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

by Ross E. Dunn

  19. A. H. Hill, “The Coming of Islam to North Sumatra,” Journal of Southeast Asian History 4 (1963): 6–21.

  20. The most adamant skeptic is Gabriel Ferrand, Relations de voyages et textes géographiques arabes, persans et turks relatifs à l’Extrême Orient du VIII au XVIII siècles, 2 vols. (Paris, 1913–14). He finds IB’s itinerary through Southeast Asia and China “absurd or unrealizable” (vol. 2, p. 429) and concludes that IB “never went to Indochina and invented the journey out of whole cloth; or else either Ibn Juzayy or copyists of manuscripts of the narrative modified the text to the point where it is devoid of any exactitude” (vol. 2, pp. 432–33). Yule, who had published the most detailed annotation of the China trip, accepts IB’s veracity in general but points out numerous flaws and puzzles in this section of the Rihla that must raise genuine doubts. Cathay, vol. 4, pp. 50–51 and passim. Gibb believes IB went to China, observing that to reject its veracity raises more problems with the text than otherwise. Travels in Asia and Africa, pp. 13–14. More recently, Peter Jackson has argued that IB’s sojourn in China is “highly suspect,” emphasizing Yule’s observations that (1) the mosque IB claims to have seen at Guangzhou in 1346 burned down in 1343 and was not rebuilt until 1349–51, and (2) his account of political events in Beijing and North China during his visit there in 1347 bears almost no resemblance to what we know from numerous other sources. “The Mongols and India (1221–1351),” Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1977, p. 221.

  21. The Voyage of François Pyrard of Laval to the East Indies, the Maldives, and Moluccas and Brazil, trans. and ed. Albert Gray, 2 vols. (London, n.d. [Hakluyt Society]; reprint edn., New York, 1963?), vol. 1, pp. 237–42; MH, p. 201.

  22. N. K. Bhattasali, Coins and Chronology of the Early Independent Sultans of Bengal (Cambridge, England, 1922; reprint edn., New Delhi, 1976), pp. 150–54.

  23. IB identifies the place of his debarkation as Sudkawan. Several historians have taken sides on the issue of whether this toponym corresponds to Chittagong, today an important city in southeastern Bangladesh, or Satgaon, a medieval commercial center in the western delta region north of modern Calcutta. The proponents of Chittagong are Muhammad Abdur Rahim, Social and Cultural History of Bengal (Karachi, 1963), pp. 12–14; Bhattasali, Coins and Chronology, pp. 145–49; Gibb, Travels in Asia and Africa, p. 366n; MH, p. 235n; and Yule, Cathay, vol. 4, p. 82n. The advocates of Satgaon are Jadunath Sarkar (ed.), The History of Bengal, 2 vols. (Dacca, 1948), vol. 2, p. 100; Ibn Batutah’s Account of Bengal, trans. Harinath De, and ed. P. N. Ghosh (Calcutta, 1978), app. I, pp. 1–4; Ferrand, Relations de voyages, pp. 434–35; and Henri Cordier, editor of 3rd edn. of Yule’s Cathay, vol. 4, p. 82n. Without laying out the several semantic and geographical arguments advanced on both sides, I find the case for Chittagong the more convincing, especially in the context of IB’s subsequent movements through Bengal.

  24. IB states that he went to see Shah Jalal in the mountains of Kamaru, that is, Kamrup in Assam. Sylhet, however, is on the edge of the delta region just south of the hills of Assam. IB does not mention Sylhet by name, but Shah Jalal is known to have resided there. Yule, Cathay, vol. 4, pp. 151–52. Mahdi Husain (MH, p. 237n) suggests that IB made a long looping tour up the Brahmaputra River through central Assam, then southward to Sylhet. But there is nothing in IB’s account of his personal experiences indicating he went any further north than Sylhet.

  25. In connection with his befriending al-Tuzari in Cairo, IB states that the man “continued to accompany me for many years, until we quitted the land of India, when he died at Sandabur.” Gb, vol. 2, p. 415. However, IB says nothing of al-Tuzari in the account of his experiences at Sandapur, and the man was apparently still in his suite later in Ma’bar. It is conceivable that IB made a subsequent visit to Sandapur that he never mentions in the Rihla and left al-Tuzari there; or else al-Tuzari went there on his own when IB left India on his way to China.

