The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century

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Summary: A brilliant light over Islam culture of XIV century
Review: A fascinating travel around the Islam world of the XIV century. Ross Dunn made a tremendous job elaborating the original text from the traditional "rihla" format of travel reports, which a contemporary writer prepared on the basis of Ibn Battuta comments and the exisiting notes from different travelers. The original text would have been boring and not so easy for a normal reader to understand the historic and social context in which Ibn Battuta was moving. A vast piece of world united under the Islam culture, ranging from the Atlantic shore of Morocco to the South China Sea and south to the Guinea Gulf coast. The book is easy to read and full of foot-notes for further reading.

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Summary: From Tangier to the ends of the earth and back......
Review: Centuries-old travelogues tend to have this archaic, dusty sort of air about them. We can't identify with the people who wrote them because the language in no way resembles ours. This is of course the fault of those who translate those documents. Then too, travellers of medieval times or earlier tended to write about things not so much of interest today. In THE ADVENTURES OF IBN BATTUTA, Ross E. Dunn has successfully avoided these problems by writing ABOUT the 14th century North African traveller, Ibn Battuta, not just translating his book. Ibn Battuta (1304-1368) travelled around the civilized world of his day. Surprisingly enough for Eurocentric folks, the term "civilized" only included Spain at that time. It did, however, include most of the Islamic regions on earth, plus India and China. Dunn includes chapters on Tangier, North Africa, Egypt-Syria-Palestine, Mecca, Persia and Iraq, Yemen, Oman, and East Africa, Constantinople, Anatolia, Central Asia, India and the Maldives, China, Spain, and Mali---across the Sahara in West Africa. In each, he gives a picture of the times in that particular place, what Ibn Battuta said he saw and what he must have seen or experienced but didn't mention. Dunn recounts many of the Moroccan's interesting adventures, from being jailed in Delhi to trying as a judge to forbid Maldivian women going topless in public. Dunn also places Ibn Battuta in a framework of a hemisphere-wide Islamic civilization and as an ambitious semi-scholar who was perhaps not so well studied as he wanted people to believe. So, not only is this book a record of Ibn Battuta's life and voyages, it is a very interesting commentary on a large part of the world in the 14th century and the life story of a particular individual. If you like history, if you are interested in what was happening in the world beyond Europe in the days when "knights were bold" [and illiterate], read this book. It comes with good maps and some black and white photographs of places that might still look a bit like what they did in Ibn Battuta's time.

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Summary: A 14th century traveller who saw more than even Marco Polo
Review: In 1325 the young Morrocan Ibn Battuta left his home to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. On the way, he became enamoured with travel and travelled half the world, from North Africa to China, before returning to his home in 1349. His record of his journeys, the Rihla, is difficult to read and chaotically organised, leading historian Ross E. Dunn to present Ibn Battuta's story in a more accessible format. THE ADVENTURES OF IBN BATTUTA is an extremely interesting book, and I recommend it highly to anyone interested in world history.

Battuta's memoirs often lack detail, so Dunn has put his travels in context by bringing in outside information. Thus, before covering Battuta's travels over the steppe of Northern Asia, he explains how the Mongols came to acquire so much territory and then convert to Islam.

Another interesting part of Battuta's story is how Europeans and inhabitants of the Middle East interacted in the 14th century. Battuta gives an anecdote about a stay in a Muslim town in the Crimean where Italian traders had an outpost. Hearing the Italian's churchbells, which sounded to him like a diabolic cacophony, he and his friends immediately ran to the roof and began to make the muezzin call to prayer. Luckily, there was no violent conflict from this culture class. Dunn's background information also gives interesting details of European activity in Asia during the late Middle Ages. I didn't know that Venetian and Genoese merchants travelled and resided as far east as Tabriz (in modern-day Iran) until I read THE ADVENTURES OF IBN BATTUTA.

