Page 128 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

ibn battuta 947

Ibn Battuta on the
Maldives

The inhabitants of the Maldives are all Muslims,
pious and upright. The islands are divided into khstan and from the South China Sea to tropical West
twelve districts, each under a governor whom Africa. He traveled by donkey, horse, camel, wagon, and
they call the Kardui.The district of Mahal, which ship, covering in all 116,000–120,000 kilometers. His
has given its name to the whole archipelago, is account of his adventures includes numerous delights, trib-
the residence of their sultans. There is no agri- ulations, and brushes with death. He was shipwrecked
culture at all on any of the islands, except that a off the coast of Sri Lanka, lost in a mountain blizzard in
cereal resembling millet is grown in one district Anatolia, captured by Indian bandits, attacked by pirates
and carried thence to Mahal.The inhabitants live off the Malabar Coast, nearly executed by the Sultan of
on a fish called qulb-al-mas, which has red flesh Delhi, infected with disease, and drawn into a plot to
and no grease and smells like mutton. On catch- overthrow the government of the Maldive Islands. He
ing it they cut it in four, cook it lightly, then also married and divorced several times, bought and sold
smoke it in palm leaf baskets. When it is quite slaves, fathered children, and sat in audience with Mon-
dry, they eat it. Some of these fish are exported to gol monarchs.
India, China, and Yemen. Most of the trees on Everything we know about Ibn Battuta’s routes and
those islands are coco-palms, which with the fish destinations is to be found in the narrative he produced
mentioned above provide food for the inhabi- at the end of his traveling career.The itinerary and chron-
tants. The coco-palm is an extraordinary tree; it ology as he reports them are complex and often puz-
bears twelve bunches a year, one in each month. zling, but despite numerous uncertainties, we may with
Some are small, some large, some dry and some some confidence group the travels into ten major periods:
green, never changing. They make milk, oil, and
honey from it, as we have already related. ■ 1325–1326. Tangier to Mecca by way of Cairo and
Damascus.
Source: Gibb, H. A. R. (Trans.). (1929). Travels in Asia and Africa: 1325–1354,
by Ibn Battuta. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd. ■ 1326–1327. Mecca to Iraq, western Iran, and back to
Mecca.
■ 1328–1330. Mecca to Yemen, East Africa, South Ara-
bia, the Persian Gulf, and back to Mecca.
the medieval era. His Rihla strikingly reveals both the far- ■ 1330–1333. Mecca to Syria, Anatolia, the Pontic-
flung cosmopolitanism of Muslim civilization in the Caspian steppes, Byzantium, the Volga River valley,
fourteenth century and the dense networks of communi- Transoxiana (in present-day Uzbekistan),Afghanistan,
cation and exchange that linked together nearly all parts and North India.
of the Eastern Hemisphere at that time. ■ 1333–1341. Residence in the Sultanate of Delhi and
Born in Tangier, Morocco, in the time of the Marinid travels in North India.
dynasty, Ibn Battuta grew up in a family known for ca- ■ 1341–1345. Delhi to Gujarat, Malabar, the Maldive
reers in legal scholarship. He received an education in the Islands, Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), and Bengal.
religious sciences, literature, and law befitting a young ■ 1345–1347. Bengal to Indochina, Sumatra, and south-
Arab gentleman. In 1324, he left Morocco to perform ern China.
the holy pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca in western Arabia. ■ 1347–1349. Southern China to Sumatra, Malabar, the
Initially, he may have intended to study Islamic law in Persian Gulf, western Iran, Syria, Egypt, Mecca,Tunis,
Cairo or one of the other Muslim university centers, then and Morocco.
return home to a respectable career in jurisprudence. In- ■ 1349–1351.Travels in Morocco and southern Spain,
stead, he set forth on a remarkable twenty-nine year odys- including visits to Fez, Tangier, Gibraltar, Granada,
sey that took him from what is now Tanzania to Kaza- Salé, and Marrakech.