by Ross E. Dunn
Ibn Battuta ended a sojourn of a little more than eight months in the capital in a state of ambivalence over the qualities of Malian culture. On the one hand he respected Sulayman’s just and stable government and the earnest devotion of the Muslim population to their mosque prayers and Qur’anic studies. “They place fetters on their children if there appears on their part a failure to memorize the Qur’an,” he reports approvingly, “and they are not undone until they memorize it.” On the other hand he reproached the Sudanese severely for practices obviously based in Malinke tradition but, from his point of view, either profane or ridiculous when set against the model of the rightly guided Islamic state: female slaves and servants who went stark naked into the court for all to see; subjects who groveled before the sultan, beating the ground with their elbows and throwing dust and ashes over their heads; royal poets who romped about in feathers and bird masks. Ibn Battuta seems indeed to be harsher on the Malians than he does on other societies of the Islamic periphery where behavior rooted in local tradition, but contrary to his scriptural and legal standards, colored religious and social practice. We may sense in his reportage a certain embarrassment that a kingdom whose Islam was so profoundly influenced by his own homeland and its Maliki doctors was not doing a better job keeping to the straight and narrow.
Ibn Battuta left Sulayman’s court on 27 February 1353 (22 Muharram 754), traveling by camel in the company of a merchant. Since the location of the capital is uncertain, his itinerary away from it is equally problematic. If he had a general plan of travel, it seems to have been to explore the provinces of Mali further down the Niger. He mentions that in the ensuing days he crossed, not the great river itself, but a tributary channel, which might be identified with the “canal du Sahel,” a northerly flood branch located east of the modern Malian town of Ségou.21 From there he followed a northeasterly route, keeping well to the west of the river, then rejoining it again somewhere not far upstream from Timbuktu.
In the Rihla Ibn Battuta expresses no particular wonder at that legendary “city of gold.” In fact the rise of Timbuktu as a trans-Saharan terminus and capital of Islamic learning came mainly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the mid fourteenth century, when Ibn Battuta passed through, the town was only beginning to flower. It had a population of about 10,000 and a Malian governor, who had been installed when Mansa Musa visited the town on his return from the Hijaz.22 It almost certainly had a sizable community of Maghribi and Sudanese scholars. According to tradition, Mansa Musa had commissioned an impressive grand mosque.23 Yet until later in the century Timbuktu was junior to Walata as a trade and intellectual center. Ibn Battuta found nothing there to detain him for long and was soon on his way down the Niger.
At Kabara, Timbuktu’s “port” on the river four miles south of the city, he abandoned his dromedary and boarded a small boat, a type of canoe (“carved out of a single piece of wood”) that is still used in the region today.24 From Kabara the Niger flows due eastward for about 180 miles through the flat Sahelian steppe. “Each night,” he reports, “we stayed in a village and bought what we were in need of in the way of wheat and butter for salt, spices and glass trinkets.” At one village he celebrated the Prophet’s Birthday (12 Rabi’ I 754 or 17 April 1353) in the company of the local commander, whose generosity the Rihla praises so effusively that the tacit negative comparison to Mansa Sulayman is not lost on the reader. The officer not only entertained his visitor warmly but even gave him a slave boy as a gift. The lad accompanied Ibn Battuta back across the Sahara and remained with him for some years.
Continuing down river, the traveler spent about a month in Gao (Kawkaw), a thriving commercial city at the eastern extremity of Mali’s political orbit. Then, having by this time crossed a large part of the empire from west to east and visited most of the towns with important Muslim populations, he decided to make for home. Gao paralleled Walata and Timbuktu as a terminus of trans-Saharan trade, but with relatively more important route connections to Ifriqiya and Egypt. Ibn Battuta found “a big caravan” departing from Gao for Ghadamès (Ghadamis), a major stop in the northern desert about 450 miles due south of Tunis. He had no plans to go to Ghadamès, but it made sense for him to accompany the convoy as far east as the oasis of Takedda (Azelik), which lay to the southwest of the Saharan highland region called Air.25 From there he could expect to intercept a caravan en route to Sijilmasa from the central Sudan (the region corresponding to the northern part of modern Nigeria).
