Ibn e Battuta | Ibn e Battuta History in Urdu | Ibn e Battuta Biography in Urdu | Ibn e Battuta in Urdu | Ibn e Battuta Life History
Ibn e Battuta History in Urdu
Ibn e Battuta History in English
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Ibn Batuta embodies the universal spirit
of humankind to explore, learn, document and teach. Born in 1304 in the
Moroccan city of Tangier, he set out to perform his Hajj as a young man
of twenty-one. From Mecca, he embarked on a journey that took him, over a
span of 25 years, to all the major centers of world culture.
Undoubtedly, one of the greatest travelers the world has known, Ibn
Batuta belongs to a select group of explorers like Fah-yen (China, 6th century), Ibn Jubayr (Spain, 12th century) and Marco Polo (Venice, 13th century).
The historical importance of Ibn Batuta lies in his Rehla (travelogue), which provides a snapshot of the Islamic world, as it existed in the first half of the 14th
century and its relationships with the other centers of global and
regional power. Ibn Batuta personally met some of the major figures who
have left their imprint on history, including Ibn Khaldun of the
Maghrib, Ibn Taymiyah of Syria, Sultan Abu Saeed of Persia-Iraq, Sultan
Nuruddin Ali of East Africa, Sultan Orkhan of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan
Muhammed bin Tughlaq of India, Sultan Al Zahir of Indonesia, Emperor
Toghun Timur of China, Mansa Sulaiman of Mali and some of the most
prominent Sufi shaykhs of the era. His impressions of these men provide
invaluable information about the movers and shakers of the era. His
observations on the customs, values and institutions of the societies he
visited provide a first-hand account of the unity as well as the
cultural diversity in the Muslim world as it existed at that time.
In the first half of the 14th
century, the world was in relative peace. The Crusades had ended and the
Mongol slaughters were a thing of the past. In the Maghrib, there
existed a balance of power between the Muslims and the Christians. The
Al Muhaddith dynasty in the Maghrib had broken up and its place taken by
four separate powers, the Merinides of Morocco, Wadids of Algeria,
Hafsids of Tunisia and the Nasirids of Granada. There was relative quiet
between these sultanates and the Christian kingdoms of Castile and
Aragon. This equilibrium allowed the Straits of Gibraltar to be open to
shipping and Venetian and Genoese vessels were able to cross the Straits
and trade with the western shores of France and England. The prosperous
city-states of Italy experienced the first wave of the Renaissance.
Egypt, Syria and Hejaz were under the Mamlukes of Egypt who had earned
the respect of the Islamic world by their victory over the Mongols.
Moreover, after the destruction of Baghdad, Cairo had become the seat of
the Caliphate. Cairo and Damascus became world-class cities due to
their trade with India and China through Yemen. Persia was back in the
fold of Islam and there began tremendous reconstruction works in Persia,
Iraq and Khorasan. The Silk Road to China was reopened. The Ottoman
Turks were continuing their relentless advance into Europe, while the
Byzantine emperors tried to contain them through treaties and marriage
ties. In India and Pakistan, the rich and powerful Tughlaq dynasty
ruled, heir to the mighty Khiljis who had left a consolidated
subcontinent under the military-political control of Delhi. Islam had
entered Malaysia and Indonesia and the Sultanate of Acheh eagerly sought
scholars and jurists who were fleeing the Mongol devastations of the
previous century. China was still ruled by the Mongol (Yuan) dynasty,
which had brought the northern and southern halves of China under one
flag. West Africa witnessed the great Mali Empire at its zenith.
The cement that held this far-flung
Islamic world together was the Shariah. Ibn Batuta was trained in the
Shariah and its application in the Maliki School of Fiqh. As such, he carried the credentials of a kadi
that was to serve him well in a world that was at relative peace with
itself under the umbrella of a Sunni vision of Islam. Second only to the
Law, as a universal binding force was the Arabic language. Even in the
eastern parts of the Islamic world wherein Farsi was the literary
language, Arabic enjoyed a unique place as the language of the Qur’an
and Hadith and as the medium of transmission of the Law. The
Law and the language were the universal forces that held the Muslims
together, even as they fought amongst themselves and with non-Muslims
for power and position. Political power and the mastery of the great
land mass extending from Mauritania to Bengal gave them control of the
trade routes linking the principal seats of civilization, namely China,
India, Persia, Egypt, Italy and West Africa. This vast network of trade
routes was jealously guarded and protected by the regional monarchs who
knew that their own prosperity depended on international trade. A
traveler could move from Mali to Delhi without leaving the familiar
religious and linguistic framework of the Muslims.
