by Ross E. Dunn
Notes
1. Quoted in P. Hardy, Historians of Medieval India (London, 1960), p. 98.
2. Ibn Fadl Allah al-’Umari, A Fourteenth Century Arab Account of India under Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq, trans. and ed. Iqtidar Husain Siddiqi and Qazi Mohammad Ahmad (Aligarh, 1971), p. 36.
3. Since IB lived and traveled in India for about a decade and since he and his editor expected literate Moroccans to be particularly interested in facts about that distant land, he devotes nearly a fifth of the Rihla to a description of the history, political affairs, social customs, class relations, and Muslim religious life of the sultanate and other regions of the subcontinent. The Rihla is one of a very few contemporary literary sources on fourteenth-century India, especially the life and times of Muhammad Tughluq. IB is indeed the sole source of information on a number of historical events, including some of the rebellions against the sultan. He also gives a brief dynastic history of the kingdom, based, as he reveals, on information supplied to him mainly by Kamal al-Din ibn al-Burhan, the chief judge. Where IB’s reporting has been checked against the other contemporary sources, he has been found reasonably accurate. For the modern historian, however, the value of the narrative has been restricted by the lack of a clear chronological framework and almost no references to either absolute or relative dates. The other chronicles of the time suffer from the same deficiency.
Since the Rihla is a book for Muslims about Muslims, indeed literate Muslims, it is an inadequate source on Hindu society and civilization. Though IB does describe certain Hindu customs and gives some examples of the interpenetration of Hindu and Muslim culture, he is generally disinclined to examine the life of Muslim peasant folk, much less infidel peasant folk. Despite the thread of amiable tolerance that runs through the Rihla, IB’s perspective is identical with that of the other Muslim writers of the time. “For them, indeed as for Muslim historians outside India,” Peter Hardy writes, “the only significant history is the history of the Muslim community; they are historians of the res gestae of the politically prominent members of a group united by ties of common faith rather than historians of the whole people of the area controlled by the Delhi sultan.” Historians of Medieval India, p. 114.
4. Muhammad Tughluq was also suspected of being under the pernicious influence of a disciple of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), a famous theologian and exponent of the Hanbali madhhab who had lived in Damascus. Ibn Taymiyya incurred the opposition of the orthodox scholars by his critical rejection of Sufi mysticism and by his insistence on the right of ijtihad, that is, the freedom to inquire into the foundations of particular points of law even where an authoritative madhhab decision already existed. IB claims to have heard him preach in Damascus in 1326 and characterizes him as having, according to Gibb’s translation, “some kink in his brain.” Gb, vol. 1, p. 135. The validity of IB’s remark is examined by D. P. Little, “Did Ibn Taymiyya Have a Screw Loose?” Studia Islamica 41 (1975): 39–111.
5. Peter Jackson links the plan for the conquest of Chagatay with an abortive invasion of Kashmir, called the Qarachil expedition. “The Mongols and the Delhi Sultanate in the Reign of Muhammad Tughluq (1325–51).” Central Asiatic Journal 19 (1975): 128–43.
6. Ziya al-Din Barani, Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, trans. and ed. H. M. Elliot and John Dowson, The History of India as Told by its Own Historians, vol. 3 (Allahabad, 1964), p. 236. Barani was a courtier at the court of Muhammad Tughluq and perhaps an acquaintance of IB. Under the patronage of Firuz Shah, Muhammad’s successor, he wrote a history of the sultanate from 1266 to 1351. He interprets each reign in the light of his own orthodox morality and finds Muhammad Tughluq badly wanting. Barani does not mention IB.