His journey to Takedda was disagreeable. In Gao he purchased a riding camel, as well as a she-camel to carry his provisions. But the sweltering desert summer was approaching, and after only one stage on the trail the she-camel collapsed. Other travelers among the company agreed to help transport Ibn Battuta’s belongings, but further on he fell sick, this time “because of the extreme heat and a surplus of bile.” Stumbling on to Takedda, he found a house in which to recuperate as well as a welcoming community of resident Moroccans.
Like Taghaza, Takedda was a grim spot in the desert important for its mine, in this case copper. Unlike Taghaza, the town was also a junction of trade routes and consequently a place of some slight urbanity. Ibn Battuta reports:
The people of Takedda have no occupation but trade. They travel each year to Egypt and import some of everything which is there in the way of fine cloth and other things. Its people are comfortable and well off and are proud of the number of male and female slaves which they have.
Recovering from his illness, he thought of buying “an educated slave girl” for himself. The effort brought nothing but trouble, not least for the unfortunate young women involved. First, the qadi of the town got one of the other notables to sell the traveler a girl of his own for a quantity of gold. Then the man decided he had made a mistake and asked to buy her back. Ibn Battuta agreed on condition that a replacement be found. Another Moroccan in the caravan, a man named ’Ali ’Aghyul, had a woman he was ready to sell. But Ibn Battuta and this fellow had already had a personal row. On the journey to Takedda, ’Ali ’Aghyul had not only refused to help carry the load from Ibn Battuta’s dead camel but even denied a drink of water to his countryman’s slave boy. Nevertheless Ibn Battuta went through with the deal, this girl “being better than the first one.” But then
this Moroccan regretted having sold the slave and wished to revoke the bargain. He importuned me to do so, but I declined to do anything but reward him for his evil acts. He almost went mad and died of grief. But I let him off afterwards.
Some time following this shabby incident, a slave messenger arrived in a caravan from Sijilmasa carrying an order from Sultan Abu ’Inan that the faqih should return immediately to Fez. Ibn Battuta offers no explanation why the sultan should have kept such close track of his movements south of the Sahara. It seems likely that Abu ’Inan was anxious to have a report from him on political and commercial conditions in Mali, matters so important to the health of the Marinid state.26
Ibn Battuta left Takadda on 11 September 1353 (11 Sha’ban 754) in the company of a large caravan transporting 600 black female slaves to Morocco. These unfortunates had probably started out from the savanna lands southeast of Takedda, regions which, in the absence of gold deposits, engaged more extensively in slave commerce than did Mali.27 Once arrived in Sijilmasa or Fez, the women would be sold into service as domestics, concubines, or servants of the royal court.
The caravan trekked northward through 18 days of “wilderness without habitation” to a point north of Air (possibly Assiou or In Azaoua,28 where the route leading to Ghadamès forked off from the road to Sijilmasa. From there the convoy skirted the western side of the Ahaggar (Hoggar, or Hukkar) Mountains of the central desert. Here they passed through the territory of veiled Berber nomads who, Ibn Battuta informs us, were “good for nothing . . . We encountered one of their chief men who held up the caravan until he was paid an impost of cloth and other things.”
Now veering gradually to the northwest, the company eventually reached
the great north Saharan oasis complex of Tuwat (Touat). Ibn Battuta mentions only one stopping place in this region (Buda), then tells us simply that they continued on to Sijilmasa. He stayed there no more than about two weeks, then continued on over the High Atlas in the dead of winter. “I have seen difficult roads and much snow in Bukhara, Samarkand, Khurasan and the land of the Turks, but I never saw a road more difficult than that.” Somewhere along that frigid highway he halted to celebrate the Feast of Sacrifice, 6 January 1354.
Then I departed and reached the capital Fez, capital of our Lord the Commander of the Faithful, may God support him, and kissed his noble hand, and deemed myself fortunate to see his blessed face. I remained in the shelter of his beneficence after my long travels, may God . . . thank him for the great benefits which he bestowed on me and his ample benignity.
Indeed Abu ’Inan could afford to be amply benign, for his reign had just about reached its high point when Ibn Battuta returned to the capital. Morocco was generally at peace, and the sultan was even planning for the day when he would best his father at conquering Ifriqiya and unifying North Africa once and for all. If the Black Death had temporarily deflated Fez’s productiveness in craft and industry, the city was still the center of the intellectual universe west of Cairo. Among the stars of saintliness and erudition gathered there, Ibn Battuta might expect to shine for a moment or two on the strength of the stories he had to tell.
