Off the Map

by Fergus Fleming

  The wanderings of Ibn Battuta (1325–55)

  When the Prophet Mohammed died, on 8 June 632, he left as his legacy one of the fastest growing religions of the millennium. By the 14th century Islam had taken root in countries as far afield as Spain and the East Indies, creating not exactly an empire but a network of kingdoms united by a single faith. Wherever a traveller went within the Dar al-Islam, or ‘Home of Islam’, he could expect to find the same laws, the same religious ceremonies, the same customs and often the same food and clothes. Unlike Europe, which in the same period was an insular, ignorant and frequently barbaric place, the Islamic world was cosmopolitan, civilized and above all well-travelled: every believer was encouraged to make, at least once in a lifetime, the hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca; and year by year Muslim merchants established new trade links with the east, assisted by navigators whose maps and instruments were of unrivalled sophistication. Yet for all this homogeneity, and for all the to-ing and fro-ing, inhabitants at either end of the Dar al-Islam knew remarkably little about each other. The situation changed, almost accidentally, when, in 1325, a 21-year-old legal student left Tangier to make the hajj. His name was Abu Abdullah Mohammed ibn Battuta.

  There were two ways to make the hajj. The first, and most spiritually rewarding, was to go on foot. The second, and most realistic – also the safer – was to go by ship or by camel. Ibn Battuta chose the latter, travelling with a caravan of pilgrims across North Africa to the Middle East. Ibn Battuta appears to have been a charming man, who impressed people wherever he went with his piety, his intellectual curiosity and his affability. (He acquired two wives during his trip across the Maghreb.) He also demonstrated a remarkable inability to stick to his chosen course, taking sudden detours whenever they presented themselves, and refusing to retrack on the grounds that it was best ‘never to travel the same route for a second time’. It was in Egypt that his hajj took its first unexpected turn.

  Thanks to its domination of the Far Eastern spice trade, and the stability conferred by its powerful Mamluk rulers, Egypt was then the richest nation in the Middle East. In fact, it virtually was the Middle East, its dominions extending not only along the Nile but as far north as Syria. With 600,000 inhabitants, the capital Cairo was the most populous city west of China – its population was 15 times that of London – and as one Italian traveller wrote in 1384, more people lived in a single street than in the whole of Florence. The port of Alexandria was the grandest in the Mediterranean, with not one but two spacious harbours – the eastern for Christian ships, the western for Muslim – separated by the towering Pharos lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, whose beam was visible several miles out to sea. As for the Nile, it was probably the most profitable river on the globe: the silt deposited by its annual flood supported myriad farmers; and for merchants who landed in the Red Sea it offered the quickest and easiest means of getting their spices to Alexandria.

  Ibn Battuta had never seen anything like it. ‘There is a continuous series of bazaars from the city of Alexandria to Cairo,’ he wrote. ‘Cities and villages succeed one another along its banks without interruption and have no equal in the inhabited world, nor is any river known whose basin is so intensively cultivated as that of the Nile. There is no river on earth but it, which is called a sea.’ Because of its geographical situation and its prosperity, Egypt became the bulletin board of the Dar al-Islam, a place where merchants and religious men from around the world met to exchange their news. Here one might encounter traders from the east coast of Africa, from the newly established Delhi Sultanate in India, from the East Indies and beyond. Wherever Muslim merchants went, news of their discoveries reached Cairo within a year or two.

  Ibn Battuta’s home town of Tangier was also a trading port, but compared to Alexandria it appeared ridiculously insignificant. In his charming way – and thanks to the tradition of hospitality that pervaded the Dar al-Islam – he found quarters with a revered Sufi ascetic. Casually, the man mentioned that he had three friends, two in India, one in China, whom he thought Ibn Battuta might like to visit. Looking back on the remark, Ibn Battuta wrote, ‘I was amazed by his prediction, and the idea of these countries having been cast into my mind, my wanderings never ceased’. First, however, he had to complete his hajj. He travelled to the Red Sea where, his passage to Arabia being blocked by local wars, he retreated to Cairo and took the main highway to Damascus (where he acquired a third wife), before catching a caravan south to Mecca. From Syria the road south led through deserts and mountains, whose climate was both extreme and unpredictable: one year 100 pilgrims died of exposure to the winter cold; another year 3,000 perished from heat and thirst; in yet another a whole caravan was swamped by sandstorms. His own party survived the crossing, but even so he judged it a ‘fearsome wilderness’. He spent several months studying in Mecca and then, for no reason other than curiosity, joined a caravan to Mesopotamia (modern Iraq).

