Over the next two years together, the men wove what would become the Book of Travels , based primarily on Ibn Battuta's memories, but also interweaving descriptions from earlier writers.
The manuscript was circulated around different Islamic countries, but not much cited by Muslim scholars. It eventually came to the attention of the west by way of two adventurers of the 18th and 19th centuries, Ulrich Jasper Seetzen — and Johan Ludwig Burckhardt — They had separately purchased abridged copies during their travels throughout the Mideast.
The first English language translation of those copies was published in by Samuel Lee. Five manuscripts were found by the French when they conquered Algeria in The most complete copy recovered in Algiers was made in , but the oldest fragment was dated That fragment had the title "Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling," and is believed to have been a very early copy indeed if not an original fragment.
The full text was translated first into English by Hamilton A. Gibb in Several subsequent translations are available today. Ibn Battuta recounted tales of his travels throughout his voyage and when he returned home, but it was not until his association with Ibn Jazayy that the stories were committed to formal writing.
Battuta took notes during the journey but admitted that he lost some of them along the way. He was accused of lying by some contemporaries, though the veracity of those claims is widely disputed. Modern critics have noted several textual discrepancies which hint at substantial borrowing from older tales.
Much of the criticism of Battuta's writing is aimed at the sometimes confusing chronology and plausibility of certain parts of the itinerary.
Some critics suggest he may have never reached mainland China, but did get as far as Vietnam and Cambodia. Parts of the story were borrowed from earlier writers, some attributed, others not, such as Ibn Jubary and Abu al-Baqa Khalid al-Balawi. Those borrowed parts include descriptions of Alexandria, Cairo, Medina, and Mecca.
He also relied on original sources, relating historical events told to him in the courts of the world, such as the capture of Delhi and the devastations of Genghis Khan. After his collaboration with Ibn Jazayy ended, Ibn Batuta retired to a judicial post in a small Moroccan provincial town, where he died in Ibn Battuta has been called the greatest of all travel writers, having traveled farther than Marco Polo.
In his work, he provided priceless glimpses of the various people, courts and religious monuments around the world. His travelogue has been the source of countless research projects and historical investigations. Even if some of the stories were borrowed, and some of the tales a bit too marvelous to be believed, Ibn Battuta's rilha remains an enlightening and influential work of travel literature to this day.
Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. 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. While describing the river Ganges, Battuta has mentioned its importance as a sacred river to which the Hindus go in pilgrimage.
In his narratives we find for the first time the mention of the practice of magic and witchcraft of the people of Kamrupa, their skill in and addiction to the art. Battuta's report throws light on the economic condition of the people of Bangala at the period in view of the abundance of food grains and cheapness of the commodities of daily use, the parallel of which he had seen nowhere in the world.
He has left an account of the inland trade and foreign trade-links of the people of Bangala. He has mentioned the plying of innumerable boats in the river carrying men and merchandise, market places on the bank of the river, and anchorage of Chinese junk at the port of Sonargoan bound for Java.
He has also noted Bangala's trade on rice with Maldive islands. Battuta has noted that on board of every merchant-boat there was a drum. When two of the boats met, the sailors of each struck the drum and transmitted their mutual greetings.
The practice of beating drums is perhaps a signal for identifying the genuineness of the inland merchant boats and a skill for detecting the stranger-boats from outside as a safeguard against piracy. Ibn Battuta has left for us a list of the price of commodities of daily use at the time of his visit to Bangala. The list of prices of commodities furnished by him is the result of his personal observation of the market.
Ibn Battuta tabulated the price of commodities in terms of dinar and dirham, and his measurement was based on the weight of Delhi ratl. As the price mentioned by him would be of no meaning without their relation to present value, a computation of prices in terms of modern money is extremely desirable. We furnish below a computation table of prices current at the time when Ibn Battuta visited Bengal in terms of modern money and weight.
We preferably accept silver as standard and compute the following table taking the weight of one Delhi ratl equivalent to approximately 14 seers around 14 kilogram of our time, one silver dinar equivalent to one taka approximately. The price thus runs as follows:. Ibn Battuta is undoubtedly our earliest authority in providing intimate knowledge of the life of the people of Bengal who had the occasion to collect his material from the soil he traversed through and the people he met with.
Though brief in outline and in detail, the narratives of Ibn Battuta cover almost all aspects of life in Bengal. His living sense of observing the beauty of nature, keen perception, and his lucid style of expression, made his description of the picturesque view of the natural phenomenon quite lively.
Toggle navigation Banglapedia. Main page Random page Contact. Ibn Battuta. The price thus runs as follows: Rice : per maund 11 paisa Paddy : per maund 3 paisa Sugar : per maund 1. Category : Biography. This page was last edited on 18 June , at
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