Notes
1. Abu Zayd ’Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun, Kitab al-’lbar, in L&H, pp. 333–34.
2. Ibn Fadl Allah al-Umari, Masalik al-absar fi mamalik al-amsar, in L&H, pp. 269–70.
3. Al-Umari, L&H, pp. 270–71.
4. Andrew M. Watson, “Back to Gold and Silver,” Economic History Review 20 (1967): 30–31; Nehemia Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali (London, 1973), pp. 131–33.
5. Al-Umari, L&H, p. 261.
6. The Rihla is the only existing eye-witness testimony on the Mali empire and therefore a precious historical source.
7. The commentaries are divided on the question of IB’s purpose in going to the Sudan. The issue hinges on the translation of the phrase bi-rasm al-safar in the Arabic text. One version has it: “I took leave of our Master (may God uphold him). I departed with orders to accomplish a journey to the land of the Sudan.” R. Mauny et al., Textes et documents relatifs à l’histoire de l’Afrique: extraits tirés des voyages d’Ibn Battuta (Dakar, 1966), p. 35. Levtzion and Hopkins (L&H, p. 414), however, believe that this translation “seems to read too much into the text.” They prefer “and set off with the purpose of traveling to the land of the Sudan.” Both D&S (vol. 4, p. 376) and H&K (p. 22) give similar meaning to their translation of the phrase. Levtzion (Ghana and Mali, p. 216) states that IB was “on a private visit to the Sudan” but that Abu ’Inan knew of his movements. When IB was at Takadda in the southern Sahara, the sultan sent a messenger telling him to return to Fez. I agree with Levtzion. If IB were on an official mission to Mali, we might expect him to make a good deal of it in the Rihla or at least refer to it in connection with his appearance at the Mali court.
8. Al-Umari, L&H, p. 275.
9. Abu ’Abd Allah al-Idrisi, Nuzhat al-mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq, L&H. p. 118.
10. Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa, trans. Robert Pory, ed. Robert Brown, 3 vols. (New York, 1896), vol. 3, pp. 800–01. Modern spelling mine.
11. Mauny et al. (Textes et Documents, p. 38) identify IB’s Tasarahla with Bir al- Ksaib.
12. Mauny et al., Textes et documents, p. 37.
13. Raymond Mauny, Tableau géographique de l’Ouest Africain au Moyen ge d’après les sources écrites, la tradition et l’archéologie (Amsterdam, 1967), p. 485.
14. H&K, p. 70n.
15. J. O. Hunwick identifies Zaghari with the Sokolo region and Karsakhu with a point on the Niger south of there. “The Mid-Fourteenth century capital of Mali,” Journal of African History 14 (1973): 199–200. Other hypotheses on this stretch of IB’s itinerary are offered by Claude Meillassoux, “L’itinéraire d’Ibn Battuta de Walata à Malli,” Journal of African History 13 (1972): 389–95; and Mauny et al., Textes et documents, pp. 46–47.
16. Textual, linguistic, and archaeological evidence have all been marshalled to find the fourteenth century capital of Mali. Recent discussions, which also review the earlier literature on the problem, are Wladyslaw Filipowiak, Études archéologiques sur la capitale médiévale du Mali, trans. Zofia Slawskaj (Szczecin, 1979); Hunwick, “Mid-Fourteenth Century Capital,” pp. 195–206; and Meillassoux, “L’itinéraire d’Ibn Battuta,’ pp. 389–95. Hunwick hypothesizes that IB did not visit Niani but a place north of the Niger, pointing out that the traveler never mentions crossing the river.
17. Al-Umari, L&H, p. 263.
18. Ibn Khaldun, L&H, p. 335.
19. Al-Umari, L&H, pp. 262–63.
20. H&K, p. 72n.
21. Hunwick, “Mid-Fourteenth Century Capital,” p. 203.
22. Elias N. Saad, Social History of Timbuktu: the Role of Muslim Scholars and Notables, 1400–1900 (Cambridge, England, 1983), pp. 11, 27.
23. Levtzion, Ghana and Mali, p. 201; Mauny, Tableau géographique, pp. 114–15; and Saad, Social History of Timbuktu, pp. 36–37.