Trade as well as the competition among
the rulers for prestige facilitated the movement of scholars,
architects, doctors, engineers, poets and men of learning who sought
gainful employment at the various courts. This movement provided a
powerful engine for the spread of knowledge and the diffusion of faith.
The beneficiaries were the peripheral territories that had recently come
under the political sway of Islam. These territories included India and
Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey and West Africa. It was during
this period that the technology of gunpowder moved from China to west
Asia and from there to Europe. The 14th century transformed
the Islamic landscape and shifted the center of gravity of Islam from
its traditional Arab-Persian heartland to the regions that hold the
largest number of believers today: Indonesia, Pakistan, India,
Bangladesh and Nigeria.
The importance of the external links
provided by the Divine Law, the Arabic language and trade routes is
obvious. Of equal importance was the spiritual unity of Islam, which had
asserted itself at the height of the Mongol catastrophe and now was the
principal vehicle for religious expression. Like a vast subterranean
lake of fresh water linking small islands, this spirituality linked the
lands inhabited by the Africans, the Arabs, the Persians, the Turks, the
Indians and the Malays. Transcending geography and culture, it provided
the motive force for the migration of great Sufi shaykhs into the
heartland of Hindustan and the dispersed islands of the East Indies. It
was also the engine that propelled the Turkish advance into southeastern
Europe, as one Sufic order or the other influenced the ghazi brigades
of the Turks.
The Chishtiya order had penetrated the
jungles of central India and Mallams (religious teachers) traversed the
African grasslands carrying with them not just water bags to quench
bodily thirst but the universal spirituality of Islam to quench the
spiritual thirst of all human beings. By the first half of the 14th
century, this spirituality had moved forward from mere contemplation
and recitation to social activism and had established powerful
institutions to sustain this activism. A traveler could find peace and
solace at various stations not only in the karavanserais (places of rest for travelers) built by the rulers, but also in the qanqas
(places of retreat) built by the Sufis. Among the better known of the
Sufis whose hospitality Ibn Batuta enjoyed were Shaykh Burhanuddin of
Alexandria, Shaykh Abdur Rahman ibn Mustafa of Jerusalem, Shaykh
Qutbuddin of Isfahan, Chirag-e-Dehli of India and Shah Jalal of Sylhet.
Ibn Batuta received his early education in the Maliki School of Fiqh,
a vocation that was to serve him well in his interactions with the
learned men in far-away lands. He was also trained in the urbane manners
becoming of a gentleman of the era. Tasawwuf pervaded the
Islamic social milieu and Ibn Batuta was at home with the Sufi masters.
Indeed, Ibn Batuta personified the new Muslim personality, imbibed with
Sufi spirituality, which was fully integrated with the rules and
regulations of the Shariah. Ibn Batuta, as a native of Morocco, was
fluent in the language. Familiarity with Arabic ensured that he would
find companionship with the kadis, ulema and the Sufis who formed the literary and spiritual elite of Islam.
In 1325, he set out from Tangier to
fulfill his obligation for Hajj. At that time, performance of the Hajj
was not just a visit to Mecca but an adventure through the many cities
that lay in the pilgrim’s path and an opportunity to visit great
mosques, madrasas and to learn from master teachers. It was also a
unique opportunity to give expression to the universal brotherhood and
sisterhood of humankind. Ibn Batuta’s caravan, which included the noted
scholar Abu Abdullah al Zubaidi and Abu Abdullah al Nafzawi, Kadi of
Tunis, passed through some of the principal cities of the Maghrib
including Tlemchen (capital of the Wadids), Algiers and Tunis. Tunis was
at the time a major trade depot and a cultural center. From Africa came
gold, ivory and nuts. From Egypt it imported embroidery and woodwork as
well as trans-shipped products of the east such as Indian herbs,
medicines, spices and Chinese porcelain. These products were sold to the
city-states of southern Europe as well as to the other cities of the
Maghrib. It was the eastern capital of the Al Muhaddith who embellished
it with mosques and built higher schools of learning. With the breakup
of the Al Muhaddith Empire, Christian armies had overrun much of Spain
and had expelled most of the Muslims. North Africa, Tunis in particular,
benefited from this forced migration of scholars, artisans, poets,
musicians, horticulturalists and men of letters. The Hafsids, who
succeeded the Al Muhaddith, continued the tradition of encouraging
learning and Tunis with a population of over 100,000, became a center
that attracted noted ulema from as far away as Cairo, Damascus
and Fez. Ibn Batuta stayed in Tunis for about two months acquiring in
the process some of the Andalusian refinement and court manners that
would serve him well later in his travels.
