Stories from Islamic History (7 page)

Like most children of his time, Abu Abdullah
Mohammed ibn Battuta started school in his native Tangier, at the
age of six. His goal, just like most young students of his time was
to learn the Quran by heart.

For an 8th
hijri
century (14th century
CE) student in the dar-es Islam, learning, in the first instance,
meant memorizing the Quran and understanding its meaning. However,
it did not end there. Elementary arithmetic was an obligatory part
of the curriculum, as were any vocational skills from the range of
options available. Classes started when a child reached six years
of age, in the masjid or at the teacher's home.

Higher studies meant advanced Arabic grammar,
history, ethics, law, geography, commercial mathematics, and
military art. Although no institutional degrees existed, the
student received a certificate from his teachers. The highest
accolade was adah, meaning "one who is adept" at manners, taste,
wit, grace, gentility, and above all, "knowledge carried lightly."
Those religiously inclined had another stream to pursue though –
wandering students, on a journey from one end of
dar-us-Islam
to the other were a common sight of the times.
Anyone who aspired to be an
alim
embarked on a scholarly
Grand Tour – with Makkah, Madinah, Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo the
obligatory stops.

It was to such a journey that Ibn Battuta set
out from his native Tangier. His first target was
hajj
. In
the words he dictated to his scribe three decades later, he says
"I set out alone, having neither fellow-traveler
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 [of Makkah and Madinah]. So 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."

From Tangier Ibn Battuta proceeded to Algeria
and Tunis. During those days, wandering scholars were given modest
free meals and place to stay in the madrasas that dotted
dar-us-Islam
, or if no better accommodation were available
they slept on masjid floors.

The journey had its fair share of dangers
though. Ibn Battuta got the first taste of the big bad world when
his fellow traveller fell ill by the wayside. Government agents,
far from providing succor, confiscated the entire estate of this
unfortunate fellow-traveller, which he was carting away his gold to
his needy heirs. Ibn Battuta himself fell ill, but he was
determined enough and strapped himself to the saddle of his mule.
"if Allah decrees my death, it shall be on the road with my face
set towards the land of the Hijaz and Makkah,” he resolved.

In Tunis, Ibn Battuta joined a caravan headed
for Alexandria. Here he met one Burhan al Din, who made him set his
sights forever on the travels he eventually undertook. He
narrates:“
I met the pious Burhan al-Din...whose
hospitality I enjoyed for three days. One day he said to me, "I see
that you are fond of traveling through foreign lands." I replied,
"Yes, I am" (though as yet I had no thoughts of going to such
distant lands as India or China). Then he said, "You must certainly
visit my brother Farid al-Din in India, and my brother Rukn al-Din
in Sind, and my brother Burhan al-Din in China. When you find them,
give them greetings from me." I was amazed at his prediction, but
the idea of going to these countries once cast into my mind, my
journey never ceased until I had met these three and conveyed his
greeting to them.
”

In Cairo, Ibn Battuta encountered mainstream
Muslim society for the first time. Egypt at the time was in the
midst of an unprecedented economic boom, thanks to its thriving
trade with Asia and the good administrative bureaucracy provided by
the Malemuke sultans.

Tempted as Ibn Battuta was to stay back and
enjoy the pleasures of the high life that prosperous Egypt offered,
he set out to his original goal – Makkah. He crossed the Nile and
took a caravan to Aydhab on the Red Sea coast, a transit town
"brackish of water and flaming of air." He arrived just in time
when the ruling clan of the province started a revolt against his
Mamluke sovereign of Cairo.

Making the best out of the worst, something
in which Ibn Battuta became quite adept, he returned to Cairo and
decided to try his luck, crossing the Sinai by camel. This he did,
sojourning in the khans of Palestine and Syria until he reached
Damascus and joined the annual
hajj
caravan to Makkah. That
another caravan left directly from Cairo betrays Ibn Battuta's
temperament. Rather than endure a brief residence in Cairo, he
chose to extend his travels.

