he found men “wearing no covering.
This appeared a shocking thing to me,
and I went to the governor and informed
him of it.”
Sailing up the Nile, Ibn Battuta
attempted to cross the Red Sea to the
Arabian peninsula, but was stymied by
conflict and returned to Cairo before
departing in July 1326 to travel to
Mecca via an alternative route. In
Jerusalem, then a small town of around
10,000 inhabitants noted for its sacred
Muslim sites such as al-Aqsa Mosque, he
was smitten by the Dome of the Rock.
“Both outside and inside, the decoration
is so magnificent and the workmanship
so surpassing as to def y description. The
greater part is covered with gold so that
the eyes of one who gazes on its beauties
are dazzled by its brilliance, now
glowing like a mass of light, now
flashing like lightning.”
By contrast, Damascus – a short jour-
ney of 150 miles or so from Jerusalem –
was a full-blown metropolis with a
population around 10 times as great.
In 634, Damascus had been the first
major Byzantine city to fall to Muslim
warriors – a feather in the cap for the
fast-spreading Islamic empire. With
a history stretching back centuries –
it’s often claimed to be the oldest
continuously inhabited city in the world
- Damascus had long attracted florid
praise from Muslim visitors. Ibn
Battuta considered its Umayyad Mosque
“the greatest mosque on earth”, and
Damascus “the city that surpasses all
other cities in beauty and takes
precedence of them in loveliness”.
Apart from rubbing shoulders with the
cream of the city’s scholars, holy men
and officials, we know he married again
in Damascus, and just as quickly
divorced ; we also know that he took
many concubines and fathered numer-
ous children across several continents.
In September 1326, Ibn Battuta’s
caravan set off south from Damascus
towards Arabia, passing the mighty
castle of K arak, “one of the most
marvellous, inaccessible and celebrated
of fortresses”, still standing today. Once
on the Arabian peninsula, he recounted
that the caravan “pushes on speedily day
and night, for fear of this wilderness”.
After four days in the Prophet’s
Mosque in Medina, Ibn Battuta and his
fellow pilgrims finally reached Mecca
“with hearts full of gladness at reaching
the goal of their hopes” – a spiritually
uplifting experience. But once his
pilgrimage was over, in mid-November,
it was clear the young Moroccan had
been bitten by the travel bug. There was
no question of returning home.
Instead, Ibn Battuta set his sights on
travelling north. In November he was in-
vited by a rich official to share a relatively
luxurious camel litter in a caravan bound
for Mesopotamia (a land corresponding
roughly with what’s now Iraq). Having
passed through Basra, they looped
through the mountains and orchards of
Persia via Isfahan – “one of the largest
and fairest of cities” – and Shiraz, where
he admired the local women’s piety. He
reached Baghdad in 1327, and recalled
the famous verse his father used to recite
to him:“Baghdad for men of wealth has
an ever-open door / But short and narrow
shrift is all she gives the poor.”
A spa-lover before his time, Ibn
Battuta was again fascinated by the city’s
public baths, impressed by their state-of-
the-art facilities and by the Baghdadis’
generosity with fluffy towels. “Every
bather is given three towels: one to wear
round his waist when he goes in, another
to wear round his waist when he comes
out, and the third to dry himself with.”Ibn Battuta was a
proud Muslim travel-
ling in an era when
the blaze of Islam
illuminated much
of Africa and Asia
More scholarly appetites were sated
with visits to “the wonderful Nizamiya
College” and, a stone’s throw from the
river Tigris, Mustansiriya University,
Baghdad’s finest ancient monument and
one of the world’s oldest universities,
founded in 1233.
Ibn Battuta was a proud, observant
Muslim travelling – and later writing –
in an era when the self-confident blaze of
Islam illuminated much of Africa and
Asia. For any Muslim, Baghdad – capi-
tal of the mighty Abbasid caliphate from
762 to 1258 – was a hallowed city, an
architectural gem steeped in glorious
history. In his words: “She is the abode
of peace and capital of al-Islam, of
illustrious rank and supreme pre-
eminence, abode of caliphs and
residence of scholars.”Beyond Baghdad
After Baghdad, the adventures
had to continue. There was a pause –
understandable after totting up around
4,000 miles in frequently challenging
conditions – while Ibn Battuta returned
to his books. He backtracked to Mecca,
where he studied and prayed for a year- then it was time to hit the road again.
In c1329–30, he sailed down the Red
Sea, visiting Yemen before continuing
south along the east African coast,
calling in at Mogadishu and Mombasa,
successfully dodging pirates and an
unscrupulous guide’s plot to kill him.
His party then sailed north again,
rounding Oman and traversing the Gulf
of Hormuz before crossing the A rabian
peninsula from Bahrain to Mecca.
From 1330, he retraced his footsteps
north and continued to Anatolia, aspects
of which thrilled and disgusted him.
In one city he learned that “they buy
beautiful Greek slave girls and put them
out to prostitution, and each girl has to
pay a regular due to her master. I heard it
said that the girls go into the bathhouses
with the men, and anyone who wishes to
indulge in depravity does so in the bath-
house – and nobody tries to stop him.”
JOURNEYS In the footsteps of Ibn Battuta’s journeys across Africa and Asia