The Travels of Ibn Battutah
The Travels of Ibn Battutah Review
Ibn Battutah was a 14th century Berber traveler who took a quickie (6 week) course in figh (Islamic jurisprudence) in order to have a portable skill as a qadi (Islamic judge) to finance his voyages around the known world of his day. Along the way he sleeps around, buys and sells slave girls, dabbles in asceticism, goes to war and in general seems to have a rollicking good time. Seemingly by reputation or letters of introduction from his patron the Sultan he meets the elite leaderships and is invariably endowed with gifts, honour and in some cases whole villages who’s income he is to use to cover his expenses – and still he overspends, winds up in debt and is bailed out by his patrons.
Starting from Tangiers Battutah travels by caravan eventually reaching Alexandria, then Cario and then to the gateway of Syria which begins at a border crossing just west of the city of Gaza. Traveling along the coast of what is today Israel he finds cities abandoned in desolation. Haifa has a Christian shrine but he records no people. Acco is a small port and then on to Tyre. This is in marked contrast to another traveler Benjamin of Tudela who records communities of Samaritans and Jews around 160 years earlier. The difference has been caused by clashes between the Saracens and the Crusaders. He proceeds to Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron where he finds bustling communities.
For some reason (ostensibly a seer) he has to double back to Damascus before proceding on to Mecca and Medina where he stays several years. Then on to Turkey where he encounters Dervishes, the Crimea and the Ural Steppes, again encountering generous Muslims, women on par with men and frozen rivers of ice and snow. (Not entirely strange I’d guess – I’ve seen travel posters showing skiing in the Atlas mountains to the south of Tangiers.)
The focus then shifts to India where he observes the assassination of one ruler by a booby trapped wall, and joins a war party where his side is gloriously victorious, only to have the tables turned and having to sneak away. He is robbed by brigands and spends a pleasant few years in the Maldives where the women “marry” easily and he is again able to ply his trade as a qadi, though he’s a bit of a fish out of water meting out judgments far harsher than the locals are used to.
The section that follows on China I find disappointing short – whether that is the fault of editing or the original material I don’t really know. The final section deals with his travels in Africa, “the lands of the blacks”.
Overall the voyages take over 26 years. In Syria (again) he hears of the death of his father. By the time he returns home he finds that his mother has died of the plague a year earlier. The juxtaposition of the black death and Battutah’s journey puts the tale in perspective. He has traveled the world at the best of times and the years that follow the world and travel in it will be greatly diminished.
The Rhila (Travels) is often considered to be one of the great books. Like the Odyssey this is a world tale that should be treasured and revisited. I greatly enjoyed Tim Mackintosh-Smith’s (TMS) rendition. He explains what’s left out of the translation from the Arabic (mostly long winded tributes to Ibn Battuta’s royal sponsor) and his footnotes at the end were an invaluable guide. However around pp120 I found the book a little boring and I realized that I needed more context. So I picked up his earlier book Travels with a Tangerine (which only goes as far as the Crimea) and continued by reading the two books in tandem which I found helpful. He also mentions several other medieval travelers in the earlier book, and several references appear in the footnotes of this one.
Recommended.
The Travels of Ibn Battutah Feature
- ISBN13: 9780330418799
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
The Travels of Ibn Battutah Overview
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