From Tunis, the caravan traversed the
harsh Libyan Desert until it arrived at the city of Alexandria. This
city, located at the mouth of the Nile Delta, was a busy commercial
center with a brisk trade with Venice, Genoa, Tunis, Tangier, Valencia,
Sicily and the Syrian coast. It was here that the caravan routes leading
from India and the sea routes from East Africa met. All the products of
Asia and Africa passed through the city. In Alexandria, Ibn Batuta met
the noted Sufi Shaykh Burhanuddin and spent some time in his zawiyah.
The elderly Shaykh gave the young traveler robes to signify his
initiation into the Sufi order and showered upon him his spiritual
radiance. From Alexandria, the Hajj caravan reached the great city of
Cairo.
Cairo at that time had a population in
excess of half a million, which was more than fifteen times that of the
city of London, three times that of the city of Tabriz, twice that of
the city of Delhi. It was the capital of the Mamlukes. The Mamlukes,
like their counterparts in India, originated from European and Central
Asian slaves who were bought and adopted by the Turks, accepted Islam,
married into noble families and through their sheer resilience rose up
to become kings. The Mamlukes of Egypt were called Bahri Mamlukes
because some of them inhabited the islands in the River Nile. They
displaced the ailing Ayyubid dynasty in 1250 and brought Egypt, Syria
and the Red Sea coasts of Arabia and the Sudan under their control. The
Mamlukes proved themselves to be excellent administrators and
outstanding patrons of learning. Ibn Batuta arrived in Cairo during the
reign of Sultan Al Nasir Muhammed ibn Qalawun who ruled from 1293 to
1341. A great builder, Al Nasir built more than thirty mosques and
numerous schools and hospitals. The great mosque of ibn Qalawun still
stands in the old city of Cairo. The Mongol plunders in Persia, Iraq and
Central Asia had pushed a large number of scholars, Sufis, poets,
linguists, architects, fuqahah, mathematicians, philosophers and doctors into Cairo.
Cairo had become the pre-eminent center
of culture, art and learning in the Islamic world. After the destruction
of Baghdad (1258), a surviving member of the Abbasids had been
installed as the Caliph in Cairo and the city had become the seat of the
Caliphate and hence the focus of Islamic political life. The hospital (maristan
as it was called) of Qalawun was a marvel of the age. It contained more
than 300 wards for patients and was equipped with the most advanced
surgical tools of the era. The hospital was well staffed with doctors,
surgeons and attendants. There were lecture rooms, baths, libraries and
dispensaries attached to the building. Recitations from the Qur’an
soothed the soul. Music was played to help the healing process.
Treatment was free. Rich and poor were treated alike.
Madrasas (schools) were attached to
the mosques. The concept of a mosque-madrasa grew out of Masjid al
Nabawi, the mosque of the Prophet, in Madina. The idea found patronage
at the highest level during the intense rivalry between the Fatimids and
the Abbasids (969-1100). Both Cairo and Baghdad became great centers of
learning. Al Azhar grew in Cairo and the Nizamiya College flourished in
Baghdad. The example of these two capital cities was copied by the
provincial centers of Merv, Nishapur, Bukhara, Samarqand, Damascus, Fez,
Timbuktu and Cordoba, as well as the cities that came under Islamic
influence in later centuries such as Delhi, Tabriz, Istanbul and Lahore.
Ibn Batuta records that the schools in Cairo were too numerous to
count. Each mosque-madrasa had a courtyard wherein great teachers gave
lectures and eager students learned the Qur’an, Fiqh, Arabic grammar,
mathematics, medicine and philosophy, although the study of more secular
sciences such as mathematics, medicine and philosophy was not available
in all schools.
