The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century

by Ross E. Dunn

  The anchoring of the Mongol state and the revival of trade found Tabriz rather than Baghdad the main junction of trans-Persian routes linking the Mediterranean, Central Asia, and the Indian Ocean. The city also attracted colonies of Genoese, Venetians, and other south Europeans, who responded fast to Mongol tolerance and internationalism by advancing in from their bases on the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts. Even the Ilkhans who had converted to Islam observed the Pax Mongolica tradition of open trade and travel. Abu Sa’id, for example, signed a commercial treaty with Venice in 1320, and though Ibn Battuta does not mention the presence of Europeans in Tabriz in connection with his visit, we know some were there.35

  The Ilkhan Ghazan made Tabriz worthy of the cultivated Persian gentlemen who staffed his secretariat by beautifying the town and ordering the construction of an entirely new suburb of grand buildings, including a mosque, a madrasa, a hospice, a library, a hospital, a residence for religious and state officials, and his own mausoleum — none of which has survived to the present.36 Around the end of the fourteenth century Tabriz had a population of 200,000 to 300,000 people.37 Oljeitu established his own new capital at Sultaniya, and Abu Sa’id honored the change. But Sultaniya was the Ilkhanids’ Brazilia. The court and bureaucratic elite resisted mightily the notion of leaving comfortable Tabriz, which remained the far greater city of the two.38

  Ibn Battuta, unfortunately, had little time to take in the sights of the town. On the very morning after he arrived there with the Mongol envoys, ’Ala al-Din received orders to rejoin the Ilkhan’s mahalla. The Moroccan apparently decided there was nothing for it but to stick with his benefactor if he were to be assured of getting back to Baghdad in time for the hajj departure. And so off he went after a single night and without meeting any of the city’s scholars. He did, however, manage to squeeze in a look around. He lodged in a magnificent hospice, where he dined, he tells us, on meat, bread, rice, and sweets. In the morning he toured the great bazaar (“One of the finest bazaars I have seen the world over”) where the international merchantry displayed the wares of all Eurasia.

  He undoubtedly chafed at having to leave Tabriz so precipitately. Yet he was to be unexpectedly compensated soon enough. For when he returned to the mahalla several days later, ’Ala al-Din arranged for him to meet the Ilkhan himself. The audience in the royal tent was probably brief, but Abu Sa’id questioned the visitor about his country, gave him a robe and a horse, and even ordered that a letter of introduction be sent to the governor of Baghdad with instructions to supply the young faqih with camels and provisions for the journey to the Hijaz. There was nothing very special about a pious ruler giving charity to a scholar on his way to the hajj. And Ibn Battuta, for his part, has relatively little to say in the Rihla about Abu Sa’id and his court compared, for example, to the dozens of pages he devotes to the sultan of Delhi. But, at the time, the experience was significant if only as more evidence of those combined qualities of good breeding, piety, and charm which smoothed the young traveler’s way into the presence of the high and powerful.

  The Rihla is silent on the itinerary and schedule back to Baghdad, including his traveling companions. The entire round trip could have taken as little as 35 days, since he journeyed a good part of the way with a fast-moving royal envoy. He might then have been back in Baghdad as early as about mid-July.39

  He still had two months to wait for the hajj caravan, which traditionally left Baghdad on 1 Dhu l-Qa’da, or in that year 18 September. Since he had come back from his Tabriz expedition so quickly he “thought it a good plan” to squeeze in a tour, a rather uneventful one as it turned out, of the upper Mesopotamian region, known as the Jazira. He traveled northward along the Tigris to the important Kurdish city of Mosul, then on to Cizre (Jazirat ibn ’Umar) in modern Turkey near the Iraqi border. This stretch generally replicated the route taken by Marco Polo 55 years earlier on his outbound journey from the Levant to China and by Ibn Jubayr in 1184, from whose book the Rihla lifts most of its descriptive material on the Tigris towns. From Cizre, Ibn Battuta made a loop of about 360 miles through the plateau country west of the river. He got as far as the fortress city of Mardin (which is in modern Turkey), then doubled back by way of Sinjar (and a corner of modern Syria) to Mosul. His hosts along the way included the Ilkhanid governor at Mosul (who lodged him and footed his expenses), the chief qadi at Mardin, and a Kurdish mystic whom he met in a mountain-top hermitage near Sinjar and who gave him some silver coins which he kept in his possession until he lost them to bandits in India several years later.