  26. IB calls the man he visited Shaykh Jalal al-Din al-Tabrizi, but he appears to have confused the saint of this name, a divine of the Suhrawardi order who died about 1225, with Shah Jalal, the Muslim conqueror of Sylhet. Abdul Karim, Social History of the Muslims of Bengal (Dacca, 1959), pp. 91–101; Abdur Rahim, Social and Cultural History of Bengal, pp. 85–103; Bhattasali, Coins and Chronology, pp. 149–54. This mistake might raise questions about the authenticity of IB’s journey into the interior of Bengal, except that Bengalis themselves commonly confuse these two holy men and even use “Shah Jalal” as a generic term for any powerful saint. Personal communication from Richard Eaton, University of Arizona.

  27. G. R. Tibbetts, A Study of the Arabic Texts Containing Material on South-East Asia (Leiden, 1979), p. 97; Yule, Cathay, vol. 4, pp. 93–94n.

  28. The identification of Oaqula is a puzzle. IB places his visit there after his stopover in Sumatra and identifies the place with Mul-Java, which in some Arabic texts means the island of Java. None of the principal commentators, however, are convinced that IB actually visited Java. Cordier (Yule, Cathay, vol. 4, p. 157n) believes Qaqula to be located on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula, that is, along IB’s route from the Strait of Malacca to China. Tibbetts (Arabic Texts, pp. 97–98) makes an interesting case for placing Qaqula on the western, or Tenasserim, coast of Malaya. He suggests that the description of it may be displaced in the Rihla and that IB probably stopped there on his way from Burma to Samudra (northwest Sumatra).

  29. IB calls the island of Sumatra “Java,” which was common medieval usage. Marco Polo calls Sumatra “Java the Less.” Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo, 2 vols. (reprint edn, Paris, 1959–63), vol. 2, pp. 757–58; Yule, Cathay, pp. 94–95. The commercial center, known as Samudra, whose exact medieval site is not certain, later gave its name to the entire island. Kenneth R. Hall, “Trade and Statecraft in the Western Archipelago at the Dawn of the European Age,” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 54 (1981): 30–31; Hill, “North Sumatra,” pp. 7–12.

  30. Hill, “North Sumatra,” pp. 13–15.

  31. Kenneth R. Hall, “The Coming of Islam to the Archipelago: A Re-Assessment” in Karl L. Hutterer (ed.), Economic Exchange and Social Interaction in Southeast Asia (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1977), p. 226.

  32. IB implies in the Rihla that he left at the start of the southwest monsoon, as Défrémery and Sanguinetti (D&S, vol. 4, p. 239) note parenthetically.

  33. Teobaldo Filesi, China and Africa in the Middle Ages, trans. D. L. Morisen (London, 1972), p. 15.

  34. One of the stops mentioned is Qaqula. See note 28. The other is a port called Kaylukari (Cailoucary) in the country of Tawalisi. IB’s description of his visit to the female governor of the city (and daughter of the king) reads as though it were a pastiche of legends, misplaced anecdotes, and garbled geography. The people of this realm look like Turks, IB says, and the king is the equal of the emperor of China, against whom he conducts successful naval campaigns. The governor–princess, who happens to have the same name as one of the wives of Ozbeg, Khan of Kipchak, speaks Turkish, writes Arabic characters skillfully, but is not a Muslim! She also commands a force of female mounted archers! Yule (Cathay, vol. 4, pp. 157–60) develops a lengthy, unconvincing argument to suggest that Tawalisi is a kingdom in the Sulu Archipelago, the most southerly island group of the Philippines. Défrémery and Sanguinetti (D&S, vol. 4, p. 248) put forward Tonkin or the Celebes without explanation. Yamamato Tatsuro argues for Champa, i.e., southeastern Indochina. “Tawalisi Described by Ibn Battuta,” Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, no. 8 (1936), pp. 93–133. Tibbetts (Arabic Texts, p. 98) favors Indochina. Assuming that IB traveled the normal route from the Strait of Malacca to South China and did not visit Java, then intermediary stops along the Malayan or Indochinese coast would not have been out of the ordinary. The description of Tawalisi, however, does seem embellished with information pulled from other contexts. Legends and tales about a mysterious “kingdom of women” or “island of women” appear in Arabic, as well as European and Chinese, medie
val literature. Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo, vol. 2, pp. 671–725.

  35. D&S, vol. 4, p. 267.

  36. D&S, vol. 4, pp. 282–83.

  37. Because of the language barrier, IB would certainly have had difficulty remembering, or even recording in notes, numerous Chinese place names. When he and Ibn Juzayy composed the Rihla, we may suppose they had at hand a library of standard Arab geographical and travel works and used them to help IB refresh his memory about particular places, including the spelling of toponyms. Such reference works, however, had little to say about China, obliging him to rely on his own recollections or notes (if there were any) when mentioning strange Chinese place names to his collaborator.

