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

by Ross E. Dunn

  And so, following the sunset prayer the puzzled visitor and his host went off with the shabby cobbler to his lodge.

  We found it to be a fine building, carpeted with beautiful Rumi rugs, and with a large number of lustres of Iraqi glass . . . Standing in rows in the chamber were a number of young men wearing long cloaks, and with boots on their feet. Each one of them had a knife about two cubits long attached to a girdle round his waist, and on their heads were white bonnets of wool with a piece of stuff about a cubit long and two fingers broad attached to the peak of each bonnet . . . When we had taken our places among them, they brought in a great banquet, with fruits and sweetmeats, after which they began their singing and dancing.

  Thus Ibn Battuta had his introduction to the fityan associations of Anatolia, the institution that would subsequently see him through more than 25 different towns and cities with displays of hospitality more lavish and enthusiastic than he would experience anywhere else in the Muslim world.12 The fityan organizations, also called the akhis (originally a Turkish word meaning “generous”), were corporations of unmarried young men representing generally the artisan classes of Anatolian towns. Their purpose was essentially the social one of providing a structure of solidarity and mutual aid in the urban environment. The code of conduct and initiation ceremonies of the fityan were founded on a set of standards and values that went by the name of futuwwa, both words coming from the same Arabic root and referring in concept to the Muslim ideal of the “youth” (fata) as the exemplary expression of the qualities of nobility, honesty, loyalty, and courage. The brothers of the fityan were expected to lead lives approaching these ideal qualities, which included demonstrations of generous hospitality to visiting strangers. The leaders of the associations were usually prestigious local personages of mature years who held the honorific title of “Akhi.”

  Known from Abbasid times in varying forms of organization and purpose, the precepts of the futuwwa appear to have entered Asia Minor from Iran where fityan corporations had long been established (though Ibn Battuta barely mentions them in connection with his travels there). By the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries associations existed in probably every Anatolian town of any size. In the era of political upheaval and fragmentation extending from the Mongol invasion to the rise of the Ottoman Empire, the fityan were filling a crucial civic function of helping to maintain urban cohesiveness and defense. Each association had its distinctive costume, which normally included a white cap and special trousers, and the members met regularly in their lodges or the homes of their Akhis for sport, food, and fellowship. Drawing their initiates from young workers and craftsmen, the clubs were organized to some degree along occupational lines, though they were not synonymous with trade guilds, which also existed. Meetings and initiation rites incorporated prayers and mystical observances, the religious dimension reinforcing the secular bonds of common interest and civic idealism.

  Coming away from his first fityan banquet “greatly astonished at their generosity and innate nobility” and doubtless looking forward to the pleasant evenings that lay on the road ahead, Ibn Battuta turned his back on the Mediterranean and pushed northward through the coastal hills to the lake district of the southwestern interior and the territory of the Amirate of Hamid. At the town of Burdur he and al-Tuzari (and perhaps other companions) stayed in the house of the mosque preacher, but the fityan put on a marvelous entertainment, “although,” he admits, “they were ignorant of our language and we of theirs, and there was no one to interpret between us.” Turning northeastward next day the travelers continued to Egridir (Akkridur), capital of the Hamid dynasty situated at the southern end of a beautiful mountain lake.

  From this point in the Anatolian journey Ibn Battuta’s reconstruction of his itinerary presents serious and puzzling im- plausibilities. Though we will never be quite sure which way he went after leaving Egridir, the force of logic would suggest that he continued eastward over the Sultan Daghlari mountains to Konya at the southwestern edge of the central plateau, arriving there sometime early in January 1331 (1333).13

  Talking with the scholars under the domes of the beautiful Seljukid mosque of ’Ala al-Din or the college of Ince Minare, Ibn Battuta might have felt a bit as though he were back in Iran again, for Konya, whose population was a mix of Turks, Persians, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, was the most Persianized of Anatolian cities at the level of educated culture.14 It was not, admittedly, the grand capital it had been in the heyday of the Seljukids. But it was an important trade center, and it glowed with the residual prestige of its great endowments and the memory of Jalal al-Din Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi poet whose works are classics of world literature.