The hajj caravan with whom Ibn Batuta
was traveling was delayed. Impatient to reach the Hejaz, Ibn Batuta,
took the southern route down the River Nile and through the desert to
the Sudanese port of Aydhab. He described the Nile valley as a veritable
garden, full of life and vitality, serving as the breadbasket for the
Mamluke Empire. Aydhab was a sultry harbor town, dusty, hot, without
water, crammed with import-export merchandise. Forced by inhospitable
weather, Ibn Batuta turned back to Cairo and from there he traveled
through the Sinai to Palestine and Syria. He prayed at the mosque of
Abraham in al Khalil (Hebron) and spent several days at Masjid al Aqsa
in Jerusalem. By 1326, Jerusalem had ceased to be a bone of contention
between the Christians and the Muslims. The Crusades in Palestine had
ended and the chief attraction of the city was its pilgrimage sites for
Muslims, Christians and Jews. Ibn Batuta spent several nights in prayer
at Masjid al Aqsa and at the Dome of the Rock, recalling the events of
Isra and Meraj. He also spent many days at the zawiyah of Sufi Shaykh
Abdul Rahman ibn Mustafa who belonged to the Rifai order.
After receiving his ijazat (literally
meaning permission, also a diploma) from Shaykh ibn Mustafa, Ibn Batuta
moved on to Damascus, where he met the well-known reformer Ibn Taymiyah
(d. 1328). The two were on different wavelengths. Ibn Batuta was a man
of the new Sufic age. Indeed, wherever he went, he sought the company of
well-known Sufis. By contrast, Ibn Taymiyah foresaw inherent dangers in
the Sufic approach, which had no empirical proofs and lent itself to
exploitation by pretenders. The Sufis would respond to this charge by
asserting that the best empirical proof of their approach was the
noticeable transformation of human character that it brings about. Ibn
Taymiyah was very much against the allegorical interpretations given to
the Qur’an by certain Sufi schools and felt that the Qur’an had to be
understood in its literal sense, as emphasized by Imam Shafi’i. Ibn
Taymiyah fought a life-long struggle to alert his generation against the
risks that he felt lurked in the Sufi approach. He urged Muslims to
return to what he felt was the vibrant, outward, empirical Islam of the
Umayyad and the Abbasid periods. Needless to say, the two men did not
see eye to eye. As history would have it, the Islamic world embraced the
Sufis and relegated Ibn Taymiyah to scholars respected but forgotten.
It is only in the last 200 years, since the advent of European
colonialism, that the Islamic world has once again turned to the ideas
of Ibn Taymiyah to find some answers to the challenge of the West.
Damascus was the second capital of
the Mamlukes and was a great city in its own right. During the struggle
between the Mamlukes and the Il Khans of Persia-Iraq (1258-1315),
Damascus had suffered. With the onset of peace between the two dynasties
in 1315, the city had regained its former preeminence as a pivotal
station in the trade routes linking Egypt and North Africa to the Black
Sea, Persia, China and India. It had a population of over 250,000 and
was known for its high quality steel, called Damascus steel, which was
valued and sought after the world over.
The trade in iron and its processing
provides one illustration of how Islam had welded together the old world
into a single trading block. Iron ore was exported from East Africa to
Gujrat in India where it was smelted into pig iron and re-exported to
Syria. In Damascus, it was re-smelted, alloyed and formed into steel,
using a process that was only re-discovered in the 1960s and is referred
to as super-plasticity. Ibn Batuta records that the bazaars of Damascus
were thriving with imported goods which included spices, gems,
embroidery, perfumes and medicinal herbs from India, porcelain from
China, furs from the Black Sea area and Turkish horses from Central
Asia. The nobility in Damascus, emulating the example of the Sultan in
Cairo, had built numerous mosques, schools, hospitals, rest houses for
travelers, canals and public baths. He spent a great deal of time at the
magnificent Umayyad mosque of Damascus, learning among other subjects,
the Hadith according to Shaykh Bukhari.
In September 1326, Ibn Batuta finally
set out to perform his Hajj. Modern conveniences that Hajjis take for
granted these days did not exist and the 800 miles from Damascus to
Mecca were a trial for the hardy. Pilgrims usually traveled in large
caravans, some as large as 30,000, with full provisions for the journey,
led by an emir (leader), accompanied by imams, judges, doctors and
protected by soldiers. Even so, many perished on the road, caught in the
unpredictable desert sand storms, or attacked by bandits. It took
almost a year to perform the Hajj and from some parts of Africa, such as
Mali, it took almost two years. Yet they came, the sons and daughters
of Adam, from all corners of the earth, to the hallowed sanctuary of
Mecca, to celebrate the Name of the Creator and to cement the pristine
brotherhood of humankind.