  Swollen by pilgrims returning on foot, the convoy left Mecca on 17 November 1326. It was so enormous that ‘Anyone who left the caravan for a natural want and had no mark by which to guide himself to his place could not find it again for the vast number of people’. Ibn Battuta was not among the foot travellers, having persuaded an official to buy him one half of a double camel litter. Thus ensconced, he revelled in their journey through the Arabian Peninsula. The landscape was hostile, but they were well equipped to face it. They carried enough water, they had ‘great supplies of luxuries’, the poorer members were given free water, food and medicine, and after their hajj everyone felt illuminated – not only spiritually but literally since, travelling by night to avoid the heat, they lit torches ‘so that you saw the countryside gleaming with light and the darkness turned into radiant day’. After 44 days this gigantic glow-worm of humanity emerged on the other side of the desert, to be greeted by the citizens of Kufa bearing fresh supplies of bread, dates and fruit.

  Mesopotamia fell within the Mongol Ilkhanate, whose ruler had recently decreed – to the dismay of Christian deputations from Rome and Byzantium – that his realm should adopt Islam. As a result, Ibn Battuta was shown extravagant hospitality by officials keen to demonstrate their enthusiasm for the new religion. It was not just his personability that attracted them but the fact that he spoke Arabic and could recite the Koran in its original, purest form. Under their protection he visited Basra, Baghdad, Isfahan, Tabriz and other venerable centres – marvelling at how these once great cities were still in ruins from the Mongol invasions of more than a century ago – before travelling up the Tigris to Mosul and then returning to Mecca. In the course of a year he had covered more than 4,000 miles. And he had done it all for no other reason than that, as he explained, he ‘thought it a good plan’. It was a phrase that would become the leitmotif of 30 years’ wanderings. Almost as soon as he reached Mecca, in late 1327, another ‘good plan’ presented itself: instead of returning to Morocco, he would go to the Delhi Sultanate.

  The current Sultan of Delhi, Mohammed Tughluq, was a volatile, nonconformist autocrat, who had recently annexed most of India. But although wealthy beyond imagination, his empire lacked sophistication. Therefore, in a blunt-spoken way, he advertised for Islamic poets, theologians, judges and men of letters to join his court. They came in their hundreds, drawn both by the legendary generosity of the Sultan and by the near certainty of being promoted to a high position. Ibn Battuta decided to join the throng but, in habitual fashion, he went about it in the longest and most circuitous manner possible. Accompanied by a friend named Abdullah al-Tuzri, he sailed down the Red Sea, touching at ports such as Aden and Zeila – ‘the dirtiest, most disagreeable, and most stinking town in the world’ – then rounded the Horn of Africa and proceeded to the ports of Mogadishu, Mombasa and Kilwa, sailing almost as far south as Madagascar.

  East Africa was the frontier zone of the Dar al-Islam: a region of great natural wealth, scarcely touched by Islamic civilization save for one or two outposts on the coast from which a small num
ber of adventurers launched sporadic campaigns against the unbelievers of the interior. The merchants’ houses were large and airy, with running water, all amenities and inconceivably colourful gardens, but outside the grand, three-storey mansions with their fountained courtyards everything was basic. The ports were frontier settlements which existed solely for the processing of gold, ivory, ostrich feathers, animal pelts and, above all, slaves, all of which were taken to the Middle East by dhow – fragile but flexible vessels whose hulls were constructed not of overlapping, iron-nailed strakes but of abutting boards sewn together by lengths of coconut fibre. While generally approving of the way in which these ports conducted themselves, Ibn Battuta had the city-dweller’s contempt for life in the wilds. In Mogadishu he partook of a meal that comprised copious amounts of meat poured over ghee-fried rice, unripe bananas in milk and a dish of sour milk with ginger, mangoes, pickled lemons and chilli. Observing the way his hosts tucked in, he wrote: ‘A single person [here] eats as much as a whole company of us would eat, as a matter of habit, and they are corpulent and fat in the extreme.’