  During the late winter and spring of 1331 (1333), if our guess at the actual itinerary is correct, Ibn Battuta traveled from Konya across the central plateau to as far east as Erzurum in the mountains of Armenia, and then back again. If he had at the time no immediate desire to go to India, some of the merchants and scholars he met on the trail probably did, for much of the way he kept to the Mongol-controlled trunk roads connecting both the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea with Tabriz and the main spice and silk routes beyond it. In 1271 the young Marco Polo and his father had disembarked at Ayas in Little Armenia and followed the trans-Anatolian road by way of Sivas, the principal long-distance emporium of the eastern interior, to the upper Tigris and thence to China.

  In the later twelfth and the thirteenth centuries the Seljukids had built numerous caravansaries (khans) along the main routes eastwards of Konya. A merchant bound for Persia could not have found grander or more comfortable road accommodations anywhere in the Muslim world. Designed to serve both ordinary travelers and sultans on the march during the long and cold Anatolian winters, the most elaborate khans had, in addition to the usual sleeping quarters and storerooms grouped around an open courtyard, a large covered hall, a bath, a small mosque, and a massive, ornately carved portal. The Mongols built even more hostelries and placed contingents of mounted police along the roads to collect tolls and ensure the safety of the merchants. Even today the ruins of 23 khans still stand along the old road between Konya and Sivas.15

  In the Rihla Ibn Battuta does not, surprisingly enough, mention staying in any of these caravansaries. But he has much to say about the hospitality of the Akhis. At all his major stops between Konya and Sivas (excepting Karaman [Laranda], the capital of the Karamanid dynasty, where he was entertained by the sultan himself) he lodged with the local fityan. At Sivas he had the happy experience of being argued over by two different associations for the honor of regaling him first. One group of brothers representing the Akhi Bichaqchi met him and his companions at the gate of the city:

  They were a large company, some riding and some on foot. Then after them we were met by the associates of the . . . Akhi Chalabi, who was one of the chiefs of the Akhis and whose rank was higher than that of Akhi Bichaqchi. These invited us to lodge with them, but I could not accept their invitation, owing to the priority of the former. We entered the city in the company of both parties, who were boasting against one another, and those who had met us first showed the liveliest joy at our lodging with them.

  Ibn Battuta stayed with one club for three nights, the other for six, and during that time had an interview with the Ilkhanid governor, for he was now once again in the territory of the Mongol king. He gave the usual account of his wanderings, but it was also an occasion where he reveals the aptitude for well-timed un- ctuousness that would later serve him so well in India. The governor questioned him about the rulers of various countries through which he had traveled:

  His idea was that I would praise those of them who had been generous and find fault with the miserly, but I did nothing of the kind, and, on the contrary, praised them all. He was pleased with this conduct on my part and commended me for it, and then had food served.

  From Sivas eastward the sequence of stopovers given in the Rihla leaves doubt as to the precise route Ibn Battuta and his companions foll
owed. The high road to Tabriz, the route of the spice merchants, ran from Sivas across the hills of the eastern plateau to Erzincan (Arzanjan), a large Armenian city, and thence to Erzurum, the last important town west of the passes leading into Azerbaijan. Ibn Battuta, however, made two long and arduous side trips. One was to Amasya (Amasiya) and Sunisa (Sunusa), two Ilkhanid towns in the Pontic Mountains (Kuzey Anadolou Daghari), the lofty range that runs parallel to the Black Sea coast. The other was to Gumushane (Kumish), high up in the forests on the main road between Erzurum and the sea.16 He intended to stay in Erzurum only one night but was obliged to remain for three, at the insistence of an elderly Akhi, who personally catered the visitors’ meals, though he was by local accounts more than 130 years old!

  As the itinerary in the Rihla has it, Ibn Battuta and his friends were suddenly and inexplicably transported as if by jet aircraft from Erzurum to the city of Birgi, which lay almost 700 miles to the west. He says nothing of his return journey from eastern Anatolia, but by his own account he was in Egridir, capital of the Hamid principality, at the beginning of Ramadan, which was 8 June in 1331 (16 May in 1333). Accounting logically for his whereabouts during the previous several months, he may well have been in Egridir for a second time, returning westward, when Ramadan arrived.17 He remained there several days, attending the royal court and breaking the fast every evening in the company of the sultan and his qadi.

