The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century (20 page)

It was not in fact as bad as all that. As with the buildup of silt in the irrigation canals, the city’s waning had been gradual, in most periods almost imperceptible. Despite Turkish military
coups
, sectarian violence, urban gang warfare, and the menace of floods pouring over neglected dykes, Baghdad retained a good share of both its international commercial prosperity and its residual prestige as capital of the Caliphs long after the glorious eighth and ninth centuries. Even the rampaging Mongols left many of its public buildings standing and quite a few of its people alive. In fact Hulegu’s army had barely finished the sacking when he ordered, in typical fashion, that a vigorous restoration program should begin. Under an administration of local Arab and Persian officials, the city quickly pulled itself up to the status of provincial capital of Mesopotamia.

Baghdad was no longer an important stop on a Middle Eastern study tour and Ibn Battuta found most of its numerous colleges in
ruins. But teaching continued, notably in the Nizamiya, the eleventh-century prototype of the four-sided
madrasa
, and in the Mustansiriya, a college built in 1234 to provide professorial chairs and lecture rooms for all four of the major juridical schools.
²⁸
The Mosque of the Caliphs, one of the great congregational mosques located on the east bank of the river, had been burned down in the Mongol assault, but Ibn Battuta found it fully rebuilt and offering advanced studies. Although he stayed only two or three weeks in the city, he found time to go to the mosque to hear a set of lectures on one of the important compilations of Prophetic Traditions.

If Baghdad’s intellectual life had had more to offer, he might have been content to remain there throughout the summer, awaiting the departure of the
hajj
caravan in mid-September. Any traveler less obdurate than he would probably have been thankful for a long rest at this point before starting another trek across the Arabian waste. But unexpectedly, a new adventure suddenly came his way, and it would have been entirely out of character for him to pass it up.

He arrived in Baghdad to learn that the Ilkhan himself was currently in residence, perhaps having wintered there as the rulers sometimes did to escape the cold of Azerbaijan. Abu Sa’id was then making preparations to return to the north, most likely to Sultaniya, the capital founded by his father Oljeitu. The Ilkhan always traveled in the company of a huge retinue, called in Arabic the
mahalla
, or “camp,” which was in effect the entire royal court in motion: several
amirs
and their mounted troops, myriad religious and administrative personnel, and a small army of servants and slaves. In addition, the ruler’s wives and favorites, called the
khatuns
, all had their own suites of bodyguards and functionaries. Ibn Battuta jumped at the chance to tag along with the royal procession, “on purpose,” he explains, “to see the ceremonial observed by the king of al-’Iraq in his journeying and encamping, and the manner of his transportation and travel.” Either before leaving Baghdad or
en route
with the
mahalla
, he managed to secure the patronage of ’Ala al-Din Muhammad, one of the Ilkhan’s leading generals.

Abu Sa’id, the last of the Mongols of Persia, ascended the throne in 1316 at the age of twelve. He was in fact about a year younger than Ibn Battuta, who describes him as being “the most beautiful of God’s creatures in features, and without any growth on his cheeks.” The traveler also admired him for his civilized
qualities. He was not only a committed Sunni, but a generous, pious, and tolerant one. According to the fifteenth-century Egyptian writer Taghribirdi, he was “an illustrious and brave prince, with an imposing aspect, generous and gay.”
²⁹
He wrote both Arabic and Persian with a beautiful hand, played the lute, composed songs and poems, and, in the latter part of his reign, even lightened some of the tax load on the peasantry. Whereas several of his Mongol predecessors were confirmed alcholics and some of them died of the consequences, he prohibited the use of spirits in the kingdom in accord with the Sacred Law — though with what success we do not know. There seems to have been little in his character that recalled his ancestor Chinggis Khan. He represents rather the definitive conversion of the Ilkhanid state to polished Persian culture. Perhaps if he had reigned longer, he would have been a great builder like his contemporary al-Nasir Muhammad of Egypt. As it was, the political foundations he laid during his last eight years were not strong enough to ensure the survival of the regime, which utterly collapsed at his death in 1335, leaving Persia to face the remainder of the century in fragmentation and war.
³⁰