The rites of Hajj have not changed in
the fourteen hundred years since the Prophet perfected them. A pilgrim
today would experience the same emotions and express himself the same
way, as did Ibn Batuta in the year 1326. Approaching from the north, the
caravan from Damascus first stopped in Madina, the City of the Prophet.
There, surrounded by the radiance of the Prophet’s Mosque, Ibn Batuta
prayed, remembering often the name of the beloved Apostle of God. At
Dhul Halifa, he discarded his urbane attire, donned the Ihram and
marched forth with his companions reciting Talbiya: “Here I am, O Lord,
Here I am! Indeed, Thee alone is worthy of all Praise. Thine is the
Bounty. Thine is the Sovereignty. Here I am at your Command, O Lord!”.
Emotions swelled in him as he first saw the Haram (the word Haram is
used only for the sanctuaries around the Ka’ba in Mecca, the Prophet’s
Mosque in Madina and the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem), circled by
thousands, invoking the name of God in a hundred different tongues. He
melted into the human mass, completing the circles.
Thereafter, he marched forth to the
hills of Safa and Marwa, recalling the struggle of Hajira to find water
in the desert, after Prophet Ibrahim left her there with her infant son
Ismail. He remembered that moment when Divine mercy intervened to answer
the supplication of a mother and caused water to gush forth from a
rock. The mother, Hajira, cried out, “Zumi, Ya Mubaraka” (Stop! O,
blessed water!). After traversing the hills of Safa and Marwa seven
times, Ibn Batuta drank to his heart’s content from the well of Zamzam.
(The word Zamzam derives from Zumi, the exclamation of Hajira when she
saw water burst forth from a rock).
From Mecca, he proceeded to Mina and
on to the great gathering at Arafat. On this plain stood the children of
Adam, black and white, rich and poor, Arabs and Turks, Persians and
Spaniards. Where in this gathering were the kings and where the
mendicants? All were equal in the sight of God and equal in the sight of
man, in supplication before the Creator, celebrating only His Name,
invoking His mercy and His munificence. From Arafat, Ibn Batuta returned
to Muzdalifa and on to Mina and Mecca to complete the rites of the Hajj
and joined his fellow Hajjis in celebration of this blessed
opportunity. He had now fulfilled the goal he had set for himself when
he set out from Tangier, but farther horizons beckoned him.
In 1326, Ibn Batuta joined a caravan
of Persian pilgrims returning home from Hajj. The caravan took the
northerly route from Mecca to Madina, through central Arabia to Kufa.
Along the route, Ibn Batuta saw the many wells, aqueducts and rest stops
that had been built by Empress Zubaida, wife of Harun al Rashid, during
her celebrated Hajj (799). Najaf and Karbala were pilgrimage sites.
From Najaf, the young traveler turned south in the direction of Basra,
visiting along the road the tomb of Shaykh Ahmed ibn Rifai, founder of
the Rifai Sufi order. He stayed at the zawiyah, participating in the
Sufi rites of the order, including prayer, music and rapturous movements
of the dervishes. Farther south, in the city of Abidjan, Ibn Batuta
spent more time in the company of Sufis. Ascending the Persian plateau,
he crossed the Zeros mountains to the beautiful city of Isfahan. Isfahan
had escaped the Mongol devastations, partly because it was far from the
main route of the advancing Mongol armies and partly because it had
avoided taking a defiant stand and had accepted a measure of Mongol
over- lordship. Ibn Batuta stayed with Shaykh Qutbuddin Hussain of the
Suhrawardi order. He then proceeded to the magnificent city of Shiraz,
which, like its sister city of Isfahan, had escaped the Mongol
devastations and had become the hub of Sufi activity in Persia. Shiraz
was referred to as “Burj e Awliya” (bridge to the Beloveds of God, the
great Sufis) and it was here that the well-known Farsi poet Shaykh
Sa’adi and the venerated Sufi Shaykh Ibn Khafif were buried. Ibn Batuta
found the Persian people to be generous, given to culture and good deeds
and the cultivation of piety.
Turning around, Ibn Batuta visited
Baghdad but found the city struggling to lift itself out of its ruins.