  38. Gibb (Travels in Asia and Africa, p. 371n) makes a tentative case for Qanjanfu being Fuzhou. Yule (Cathy, vol. 4, pp. 126–27n) argues that the place may be identified with Kien Ch’ang Fu in the interior province of Jiangxi. But, as Gibb points out, a route from Quanzhou to Hangzhou by way of Jiangxi would have been roundabout and very unlikely.

  39. Gibb, Travels in Asia and Africa, p. 292. Gibb notes (p. 14) that IB would never have told of such an encounter if he had not really traveled to China, since the citizens of Ceuta might well have confirmed the story through the family of al-Bushri at some later time. Also see Chapter 13 on IB’s meeting al-Bushri’s brother in southern Morocco in 1353.

  40. Jacques Gernet, Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion 1250–1276, trans. H. M. Wright (Stanford, Calif., 1970), pp. 27–31.

  41. Yule (Cathay, vol. 4, p. 130) notes that “there are several very questionable statements in Ibn Batuta’s account of the great city.”

  42. Aside from some descriptive incongruities, IB’s account of his visit to Beijing is made barely credible by his assertion that he witnessed the funeral of the Yuan emperor, who, he says, had died in battle attempting to quell a revolt led by a rival member of the royal house. There is no doubt at all, however, that Toghon Temur reigned straight through from 1333 to 1368. Yule (Cathay, vol. 4, p. 142) can find no “indication of any circumstance occurring about this time that could have made the foundation of such a story,” though IB’s description of Mongol funereal ritual is generally accurate (p. 143). Jackson (“Mongols and India”, p. 221) thinks the story may be “a very garbled version” of a succession conflict that had taken place in China in 1328–29, when IB was far away in Arabia and Africa.

  12 Home

  Civilization both in the East and the West was visited by a destructive plague which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish. It swallowed up many of the good things of civilization and wiped them out . . . Civilization decreased with the decrease of mankind. Cities and buildings were laid waste, roads and way signs were obliterated, settlements and mansions became empty, dynasties and tribes grew weak. The entire inhabited world changed.1

  Ibn Khaldun

  Sometime in Ramadan 747 A.H. (December 1346 or January 1347) Ibn Battuta arrived back in Quilon on the south Malabar coast. He had sailed all the way through from Quanzhou to India on a single winter’s monsoon, changing ships at Samudra in the Malacca Strait and making a return visit of a few weeks to the court of Sultan al-Malik al-Zahir. Once in Quilon he lodged with the qadi until the Breaking of the Fast, then traveled on up the coast to Calicut.2

  Here he had another argument with himself over the advisability of returning to North India, throwing himself on the mercy of Muhammad Tughluq, and perhaps recovering his judicial sinecure. Such a plan might be brash enough to work in the short run. Yet quite apart from the possibility that his appearance before the royal Person would be swiftly followed by his execution, anyone in Malabar could have warned him that the Tughluq empire was in a more advanced state of deterioration than when he had left India and that Delhi in 1346 was hardly an auspicious place to rebuild a career in public service. And so, repudiating once and for all the attractions of that extraordinary city, he decided not to travel north. (Muhammad Tughluq had in fact left Delhi the previous year on one of his frantic campaigns. He would never return again, perishing of an illness on the banks of the Indus in 1351 while obsessively chasing down his last rebel. His successor, Firuz Tughluq, would inherit only a modest North Indian state and be obliged to share the subcontinent with a patchwork of upstart Muslim and Hindu kingdoms.)

  Map 11: Ibn Battuta’s Return Itinerary from China to North Africa, 1346–49

  When Ibn Battuta had first angered Muhammad Tughluq back in 1340 over the Shihab al-Din affair, he had thought then of making the hajj again, if only as a credible excuse for getting out of the sultanate. Now, in the absence of any further prospects for a career in India, Mecca seemed more than ever a sensible destination.

  The season for westbound voyages from Malabar was coming to an end, but he managed to secure passage on a ship embarking for Zafar (Dhofar), the South Arabian port he had visited 18 years earlier in connection with his trip to East Africa. He has nothing to say about his spring voyage across the open expanse of the Arabian Sea except that the trip took a normal 28 days and that he reached Zafar in Muharram 748, that is, sometime after 13 April 1347. Possibly because the next hajj season was almost a year away or because he would have had to wait in tedious Zafar until September to get a westbound ship to Aden, he decided to make a grand looping tour through Persia, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, violating once again his quixotic oath never to travel by the same road twice.