24. Mauny et al., Textes et documents, p.71.
25. Mauny (Tableau geógraphique, pp. 139–40) identifies IB’s Takadda with Azelik. Most other commentators agree.
26. Jean Devisse presumes that IB was on a mission for Abu ’Inan and speculates that the sultan wanted up-to-date intelligence out of fear that the gold trade was being increasingly diverted towards Egypt. “Routes de commerce et échanges en Afrique Occidentale en relation avec la Méditerranée,” Revue d’Histoire Économique et Sociale 50 (1972): 373.
27. Levtzion, Ghana and Mali, pp. 174–76.
28. Mauny et al. (Textes et documents, p. 79) identify IB’s watering place with one or the other of these points. L&H (p. 418n) are doubtful but offer no alternative.
14 The Rihla
I have indeed — praise be to God — attained my desire in this world, which was to travel through the earth, and I have attained in this respect what no other person has attained to my knowledge.1
Ibn Battuta
We know only in a very general way what happened to Ibn Battuta after he returned to Fez in 1354. Sultan Abu ’Inan certainly listened to his report on Mali and no doubt wanted to hear about his traveling career, the political highlights in particular. After the interview Ibn Battuta might have expected to slip quietly out of public notice, perhaps to seek a judicial appointment elsewhere in Morocco. Yet the king was sufficiently impressed by this genial and sharp-witted faqih that he ordered him to stay in Fez for the time being and prepare a narrative of his experiences for the pleasure of the royal court.
Since Ibn Battuta was no belle-lettrist, Ibn Juzayy, the young secretary he had met briefly in Granada three years earlier, was commissioned by the sultan to shape the Tangierian’s story into a proper oeuvre conforming to the literary standards of a rihla: an account of travels centering upon a journey (or journeys) to Mecca. Ibn Juzayy had fallen out of favor with his former employer Yusuf I of Granada and left his service to accept a post in Fez not long before Ibn Battuta’s return there from Mali. He already had a reputation for his poetry, his prose writings in philology, history, and law, and his fine calligraphic style.2 He seems to have come to his assignment with enthusiasm and may well have developed a warm friendship with the journeyer.
The two of them probably met together regularly for about two years from shortly after Ibn Battuta’s arrival in Fez until December 1355, when the redaction of the narrative was finished under the florid formal title, “A Gift to the Observers Concerning the Curiosities of the Cities and the Marvels Encountered in Travels.” The work sessions likely took place in different places: in the older man’s house or the younger’s, in the gardens or halls of Fez Jdid, in the shady arcades of mosques. Ibn Juzayy admits that what he wrote was only an abridgmen
t of all that his collaborator told him or had written out for him in notes. There is no direct evidence that Ibn Battuta ever read the completed manuscript or checked it for errors. Mistakes in the phonetic spelling of various foreign words suggest that he did not.3 Ibn Juzayy may have continued to revise and refine the book after his interviews with the traveler were completed. In any case, the connection between the two men ended in 1356 or 1357 when Ibn Juzayy, not yet 37 years old, died of causes unknown.4
In his brief introduction to the Rihla, Ibn Juzayy explains precisely what the sultan had ordered Ibn Battuta to do:
he should dictate an account of the cities which he had seen in his travel, and of the interesting events which had clung to his memory, and that he should speak of those whom he had met of the rulers of countries, of their distinguished men of learning, and of their pious saints. Accordingly, he dictated upon these subjects a narrative which gave entertainment to the mind and delight to the ears and eyes.
This is a concise statement of the general subject matter of Ibn Battuta’s interviews with Ibn Juzayy, although he ranged over almost every conceivable aspect of fourteenth-century life from cuisine, botany, and marriage practices to dynastic history and the price of chickens. As he spoke or fed Ibn Juzayy notes, he wove his descriptive observations haphazardly into the account of his own experience. Ibn Juzayy, moreover, interjected rhetorical odds and ends into the manuscript here and there, including a bit of verse. But generally he stayed true to the structure of Ibn Battuta’s verbal recounting. Consequently, the autobiography, the personal adventure, remains at the heart of the book, revealing the traveler’s gregarious, high-spirited, pushy, impetuous, pious, ingratiating personality through the account of the life he lived. The plan of the Rihla was very different from the organization of that other famous travel narrative of the medieval age, the Book of Marco Polo. The Venetian’s work is divided into two parts, the first a brief summary of his traveling career, the second, which makes up most of the account, a systematic, didactic presentation of information about China and other lands east of Europe. All in all, the book remains, in vivid contrast to the Rihla, “a treatise of empirical geography,” revealing almost nothing about Marco’s personality.5