed since Ibn Battuta only chronicles their sojourn in a foreign country.

Women sometimes bitterly resented the need to travel occasioned by marriage, and their complaints reflect their relative lack of choice in the matter. Wives who accompanied their husbands on pilgrimage could find themselves settled there among the “sojourners” who devoted their time to pious study and exercise. Among such travelers to Mecca who settled there was Shihab al-Din al-Nuwairi (d. 1336-37). He came from Upper Egypt and married the daughter of the Qadi (Muslim judge) Najm al-Din al-Tabari, who “stayed with him for some years and traveled with him to al-Madina the Illustrious, accompanied by her brother,” before being divorced.23 To some women, travel might be a threatening experience, objected to and even resisted, as in the case of Tash Khatun, the widow of the governor of Shiraz. She and her children were arrested by the new governor with the intention of carrying them off to Iraq. By rousing the public to her defense at the very moment of transportation, Tash Khatun managed to escape deportation, imprisonment, and probable death.24 In another instance, Ibn Battuta mentions that after the fall of the above-mentioned Chingizid Tarmashirin in 1334-35, his son Bashay Ughli fled, “together with his sister and her husband Firuz, to the King of India.”25

On the frontier of the Dar al-Islam, Ibn Battuta reports on wives traveling with their husbands to distant state functions, as in the case of Mongol rulers among whom, by the mid-14th century, many professed Islam.26 In relating some of the regulations of the “Great Yasa” of Chingiz Khan he reports, correctly, that “one of its prescriptions is that they shall assemble on one day in each year, which they call the tuy (meaning the day of the banquet). The descendants of Tankiz and the amirs come from all quarters, and the khatuns (princely women) and superior officers of the army also attend.” Two years after Ibn Battuta's arrival in India (i.e., approximately in 1336), such a meeting was held “in the most remote part of [Sultan Tarmashirin's] territories, adjoining China.”27

Since the Turkish, Turco-Mongolian, and Turkmenian houses ruled over the large parts of Asia visited by Ibn Battuta, the Turkish custom of moving camp affected even the highest-born women. After leaving the Golden Horde Khan Uzbek in Astrakhan on the Volga, Ibn Battuta traveled all the way to Constantinople before returning to find out that the Khan “had moved and had settled at the capital of his kingdom, so we traveled [to it] for three nights on the river Itil [Volga] and its joining waters, which were frozen over … [on the fourth day] we reached the city of al-Sara, known also as Sara Baraka, which is the capital of the Sultan Uzbak.”28 (In contrast, the nomadic lifestyle of the Arab tribes is only fleetingly alluded to by Ibn Battuta.)

And finally, besides the free women forced to abandon or move home by family or political pressures, there was a large group of women whose will and considerations had nothing or little to do with their physical mobility: slaves. Although Islam prescribes gentle treatment of slaves, and slave women in particular could achieve comfort and influence as concubines, their choice of destination and domicile was made for them by their masters, and before being sold, by their captors. (Islam prohibited enslavement of Muslims, but slaves who converted to Islam were not automatically enfranchised.)

In Ibn Battuta's lifetime Islam was undergoing a major expansion,29 a situation that affected the movement of slaves, and Ibn Battuta mentions holy war as a common occurrence in Africa, India, and southeast Asia. The Turkish-Byzantine warfare, on which Ibn Battuta is silent, also was a constant factor at this time, affecting some of the areas he visited. From the frontier areas captive women would be moved to slave markets in the interior and then disperse all over the Dar al-Islam. During Ibn Battuta's stay in India, “some captives taken from the infidels” arrived, and he was sent ten “girls” whom he distributed among his companions and retainers.30 On his last, homeward journey in 1353, Ibn Battuta left Mali for Morocco “with a large caravan which included six hundred women slaves.”31 On a journey along the Niger, going by boat from Timbuctu, he met an Arab slave girl from Damascus32 and in Khansa (Hangchow, in China) the amir's slaves included Muslim cooks as well as musicians and singers who entertained guests in Arabic and Persian.33 Here he also encountered Jews, Christians, sun-worshipping Turks, and Muslims among the free population, largely merchants—but as we shall see this does not automatically imply a corresponding presence of free Muslim women in their midst.

THE WIVES WHO WOULD NOT TRAVEL

Although movement abroad and access to travel could be controlled, the right of travel as such was not denied women. Yet so many women did not choose to travel that a second pattern, very different from the one sketched above, must be noted. This pattern also challenges the stereotype of the passive shut-in, because staying at home resulted from considered rejection of the option of travel.