7. Quoted in K. M. Ashraf, Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan, 2nd edn (New Delhi, 1970), p. 150.
8. See Chapter 8, note 25.
9. IB states that his first visit to Sind took place shortly after the suppression of a local uprising, the Sumra revolt, by the military governor Imad al-Mulk Sartiz. This official was not appointed, however, until about 1337. Peter Jackson, “The Mongols and India (1221–1351),” Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1977, pp. 225–26. IB may therefore be confusing this alleged tour of Sind with the trip he took there from Delhi shortly before July 1341. He also says that he visited Sind for the first time during the “hottest period of the summer.” Such a remark fits poorly into the chronological scheme of his arrival in India, which he claims began on 12 September 1333. There is no evidence that he remained in the Punjab and Sind from then until the following summer. The 1341 visit, however, apparently did take place in early summer, which was indeed the time of the scorching southwesterly winds. Jackson develops a line of argument about IB’s chronology to suggest that he did not visit China at all, that he stayed in India until 1346–47 (747–48 A.H.), and that he left there definitively by way of an overland route through Sind and Khurasan. Jackson admits, however, that if IB did pass through Sind as late as 1346–47, Sartiz was no longer governor there, having been transferred to the Deccan in 1345 (p. 226). Thus the Sumra rebellion, for which IB offers the only description, may well have taken place in 1341 rather than 1333. M. R. Haig discusses IB’s itinerary in Sind and struggles unsuccessfully with the chronological difficulties. “Ibnu Batuta in Sindh,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 19 (1887): 393–412. C. F. Beckingham suggests the Sind visit may have taken place in 1341 rather than 1333–34. “Ibn Battuta in Sind” in Hamida Khuhro (ed.), Sind through the Centuries: Proceedings of an International Seminar, Karachi 1975 (Karachi, 1981), pp. 139–42.
10. IB states that he had been in Multan for two months when the sultan’s chamberlain arrived. Gb, vol. 3, p. 606. If he did not in fact visit Sind at this time, he may have stayed quite a bit more than two months in Multan.
11. A description of the route during the Sultanate period is found in A. M. Stow, “The Road between Delhi and Multan,” Panjab University Historical Society 3 (1914–15): 26–37.
12. He mentions in connection with his arrival on the Indus that he had about 40 people with him. This company probably numbered more or less the same on the continuing trip to Delhi.
13. Mahdi Husain, Tughluq Dynasty (Calcutta, 1963), pp. 145–75. The author presents a lengthy analysis of the transfer of the capital and its consequences for Delhi. He suggests that the destruction of Delhi alleged by Barani and others has been greatly exaggerated. Other modern historians disagree.
14. IB names the villages, which have been identified by Gibb (Gb, vol. 3, p. 741) and Mahdi Husain (MH, p. 122).
15. Mahdi Husain (Tughluq Dynasty, p. 480) presents a description of the sultan compiled from various medieval sources.
16. On the general organization of the judicial system, S. M. Ikram, Muslim Rule in India and Pakistan, 2nd edn (Lahore, 1966), pp. 149–52; and A. B. M. Habibullah, The Foundation of Muslim Rule in India, 2nd edn. (Allahabad, 1961), pp. 271–79.
17. Ashraf, Life and Conditions, p. 291.
18. On sinecurism among the religious, judicial, and educational officeholders of fifteenth-century Egypt see Carl F. Petry, The Civilian Elite of Cairo in the later Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J., 1981), pp. 201, 319.
19. Quoted in Mohammad Habib and Afsar Umar Salim Khan, The Political Theory of the Delhi Sultanate (Allahabad, n.d.), p. 159.
20. Quoted in M. Mujeeb, The Indian Muslims (Montreal, 1967), p. 209.
21. IB gives the departure date as 9 Jumada I, or 5 January 1335. All recent authorities are agreed that the Ma’bar rebellion broke out in 1334, and Mahdi Husain (Tughluq Dynasty, p. 243) affirms that Muhammad Tughluq must have left Delhi the following year. Unfortunately, in a note in his translation of the narrative (MH, p. 140), he mistakenly converts 9 Jumada I to 21 October 1341. Gibb (Gb, vol. 3, p. 758) repeats the error.
22. The tomb of Qutb al-Din Mubarak no longer exists.
23. Barani, Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, p. 238.
24. IB states that he made this trip during “the period of the rains,” that is, during the
summer or early fall monsoon season. Although he says nothing in the context of his years in Delhi about excursions other than the trips to Kanauj (see below) and Sind, he mentions later in the Rihla of having visited Gwalior, a city about 150 miles south of the capital, sometime between 1334 and 1341.
25. IB’s Saru River is the Sarju. MH, p. 145n.
26. Gibb (Gb, vol. 3, p. 698) and Mahdi Husain (Tughluq Dynasty, pp. 254, 658) agree that the sultan established his temporary capital on the Ganges in 1338. Jackson (“The Mongols and the Delhi Sultanate,” p. 149) suggests 1337 or 1338. IB states that Muhammad was absent from Delhi on the Ma’bar expedition for two and a half years from January 1335.