Persia was at this time ruled by the Mongol prince, Abu Said
(1316-1335), an accomplished scholar, a pious man, a master builder and
an able administrator. Under him Persia had prospered and had started to
dig itself out of the ashes of the Mongol onslaught. The Mongols had
made Tabriz their capital. Ibn Batuta visited this city and found it to
be a prosperous commercial town comparable to Damascus, embellished with
gardens, mosques and palaces.
Returning back to Baghdad, the world
traveler took an excursion north towards Mosul where he visited a great
Sufi, a lady named Sitt Zahida, who was the patron saint and teacher for
a great many Sufis. In early Islamic history, tasawwuf was not a
privilege only of men. A great many women stand out as towers of light,
beckoning all men and women to that spirituality that is innate in
humankind. Rabia al Adawiyyah (d. 802) was one of the earliest women
Sufis in Islam who expressed the love of God in exquisite and sublime
Arabic poetry and was a teacher to many a great shaykh. It was much
later in Islamic history that Muslim women were pushed into the
background and were largely denied the privilege of learning and
teaching.
After returning to Mecca and studying
there for two years (1327-1329), Ibn Batuta embarked on a journey that
took him to the coastal cities along the western shores of the Indian
Ocean. Since the time of the Prophet, Muslims had sought their economic
well-being in trade. The location of West Asia astride the major trade
routes between Asia, Europe and Africa provided them a strategic
geographical position. The East African coast was connected by sea to
India, Indonesia and China. Towns such as Abadan and Muscat on the
Persian Gulf, Zafar on the southern shores of the Arabian Peninsula and
Aden in Yemen were principal seaports. Included in this trade network
were Mogadishu, Mombasa, Kilwa and Shofala along the African coast.
These became thriving cities ruled by local Muslim emirs.
The land further south was called the land Zanj. The movement of people and goods was two-way. As early as the 8th
century, there was a Zanj colony in southern Iraq. Ibn Batuta’s
itinerary took him from Mecca to Suakin (Sudan), Aden (Yemen), Zeila
(Eritrea), Mogadishu (Somalia), Mombasa (Kenya) and further south to
Zanzibar and Kilwa. East Africa exported gold, ivory, animal hide and
hardwood. In turn it imported spices, fine cotton fabrics and medicines
from India, porcelain and silk from China, steel from Damascus, brocades
and brass-work from Cairo. The African seacoast was integrated through
Sufi missions with the rest of the Muslim world. Scholars as well as
merchants from as far away as Samarqand immigrated, intermarried with
African women and created the rich, composite culture of the Sahel. Ibn
Batuta found the inhabitants of these cities quite affluent. They wore
fine cotton clothes and fine gold jewelry, prayed in domed mosques,
dined on fine porcelain from China. Their cities were peaceful, with no
outer fortresses, offering a warm and open welcome to the merchants from
far-away lands. This peaceful, no-walled character of the African
coastal cities was to prove their undoing in the 16th century, when Portuguese ships appeared offshore and mercilessly bombarded the towns into submission one after the other.
The year 1332 saw Ibn Batuta explore
the Anatolian plateau and the lands around the Black Sea. Three of his
observations about Anatolia are noteworthy. First, the spirit of ghazzah
was widespread among the Turks. By 1332, the Turks had conquered most
of Anatolia and the budding Ottoman principality was soon to blossom
into a world empire. Ever since the 9th century, Turkish
tribes had burst forth from their homeland on the outskirts of Mongolia,
first into Khorasan, then into Persia and onwards into Anatolia and
beyond. These migrations were later sanctified in the form of a valiant
struggle (ghazzah) for faith.
Islam provided an over-arching faith
for the Turkish tribes whose intercontinental movements would have been
inevitable with or without their mass conversion to Islam. Secondly, Ibn
Batuta noted the participation of women in public life. Turkish women
rode horses, went to war, attended state functions and engaged in trade
on an equal footing with men, a situation not known in the strict
atmosphere of the Maliki Maghrib from which Ibn Batuta came. It was no
surprise that the only women sovereigns, the queen-monarchs of Islam
came from the Turks. (In the 16th century, there was a
succession of five Muslim queens in Indonesia). Third, Ibn Batuta
records the strong presence of youth movements in Anatolia, attached to
Sufi brotherhoods. The akhi youth movement reinforced fraternal bonds
and taught young men the virtues of integrity, generosity, courage and
nobility. Akhi fraternities provided hospitality to scholars and
wayfarers. The akhi movement was to the youth what the ghazi movement
was to the general population.