Ibn Battuta speaks of the
waqf
s of
Damascus: “
The variety and expenditure of the
religious endowments of Damascus are beyond computation. There are
endowments for the aid of persons who cannot undertake the hajj
[such as the aged and the physically disabled], out of which are
paid the expenses of those who go in their stead. There are
endowments to dower poor women for marriage. There are others to
free prisoners [of war.] There are endowments in aid of travelers,
out of the revenues of which they are given food, clothing, and the
expenses of conveyance to their countries. There are civic
endowments for the improvement and paving of the streets, because
of which all the lanes in Damascus have sidewalks on either side,
on which foot passenger’s walk, while those who ride the roadway
use the center. One day I passed a young servant who had dropped a
Chinese porcelain dish, which was broken to bits. A number of
people collected around him and suggested, "Gather up the pieces
and take them to the custodian of the endowment for utensils." He
did so, and when the endowment custodian saw the broken pieces he
gave the boy money to buy a new plate. This benefaction is indeed a
mender of hearts.
”

Of Damascus's one hundred and seventy one
waqfs
, as Ibn Battuta reports, ten were endowed by the
sultan, eleven by court officials, twenty five by merchants, forty
three by members of the
ulema
, and eighty two by military
officials. And this was a time almost immediately after the Muslim
rule in the area was restored, after more than two hundred years of
Crusader and Mongol rule.

The
hajj
caravan was a moving city in
all aspects, complete with a vibrant and cosmopolitan crowd of
traders, servants, poets, camel-tenders, soldiers, singers,
ambassadors, clerks, physicians, coiners, architects,
stable-sweepers, scullery boys, waiters, legalists, minstrels,
jugglers, beekeepers, artisans, peddlers, shopkeepers, weavers,
smiths, carters, hawkers, beggars, slaves and the occasional
pickpocket and thief, all accompanying the pilgrim. The one
thousand three hundred and fifty kilometer caravan journey through
the interior of Arabia took almost two months to complete.

The caravan had its own kind of cruise-ship
economy, with several
qadi
s for dispute resolution, muezzins
to call people to prayer,
imam
s to lead prayers; and even a
scribe to record of the property of pilgrims who died en route.

At Dhu al-Hulaifa, just outside Madinah, the
hajj
is changed their weather-worn caravan clothes for the
ihram
. Once in the
ihram
, the Muslim's behavior was
expected to be a model of piety, and the spiritual aura of Makkah
reinforced that expectation.

Ibn Battuta says: “I entered the pilgrim state under
obligation to carry out the rites of the Greater Pilgrimage...and
[in my enthusiasm] I did not cease crying, "Labbaik, Allahumma
Labbaik Labbaik la shareek labbaik" ["At Thy service, O Allah!"]
through every valley and hill and rise and descent until I came to
the Pass of Ali (upon him be peace), where I halted for the
night.

We saw before our eyes the illustrious Kaa'ba, may
Allah increase it in veneration, like a bride displayed on the
bridal chair of majesty and the proud mantles of beauty.... We made
the seven-fold circuit of arrival and kissed the Holy Stone. We
performed the prayer of two bowings at the Maqam Ibrahim and drank
of the water of the well of Zamzam which, if you drink it seeking
restoration from illness, Allah restoreth thee; if you drink it for
satiation from hunger, Allah satisfieth thee; if you drink it to
quench thy thirst, Allah quencheth it.... Praise be to Allah Who
hath honored us by visitation to this Holy House.”

Makkah was the ultimate destination for most
devout. Not for Ibn Battuta though. For him there was the rest of
the world and a lifetime of footsteps ahead. Ibn Battuta’s appetite
for more travels was probably whetted on hearing word that jurists
like him might find lucrative employment in the remote corners of
dar-us-Islam, where such skill-sets were rare and offered a
premium.

Rather than take the return caravan to
Tangier, Ibn Battuta rode out to the Arabian deserts. He looped
through southern Iran and ventured north to Tabriz, and from there
via Kufah towards the Tigris, to enter the once famous city of
Baghdad.