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Summary: A traveler with a charmed life
Review: So, what should we know about the Marco Polo of Tangier? The first thing is that the Marco Polo comparison, while of obvious utility, is really not a good one. The Adventures of Ibn Battuta is about Ibn Battuta and his world, and I think the story stands better on its own. Ross Dunn, the author, apparently thinks the same way, since the comparison is mentioned at the very beginning, but seldom after that. Battuta's travels through the world were done in a way only someone of his background could do them.

So what did he do? Ibn Battuta was a twenty one year old scholar of probably modest talent who set out to perform the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and managed to not return home for twenty-four years. He apparently liked to travel, and took quite a few detours whenever he wanted to see something, usually a noted Muslim city or holy site. He did stay in India for quite a long time, working as a qadi, an Islamic judge, at a time when foreigners were welcomed for just that sort of thing. Eventually he made it as far east as China (maybe), as far south as modern day Tanzania, and in a later voyage in his life, down to Mali.

Structurally, the text works well. In each section Dunn provides a background on the region before we learn of how Battuta spent his time there. It helps to know that such and such an emperor had been around for so many years, and was having the following problems. This is not just for our curiosity. Since Battuta, particularly in later years, involved himself often in government affairs, it becomes essential for the reader to know something about what was going on. Though Battuta wrote (or provided information for another author to write) a travel diary after his return, that is not what we see here. Dunn only references Battuta's Rihla occasionally. More often he explains some historiography of the work, pointing out that the text is unclear, missing portions, confusing, or just plain impossible, such as Battuta's claim to have visited Peking, though he would almost have to travel faster than a human could in those days to have done so in the time available.

Of course what makes the text really work is the story. Battuta is an interesting character. He was half rogue and half self-important egotist. It is an essential feature of his travels that he was an educated Muslim traveling in Muslim lands. So everywhere he went, he could present himself to local leaders as a wandering Muslim from far away, and get himself treated to meals, lodging, and gifts. And when I say everywhere, it really was just about everywhere. This is one of the reasons the Marco Polo comparison doesn't work well. In many places he could find Arabic speakers, if not as native speakers, then at least as a second language. Between Islamic custom for charity towards travelers and Battuta's apparently charming personality, he traveled quite far in some comfort and without excessive culture shock.

There is a darker side to Battuta's personality that come out in many places. He was, to put it mildly, a religious bigot. He was condescending towards Shiites. The first time he heard Christian church bells in a mixed region of Muslims and Christians, he and a fellow traveler ran up to the top of the local minaret and began shouting the call to Prayer to try to drown out the sounds. When faced with local behavior in distant lands that he thought non-Islamic, he typically behaved rudely - he wouldn't even enter the house of someone if he thought he would see the wife speaking to other men. As a judge, he imposed full Islamic justice (for wine drinking for example, eighty lashes) on unsuspected locals. In China he was infuriated that the locals didn't want to discuss Islam with him at all. When his career in the Maldives (off south west India) came to a halt, he sailed to a neighboring kingdom on the coast and offered to lead a military expedition to invade them; it didn't happen. So although Battuta could be charming and pleasant, he reserved that honor for proper Muslims, and if he had something to gain from them, all the better. The closest modern day analogy I can think of to describe him would be an arrogant nineteenth Century English nobleman touring the British Empire and ignoring or belittling the natives. The passage of time and remoteness of Battuta to our own life makes the story fun and fascinating, however much of a bore and a rogue he may have been in his own life. So I would give high marks to this story of the Ibn Battuta of the Islamic world.

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Summary: The best travel account in history
Review: This book is the travel accounts of Ibn Battuta a Moroccan traveler from 14th. century A.D. who traveled from Morocco to China bassing by North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Arabia, Iran, Byzantine empire, South East Asia(During his travel he was appointed as a supreme judge in Delhy(India) and in Maldive islands(His journey lasted for more than 20 years). He also visited Spain, and West Africa. At the end he went back to Morocco and dictated his travel accounts to the script of the Sultan Anan al-Marini of Morocco.