  Ibn Battuta’s aim had been to catch the monsoon winds from Africa to India, but he changed his mind. If he went by sea he would arrive unannounced and friendless. Perhaps it would be better to take the overland route through Central Asia in order to cultivate useful contacts along the way. Therefore he sailed north to the Persian Gulf – he and al-Tuzri very nearly losing their lives when they took an overland trip through the Yemen and were misled by an avaricious guide who hoped to steal their belongings once they had died in the desert – before recrossing the Arabian Peninsula to the Red Sea, and from Egypt making his way to Anatolia and the Crimea. The Crimea, like Persia, was ruled by a Mongol – in this case the Kipchak Khan, or the Khan of the Golden Horde.* A less prosperous relative of the Ilkhan, Khan Ozbeg of the Golden Horde had also converted to Islam and, like his cousin, he welcomed men of learning. He was a hard man to find, constantly shifting from one border to another, but in May 1332 Ibn Battuta caught up with him. Camped on a low hill to the north of the Azov Sea, he saw a massive convoy of horse-drawn wagons carrying houses, bazaars, mosques and kitchens, the smoke from its fires drifting into the air to give the impression of nothing less than ‘a vast city on the move’. This was the Khan and his personal escort.

  As soon as he made himself known, Ibn Battuta was given the freedom of the caravan. He found some of the Khan’s practices offensive, such as his habit of greeting a wife (of which he had many) in the presence of his court and inviting her to sit down before he did. ‘All this is done in full view of those present,’ he wrote, ‘and without any use of veils.’ His sense of decorum, however, did not prevent him investigating the circumstances in which the chief wife, or khatun, lived. Marco Polo, whose book Ibn Battuta had not read, had been criticized for overstating the grandeur of Kubilai Khan’s court in China. Ibn Battuta’s description of a khatun’s entourage suggests that Polo was not exaggerating in the slightest. Although one of the minor Mongol khans, Ozbeg put on a show only slightly less splendid that that of Kubilai himself. The khatun’s wagon was drawn by horses draped in gilt silk, and preceded by 10 or 15 slaves clad similarly in gold tunics encrusted with jewels, and bearing maces wrapped in golf leaf. Behind came another 100 wagons, each of them carrying four slave girls, followed in turn by a further 300 wagons containing the khatun’s clothes, food and jewels. When added to the trains of the Khan’s other wives, the Khan’s officers and the Khan himself, not to mention the stream of servants and vehicles required to support them, the sight was spectacular.

  Ibn Battuta and al-Tuzri (who soon faded from Ibn Battuta’s journal and whose fate is unknown) accompanied this fantastical procession as far as Astrakhan, where he learned that Ozbeg’s third wife, a daughter of the Emperor of Byzantium, wished to give birth at her father’s home. With another ‘good plan’ in the offing, Ibn Battuta asked if he could accompany her. Ozbeg gave him his permission, 1,500 dinars, a valuable robe and several horses. Each of Ozbeg’s wives donated several silver ingots, his daughter gave even more, and by the time Ibn Battuta left on 5 July 1332 he was weighed down with a large amount of bullion as well as a ‘collection of horses, robes, and furs of miniver and sable’. They were accompanied by 5,000 Mongol horsemen, 500 soldiers of the khatun’s personal escort, 200 slave girls, 20 pages, 400 wagons, 2,000 horses and 500 oxen. Like Kubilai, Ozbeg did nothing by halves.

  At the border with Byzantium Ozbeg’s wife proclaimed herself a Christian and sent the Khan’s troops home, keeping only her own escort and Ibn Battuta. Stoically, he mentioned that ‘Inner sentiments ... suffered a change through our entry into the land of infidelity’. But he was happy that the Byzantine commander had one of his men beaten for laughing at the Muslims at prayer and was overjoyed when the Emperor of Byzantium gave him yet more robes and money. The Emperor’s daughter said she would like to remain in Byzantium, so Ibn Battuta made a brief journey into Thrace before returning to the Golden Horde at the end of autumn 1332. He did not go far before he met the cold winter of the lower Ukrainian steppe. It was so icy, he said, that ‘I used to perform my ablutions with hot water close to the fire, but not a drop of water fell without being frozen on the instant’. When he washed his face the water froze on his beard, and when he shook his head the ice fell in showers like dandruff. He hid within three fur coats, two pairs of trousers, two layers of socks and a pair of boots lined with bearskin. But, as he lamented, this did not ease matters: ‘I was unable to mount a horse because of the quantity of clothes I had on, so that my associates had to help me into the saddle.’ Accompanying the Golden Horde as far as the Volga, he then went south, skirting the Aral Sea, to Bukhara and Samarkand, in the direction of India. He crossed the Hindu Kush with a caravan of horse merchants, laying a trail of felt cloths to prevent the camels sinking into the snow, and reached the Indus on 12 September 1333.