In contradistinction to brides traveling to their grooms and wives accompanying their husbands, Ibn Battuta tells of women who did not leave their country or home town to follow their wandering husbands, as evidently he felt they should: his reaction is annoyance and hurt surprise. For instance, in Zabid, an important and wealthy town he visited in Yemen, women earned his praise along with frustration:

For all we have said of their exceeding beauty they are virtuous and possessed of excellent qualities. They show a predilection for foreigners, and do not refuse to marry them, as the women in our country do. When a woman's husband wishes to travel she goes out with him and bids him farewell, and if they have a child, it is she who takes care of it and supplies its wants until the father returns. While he is absent she demands nothing from him for maintenance or clothing or anything else, and while he stays with her she is content with very little for upkeep and clothing. But the women never leave their own towns, and none of them would consent to do so, however much she were offered.34

In China, women could but were not compelled to follow Muslim men traveling abroad, even if they had been sold to them as slaves.35 In the Maldive Islands, the ease of Islamic marriage and divorce resulted, conveniently for travelers, in a practice reminiscent of temporary marriage (allowed in Shi‘ite but not in Sunnite law):

It is easy to get married in these islands on account of the smallness of the dowries [rather, dower, payable in Islam by the husband to the bride] and the pleasure of their women's society. When ships arrive, the crew marry wives, and when they are about to sail they divorce them. It is really a sort of temporary marriage. The women never leave their country.36

The women who chose not to travel, or returned home while allowed by law or expected by their husbands to join them on a journey, figure prominently in Ibn Battuta's discussion of womenfolk. Among the stories of wives reluctant to leave parental surroundings, a particularly telling case involves Ibn Battuta's own wife, one of several he married during his eight-year stay in India.

Although he left several other wives behind earlier—one in Damascus and two on this very occasion of Ibn Battuta's departure from the increasingly hostile court at Mahal (in the Maldives)—this woman, related to the royal minister, had originally sailed away with her husband. On reaching another island “my wife was attacked by severe pains and wished to go back, so I divorced her and left her there, sending word to that effect to the Wazir, because she was the mother of his son's wife.”37 Ibn Battuta's compliance with the wife's wish and his concern over her future comfort are apparently dictated by local custom and political concern. Importantly, divorce as a result of one party's travel is clearly perceived in the narrative as a deserving deed rather than an act of abandonment. While Ibn Battuta's wife had no control over his departure, he, in turn, seemed to have no power or wish to force unwanted mobility on her.

THE WOMEN WHO CHOSE TO TRAVEL

The third pattern, that of women's travel by choice rather than necessity, highlights journeys sanctioned by religion and approved socially. Despite assigning seclusion the value of propriety and prestige, in one respect Islam adopted, from the start, an ancient Arabian custom that offered women an opportunity to travel. The pilgrimage to the Ka‘ba sanctuary in Mecca is incumbent on all adult Muslims regardless of sex as long as they can afford it. Modified for women believers by the clause requiring male protection,38 the hajj (pilgrimage) early on brought out numbers of female worshippers sufficient to necessitate reserving one entrance into the sacred area especially for women,39 as well as scheduling certain days for exclusive women's attendance at the shrine.40 That hajj was important to women beyond the personal performance of a required duty was testified to by women of wealth and high status as early as the eighth century. A pilgrim road from Kufa had been provided with wells, pools, and resting stations by Zubayda, wife and cousin of the famous Harun al-Rashid (786-809). Ibn Battuta in fact traveled parts of the road that became known as Darb Zubayda.41 In Ibn Battutta's own time a highly placed woman of Mamluk Egypt, Sitt Hadaq, whose visit to Mecca in 1328 is noted by him,42 commemorated her return from the pilgrimage by erecting a mosque in Cairo.43

Meccan women expressed their piety by coming out to perform the circuit of the Ka‘ba on Thursday evenings. The women's circumambulation of the Ka‘ba was routed “at the outer edge of the pavement.”44 They “come in their finest apparel, and the sanctuary is saturated with the smell of their perfume. When one of these women goes away, the odour of the perfume clings as an effluvium to the place after she has gone.” During the ritual no veil is worn over the face, and so Ibn Battuta is able to add to this picture of pious promenade his admiration for the Meccan women's “rare and surpassing beauty.”45