  From Zafar he sailed on a coasting vessel that was running before the early summer monsoon up to the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hurmuz. Arrived at Hurmuz city, he found the elderly Arab ruler of that great emporium locked in a naval war with two of his nephews for control of the family domain, which included all the key ports of the strait. The fighting had severely disrupted the India trade, and the country was gripped by famine. Ibn Battuta stayed there for about two weeks but had only one brief meeting with the old sultan, who was preoccupied fitting out his war galleys.3

  The political and economic troubles Ibn Battuta found at the mouth of the Persian Gulf were echoes of the violent disintegration of the Ilkhanid state, which had occurred twelve years earlier when he was just beginning his career in Delhi. For three-quarters of a century the successors of the Mongol conqueror Hulegu had held greater Persia precariously together, but the finances of the Ilkhanate rested on an agricultural and urban recovery that was too limp to ensure firm, confident central rule over the long term. When the young king Abu Sa’id died suddenly in 1335 while on campaign in the Caucasus against the Golden Horde, he left a government debilitated by chronic frontier wars and a throne with no obvious successor groomed to mount it. On the instant, an omnivorous mix of Mongol and Turkish commanders leapt into the political void, violently challenging one another for control of the land. By the time Ibn Battuta returned to the region, the great kingdom had been superseded by a cluster of states, ruled by parvenu military dynasties. Thus the Khanate of the Ilkhans was the first of the four Tatar empires to run its course, heralding the last days of the Mongol Age.

  Apparently having little urge to discover what any of these petty regimes might offer him, Ibn Battuta hurried through Persia, making his only important stopover at Shiraz. Traveling north to Isfahan, then westward over the Zagros Mountain passes to Basra, he retraced his journey of 1327 up the valley of the Euphrates. In January 1348 (Shawwal 748) he made a brief stop in Baghdad. From there he continued along the valley beyond ’Anah, then crossed the Syrian desert on the camel route through Palmyra (Tadmor). He reached Damascus, second capital of the Mamluk Sultanate, some time in the late winter of 1348.

  The first time he had visited Damascus in 1326, he had married a woman of Moroccan origin. But he divorced her when he set out for Mecca, terminating a union that lasted hardly more than a few weeks. Much later in India he learned that after the separation the woman had given birth to a son. Feeling some responsibility for the boy, if not for the mother, he had sent his ex-wife’s father, who lived not in Syria but in Morocco, a gift of 40 gold
dinars, presumably through the good offices of a westbound merchant. Now arrived in Damascus again, he soon learned that the son he had never seen had died about 1336 at the age often.

  More unhappy news followed. A Moroccan jurist who was affiliated with one of the Damascene colleges informed him that his father had passed away in Tangier some 15 years earlier. His mother, as far as the man knew, was still alive and well.

  After resting in Damascus for several weeks, he decided about the end of March to make a trip up to Aleppo (Haleb), the second ranking city of industry and commerce in Syria and the seat of Mamluk administration on the northern frontier. This journey was to be one of his leisurely diversions, an itinerary to occupy a few months before it was time to travel toward Mecca. Yet even as he rode north, the catastrophe of the fourteenth century descended on Syria behind him.4 While Ibn Battuta was enjoying the company of the ’ulama of Aleppo in June 1348, travelers reaching the city from the south reported that a virulent disease had been raging at Gaza on the Egyptian frontier and that more than a thousand people had been dying from it every day. Buboes, or inflamed swellings, appeared in the groin, armpits, or neck of the afflicted, and this irruption was typically accompanied by nausea, pain in the head, stomach, and limbs, insomnia, and delirium. If a victim began to spit blood and experience pneumonic symptoms, he usually died within hours.

  Amid rumors of this lethal darkness advancing into Syria, Ibn Battuta decided to return south. He got as far as the town of Horns when he suddenly found himself engulfed in the epidemic, 300 people dying the day he arrived there. Continuing on to Damacus, he reached the great oasis in July to find that the plague had already struck. The death toll had risen to 2,000 a day, the population was reeling in shock, and the mundane routines of the city had come to a halt.

  The people fasted for three successive days, the last of which was a Thursday. At the end of this period the amirs, sharifs, qadis, doctors of the Law, and all other classes of the people in their several degrees, assembled in the great mosque, until it was filled to overflowing with them, and spent Thursday night there in prayers and liturgies and supplications. Then, after performing the dawn prayer . . ., they all went out together on foot carrying Qur’ans in their hands – the amirs too barefooted. The entire population of the city joined in the exodus, male and female, small and large, the Jews went out with their book of the law and the Christians with their Gospel, their women and children with them; the whole concourse of them in tears and humble supplications, imploring the favor of God through His Books and His Prophets.5