Ibn Batuta’s vision now turned east
towards Delhi, which had become a magnet for Sufis, scholars and
merchants. Setting out in late 1332, he traveled through the Volga
region, which was even in his time noted for its brisk trade in slaves.
Then through Khorasan and the Khanate of Chagatai, Ibn Batuta saw the
ruins of Bukhara, Samarqand, Balkh and Herat. These were cities that
were once the crown jewels of Islamic civilization but were laid waste
by the Mongols. Ibn Batuta visited Kabul, Ghazna and Multan where he
stayed with Shaykh Ruknuddin Abul Fatha of the Suhrwardi order. Arriving
in in 1334, he was pressed into service as the chief kadi by the
Emperor Muhammed bin Tughlaq, a monarch noted for his intellectual and
literary attainment as well as for his impulsiveness. During the
previous century Delhi had grown from a small Rajput garrison town into a
bustling world-class cosmopolitan city and the seat of a mighty empire.
The consolidation of the subcontinent under the central power of Delhi
had brought unparalleled power and prosperity to India. Embassies from
all of the Asian powers frequented the capital. The Qutub Minar was
already a hundred years old and the great mosque of Quwwatul-Islam
served as the Jamia Masjid for the metropolis.
Indeed, it was Ibn Batuta’s
description of the wealth and magnificence of the Delhi court that made
him suspect in the eyes of his contemporaries when he returned home to
Morocco. No less a person than Ibn Khaldun thought that the stories of
Ibn Batuta (“the Shaykh from Tangier”) were not credible. Ibn Batuta
records that in 1340, an embassy arrived from the Emperor Toghon Timur,
Yuan Emperor of China, seeking the Sultan’s permission to establish a
Buddhist monastery near Delhi. Muhammed bin Tughlaq denied the request.
In historical hindsight, the denial prevented a more vigorous
interaction between the Muslim Sufis of India and the Buddhists of the
Yuan Empire and the spread of Islam into the Chinese mainland. So as not
to send the Chinese ambassadors empty handed, the Sultan entrusted Ibn
Batuta to accompany them to Beijing, along with gifts of gold, diamonds
and pearls. As ordered by the Emperor, Ibn Batuta set out with a large
entourage in 1340, visiting Gwalior, Gujrat and Daulatabad on his way to
Surat in western India from where he planned to embark on his voyage to
China. But his ships capsized in a great storm off the coast of Malabar
and Ibn Batuta found himself moving from city to city along the coast.
Further travels took him to the MaldiveIslands , Sri Lanka and Bengal
where he visited with Sufi Shaykh Jalal of Sylhet. Traveling eastward to
Indonesia, he was received by Sultan Ahmed al Malik al Zahir of
Sumatra. Finally, he did make his way to Beijing Canton where he found a
thriving community of Muslim traders.
Returning home to Morocco in 1349,
the restless Ibn Batuta found himself on a journey to the south, to the
great empire of Mali. During the years 1351-1355, his travels took him
through the trade centers of Sijilmasa, Walata, Timbuktu and Gao on the
Niger River. At this time Mansa Sulaiman, successor to the great Mansa
Musa, ruled Mali.
Ibn Batuta’s account of Muslim life
in Mali is noteworthy for the differences in the way women were treated
in African and Arab societies. In Mali, Ibn Batuta found that women were
not secluded from men as they were in North Africa. Like their sisters
in Turkish Anatolia, the Muslim African women frequented the markets,
participated in court life and were free to consult with kadis and ulema
without hiding their faces in hijab, a situation Ibn Batuta, a Maliki
jurist, found objectionable. Ibn Batuta found the great cities of the
Niger River rich and prosperous. The people were pious and steadfast in
prayer, the scholars well versed in the Qur’an and Sunnah, the
universities frequented by great scholars from Fez and Cairo and its
great mosques filled with worshipers. Ibn Batuta returned home in 1355
and spent the remainder of his life in the service of his sovereign,
Sultan Abu Inan of the Merinides. It was at the orders of this Sultan
that the Rehla was composed and recorded by Ibn Juzayy using first hand
accounts from Ibn Batuta.
The world that Ibn Batuta knew was
soon to vanish, engulfed by the great plague of 1346, which moved like a
black spider across the globe, obliterating entire cities with its
sting and arresting the growth of Afro-Eurasian civilizations for more
than a generation. It was this spent world that faced the invasions of
Timurlane of Samarqand, circa 1385.
