Muhammad bin 'Abdallah bin Battutah

Of these travellers none is more celebrated than Muhammed Bin 'Abdallah bin Battutah. Ibn Battutah was born in Tangier in 1304 and died in Marrakesh around 1377. The comparison with Marco Polo, his western counterpart (1254-1324) is interesting, for the Muslim traveller appears as the sun was setting on the greatest period of Muslim creativity whereas Polo introduced the rest of the world to the emerging renaissance of the West.

Of Ibn Battutah's life Muslim scholars wrote little, but much can be gleaned from his accounts of his trips. His family tradition was of the Muslim judiciary, and from this, it was assumed that he received training in religious, scholastic, and literary subjects.

At the age of twenty-one the young Ibn Battutah embarked on the pilgrimage to Makkah in order firstly, to fulfil one of the "pillars of Islam" and also as a kind of grand-tour finishing school that would provide the prestige of studying with scholars of the Muslim east to this western hopeful. Even on this trip (eight are known about), Ibn Battutah put into practice his travel rule, "Never, so far as possible, cover any road a second time." Using Makkah as a base, he managed to get as far as east Iraq and Iran, down both sides of the Red Sea to Yemen and Aden, thence down the East African Coast and back via Oman and the Arabian Gulf. On later trips he began to move in the company of princes and even had an entourage of his own.

In 1332 after another pilgrimage, Ibn Battutah wanted to go to Muslim India. He took a ship north and went overland through Egypt and Syria. He then travelled by ship from Latakia to Istanbul, criss-crossed Asia Minor, crossed the Black Sea to the Crimea and made his way overland across the Golden Hordes territory, through Samarkand, Bukhara, and Afghanistan. He reached the Indus River frontier with India in September 1333. In time he became chief judge in Delhi, and in 1342, he was sent by the Sultan as his Ambassador to the Mongol Emperor of China. This trip took him to the Maldives, Bengal, Assam, Sumatra, and finally to the Chinese city of Zaytun and possibly Beijing. He returned to Morocco in 1349.

Although forty-five years old Ibn Battutah still wanted to see new sights. First he crossed the Pillars of Hercules to the Western Muslim capital, Granada - a modest trip compared to his final effort, which took him in 1352 across the Sahara to the Muslim empire of the Mandingos and back again across the great desert to his homeland a year later. On his return to Fez the Marinid Sultan, Abu 'Inan, commanded him to dictate the story of his journeys to the scribe Ibn Jazayy. Thereafter we lose sight of Ibn Battutah and can only guess at how he spent the last years of his life. Perhaps he became a qadi in some town or other. Ibn Battutah finished dictating his account to Ibn Jazayy in 1357. The style varies widely from the matter-of-fact to the euphemistic, it is impossible to tell where the author leaves off and the scribe begins, and it is extremely difficult to straighten out the chronologies of his trips.

It is clear that Ibn Jazayy exaggerated in general and that Ibn Battutah sometimes relied on his memory, where his notes failed and perhaps his imagination as well. Nevertheless, his account is one of the most valuable sources for Ottoman history, the history of Muslim India and the history of West Africa. It is a fascinating narrative. He explains how the city rice granaries worked in the midst of famine in Delhi. He comments on the fine bazaars and wide streets in the original Ottoman capital of Bursa, and on the silk uniforms of the pages in Aydin. Like any foreigner in a strange land he preferred to stay in the best quarter.

The oikoumene of the Muslims found Ibn Battutah a traveller and reporter of unparalleled breadth and depth.