In the summer of 1327, however, the dynasty looked vigorous enough to the Moroccan traveler, when he witnessed the nosiy, fearsome extravaganza of a Mongol Khan on the march:

Each of the
amirs
comes up with his troops, his drums, and his standards, and halts in a position that has been assigned to him, not a step further, either on the right wing or on the left wing. When they have all taken up their positions and their ranks are set in perfect order, the king mounts, and the drums, trumpets and fifes are sounded for the departure. Each of the
amirs
advances, salutes the king, and returns to his place; then the chamberlains and the marshals move forward ahead of the king, and are followed by the musicians. These number about a hundred men, wearing handsome robes, and behind them comes the sultan’s cavalcade. Ahead of the musicians there are ten horsemen, with ten drums carried on slings round their necks, and five [other] horsemen carrying five reed-pipes . . . On the sultan’s right and left during his march are the great
amirs
, who number about fifty.

Ibn Battuta may have had only a general notion of where he might be going when he left Baghdad with this
mahalla
in the latter
part of June.
³¹
In his description of the journey, he does not name any of the stations but states only that he traveled in the company of the Ilkhan for ten days. The king was almost certainly heading for the new capital of Sultaniya (172 miles northwest of Tehran), probably following the trans-Persian “Khurasan Road” by way of Kermanshah, the central Zagros, and Hamadan.
³²
Somewhere near Hamadan the
amir
’Ala al-Din Muhammad, Ibn Battuta’s patron, was suddenly ordered to leave the
mahalla
and proceed northward to Tabriz, apparently on urgent business of state.
³³
He almost certainly traveled with a lean, fast-riding detachment, and Ibn Battuta was given leave to go along. Again, his route to Tabriz is a mystery, but the party may have taken the old Abbasid high road from Hamadan northwestward through the mountains, passing east of Lake Urmiya.
³⁴
Meanwhile, Abu Sa’id and his suite lumbered on toward Sultaniya.

Ibn Battuta could count it a stroke of good fortune to have this unexpected visit to Tabriz, for it was the premier city of the Persian Mongols and, at just this moment in history, one of the key commercial centers of the Eurasian world. Located in a grassy plain dominated to the south by the 12,000 foot pinnacle of Mount Sahand, Tabriz had been nothing more than the main town of the region until the Turco–Mongol herdsmen flooded into Azerbaijan. This migration produced a dramatic shift of both military power and population growth away from Mesopotamia to the high northwestern rim of Persia. The local notability had been wise enough to greet the Mongol invaders with the keys to the city, thus offering the Ilkhans the convenience of establishing their first capital in a town that their fellow Tatars had not first demolished.

The anchoring of the Mongol state and the revival of trade found Tabriz rather than Baghdad the main junction of trans-Persian routes linking the Mediterranean, Central Asia, and the Indian Ocean. The city also attracted colonies of Genoese, Venetians, and other south Europeans, who responded fast to Mongol tolerance and internationalism by advancing in from their bases on the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts. Even the Ilkhans who had converted to Islam observed the Pax Mongolica tradition of open trade and travel. Abu Sa’id, for example, signed a commercial treaty with Venice in 1320, and though Ibn Battuta does not mention the presence of Europeans in Tabriz in connection with his visit, we know some were there.
³⁵

The Ilkhan Ghazan made Tabriz worthy of the cultivated
Persian gentlemen who staffed his secretariat by beautifying the town and ordering the construction of an entirely new suburb of grand buildings, including a mosque, a
madrasa
, a hospice, a library, a hospital, a residence for religious and state officials, and his own mausoleum — none of which has survived to the present.
³⁶
Around the end of the fourteenth century Tabriz had a population of 200,000 to 300,000 people.
³⁷
Oljeitu established his own new capital at Sultaniya, and Abu Sa’id honored the change. But Sultaniya was the Ilkhanids’ Brazilia. The court and bureaucratic elite resisted mightily the notion of leaving comfortable Tabriz, which remained the far greater city of the two.
³⁸

Ibn Battuta, unfortunately, had little time to take in the sights of the town. On the very morning after he arrived there with the Mongol envoys, ’Ala al-Din received orders to rejoin the Ilkhan’s
mahalla
. The Moroccan apparently decided there was nothing for it but to stick with his benefactor if he were to be assured of getting back to Baghdad in time for the
hajj
departure. And so off he went after a single night and without meeting any of the city’s scholars. He did, however, manage to squeeze in a look around. He lodged in a magnificent hospice, where he dined, he tells us, on meat, bread, rice, and sweets. In the morning he toured the great bazaar (“One of the finest bazaars I have seen the world over”) where the international merchantry displayed the wares of all Eurasia.

