Somewhere along the way, he decided what he really wanted to do was to visit every part of the Muslim world and even beyond. Early on, he vowed "never to travel any road a second time. Throughout these regions, Islam unified many different peoples with a common religion and system of law. He boarded a trading ship and sailed halfway down the east coast of Africa. Muslim merchants had established trading ports in East Africa, mainly to trade for African gold.
The Mongols under Genghis Khan had conquered the Muslims in many of these regions during the mids. But by the time of Ibn Battuta's travels, a hundred years later, the Mongols had settled down and were rapidly adopting Islam.
Ibn Battuta reached India in Muslim sultans kings ruled most of India. By now, many had heard of Ibn Battuta and his travels. The sultan of Delhi welcomed him with gifts and money, a form of hospitality that he came to expect from the rulers he visited. His fame had earned him wealth. He no longer traveled alone, but with servants and a harem. The sultan also made him a qadi , a Muslim judge. He held this post for several years. When a rebellion broke out, however, the sultan grew suspicious of many around him, even of Ibn Battuta.
Ibn Battuta was briefly arrested. When released, he fled Delhi. But the sultan called him back. Much to Ibn Battuta's surprise, the sultan appointed him as his ambassador to the emperor of China.
He set sail for China in , but was shipwrecked. He eventually arrived by sea in southern China in This was about a half-century after Marco Polo had left China. The Mongols still ruled China when Ibn Battuta made his visit.
Unlike the other areas that the Mongols had conquered, China never became a Muslim land. But Ibn Battuta did visit Muslim merchant communities in China, especially in Hangzhou , which may have been the largest city in the world at this time. He might have traveled to Peking, but never met the ruling emperor. When Ibn Battuta returned from China by way of India and the Middle East, he encountered the first outbreak of the bubonic plague, the Black Death , in Surviving the plague, he made another pilgrimage to Mecca and then headed for home.
Ibn Battuta arrived in Tangier late in He had been away from home for 24 years. He learned that his mother had died of the plague a few months earlier, and his father had died years before. At age 45, Ibn Battuta had not yet finished traveling. He crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to tour Granada in southern Spain. This was the last Muslim kingdom left in Spain, which the Christians had been trying to reconquer for several hundred years. It lay a thousand miles south of Morocco across "the empty waste" of the Sahara Desert.
In , Ibn Battuta joined a desert caravan headed for Mali on his last great adventure. Mali was known for its gold and great wealth. The year before Ibn Battuta left home to start his world travels, the Muslim emperor of Mali, Mansa Musa, had made a spectacular appearance in Cairo, Egypt. He was on a hajj to Mecca. The royal caravan of the mansa sultan or king included thousands of attendants and slaves along with camels loaded with bags of gold.
During his stay in Cairo, Mansa Musa spent and gave away so much gold that its market value temporarily fell. Islam had spread south to Mali many years before. Soon, large caravans crossed the Sahara, carrying slabs of mined salt to trade for gold in African market towns along the southern border of the forbidding desert. Many Arab and Berber traders gradually settled in these towns as merchants. They were Muslims, and they were the ones who first brought Islam to black Africa.
From their ties with the Muslim merchants, many African rulers and merchants along the lands bordering the Sahara adopted Islam. Most of the common people, though, still held on to their traditional religious beliefs.
Because of the gold trade, several successive empires arose in West Africa south of the Sahara. The Empire of Mali took over this area in the early s and soon adopted Islam as its official religion. Mali included many different African peoples as well as Arab and Berber immigrants. Its gold financed a strong army of bowmen and an armored cavalry.
But the real source of Mali's success was its flourishing commerce with Muslim merchants and caravan traders. Africans traded gold, ivory, hides, and slaves for Arab and Berber salt, cloth, paper, and horses. Ibn Battuta reached the Mali capital in the spring of He was pleased that the Muslims of Mali strictly observed traditional Islamic practices and had a "zeal for learning the Koran by heart. He wrote that "their women show no bashfulness before men, and do not veil themselves. Mansa Sulayman largely ignored him and gave him only small gifts, which greatly displeased the famous world traveler.
Ibn Battuta did, however, get to witness an audience before Mansa Sulayman in the palace courtyard. The mansa did not speak directly to the people, but only through a spokesman.
Ibn Battuta reported, with some disgust, "If anyone addresses the king and receives a reply from him, he uncovers his back and throws dust over his head and back. I used to wonder how it was [that the people the king spoke to] did not blind themselves. Ibn Battuta also observed a state ceremony that began with Muslim prayers. But afterward came several dancers, dressed as birds, chanting before the mansa. Ibn Battuta viewed this as an insult to Islam. He did not recognize that the mansa needed to satisfy the common people, most of whom still held on to the old religious beliefs.
Despite his disappointments, Ibn Battuta was impressed that the Mali people "have a greater hatred of injustice than any other people. This city of about 10, people was never a military stronghold or seat of a king. Instead, its fame rested on its reputation as a city of scholars.
Timbuktu was founded around as a market town bordering the Sahara. Almost from the beginning, it seems to have been a Muslim town. It was self-governing until Mansa Musa annexed it without bloodshed to the Mali Empire in Even after that, the city continued running its own affairs with little control from the Mali kings. Still thirsty for adventure, the Moroccan set out at the head of a large caravan brimming with gifts and slaves. Hindu rebels harassed his group during their journey to the Indian coast, and Battuta was later kidnapped and robbed of everything but his pants.
He managed to make it to the port of Calicut, but on the eve of an ocean voyage, his ships blew out to sea in a storm and sank, killing many in his party. Ibn Battuta, Moroccan explorer, in Egypt. Illustration by Leon Benett from book by Jules Verne, The string of disasters left Battuta stranded and disgraced. He was loath to return to Delhi and face the sultan, however, so he elected to make a sea voyage south to the Indian Ocean archipelago of the Maldives.
He remained in the idyllic islands for the next year, gorging on coconuts, taking several wives and once again serving as an Islamic judge. Battuta might have stayed in the Maldives even longer, but following a falling out with its rulers, he resumed his journey to China.
After making a stopover in Sri Lanka, he rode merchant vessels through Southeast Asia. In , four years after first leaving India, he arrived at the bustling Chinese port of Quanzhou.
Having reached the edge of the known world, he finally turned around and journeyed home to Morocco, arriving back in Tangier in He then embarked on a multi-year excursion across the Sahara to the Mali Empire, where he visited Timbuktu. He spent the next year dictating his story to a writer named Ibn Juzayy.
Though not particularly popular in its day, the book now stands as one of the most vivid and wide-ranging accounts of the 14th century Islamic world. Following the completion of the Rihla , Ibn Battuta all but vanished from the historical record. He is believed to have worked as a judge in Morocco and died sometime around , but little else is known about him.
It appears that after a lifetime spent on the road, the great wanderer was finally content to stay in one place. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault.
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