The spiritual experience of pilgrimage46 was augmented for some women by intellectual opportunities. In Damascus Ibn Battuta met a woman nicknamed “the goal of the world's travel” who herself traveled extensively in the Near East, undoubtedly including visits to Mecca and Medina, both important centers of religious learning, since she was sought after as a teacher of Holy Tradition. She was the pious woman Shaykh Zainab (1248-1339), daughter of Kamal al-Din Ahmad ibn ‘Abd al-Rahim ibn ‘Abd al-Wahid ibn Ahmad al-Maqdisi.47 Her experience stands out because she had poor eyesight and never married but defied her handicap and single state to achieve celebrity. Of course such travel motivated by personal preference was beyond the possibilities of commoners: another blind woman who occasionally accompanied her son's campaigns was the mother of the sultan of Delhi, Makhduma Jahan (“Mistress of the World”).48 It is also possible that being single, at least among the high-born, actually facilitated women's mobility abroad. In India, Ibn Battuta learned the story of a woman who came to rule Delhi. Upon the death of Sultan Shams al-Din (1210-1235), his daughter Radiya engineered her own election as queen and showed considerable nonconformity. Unmarried, “she held sovereign rule for four years (1236-1240) and used to ride abroad just like the men, carrying bow and quiver and qurban, and without veiling her face.”49 (She was later deposed in favor of her younger brother and forced to marry.)

Status and wealth together afforded women means of secure and comfortable travel and even enabled them to serve as patronesses of pilgrims and travelers. On a trip between Mosul and Baghdad, Ibn Battuta joined a returning pilgrim caravan with what a century earlier would have been a princess of the blood:

Among them was a pious woman devotee called the Sitt Zahida, a descendant of the Caliphs, who had gone on pilgrimage many times and used to fast assiduously. I saluted her and placed myself under her protection. She had with her a troop of poor brethren [i.e. mystics who were in her service]. On this journey she died (God have mercy on her); her death took place at Zarud and she was buried there.50

“A descendant of the caliphs” here undoubtedly refers to the Abbasid caliphs, overthrown in 1258 by the Mongols.51 While the episode is typical of Ibn Battuta's solicitation of favors from persons of high status and influence, his placing himself under a woman's protection when en route deserves our special attention. He found himself in a similar situation in the Golden Horde and on the journey to Constantinople, where he was under the protection of Khan Uzbek's third and fourth wives. Moreover, in reporting travel customs in West Africa, he notes that no caravan can travel through the land of the Bardama (Bergdama) Berbers “without a guarantee of their protection, and for this purpose a woman's guarantee is of more value than a man's.”52

THE THIRD KHATUN'S JOURNEY

A journey which required considerable determination and planning from its initiator (and of which Ibn Battuta left us an impression-filled, detailed account) is that of Khatun Bayalun, the third wife of Khan Uzbek of the Golden Horde (1313-1341). This journey took Bayalun and Ibn Battuta all the way across the southern Russian steppe and the Balkans, from Astrakhan to Constantinople.53 Ibn Battuta had found himself in the Golden Horde after traveling northward from Syria and Asia Minor. Arriving in camp, he was placed in a hilltop tent with a flag exhibited in front to publicize his arrival. The fourth wife of the Khan Uzbek inquired about the newcomer and gave orders that Ibn Battuta be taken under her protection.54 In the camp he had ample opportunity to observe the travel and public behavior of the wives, sisters, and female servants of the Khan. Social relations within the camp environment are sketched as open and casual. In the case of a later Muslim author it has been suggested that his frankness and a willingness to discuss women may have “derived in some measure from his experience in the Turko-Mongol ordu, the relatively fluid, unstructured society.”55 It may also be suspected that on occasion Ibn Battuta's readiness to praise and overlook insufficient Islamic conformity (such as absence of veiling among the Turkish women, which greatly struck him)56 grew in direct proportion to the favors received from the royal ladies.

The trip to Constantinople was initiated by the third Khatun, by birth a Greek and an orthodox Christian, who apparently converted to Islam in connection with her marriage: the Mongol rulers of the Golden Horde and their cousins, Ilkhanids of Iran, adopted Islam in the late 13th century. The subject of travel was brought up upon reaching Astrakhan, after a protracted camping journey through the Crimea and northern Caucasus. The Khatun is identified by Ibn Battuta as “the daughter of the king of the Greeks,” despite her Mongol name Bayalun. The timing was occasioned by her pregnancy: she “begged of the sultan to permit her to visit her father, that she might give birth to her child in the latter's residence, and then return to him.”57

The journey involved elaborate farewell ceremonies and an impressive train that included only part of her slaves, servants, and chattels, as she had to leave most of her slave girls and baggage in her husband's camp.58 The calendar, if precisely remembered by the narrator, breaks into two stages of 29 and 22 days, divided at the frontier Greek fortress of Mahtuli. The detailed route of the journey, performed probably in July-September of 1332, is impossible to reconstruct;59 hospitality gifts delivered from the countryside relieved the hardship of travel. Inside the Turkish territory these were delivered to the Khatun as the spouse of a Mongol ruler; on the Greek side she was greeted as the Byzantine emperor's daughter.60

After crossing into Greek territory, her Mongol escort turned back, the mobile mosque was left behind and Muslim prayer discontinued. The princess resumed such Christian practices as drinking wine and eating pork. The rich outfit of the princess's horse is described and reminds the reader that inside the Greek territory wagons had to be left behind “because of the roughness of the country and mountains.”61 The magnificence of the princess's reception by her family prior to entry into Constantinople62 probably made it easy to forget the 5,000 Turkish horsemen, 500 troops and servants, 400 wagons, and hundreds of oxen and camels left behind.

