JOURNEYS In the footsteps of Ibn Battuta’s journeys across Africa and Asia
n a piercingly clear day in
June 1325, a 21-year-old
Moroccan from Tangier
fastened his sandals,
checked he had everything he needed,
and said his goodbyes to family and
friends. He was setting out on Hajj, the
Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca – a long
and arduous journey from the north-
west tip of Africa, but one that usually
took months or a few years, not decades.
He departed alone, “having neither
fellow-traveller in whose companionship
I might find cheer, nor caravan whose
party I might join, but swayed by an
overmastering impulse within me, and
a desire long cherished in my bosom to
visit these illustrious sanctuaries... I
braced my resolution to quit all my dear
ones... and forsook my home as birds
forsake their nests. My parents being yet
in the bonds of life, it weighed sorely
upon me to part from them, and both
they and I were afflicted with sorrow at
this separation.” Little did any of them
know that this relatively straightforward
pilgrimage would somehow be extended
into a 29-year, 75,000-mile odyssey
across Africa, the Middle East, the
Indian subcontinent and the far east.
East to Egypt
Alone on his donkey, Ibn Battuta
headed east across empt y, sun-scoured
valleys, over the Rif mountains and on
through cedar and oak forests. In what’s
now western Algeria, he joined a caravan
of travellers, which provided some
companionship – though it did not
prevent an acute pang of homesickness
outside Tunis. “I felt so sad at heart on
account of my loneliness that I could not
restrain the tears that started in my eyes,
and wept bitterly,” he wrote. And not
O
just homesickness: as on other occasions
during his later travels, at Bougie in
Algeria he fell ill from fever, though
soon recovered enough to continue.
In Tunis he threw himself into his
books, lodging in a madrassa (Islamic
college) and hobnobbing with illustri-
ous scholars and judges. It was the
earliest display of his evident ambition,
and a glimpse of the inveterate social
climber he would become. Extraordi-
narily, on leaving Tunis in November
1325 amid a swelling caravan of
travellers, he was appointed their qadi
(judge) in recognition of his burgeoning
intellectual talents.
Somewhat frustratingly, his later
accounts rarely mention his experiences
of life on the road; descriptions of
landscapes and conditions are notable
by their absence from his story. So we
know little of the details of his journey
across north Africa – but rather more
about his impressions of cities, and of
people he encountered.
Marriages came and went for Ibn
Battuta like the desert winds. Two were
contracted before he reached Cairo, the
“mother of cities”, which mesmerised
him as it does first-time visitors to this
day. Packed with peerless monuments,
the city “surges as the waves of the
sea with her throngs of folk and can
scarce contain them”. Like any tour-
ist in Egypt, after admiring the city’s
mosques, colleges and an impressive hos-
pital that offered medical services free at
the point of delivery, Ibn Battuta took
to the Nile (which “surpasses all rivers of
the earth in sweetness of taste, breadth
of channel and magnitude of utility”).
There was something of the prude about
the young traveller, who was appalled by
what he saw in one bathhouse, whereA relatively straightforward pilgrimage
extended into a 29-year odyssey across
Africa, the Middle East and the far east
Revered today as the ‘Traveller of Islam’,
Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah
al-Lawati al-Tanji ibn Battuta was born
in the Moroccan port of Tangier in 1304.
Of Berber stock, rather than an Arab, his
was a family of Islamic legal scholars, an
intellectual heritage that would underpin
later stints as chief judge to foreign
rulers. Few other details are known about
his background, other than what featured
in his memoir, and even there reliable
information – such as the number of his
wives and children – is scant.
We know, though, that his lifetime co-
incided with the highpoint of splendour
under the Moroccan Marinid dynasty,
which ruled swathes of North Africa be-
tween 1244 and 1465, making its imperial
capital in Fez. This ancient city, where Ibn
Battuta dictated his memoir to the young
scribe Ibn Juzayy, was a seat of learning
known as the ‘Athens of Africa’, hosting
al-Qarawiyyin, a complex of mosque,
madrassa, library and university dating
back to the ninth century.
This rich cultural hinterland likely pro-
vided the foundations for Ibn Battuta’s
Muslim self-confidence and sense of su-
periority when encountering non-Islamic
cultures, such as those in China and parts
of Africa. As for his curiosity, wanderlust
and insatiable desire for adventure, who
knows where they came from? Perhaps
he took at face value the Prophet
Muhammad’s famous exhortation:
“Travel in search of knowledge, even
though the journey take you to China”.
Ibn Battuta died in c1368–69, aged
around 65. It’s not known where or how
he died, nor indeed much about his life af-
ter the writing of his memoir – which, 650
years later, remains one of the greatest
works of travel literature ever written. AKG- IM
AGESIbn Battuta:
Scholar, judge, explorer,
travel writerÆ