He undoubtedly chafed at having to leave Tabriz so precipitately. Yet he was to be unexpectedly compensated soon enough. For when he returned to the
mahalla
several days later, ’Ala al-Din arranged for him to meet the Ilkhan himself. The audience in the royal tent was probably brief, but Abu Sa’id questioned the visitor about his country, gave him a robe and a horse, and even ordered that a letter of introduction be sent to the governor of Baghdad with instructions to supply the young
faqih
with camels and provisions for the journey to the Hijaz. There was nothing very special about a pious ruler giving charity to a scholar on his way to the
hajj
. And Ibn Battuta, for his part, has relatively little to say in the
Rihla
about Abu Sa’id and his court compared, for example, to the dozens of pages he devotes to the sultan of Delhi. But, at the time, the experience was significant if only as more evidence of those combined qualities of good breeding, piety, and charm which smoothed the young traveler’s way into the presence of the high and powerful.

The
Rihla
is silent on the itinerary and schedule back to
Baghdad, including his traveling companions. The entire round trip could have taken as little as 35 days, since he journeyed a good part of the way with a fast-moving royal envoy. He might then have been back in Baghdad as early as about mid-July.
³⁹

He still had two months to wait for the
hajj
caravan, which traditionally left Baghdad on 1 Dhu l-Qa’da, or in that year 18 September. Since he had come back from his Tabriz expedition so quickly he “thought it a good plan” to squeeze in a tour, a rather uneventful one as it turned out, of the upper Mesopotamian region, known as the Jazira. He traveled northward along the Tigris to the important Kurdish city of Mosul, then on to Cizre (Jazirat ibn ’Umar) in modern Turkey near the Iraqi border. This stretch generally replicated the route taken by Marco Polo 55 years earlier on his outbound journey from the Levant to China and by Ibn Jubayr in 1184, from whose book the
Rihla
lifts most of its descriptive material on the Tigris towns. From Cizre, Ibn Battuta made a loop of about 360 miles through the plateau country west of the river. He got as far as the fortress city of Mardin (which is in modern Turkey), then doubled back by way of Sinjar (and a corner of modern Syria) to Mosul. His hosts along the way included the Ilkhanid governor at Mosul (who lodged him and footed his expenses), the chief
qadi
at Mardin, and a Kurdish mystic whom he met in a mountain-top hermitage near Sinjar and who gave him some silver coins which he kept in his possession until he lost them to bandits in India several years later.

When he returned to Mosul he found one of the regional “feeder” caravans ready to depart for Baghdad to join the main assembly of pilgrims. He also had the fortune to meet an aged holy woman named Sitt Zahida, whom he describes as a descendant of the Caliphs. She had made the
hajj
numerous times and had in her service a group of Sufi disciples. Ibn Battuta joined her little company and enjoyed her protection while traveling back along the Tigris. The acquaintance was sadly brief, for she died later during the Arabian journey and was buried in the desert.

In Baghdad again, Ibn Battuta sought out the governor and received from him, as ordered by Abu Sa’id, a camel litter and sufficient food and water for four people. Luckily, the
amir al-hajj
was the same Pehlewan Muhammad al-Hawih who had looked after him on the previous year’s journey. “Our friendship was strengthened by this,” he recalls, “and I remained under his protection and favored by his bounty, for he gave me even more than
had been ordered for me.” Ibn Battuta might then have expected to return to Mecca in style except that at Kufa he fell sick with diarrhea, the illness persisting until after he reached his destination. During the long journey he had to be dismounted from his litter many times a day, though the
amir
gave instructions that he be cared for as well as possible. By the time he arrived in Mecca he was so weak that he had to make the
tawaf
and the
sa’y
mounted on one of the
amir
’s horses. On the tenth of Dhu l-Hijja, however, while camped at Mina for the sacrifice, he began to feel better.