It soon became apparent to Ibn Battuta, whom the journey provided with a unique (for a non-captive Muslim) opportunity to visit the capital of eastern Christendom, that the declared purpose of the Khatun's visit had been a pretext, that “she professed her father's religion and wished to remain with him.”63 In fact, the journey begins to look like a flight home, away from the steppe and the semi-nomadic existence that even queens had to endure among the Turks, away from the faith of Islam and the concomitant cultural, social, and dietary norm. Rather than being a simple family reunion, the apparent flight assumes a particular significance as an act of escaping from Muslim and Turkish values, especially in light of the Byzantine-Turkish struggle that characterized the period in Asia Minor and which was bound to end, in 1453, with the fall of Constantinople to Ottoman Turks. Even here, however, our traveler remains non-judgmental and praises the generosity of the princess in extending her protection during his sight-seeing and in bestowing gifts upon him and her Islamic retinue, who are dismissed from her service.

The homeward journey of the Greek princess represents a deeply personal move toward change, a challenging step of a meaningful and decisive nature. It would be very tempting to imagine the third Khatun as a heroine severing ties with a distasteful environment, putting distance between her past life and her native Constantinople. The princess's courage in traveling home across distances and frontiers is impressive by any standards, although the psychological import of her journey may seem less daring to the modern critic: seemingly nonconformist, she moves “merely” from one male-controlled milieu (virilocal) to another (patrilocal).64 She abandons Muslim conventions while resuming Christian ones. Ibn Battuta never mentions her again, and the story seems complete. However, the princess did go back; her return journey unrecorded, her presence is noted in the Golden Horde in 1341.65 Therefore her boldness in reassuming a Christian lifestyle may be judged all the more highly because she acted in front of Muslim witnesses and in the face of eventual return to the Islamized household of her Mongol husband.

TRAVEL UNDER ISLAMIC LAW

Significantly, while the former action breaks Islamic rules for the faithful, the journey itself does not. Travel, particularly travel for profit, is sanctioned by Islamic law without limitation as to time or purpose,66 although pilgrimage is deemed to be particularly rewarding. Travel in company is to be preferred, and one should share provisions generously with fellow-travelers, give alms before departure, and bring back gifts to the family.67

The Muslim husband's authority over his wife's movement extends first of all to the dwelling: if the woman leaves the house unauthorized, her maintenance may be suspended.68 But while a man may prevent his wife from showing herself in public, clauses in her marriage contract may allow a woman considerable freedom of movement.69 Visiting parents may be a specific stipulation of the contract, although refusing visitation would be considered boorish even without one. On the evidence of Ibn Battuta, the Greek princess had sought, and obtained, her husband's permission to travel.

Distance of projected travel may be of legal import: according to some authorities, while the husband may prevent the wife's parents from residing with her, he may not prohibit her from visiting them, nor stop them from visiting her once a week (and other relations once a year). Clearly, such frequency of visitation may only be practicable within a reasonable distance between two sites of residence. Day trips or moving between town and surrounding country are not considered travel, and for the most part not subject to restriction.70 (The weekly excursions of the women of Zabid seem to fall into this category.) On the other hand, a distance involving lengthy absence and breach of privacy imposed certain other limitations: according to the Prophetic Tradition, “no woman shall travel more than three days and three nights, unless accompanied by her husband or her [male] relation.”71 Interestingly, another woman is not, by law, a suitable companion, even if she is a relative.72 In his story, Ibn Battuta recounts finding women alone in their homes or camp sites, but women whom he encountered en route seem to have had at least one male servant accompanying them, and the cortège of the Byzantine princess included numerous men (and women) owned or hired by her. From the Islamic point of view, the distant and socially inferior position of these companions is legally irrelevant: a woman may travel accompanied by a male only if he is a relation in the degree prohibited for marriage73 or her slave (which would also make marriage impossible). On the other hand, a husband with several wives may not be free in his choice of the one to accompany him and, according to the Prophetic precedent, is expected to draw lots.74

The woman's choice not to leave her home town or country is a right protected on the grounds that travel exposes her to hazards and possible injury; so although a wife is required by the tradition to reside in her husband's permanent home, he is not entitled to carry her away until she has been paid her dower in full. Even then some authorities prevent his doing so against the wife's will. We saw that women who enjoyed the protection and support of their families could refuse to travel even at the price of a broken marriage. Considering Ibn Battuta's divorces in light of a woman's desire to stay in, or return to, her native city (as in the case of his Maldive wives), it may be said that divorce granted by the departing husband was actually beneficial to the woman, who herself could initiate divorce only in very few instances severely circumscribed by law.