Baghdad never recovered from the devastation
Hulagu wrecked on it in 1358, although its new Mongol overloads,
had, by Ibn Battuta’s time converted to Islam. . When Ibn Battuta
visited the city, sixty nine years had passed from that gory day,
and the tell-tale signs were still visible.

Ibn Battuta's account of Baghdad is elegiac.
The western side of the city, where
kalifah
al-Ma'mun had
built his fabled Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) and other
monuments still remained a vast edifice of ruins. Most of the
settlement was now confined to the then impoverished eastern side
of the Tigris.

The average workmen's houses were humble
rectangles of sun-dried brick. Better homes had a courtyard, a
water basin or pit well, a shade tree and ornamental plants.
Curiously, streets were wide enough for two loaded donkeys to
pass—the same width in Baghdad as in Seville. The code of social
behavior that governed life in these homes was also strikingly
similar in Baghdad as it was in Tangier, or anywhere else in
dar-us-Islam
.

Ibn Battuta was obviously successful in
impressing Sultan Abu Said, for he invited him to accompany him for
a second
hajj
. For ten days he traveled with the sultan’s
camp, but then left it and proceeded to visit the cities of Shiraz,
Isfahan and Tabriz, the last having become a major center of
Islamic Mongol influence and power. In Tabriz, Ibn Battuta
regretted being able to remain only one night, without having met
any of the scholars, although his haste was due to a summons
ordering him to rejoin Sultan Abu Sa'id's retinue.

After his second
hajj
, when Ibn
Battuta set out again, it was southward. He visited Yemen, which he
called al-Mashrabiyah (The Latticed Windows.) His description of
the byways of old Sana'a and Ta'iz still hold today. The ornate
latticework of carved wood admitted light and cooling breezes into
Yemeni homes, but they blocked the inward view of passersby,
preserving the residents' privacy.

From Yemen, Ibn Battuta crossed the Red Sea
to Somalia, disembarking north of Djibouti, which at that time was
called Zeila. He describes the place as "a large city with a great
bazaar,” but also “the dirtiest, most disagreeable and most
stinking town in the world," because of its inhabitants' habits of
selling fish in the sun and butchering camels in the street.

Ibn Battuta proceeded down the East African
coast as far as Mombasa and Kilwa before he returned to Arabia by
way of Dofar in southwestern Oman. Here he mentions the ways the
sultan lured merchants to his ports: “When a vessel arrives from
India or elsewhere, the sultan's slaves go down to the shore, and
come out to the ship in a sambuq carrying with them a complete set
of robes for the owner of the vessel [and his officers].... Three
horses are brought for them, on which they mount with drums and
trumpets playing before them from the seashore to the sultan's
residence.... Hospitality is supplied to all who are in the vessel
for three nights.... These people do this in order to gain the
goodwill of the ship owners, and they are men of humility, good
dispositions, virtue, and affection for strangers.”

Traveling further up the coast, Ibn Battuta
describes the efficient way Omani fishermen used the sharks they
caught. “They cut and dry the meat in the sun,” as dwellers on the
coast still do, “then dry the cartilaginous backbones further and
use them as the framework of their houses, covering the frame with
camel skins.”

From Oman, Ibn Battuta returned to Makkah for
his third
hajj
. This is the time he heard of the sultan of
Delhi, Muhammad ibn Tughlaq. He probably heard of his
extraordinarily generosity towards Muslim scholars, and his open
invitation to such people from
dar-us-Islam
. Having failed
to find a suitable placement in any of his wanderings, Delhi became
Ibn Battuta's lodestone for the next decade.

A goal oriented traveler would go back to
Oman, to embark on a dhow and ride the monsoon winds about forty
days to the west coast of India. But Ibn Battuta would have to wait
several months for the onset of eastbound winds, and this was
clearly not his style.

Ibn Battuta made his way back to Cairo, and
from there took to the Mediterranean coast, through Gaza and Hebron
thence to a ship bound for Anatolia. Guided by little more than
serendipity and impulse, he crisscrossed Anatolia, and became so
familiar with its petty sultanates and local customs that his
Rihala is the primary factual source for the history of Turkey
between the time of the Seljuqs and the arrival of the
Ottomans.