Voyages of Ibn Battuta

Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battutah, commonly known as Ibn Battuta (1304–1368/1369) was a Berber explorer and scholar, and among the most well-travelled people of his time, reaching further than Marco Polo had a few decades earlier. His journeys were a showcase of the Islamic Golden Age.

Understand
Ibn Battuta came from a family of legal scholars, and he was trained in that field. At age 21, he set out from Tangier for his hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and continued travelling until his forties, mostly in the Islamic world, India and imperial China.

He documented his journeys in the Rihla – always with the definite article, because rihla is a generic Arabic word for a travelogue. However, many scholars are uncertain if he visited all of the places mentioned in the Rihla or whether he based some of his descriptions on hearsay, and whether he visited them in the order provided in the book.

The University of California Berkeley has a good online account of Ibn Battuta's travels. Our text below is based on that.

Destinations
The Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca was Ibn Battuta's first long journey, starting in 1325. He travelled overland, at first alone but later joining various pilgrim caravans.

Cairo to Mecca
There were several routes from Cairo to Mecca, and he chose what was then usually the safest &mdash; south along the Nile in territory controlled by the Mamluk rulers of Egypt, then across the Red Sea to Jeddah. However, as he approached the Red Sea port involved, he found out that its ruler was in revolt against the Mamluks and there was fighting nearby, so he turned back to Cairo.

From there he took another route to Mecca, first going to Damascus via Gaza, Hebron and Jerusalem.

Mesopotamia and Persia


After his year in Mecca, he visited what are now Iraq and Iran, which were then parts of the Mongol-ruled Ilkhanate.

East Africa
He returned to Mecca, then travelled by sea along the coast of East Africa, visiting Aden, Mogadishu, Malindi, Mombasa and Zanzibar.

After returning to Yemen, he went east on foot to Oman (which proved to be a difficult journey), by boat up the Persian Gulf, then overland back to Mecca.

After some time recovering in Mecca, he was ready to continue his journey east. In nearby Jeddah, he spent several months while looking for a ship that would take him to India, but to no avail.

Anatolia
He figured he might be able to join a Turkish trade caravan heading east, so he set off north toward Anatolia, travelling via Egypt and Damascus. He left Syria on a Genoese galley which took 10 days to cross the Mediterranean to arrive at Alanya, on the southern coast of Anatolia.





Ibn Battuta praised "the land of the Turks" for its beauty, delicious cuisine, and its people's hospitality, but was surprised by the Turks' less than perfect compliance with Islamic norms.

Ibn Battuta extensively travelled the land, and was hosted by an Islamic fraternity in most towns. He eventually made his way to Konya, the capital of the Mevlevi Sufi order.

At the time of Ibn Battuta's visit, there was no central authority in Anatolia, as the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum collapsed following the Mongol invasion, and numerous petty kingdoms known as beyliks had emerged in the power vacuum left behind. Ibn Battuta visited several of the local rulers, including Orhan, the chief of the nascent statelet that was to become the Ottoman Empire.

In November 1331, he started his trek north, which proved to be full of trouble. His progress was cut off by a raging river, then a guide got them lost (apparently on purpose as the guide later demanded a ransom), and as the winter approached he almost froze to death, but he eventually managed to get to Sinop on the Black Sea coast.

The Mongol lands
From there he went into Mongol territory, first that of the Golden Horde. His boat struggled through the severe storms common in the Black Sea, and finally reached Caffa, present-day Feodosiya in Crimea, several days later.

He visited many Black Sea ports, inhabited by a multinational merchant population and receiving the rich produce of the steppe as well as that brought over via the Silk Road. He departed from Azov to catch up with the travelling court of Uzbeg Khan of the Golden Horde, whom he learned was a few days ahead.

At the time, the area was inhabited by Turkic and Mongolian nomads. He described their cuisine based on horse meat (still a delicacy in some of the modern nations in the wider region such as Kazakhstan) and how they let their horses and other livestock free range on the open steppe. He also mentioned the nomad drinks of kumis, fermented mare's milk still popular in Turkic Central Asia and in Mongolia, and boza, a thick malt drink now common in Turkey and the Balkans.

Ibn Battuta met the khan's court, which he likened to an entire city on the move, near Beshtau, in what is now Stavropol Krai north of the Caucasus Mountains. From there, he went north to Bolghar, although some modern historians dispute this. If it's true that he had been there, that was the northernmost point he ever set foot in — indeed he noted that the summer nights that far north were unusually short to him.

While in Bolghar, Ibn Battuta thought about venturing further north into the "land of darkness", likely somewhere deep inside Siberia, which could only be reached by a dog sled and was said to be inhabited by a mysterious group of people. But such a trip never materialized.

From Bolghar, he returned to the khan's court, and they moved to Astrakhan together.

At Astrakhan, he heard the khan's wife, a Byzantine princess by birth, was about to leave for her father's realm to give birth to her baby there. So in July 1332 Ibn Battuta joined her party for a 75-day trip back along the Black Sea to Constantinople, where he stayed for more than a month.

As he went back to Astrakhan, it was already winter, brutal in the Eurasian steppe. He approached Sarai on the frozen Volga River.

From Sarai, his route trended south, into the Chagatai Khanate.

India
Leaving Mongol lands, he continued to the Indian subcontinent.

Eventually, the Sultan decided to use him as an envoy to China and put him in command of an expedition that included 15 Chinese envoys returning home. They went off toward the coast with a rich and well-guarded caravan, but had some serious trouble with rebels and bandits; at one point Ibn Battuta became separated from the caravan and was robbed of everything but his trousers. However, they did make it to the fortress of Daulatabad where they rested up for a few days before continuing to Cambay, then along the coast to Gandhar where they boarded four ships.

A severe storm came up, the junks put to sea (without Ibn Battuta) to ride it out, and two of them were sunk. The third ship set off for China, without Ibn Battuta; he pursued briefly, but gave up. That ship made it as far as Sumatra, but then was seized by a local king.

Left penniless, and afraid of what the Sultan might do if he returned to Delhi a failure, he found employment with one of the southern Muslin sultans for a while, then did some more travelling.

The Maldives and Sri Lanka


Leaving Sri Lanka, he had more bad luck. One ship was sunk by a storm, but he was rescued and boarded another ship; that one was taken by pirates and again he was robbed of everything except his trousers. However, the pirates put the passengers ashore unharmed and they made their way back to Calicut.

Toward China
From Calicut he decided to continue toward China; he returned to Malé and got on an eastbound ship. The Sultan owned ships which traded with China, and sent Ibn Battuta off on one.

China
He landed in China at Quanzhou, then travelled by land to other cities.

Homeward bound
Returning to Quanzhou, he found a junk owned by the Sultan of Samudra in port, and boarded it to begin his three-year journey home. After a stop in Samudra he sailed to India, landing at Quilon then returning to Calicut where he boarded a westbound ship.

When Ibn Battuta had visited 11 years before, the Ilkhanate had been peaceful under a strong sultan. However, that sultan had died and the region was now chaotic as various generals and nobles vied for power. Ibn Battuta left Persia quickly, going west via Baghdad and Damascus.

He went back to Palestine, Cairo, Jeddah and Mecca, then returned to Egypt to take a ship west.

Iberia and West Africa


By now, Ibn Battuta had visited most of the Muslim world (dar al Islam), as well as areas beyond it. His last major journey was to Islamic kingdoms he had not yet seen.

The Rihla
After the West African journey, he settled in Tangier, worked as a judge, and wrote a book:

The work became well-known in the Muslim world, but was not much known in the West until the early 1800s.