  He then rode westward to Ladhiq, prosperous capital of the little amirate of Denizli, where he celebrated the ’Id al-Fitr, the Breaking of the Fast, with the local doctors of the law. He was now approaching the Aegean and passing into the marches where Turcoman cavalry had only in the previous few decades expelled the Byzantine armies and landlords and where the majority of the urban population was still Christian. Ladhiq had a large and economically vigorous population of Greeks engaged in the production of fine cotton fabrics. “Most of the artisans there are Greek women,” the Rihla reports, “for in it there are many Greeks who are subject to the Muslims and who pay dues to the sultan . . . The distinctive mark of the Greeks there is their [wearing of] tall pointed hats, some red and some white, and the Greek women for their part wear capacious turbans.”

  The fityan associations were there too of course, and this time their vehement ministrations were almost enough to send Ibn Battuta and his friends fleeing in panic:

  As we passed through one of the bazaars, some men came down from their booths and seized the bridles of our horses. Then certain other men quarrelled with them for doing so, and the altercation between them grew so hot that some of them drew knives. All this time we had no idea what they were saying, and we began to be afraid of them . . . At length God sent us a man, a pilgrim, who knew Arabic, and I asked what they wanted of us. He replied that they belonged to the fityan, that those who had been the first to reach us were the associates of the . . . Akhi Sinan, while the others were the associates of the . . . Akhi Tuman, and that each party wanted us to lodge with them . . . Finally they came to an agreement to cast lots, and that we should lodge first with the one whose lot was drawn.

  After resting in Ladhiq for some days following the festivities of ’Id al-Fitr, the little party joined a caravan going west. Now their road wound down along the valleys of the ancient Aegean lands of Phrygia and Caria and past the vineyards and olive groves that signalled the travelers’ return to the Mediterranean rim.

  Throughout the rest of 1331 (1333) Ibn Battuta continued his tour of Turkish principalities, moving northward through the Aegean hinterland and visiting in succession the courts of Menteshe, Aydin, Sarukhan, Karasi, Balikesir, and finally Osman. These were the front line states of the Muslim advance, which by the time of his arrival in the region had left the hapless Byzantines clinging precariously to a few patches of fortified Asian territory. Moreover, by 1331 Turkish bands were already raiding Aegean islands and the Balkan shore opposite the Dardanelles, preliminary bouts for the invasion of Europe that was soon to come.

  The speed with which the Byzantines vacated the Aegean littoral left the Turkish invaders suddenly in possession of a region of tremendous agricultural and commercial wealth and an urban tradition going back more than two millennia. Barely out of the saddle, the upstart ghazi chiefs readily transformed themselves into civilized princes. Ibn Battuta was much impressed by his reception at Birgi, capital of the Amir Mehmed of Aydin, where he arrived probably some time in July. Owing to the intense summer heat, he spent several days in the company of the sultan and his retinue at a royal mountain retreat. Then, moving down out of the highlands to the Aegean coast, the travelers turned north again, visiting in succession the ancient cities of Aya Soluk (Ephesus), Izmir (Smyrna), Manisa, Bergama (Pergamom), Balikesir, and finally Bursa and Iznik (Yaznik, Nicaea). Akhis, shaykhs, and princes came forward all along the way to host him and ply him with gifts. Everywhere except in Aya Soluk. There he forgot to get off his horse when he saluted the governor, a son of the amir of Aydin, thus breaking a fundamental Turkish courtesy. Consequently the governor snubbed him by sending him nothing more valuable than a single robe of gold brocade. The traveler also seems to have had an unsatisfactory time in the mini-amirate of Balikesir, whose sultan he describes as “a worthless person” and its people as “a large population of good-for-nothings” for failing to build a roof on their new congregational mosque and therefore having to conduct the Friday prayer in a grove of walnut trees.