  When he returned to Mosul he found one of the regional “feeder” caravans ready to depart for Baghdad to join the main assembly of pilgrims. He also had the fortune to meet an aged holy woman named Sitt Zahida, whom he describes as a descendant of the Caliphs. She had made the hajj numerous times and had in her service a group of Sufi disciples. Ibn Battuta joined her little company and enjoyed her protection while traveling back along the Tigris. The acquaintance was sadly brief, for she died later during the Arabian journey and was buried in the desert.

  In Baghdad again, Ibn Battuta sought out the governor and received from him, as ordered by Abu Sa’id, a camel litter and sufficient food and water for four people. Luckily, the amir al-hajj was the same Pehlewan Muhammad al-Hawih who had looked after him on the previous year’s journey. “Our friendship was strengthened by this,” he recalls, “and I remained under his protection and favored by his bounty, for he gave me even more than had been ordered for me.” Ibn Battuta might then have expected to return to Mecca in style except that at Kufa he fell sick with diarrhea, the illness persisting until after he reached his destination. During the long journey he had to be dismounted from his litter many times a day, though the amir gave instructions that he be cared for as well as possible. By the time he arrived in Mecca he was so weak that he had to make the tawaf and the sa’y mounted on one of the amir’s horses. On the tenth of Dhu l-Hijja, however, while camped at Mina for the sacrifice, he began to feel better.

  Perhaps after this punishing experience he deduced that he needed a rest. In a year’s time he had traveled more than 4,000 miles, crossed the Zagros Mountains four times and the Arabian desert twice, visited most of the great cities of Iraq and western Persia, and met scholars, saints, qadis, governors, an atabeg, and even a Mongol king. At this point he might have sat against a pillar of the Haram and written a respectable rihla about nothing more than his travels of 1325–27. The trip to Persia, however, would appear in retrospect as little more than a trial run for the heroic marches that were to follow. What he needed in the fall of 1327 was an interval for rest, prayer, and study. Then, spiritually refreshed, he would be off again.

  Notes

  1. V. A. Riasonovsky, Fundamental Principles of Mongol Law (Tientsin, 1937), p. 88.

  2. Juvaini, The History of the World Conqueror, trans. J. A. Boyle, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), vol. 1, p. 152.

  3. John M. Smith, “Mongol Manpower and Persian Population,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (1975): 291.

  4. Edward G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, 4 vols. (Cambridge, England, 1929–30), vol. 2, p. 439.

  5. Hamd-Allah Mustawfi, The Geographical Part of the Nuzhat al-Qulub, trans. G. Le Strange (Leiden, 1919), p. 34.

  6. D. O. Morgan argues that by the early fourteenth century a significant number of Turco–Mongols were giving up nomadism for proprietorship of agricultural estates acquired in the form of revenue grants (iqtas) from the Ilkhan, thereby planting their social roots in Persian soil. “The Mongol Armies in Persia,” Der Islam 56 (1979): 81–96.

  7. See Rashid al-Din, The Successors of Genghis Khan, trans. John A. Boyle (New York, 1971); and John A. Boyle, “Rashid al-Din: The First World Historian,” in The Mongol World Empire 1206–1370 (London, 1977), pp. 19–26.

  8. E. Ashtor, A Social and Economic History of the Near East in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1976), p. 257.

  9. Rashid al-Din, Successo
rs of Genghis Khan, p. 6.

  10. Since IB gives all the stations on his trip from Mecca to al-Najaf, no apparent problems arise with Hrbek’s estimate of 44 days (Hr, p. 427). For this section of the narrative IB once again draws heavily on Ibn Jubayr’s descriptions of the route and halting places.

  11. A. Bausani, “Religion under the Mongols,” in J. A. Boyle (ed.), The Cambridge History of Iran (Cambridge, England, 1968), vol. 5, pp. 538–47.

  12. IB does not mention the length of this stay in al-Najaf. Hrbek (Hr, p. 428) suggests three to five days on the speculative grounds that he would not have tarried long in a Shi’i town.

  13. G. Le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate (Cambridge, England, 1905), pp. 24–85. The author describes the complex topography of the Tigris – Euphrates basin in Abbasid times and later, stressing the fact that the course of the rivers and tributary streams and canals have changed repeatedly over the centuries.