27. Barani, Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, p. 249.
28. Mahdi Husain (Tughluq Dynasty, p. 254) asserts that Muhammad Tughluq stayed at Sargadwari from late 1338 until mid 1341, then returned to Delhi. IB also implies that the sultan remained there two and a half years (Gb, vol. 3, p. 698), but he does not make clear how much of that time he spent with the royal party. Mahdi Husain (Tughluq Dynasty, p. 256) dates the ’Ain al-Mulk rebellion to 1340. A date of mid 1341 for the sultan’s return to Delhi, however, does not accord well with IB’s statement that he visited him in Sind sometime before July of that year.
29. Mahdi Husain (Tughluq Dynasty, pp. ii, iii) speculates on this possibility.
30. Aziz Ahmad, “The Sufi and the Sultan in Pre-Mughal Muslim India,” Der Islam 38 (1962): 147.
31. See note 9.
10 Malabar and the Maldives
And in this land of Malabar there are Moors in great numbers . . . They are rich, and live well, they hold all the sea trade and navigation in such sort that if the King of Portugal had not discovered India, Malabar would already have been in the hands of the Moors, and would have had a Moorish King.1
Duarte Barbosa
About 1340, 15 ambassadors representing Toghon Temur, the Mongol emperor of the Yuan Dynasty of China, arrived at the court of Delhi.2 Commercial ties between China and the sultanate may have been the main business of the mission, since the Yuan emperors were pursuing a vigorous overseas trade policy. Ibn Battuta’s explanation of the event is that the delegation came to seek permission of Muhammad Tughluq to have a Buddhist shrine constructed at a town about 80 miles east of Delhi.3 The sultan declined to authorize the project, and this was the message he wished his special envoy to carry to Peking. Ibn Battuta claims that the sultan chose him for this honor because he knew his qadi loved “to travel and go abroad.” This is hardly a convincing rationale for appointing an ambassador to the largest and most populous kingdom in the world. Perhaps Muhammad thought the peripatetic Moroccan would have the energy and motivation to persevere in the mission despite the hardships of a long sea voyage. And perhaps he wished to maximize the prestige of the embassy by selecting an Arab, a pious scholar of the Prophet’s race, to represent him. (Ibn Battuta was an Arab in his literate culture, though Berber in ethnic origin.)
Whatever the reason, the ex-qadi was taking on a greater weight of official responsibility than he ever had before. Not only was he required to get himself to Peking and back, he also had to transport, and safeguard with his life, an entire caravan of royal presents for the Yuan emperor. The Chinese emissaries had earlier arrived in Delhi with 100 slaves and cartloads of fine clothing, brocade, musk, and swords, compliments of Toghon Temur. Muhammad Tughluq naturally felt obliged to reciprocate with an even more magnificent array of gifts. The list included 200 Hindu slaves, songstresses, and dancers, 15 pages, 100 horses, and wondrous quantities of choice textiles, robes, dishware, and swords.
Ibn Battuta left Delhi at the head of his mission in late summer, probably 2 August 1341.4 His companions included the 15 Chinese gentlemen, who were returning home, and two officials of the sultanate besides himself. One of them was Zahir al-Din al-Zanjani, a scholar of Persian origin. The other was a eunuch named Kafur, who held the title of shurbdar, or cupbearer, and had day-to-day responsibility for overseeing the slaves and the bullock carts laden with the imperial presents. Al-Tuzari was also along, as well as other unnamed individuals among Ibn Battuta’s personal friends, old comrades, and concubines. Muhammad al-Harawi, one of the sultan’s amirs, led a troop of 1,000 horse to escort the embassy from Delhi to the coast. The plan of travel was to march southward along the government trunk road to Daulatabad, then make for the western coast at Cambay (Kinbaya), the chief port of Gujarat. From there the mission would take ship for Calicut on the Malabar coast of South India. At Calicut they would board ocean-going junks to carry them across the Bay of Bengal to China. The landward itinerary from Delhi to Cambay was hardly the most direct route possible, as Daulatabad lay some 240 miles southeast of that port. Sultan Muhammad may have given his envoy official business in Daulatabad that the Rihla fails to mention, or perhaps he instructed the caravan to make an appearance there as a symbolic show of Delhi’s continuing authority in the Deccan.
If Ibn Battuta had undertaken this mission eight or ten years earlier, that authority would have been relatively secure and the journey all the way to Gujarat accomplished in safety. By the 1340s, however, the conditions of travel, even under armed escort, had changed drastically. Seven years of famine, repeated rebellion, and disastrous government had left the rural areas of what remained of the empire more and more difficult to control. Hindu insurgency and brigandage had become endemic outside the walls of the garrison towns, even in the Ganges heartland. Traffic on the high roads connecting the major cities was even more susceptible to interference than when Ibn Battuta had his first encounter with Hindu dacoits on his way to Delhi in 1334.