  The Sultan, Mohammed Tughluq, was subduing a provincial rebellion when Ibn Battuta arrived in Delhi, but he soon returned, announcing his presence in prodigiously extravagant fashion. His elephants were fitted with military catapults that hurled parcels of gold and silver coins before them, causing a scramble that continued right up to the doors of the palace. Summoning Ibn Battuta to the throne, he immediately made him a qadi, or judge, and gave him four villages producing 12,000 dinars a year, plus a 12,000-dinar bonus and other gifts. (To put this generosity in perspective, the average family had an income of 60 dinars a year.) When Ibn Battuta protested, feebly, that he specialized in a different kind of Islamic law from the one operating in Delhi, had no experience as a judge and did not speak Persian, the language in which all legal business was conducted, the Sultan swept his objections aside. He could have two Persian-speaking secretaries to do the work, and all he need do was sign the papers.

  Ibn Battuta soon found that his sinecure was not the godsend it appeared. Mohammed Tughluq’s rule was precarious, frenzied and arbitrary. Officials were expected to spend vast sums in imitation of the Sultan, and were dismissed if they failed to do so. Ibn Battuta swiftly ran up a debt of 55,000 dinars just trying to keep pace with the others. Moreover, Mohammed Tughluq was as violent as he was generous. An alien in a predominantly Hindu country, he bolstered his authority with terror. ‘The sultan was far too free in shedding blood,’ Ibn Battuta recorded, ‘[and] used to punish small faults and great, without respect of persons, whether men of learning or noble descent. Every day there [were] brought to the audience-hall hundreds of people, chained, pinioned, and fettered.’ Most were lucky if they escaped with a beating; torture and execution were the other options. To the paranoid Sultan his whole court was a nest of potential traitors, as Ibn Battuta discovered when he visited a Sufi ascetic who openly disdained Mohammed Tughluq’s worldly attitude. He was interested less in the man’s opinions than in the curious underground home he had built for himself, complete with reception rooms, storerooms, an oven and a bath. Nevertheless, Mohammed Tughluq had the Sufi executed and Ibn B
attuta put under house arrest on a charge of conspiracy. Then, after ten days or so, he released him on a whim. Ibn Battuta had had enough. Abandoning his house, his horses, his robes, slaves and dinars, he fled to a cave outside Delhi, where he practised fasting until he had trained himself to go without food for a period of 40 days. Having seen what Mohammed Tughluq was capabale of, he preferred a life of austerity to the extravagances of court. But he had not been forgotten: five months later, his penitence was interrupted by a summons from Delhi. Given his ‘love of travel and sightseeing’, he was to become the Sultan’s ambassador to the Mongol Emperor of China. Fifteen Chinese envoys had recently arrived in Delhi bearing gifts. Ibn Battuta’s job was to see them home with gifts of an even costlier nature. Having very little choice in the matter, he left the capital on 2 August 1341 with several hundred slaves, singers and dancers, 100 horses and numerous bales of textiles, ceramics and swords. At Calicut, on the south-western coast of India, three large junks awaited him. Supremely well constructed of overlapping strakes that were nailed rather than sewn together, with labour-saving, squarerigged sails of bamboo slats that could be raised and lowered like a Venetian blind, these were the most advanced vessels in the world. Every comfort was included – stewards, room-service, passenger saloons – and no safety measure was forgotten, from lifeboats and firefighting equipment to bulkheads that enabled the vessels to survive several punctures to the hull. They were safe, spacious and private: as Ibn Battuta enthused, a man might lock himself in a cabin with his wives and not be seen again until the end of the journey. Compared to these behemoths, with their crews of 700 sailors and marines, the Arabian dhows that crossed the Indian Ocean were little more than cockleshells.