  14. For clarity of meaning I have changed Gibb’s translation of the Arabic al-fuqara’ (D&S, vol. 2, p. 5) from “poor brethren” (Gb, vol. 2, p. 273) to “Sufi brethren.”

  15. Hrbek’s estimate of the chronology (Hr, pp. 428–29) is based on computations of distances and traveling times from other Islamic sources.

  16. This is Hrbek’s guess (Hr, p. 429) based on the idea that when IB sojourned in a spot for a substantial length of time, he always noted it.

  17. Le Strange (Lands, pp. 46–49) describes the canal system as it existed about that time. Also W. Barthold, An Historical Geography of Iran, trans. Svat Soucek, ed. with an introduction by C. E. Bosworth (Princeton, N.J., 1984), pp. 203–05.

  18. Le Strange, Lands, pp. 48–49.

  19. IB’s description of the trip through the Zagros presents serious chronological difficulties. He passed through this region a second time in 1347 on his way back to North Africa. His remarks on the season, on the identity of the atabeg, and on certain events at the princely court make it reasonably clear that almost all of the descriptive information he associates with the 1327 trip actually pertains to the later one. The same is likely true concerning his personal experiences, notably a bout with fever. Both Gibb (Gb, vol. 2, p. 288n, 290n) and Hrbek (Hr, pp. 429–31) agree that in the Rihla the two trips are confused.

  20. “Isfahan,” EI2, vol. 4, p. 102.

  21. Hrbek (Hr, pp. 431–33) rejects the Rihla’s statement that IB got his khirqa from Qutb al-Din at Shiraz on 7 May 1327, since he could not possibly have reached Baghdad during the month Rajab (23 May–21 June 1327), a period when he himself asserts he was in that city. Hrbek suggests that owing to a lapse of memory or a copyist’s mistake, the date of the investiture should perhaps read 14 Jumada I rather that 14 Jumada II, that is, 7 April rather than 7 May. If he left Isfahan in the earlier part of April, he would have had time to reach Baghdad during Rajab.

  22. Edward G. Browne, A Year amongst the Persians (London, 1893), pp. 220–62; Le Strange, Lands, p. 297.

  23. Mustawfi, Nuzhat al-Qulub, pp. 113–14.

  24. Gb, vol. 2, pp. 300n, 304n.

  25. IB also visited Majd al-Din in 1347 while en route from India to Syria. Hrbek suggests ten days for the visit in 1327, though the Rihla presents a good deal of confusion between the first and second stays. Hr, pp. 433–34; Gb, vol. 2, p. 301n.

  26. Hrbek’s calculations of the Persian chronology are speculative since IB provides only three fixed dates for the entire period of travel from Mecca to Baghdad. The long journey from Shiraz to Baghdad is especially troublesome as routes and stations are extremely vague. Hrbek suggests 35–40 days for this itinerary (Hr, p. 434).

  27. Hrbek’s estimate (Hr, p. 434), is in accord with IB’s statement that he was in the city during the month of Rajab.

  28. “Masdjid,” EI1, vol. 3, p. 354.

  29. Quoted in Henry M. Howorth, History of the Mongols, 3 vols. (London, 1876–88), vol. 3, p. 624.

  30. At the time IB was visiting Persia, the young Ilkhan was under the political domination of the Amir Choban, who held a position at court tantamount to mayor of the palace. Shortly after IB left Persia, however, Abu Sa’id abruptly and ruthlessly eliminated Choban and two of the commander’s sons and took full charge of his kingdom. IB’s account of the fall of the Choban family is one of the few historical sources on these events. See J. A. Boyle, “Dynastic and Political History of the Il-Khans” in Boyle, Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5, pp. 406–13.

  31. Hrbek (Hr, p. 437) suggests a June departure.

  32. Mustawfi, the fourteenth-century geographer and historian, names the stations on the Baghdad-to-Khurasan high road in Mongol times. Le Strange, Lands, pp. 61, 227–28.

  33. Gibb (Gb, vol. 2, p. 344n) suggests that ’Ala al-Din probably got the order to go to Tabriz near Hamadan, calculated on the ten days already traveled from Baghdad.

  34. Le Strange, Lands, pp. 229–30.

  35. W. Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au Moyen-ge, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1936), vol. 2, pp. 124–25.

  36. “Tabriz,” EI1, vol. 4, p. 586.

  37. I. P. Petrushevskey, “The Socio-Economic Condition of Iran under the Il-Khans” in Boyle, Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5, p. 507.