  In a completely contrasting tone he reports his introduction to Orkhan, ruler of the principality of Osman: “This sultan is the greatest of the kings of the Turkmens and the richest in wealth, lands and military forces.” From the perspective of the mid 1350s when the Rihla was composed, such a comparative evaluation would have seemed painfully accurate to all the other western amirates as well as the Christians of Constantinople. For between the time of the Moroccan’s visit to Anatolia and the close of his traveling career, the Osmanlis, or Ottomans, elbowed their way into world history.

  Osman, the Turcoman chief, who appears in history through a fog of later Ottoman legend, started his military career in the late thirteenth century organizing mounted archers in the Sakarya river region sandwiched between the great amirates of Germiyan and Kastamonu. He achieved fame suddenly in 1301 when he defeated a 2,000-man Byzantine force near Izmit (Nicomedia). As Greek resistance stiffened out of desperation to keep their remaining footholds in Asia, Osman’s ranks swelled with Turcoman cavalry from other amirates. In 1326, the year Osman died, the important Greek city of Bursa was taken and became for a time the Ottoman capital. In early 1331 Orkhan, his son and successor, captured Iznik and in the following six years virtually eliminated Byzantine power east of the Bosphorus.

  Ibn Battuta passed through the Osmanli kingdom at the historic moment when it was consolidating a rich agricultural and urban base in Anatolia and was on the brink of almost seven decades of military expansion in every direction. Orkhan’s talents as a military leader were apparent to the visitor:

  Of fortresses he possesses nearly a hundred, and for most of his time he is continually engaged in making the round of them, staying in each fortress for some days to put it into good order and examine its condition. It is said that he had never stayed for a whole month in any one town. He also fights with the infidels continually and keeps them under siege.

  Less than fifteen years after Ibn Battuta observed Orkhan’s compulsive war-making, the Ottoman army conquered the neighboring amirate of Karasi and soon thereafter crossed the Dardanelles into Thrace. The Byzantine fortress of Gallipoli fell in 1354, and when Orkhan died in 1360, the Turkish war machine was poised for the conquest of southeastern Europe.18

  When he was not fighting, Orkhan found time to establish a madrasa in Iznik in 133119 and would undertake a good deal more public building later in his reign, laying the cultural foundations that would transform his still very Greek cities into Turko–Muslim ones. The fityan clubs were already active in Bursa. Ibn Battuta lodged in the hospice of one of the Akhis and pas
sed the night of the fast of Ashura (10 Muharram, or 13 October 1331) there in a “truly sublime” state, listening to Qur’anic readings and a homiletic sermon. He also met Orkhan himself during his stay in Bursa (though he has nothing to say about the meeting) and received from him a gift of “a large sum of money.” In Iznik he met the Khatun, wife of Orkhan, and remained in that city for some weeks owing to one of his horses being ill.

  When he started out again sometime in November,20 now traveling eastward to his rendezvous with the Black Sea, he had in his company, he tells us, three friends (including al-Tuzari), two slave boys, and a slave girl. This is one of the few occasions in the Rihla where he reveals precisely the composition of his entourage. He was also trailing, we may surmise, several horses and a large accumulation of baggage. Heading into the last stage of his journey through Asia Minor, it seems clear that a significant change had occurred in both his material welfare and his own sense of his social status as an ’alim of moderate fortune. He speaks in the Rihla of “the prestige enjoyed by doctors of law among the Turks.” Indeed, as a jurist, a pilgrim, and a representative of Arab culture, he was treated with more honor and deference among the Turkish princes, themselves hungry for approval as legitimate and respectable Muslim rulers, than anywhere else in his travels up to that point. In turn he began to assert himself more as a mature and lettered man in the presence of secular power. In Milas at the court of Menteshe he successfully interceded before the sultan on behalf of a jurist who had fallen out of favor owing to a political slip. In Aydin the amir Mehmed asked him to write down a number of hadiths, or traditions of the Prophet, recalled from memory, then had expositions of them prepared in Turkish. Later, at the palace in Birgi Ibn Battuta loudly denounced a Jewish physician, who had a prominent position at court, for seating himself in a position above the Qur’an readers. The incident was not so much an expression of anti-semitism as a demonstration of his sense of pious propriety and his willingness to stand up for righteous standards as he perceived them, whatever the sultan’s reaction.21