The embassy had left the capital only a few days when it ran into trouble and came near to losing its leader. Arriving at Koil (modern Aligarh), a city in the Doab plain about 75 miles southeast of Delhi, a report reached the company that a force of Hindu insurgents was laying siege to the nearby town of Jalali. Riding immediately to the rescue, al-Harawi’s cavalry escort caught the rebels by surprise. Although outnumbered four to one, the troops made short bloody work of the assailants, killing, according to Ibn Battuta, all 4,000 of them and capturing their horses and weapons. The imperial force lost 78 men, including Kafur, the cupbearer. At this point Ibn Battuta decided that he should send a messenger to inform the sultan about what happened and ask him to dispatch a replacement for the unfortunate Kafur. In the meantime the mission would wait in Koil for a reply from Delhi. Since the district was apparently in a state of alarm and Hindu bands continued to raid the outskirts of Jalali, al-Harawi and his men joined forces with the local commander to undertake counter-insurgency sweeps through the local countryside.
Riding into the Doab one morning in the heat of August, Ibn Battuta and a party of his comrades intercepted a rebel band that was just then retreating after an attack on one of the villages near Jalali. The Muslims gave chase but in the confusion of the pursuit Ibn Battuta and five of his men became separated from their companions. Suddenly a force of Hindus on foot and horse sprang from a wood. The six men scattered and Ibn Battuta found himself alone. Ten of the assailants pursued him at full gallop across the fields, then all but three fell away. Twice he was forced to stop and dismount, first to pick a stone from his horse’s hoof, then to recover one of his swords, which had bounced out of its scabbard. His pursuers closing in, he eluded them by driving away his mount and hiding at the bottom of a deep ditch.
When his enemies had finally given up trying to find him, he started off on foot to find his way back to safety. Going only a short distance, he was confronted again, this time by 40 bowmen, who promptly robbed him of his remaining sword and everything else he had with him except his shirt, pants, and cloak. The brigands then led him to their camp and put him under guard. Ibn Battuta did not speak any Hindi, but he succeeded in communicating with two Indo-Muslims in the camp who knew some Persian, telling them a little about himself but wisely concealing his status as an officer of Delhi. The two men let him know that, whoever he was, he was certainly to be kill
ed, and it soon became apparent that his three guards, one of them an old man, had been instructed to do the job whenever they were so disposed.
The assassins, however, seemed to lack resolve. After keeping their prisoner in a cave throughout the night, they returned in the morning to the robber camp, which was by this time deserted. Here they sat throughout the day, the captors working up the nerve to do their deed, Ibn Battuta sweating in mortal fear that each breath was to be his last. Then at nightfall three of the bandits suddenly returned and demanded to know why the prisoner had not been dispatched. The guards had no satisfactory answer, but one of the young brigands, perhaps admitting the pointlessness of executing a man who had already given up his possessions, suggested that as far as he was concerned the foreigner could go free. Jumping at this change of events, Ibn Battuta offered the man his expensive tunic in thanks, accepted an old blue loincloth in return, and bolted into a nearby bamboo forest.
Alive but alone again and completely lost in a fairly heavily populated district whose hostility toward representatives of Muhammad Tughluq was all too apparent, he wandered the countryside for six days, avoiding villages, sleeping under trees or in abandoned houses, and subsisting on well water and herbs. At one point he eluded a band of 50 armed Hindus by hiding all day in a cotton field. On the seventh day, exhausted and starving, he entered a village in desperation, but when he begged for something to eat, one of the locals threatened him with a sword, searched him, and stole his shirt.
Then on the eighth day salvation came. After having escaped from the Hindu village with nothing but his trousers, the fugitive found himself beside a deserted well. He was just cutting one of his boots into two pieces, after having lost its mate down the well while trying to draw water with it, when a dark complexioned man suddenly appeared, offered him some beans and rice, and revealed that he too was a Muslim. The man invited Ibn Battuta to accompany him and even insisted on carrying him on his back when the exhausted wanderer’s legs gave out. Reciting a verse from the Qur’an over and over as they plodded along, Ibn Battuta finally fell asleep. When he awoke, his mysterious benefactor had disappeared, but he found himself in a village with a government officer in residence who warmly took him in, fed him, and gave him a bath and a suit of clothes.