  38. “Tabriz,”, EI1, vol. 4, p. 586.

  39. IB states that when he got back to Baghdad he still had more than two months to go before the departure of the hajj caravan. If it left at the normal time, about 1 Dhu l-Qa’da (18 September 1327), we can infer in general when the Tabriz excursion ended. Gibb (Gb, vol. 2, p. 346n) suggests it was before the end of June. Hrbek (Hr, pp. 436–37) offers 1 July or later. He also argues for a fast trip to Tabriz and back on the grounds that he was traveling part of the way with a royal official in a hurry.

  6 The Arabian Sea

  God is He who has subjected to you the sea, that the ships may run on it at His commandment, and that you may seek His bounty; haply so you will be thankful.1

  The Qur’an, Sura XLV

  In the Rihla Ibn Battuta briefly describes a residence in Mecca of about three years, from September 1327 to the autumn of 1330. In fact, the overall chronological pattern of his travels from 1327 to 1333 suggests that he lived in the city only about one year, taking the road again in 1328.2 In either case he spent an extended period in the sacred city, living as a mujawir, or scholar-sojourner. “I led a most agreeable existence,” he recalls in the Rihla, “giving myself up to circuits, pious exercises and frequent performances of the Lesser Pilgrimage.” During this period, or at least the first year, he lodged at the Muzaffariya madrasa, an endowment of a late sultan of the Yemen located near the western corner of the Haram.3 As a pilgrim-in-residence he had no trouble making ends meet on the charity of alms-givers and learned patrons. The imam of the Hanafi community, he reports, was “the most generous of the jurists of Mecca,” running up an annual debt of forty or fifty thousand dirhams dispensing alms to mujawirs and indigent travelers. The young Moroccan’s special benefactor appears to have been an esteemed North African jurist known as Khalil. This sage was the Maliki qadi of Mecca at the time and the imam of the pilgrimage rites. While Ibn Battuta was living at the Muzaffariya, the shaykh had bread and other comestibles sent to him every day following the afternoon prayer.

  The Rihla condenses Ibn Battuta’s residence into a few brief paragraphs and has much less to say about his own experiences than about the identities of various personages arriving in the hajj caravans. Muslim readers of the narrative would not of course have to be given an elaborate account of how a sojourner passed his time in the Holy City. It was taken for granted that a pious man would lead a placid life of prayer, devotion, fellowship, and learning. It is curious nevertheless that Ibn Battuta makes no mention of having undertaken courses of study with any of the important professors. He says nothing of books learned or ijazas collected as he does in connection with his earlier and briefer stay in Damascus. But we may assume that he attended lectures on law and other subjects in the Haram or the colleges round about it.4

  Map 6: Ibn Battuta
’s Itinerary in Arabia and East Africa, 1328–30 (1330–32)

  The Haram was the central teaching institution in Mecca, that is to say, the place where the greatest number of classes gathered each day.5 The leading ’ulama of the city controlled the right to teach there, preventing any literate stranger from simply walking in and setting up a class. Only after a scholar’s knowledge and reputation had been adequately examined could he set down his carpet or cushion in an assigned place in the colonnades, a spot he might then have the right to occupy for the entire teaching year, if not his lifetime. The professor always lectured facing the Ka’ba, the students ranged in a circle around him, those behind sitting in very close so they might catch every word. The size of classes varied considerably, as they do in any modern university, depending on the subject being studied and the master’s fame. Anyone was free to listen in, and around the outer fringes of the circle people came and went as they pleased. A class usually lasted about two hours, including reading of a text, commentary on it, and questions.

  The teaching day started early, and if Ibn Battuta planned to attend the first lecture of the morning he would be in the Haram right after the prayer of first light when the lesson circles began to assemble. In the hours of the dawn, classes met in the open court around the Ka’ba, but when the Arabian sun loomed over the east wall of the mosque they quickly retreated into the shadow of the colonnades. The most important teaching went on during the cool hours of the morning and late afternoon. But circles might be seen in the mosque at any time of day, applying themselves to the religious sciences or the auxiliary subjects of grammar, elocution, calligraphy, logic, or poetics. Even in the late evening between the sunset and night prayers a professor might squeeze in an additional dictation or commentary. On Fridays most classes recessed, the community devoting itself to prayer and the hearing of the congregational sermon.