Ensuring privacy is the man's responsibility. On sea voyages, Ibn Battuta had to search for ship cabins suitable for his party. Considerations of safety are paramount, and the wife may refuse to accompany her husband on the account of safety for herself and her children. Should she find herself a captive outside the Dar al-Islam, the husband is discouraged from reclaiming her if the infidel spouse has provided safe accommodations.75 The hardships of travel are considered by law so grave that even a servant (a hired free person) cannot be compelled to follow the master on a journey unless the service is stipulated in the contract. In case of a divorce, the wife is allowed to return to her native city or the place where her marriage contract was executed. However, a place of casual residence (such as the stages of a journey where Ibn Battuta's first marriages were contracted) does not constitute a home.76 A married woman who becomes divorced or widowed on a journey is subject to a number of restrictions dependent on test of pregnancy and expectations of inheritance, pointing once again to the weight of economic considerations.

These latter resurface in the case of the least questionable journey of all—the pilgrimage to Mecca. Women desirous of pilgrimage are required by some, although not all, legal authorities to travel under male protection. However, if they should travel without their husbands (who are normally required by law to support them), they are not entitled to maintenance for the duration of their absence.77 The women pilgrims of Ibn Battuta's acquaintance may be presumed possessed of means, even when he fails to mention their economic circumstances, since sufficient health and money are the only two preconditions for going on pilgrimage.78 Curiously, the only instance in which Ibn Battuta reports of a woman's inability to travel refers to a West African qadi forbidden by the Sultan to go on pilgrimage with a female companion.79

.....

It is instructive that the variety of modes and motivations of these journeys does not surprise Ibn Battuta. The contrast between apparent access to travel in the Middle Ages and enforced immobility of women in modern times is striking. The question that inevitably arises—when, why, and how did the change occur?—cannot be fully answered here. Of course, the majority of women (and men) did not travel centuries ago; however, when some did, the Dar al-Islam, although divided, did not impose on them the constraints of contemporary border regimes throughout the territory equivalent to 44 countries crossed by Ibn Battuta. Furthermore, some of Ibn Battuta's examples belong among the nomads compelled to migrate en masse by their lifestyle; others come from frontier areas where Islam was weakly enforced against local custom. Within the pattern conforming to Islamic norm, the two criteria determining public acceptance of women's travel are the perceived need and status.

It is clear that high status, whether generated by piety, career, or birth, played an important sanctioning role in initiating, commanding, or acceding to travel. It would be, however, incorrect to suppose that higher status always offered women more freedom: during the Middle Ages religious authorities increasingly enforced seclusion and especially emphasized it for noble women. By contrast, seclusion and veiling were not required for slaves. Paradoxically, that left free, highborn women more constricted in their social and creative activities, while slave women could leave the house, visit shops and markets, and show their faces to men openly and without opprobrium.80 In addition to attitudes facilitating slave women's physical mobility, it appears that the free wives' ability to resist travel stood in the way of lasting marital affection and even served to promote closer personal attachment of men to more dependent females.

As soon as he was able to afford it, Ibn Battuta himself resorted to the company of slave girls for more constant companionship than wives provided. He mentions acquiring a Greek slave girl in Ephesus and another one named Marguerite in Balikasri (Asia Minor).81 On the journey from Bukhara to Samarkand in Central Asia one of his slave girls gave birth to a daughter;82 both later accompanied Ibn Battuta to India where the daughter died. After the birth of a master's child, especially male, the woman was customarily kept on and could not be sold or given away. At her master's death, if still a slave, she usually gained personal freedom. In this instance, the mother of Ibn Battuta's child was apparently intended to accompany her master on an embassy to China in 1349. Trouble prevented Ibn Battuta from ever completing that mission, and at Calicut, attempting to sail from the port, he and his slaves were separated, the women eventually seized by the ruler of Sumatra.83 Persisting in his often dangerous quest, Ibn Battuta later sailed to Ma'bar (Coromandel) and survived a shipwreck in which he put the safety of his free male companions and the two slave girls who were with him ahead of his own, offering them the use of a raft. We learn that both parties were rescued and Ibn Battuta was (temporarily) reunited with his concubines.84

It follows from these examples that slave women, unlike wives, found themselves exposed considerably more frequently to physical dangers of travel such as shipwrecks, pirate attacks, and rape. The trade-off, if such it was, came in the form of their master's affection and concern. While some of Ibn Battuta's wives are remembered by him as pious or generously lacking in jealousy, it is his slave to whom he unabashedly refers as “the one I love.”

Notes

  1. Dale F. Eickelmann and James Piscatori, eds., Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration and the Religious Imagination (London: Routledge; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. xvi.

  2. Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society, Revised Ed. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. xv.

  3. Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Hadjdj,” by H. A. R. Gibb and J. H. Kramers. Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 166-168; Jamal J. Nasir, The Status of Women Under Islamic Law and Under Modern Islamic Legislation (London; Boston: Graham & Trotman, 1990), pp. 62-64.

  4. See Leila Ahmed, “Women and the Advent of Islam,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 77/4 (1986): 665-691. On the subject of legal interpretation of seclusion see Encyclopedia of Islam, s.v. “Hidjab,” by F. Chelhod. For historical approaches to gender boundaries in the Middle East see Nikki R. Keddie and Beth Baron, eds., Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). On the origins of doctrinal attitudes to gender see Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).

  5. H. Yule's estimate is 75,000 miles, quoted by H. A. R. Gibb, ed., in Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325-1354 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), p. 9. Ross E. Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, a Muslim Traveler of the 14th Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 3 has 73,000 miles. Mahdi Husain, The Rehla of Ibn Battuta (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1976), suggests 77,640 miles, and Thomas J. Abercrombie 75,000 miles: “Ibn Battuta, Prince of Travelers,” National Geographic, 180/6 (1991): p. 8.

  6. The most complete but unfinished English version is by H. A. R. Gibb, The Travels of Ibn Battuta a.d. 1325-1354,3 vols. (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1958-1971). The final (fourth) volume is in preparation by C. F. Beckingham. The best edition of the Arabic text is by C. Defréméry and B. R. Sanguinetti, Voyages d'Ibn Battuta, 4 vols. (Paris, 1953-58).

  7. In general, very little has been written about Arab travel literature as distinct from geographical literature. For a useful discussion of this distinction see Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400-1600 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988), ch. 1. On the travel genre in general, see the pioneering work by Maria Kowalska, Sredniowieczna arabska literatura podró” nicza (Warszawa-Krakow, 1973). The rihla literature gained special prominence in the Maghreb; consult M. B. A. Benchekroun, La vie intellectuelle marocaine sous les Mérinides et les Wattasides (Rabat, 1974). On different types of rihla see Abderrahmane El Moudden, “The Ambivalence of rihla: Community Integration and Self-definition in Moroccan Travel Accounts, 1300-1800,” in Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Travellers, ch. 4.

  8. Ibn Battuta, Travels, p. 5.

  9. In Sunnite Islam there are four schools of law (madhhab): Hanafi, common among the Turks, in the Fertile Crescent, and in India; Maliki, spread mainly in the Muslim West; ShariXi, dominant in Egypt and Syria and also found in India and Indonesia; and Hanbali, now found mostly in Arabia. ShiXa Islam developed its own law systems, and Ibn Battuta occasionally displays his animosity toward it.

  10. In India, as appointed guardian of Muslim law (qadi), Ibn Battuta “tried to make the women to wear clothes, but … could not manage that.” See Ibn Battuta, Travels, p. 250. About West Africa he writes, “Among their bad qualities are the following. The women servants, slave girls, and young girls go about in front of everyone naked, without a stitch of clothing on them. Women go into the sultan's presence naked and without coverings, and his daughters also go about naked.” See Ibn Battuta, Travels, p. 330.

  11. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 2: 345.

  12. In Islam, a legal category of territory in which the law of Islam prevails, “the Abode of Islam.” The opposite is Dar al-Harb “The Abode of War,” or territory under perpetual threat of the holy war aimed at conversion and control.

  13. Dunn, Adventures of Ibn Battuta, p. 7.

  14. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 1: 216; Ibn Battuta, Travels, p. 230.

  15. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 3: 719.

  16. Georgii Vasil'evich Miloslavskii, Ibn Battuta (Moscow, Russia: Mysl', 1974), p. 49.

  17. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 1: 8; 3: 555, 740; Ibn Battuta, Travels, pp. 266, 306. James T. Monroe offers a concise explanation of such reticence: “for a medieval Muslim, family ties were sacred, and … it was not considered polite to mention one's womenfolk without adding the formula hasha-ka ‘pardon me for mentioning the subject.’” Risalat at-tawabi‘wa-z-zawabi‘. The Treatise of Familiar Spirits and Demons by Abu ‘Amir ibn Shuhaid al-Ashja‘i al-Andalusi (Los Angeles: University of California, 1971), p. 9.

  18. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 3: 614-616. This provides a meaningful contrast to the reaction of a 17th-century European traveler who, in a detached manner, comments on the victim's gratitude for “the fame which I should carry of her to my own country.” Travels of Pietro della Valle in India, edited and translated by Edward Grey (New York: Hakluyt Society, 1892), vol. 2, p. 33.

  19. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, p. 29.

  20. For a brief summary of the route see Encyclopedia of Islam, s. v. “Ibn Battuta,” by André Miquel. Consult also maps in Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, and Dunn, Adventures of Ibn Battuta.

  21. Most recently upheld by Eric J. Leed in his The Mind of the Traveler: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism (New York: Basic Books, 1991), ch. 8.

  22. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 1:17-18. This marriage is interpreted by Leed as a mere travel accommodation: “A fellow traveler went as far as to provide him [Ibn Battuta] with a wife.” Leed, The Mind of the Traveler, p. 233.

  23. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 1: 219.

  24. Ibid., 2: 307.

  25. Ibid., 3: 562.

  26. For a classic study of the Mongol impact upon Islam consult Bertold Spuler, The Muslim World, Part II, “The Mongol Period” (Leiden: Brill, 1960).

  27. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 3: 560-561. Tarmashirin was the ruler of the Chagatay ulus of the Mongol Empire, which included Central Asia and Western Siberia. For a recent overview of the Mongol state see David Morgan, The Mongols (London: Blackwell, 1986). On the Yasa see G. Vernadsky, “The Scope and Contents of Chingis Khan's Yasa,Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 3 (1938): 337-360.

  28. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 2: 515. Saray Berke, not far from today's Volgograd, was probably founded by Berke Khan (1255-67). Uzbek (zbek, Oz Beg) was the Khan of the Kipchak ulus of the Mongol Empire, known in Europe as the Golden Horde.

  29. On this subject see Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), Vol. 2, Book Four, Ch. IV.

  30. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 3: 741.

  31. Ibn Battuta, Travels, p. 337.

  32. Ibid., p. 334.

  33. Ibid., p. 293.

  34. Ibid., p. 108.

  35. Ibid., p. 286.

  36. Ibid., p. 244.

  37. Ibid., p. 253.

  38. On hajj requirements and regulations see The Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s. v. “Hadjdj,” by A. F. Wensinck.

  39. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 1: 169 (on the authority of ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph of Islam).

  40. Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, trans. R. F. C. Broadhurst (London: Johnathan Cape, 1952), p. 137.

  41. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 1: 243, and note 215. Zubayda reportedly gave away to a pilgrim crowd 54 million silver dirhams on the occasion of her own first pilgrimage. Abd al-Kareem al-Heitty, “The Contrasting Spheres of Free Women and jawari in the Literary Life of the Early ‘Abbasid Caliphate,” Al-Masaq, Studia Arabo-Islamica Mediterranea, vol. 3 (1990), note 18.

  42. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 2: 357 and note 302. Ibn Battuta calls her the nurse of the Egyptian sultan al-Malik al-Nasir, while Gibb identifies her as the controller of his harem.

  43. Caroline Williams, “Mosque of Sitt Hadaq: Female Patronage in Medieval Cairo,” paper presented at the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (Beverly Hills, California, 1988). The woman was also celebrated for charitable generosity during the pilgrimage. See Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 3: 357.

  44. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 1: 199.

  45. Ibid., 1: 216.

  46. For a case study of spiritual and social significance of local pilgrimage in modern times see Nancy Trapper, “Ziyaret: Gender, Movement, and Exchange in a Turkish Community,” in Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Travellers, ch. 12.

  47. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 1: 157 and note 337. Such women were part of a medieval tradition: a century earlier, a woman referred to as “learned teacher” was depicted as instructor in Baghdad in a manuscript illumination by al-Wasiti (1236).

  48. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 3: 736.

  49. Ibid., 3: 631. An overview of this period is provided in Peter Jackson, “The Mongols and India (1221-1351)” (Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1977). See also his article, “The Mongols and the Delhi Sultanate in the Reign of Muhammad Tughlugh (1325-51),” Central Asiatic Journal, 19 (1975): 128-143. Quoted in Dunn, Adventures of Ibn Battuta, p. 181.

  50. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 2:355.

  51. Some women of the ‘Abbasid family had enormous political influence: Zaynab bint Sulayman reportedly counseled the first seven ‘Abbasid caliphs, whose combined reigns span 750-833. See al-Heitty, “Contrasting Spheres of Free Women,” p. 33.

  52. Ibn Battuta, Travels, p. 64.

  53. See description of this journey in Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 2: 497-514. The state of the Byzantine Empire at the time is described in D. M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261-1453 (London, 1972); on Ibn Battuta's knowledge of Byzantium see, e. g., J. Ebersolt, Constantinople byzantine et les voyageurs du Levant (Paris, 1918), and Mehmet Izzeddin, “Ibn Battouta et la topographie byzantine,” Actes du VI Congrs international des tudes byzantines, vol. 2 (Paris, 1951), pp. 191-196.

  54. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 2: 482.

  55. Stephen Frederick Dale, “Steppe Humanism: the Autobiographical Writings of Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur, 1483-1530,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 22/1 (1990): p. 51.

  56. So that he repeats the information on several occasions, e. g., Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 2: 416, 481.

  57. Ibid., 2: 437.

  58. Ibid., 2: 498.

  59. Ibid., 2: 500, note 313; see also Dunn, Adventures of Ibn Battuta, pp. 170-171.

  60. Gibb notes that in Byzantine sources there is no record of the marriage of a daughter of Andronicus III, reigning at the time, to a Khan of the Golden Horde; see Ibn Battuta, Travels, p. 357. However, several dynastic marriages with Turkish or Mongol princes took place in the 13th and 14th centuries; see Dunn, Adventures of Ibn Battuta, p. 169. Two instances involved bastard daughters; an illegitimate daughter of Andronicus II was married to the ruler of Thessaly. See John M. Sharp, ed., The Catalan Chronicle of Francisco de Moncada, Frances Hernández, trans. (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1975), p. 209.

  61. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 2: 501.

  62. Ibid., 2: 502-504.

  63. Ibid., 2: 514.

  64. Ameliorated in the Turco-Mongol environment by the fact that, in contrast with palace establishments in Arab countries, within the Khan's camp “the favorite wife has the allotment and disposal of a man's wives, keeping back or giving him whichever of them she pleases.” E. Denison Ross, ed., The Tarikh-i-Rashidi of Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlat. A History of the Moghuls of Central Asia. (Patna, India: Academia Asiatica, 1973), p. 6. The Mongol custom regarding imperial women before conversion to Islam is described in Ann K. S. Lambton, Continuity and Change in Medieval Persia (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1988), ch. 8.

  65. By Gregory Akindynos in a letter to a Byzantine monk. R. J. Loenertz, “Dix-huit lettres de Grégoire Acindyne, analysées et datées,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 23 (1957): 123-124; quoted in Dunn, Adventures of Ibn Battuta, p. 180. See also Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 2: 488, note 273.

  66. The sacred Tradition, having the strength of sanction in Islamic law, quotes the Prophet Muhammad as saying, “Travel so that you may remain hale and hearty. Travel so that you may derive benefit and get a windfall.” Islam—A Code of Social Life (New York: Islamic Seminary Publications, 1985), p. 94.

  67. Islam—A Code of Social Life, pp. 94-98.

  68. Schacht, Introduction to Islamic Law, p. 168.

  69. John L. Esposito, Women in Muslim Family Law (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1982), p. 23.

  70. Charles Hamilton, The Hedaya or Guide; a Commentary on the Mussulman Laws (Lahore: Premier Book House, 1975), p. 134.

  71. Hamilton, Heydaya, p. 600.

  72. Ibid., p. 705.

  73. Ibid., p. 705.

  74. This is the outcome of stipulated equality among the wives. Mernissi, Beyond the Veil, p. 117.

  75. Majid Khadduri, The Islamic Law of Nations: Shaybani's Siyar (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966), pp. 136-138.

  76. Hamilton, Heydaya, pp. 55, 140, 506.

  77. The logic operating here considers the husband responsible for the wife's maintenance only while she is available for the performance of marital duties. The responsibility also ceases if she is abducted. Schacht, Introduction to Islamic Law, p. 168.

  78. Arthur Percival Newton, ed., Travel and Travellers of the Middle Ages (Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1967), p. 91.

  79. Ibn Battuta, Travels, p. 321. Ibn Battuta is scandalized by the behavior of this judge who breaks the Islamic law by consorting openly with a woman who is neither his wife nor slave. It is possible that the restriction arose from the incompatibility of the intended journey (religious pilgrimage, for the duration of which pious behavior is expected) with the Islamic ban on fornication.

  80. al-Heitty, “Contrasting Spheres of Free Women,” p. 40.

  81. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 2: 445, 449.

  82. Ibid., 3: 555-556. Ibn Battuta was originally informed that the child was male and learned the truth only a week later. Instead of resentment, however, he believed that the girl brought him good fortune.

  83. Ibn Battuta, Travels, p. 240.

  84. Ibid., pp. 261-262.

The work on this paper was supported in part by a grant from the Washington State University Graduate School. The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Dagmar Weiler.

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