Introduction
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Ibn Battuta started on his travels in 1325, when he was 20 years old. His main reason to travel was to go on a
Hajj, or a Pilgrimage to Mecca, to fulfill the fifth pillar of Isla.. But his traveling went on for around 29 years
ORIAS (/) and he covered about 75,000 miles visiting the equivalent of 44 modern countries which were then mostly
under the governments of Muslim leaders of the World of Islam, or "Dar al-Islam".
Home (/home) » Resources for Teachers (/resources-teachers-0) He met many dangers and had numerous
adventures along the way. He was attacked by
» The Travels of Ibn Battuta (/resources-teachers/travels-ibn-battuta) bandits, almost drowned in a sinking ship, and
» The Journey (/resources-teachers/travels-ibn-battuta/journey) nearly beheaded by a tyrant ruler. He also had a
few marriages and lovers and fathered several
» Delhi, the Capital of Muslim India: 1334 - 1341 children on his travels!
Delhi, the Capital of Muslim India: 1334 -
1341 Near the end of Ibn Battuta's life, the Sultan of Morocco insisted that Ibn Battuta dictate the story of his travels to a
scholar and today we can read translations of that account, which was originally titled Tuhfat al-anzar fi gharaaib
al-amsar wa ajaaib al-asfar, or A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling.
That title is a bit of a mouthful so the text is generally just called Ibn Battuta's Rihla, or Journey.
"The Sultan was far too free in shedding blood... [He] used to
punish small faults and great, without respect of persons, whether
men of learning or piety or noble descent. Every day there are
brought to the audience-hall hundreds of people, chained,
pinioned, and fettered, and [they] are ... executed, ...tortured, or
...beaten." [Dunn, p. 201]
Year-Path
1325 - Across North Africa to Cairo
1326 - In Cairo
1326 - Cairo to Jerusalem, Damascus, Medina, and Mecca
1326 - The Hajj - from Medina to Mecca
1326 - 1327Iraq and Persia
1328 - 1330The Red Sea to East Africa and the Arabian Sea
1330 - 1331Anatolia
1332 - 1333Lands of the Golden Horde & the Chagatai
1334 - 1341Delhi, the Capital of Muslim India
1341 - 1344Escape from Delhi to the Maldive Islands and Sri Lanka
1345 - 1346Through the Strait of Malacca to China
1346 - 1349Return Home
1349 - 1350On to al-Andalus and Morocco
1350 - 1351Journey to Mali
1355 - Writing The Rihla
Delhi, India
Ibn Battuta entered India through the high mountains of Afghanistan, following the footsteps of
Turkish warriors who, a century earlier, had conquered the Hindu farming people of India and
established the Sultanate of Delhi. That first wave of Muslim soldiers looted towns and smashed
the images of the gods of the Hindu worshippers. But later warrior kings set up a system to tax,
rather than slaughter the peasants. They replaced the local Hindu leaders with Turks from
Afghanistan and conquered and united a large area almost to the tip of the subcontinent. But
these Muslim sultans in Delhi were not safe. They faced continued opposition from the Hindu
majority in India who rebelled against their conquerors, and they were threatened with periodic
Mongol invasions from the north. The Chagatay Khan (whom Ibn Battuta visited on his way to
India) had invaded India and threatened Delhi, the new capital city about 1323. But the armies of
the feisty Sultan Muhammad Tughluq in Delhi had chased them back across the Indus River.
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Slowly India was becoming more firmly controlled by the Muslim leaders. Hindus were even
converting to Islam and finding jobs in the new government. They recognized the economic
advantages of becoming Muslims: much lower taxes and opportunities for advancement under
the present leader. (In the rural areas, the population remained almost exclusively Hindu. They
had to pay their taxes, but were allowed to worship as they wished. And many hated the Muslim
government which was imposed upon them.)
In order to strengthen his hold on India, the Sultan needed more judges, scholars, and
administrators. He even needed writers, poets, and entertainers to praise and entertain the new
leadership. And he turned to foreigners to fill these positions. He was distrustful of the Hindus
whom he feared would rebel against him. So he recruited foreigners and rewarded them with
fabulous gifts and high salaries. Persians and Turks and other Muslims flocked to the new empire
looking for its rewards. Persian became the language of the ruling elite which almost isolated itself
in the capital city. And it was from Sultan Muhammad Tughluq that Ibn Battuta hoped to gain
employment.
Muhammad Tughluq goes down in history as an eccentric, erratic,
violent ruler. He was described as very bright. He learned how to write
Persian poetry and mastered the art of calligraphy; he could debate
legal and religious issues with scholars; he learned Arabic in order to
read religious texts like the Koran; and he showered gifts on scholars
and the Muslims whom he trusted. But he went too far and made some
disastrous decisions (about which battles to fight, where to establish his
government capital, about the economy which almost bankrupted his
treasury, and how to administer justice). He was known as a cruel man, even for the Middle Ages!
He was responsible for having not only rebels and thieves punished with cruel deaths, but also
Muslim scholars and holy men - anyone who merely questioned him about his policies or
happened to be a friend of someone who did. He was paranoid and fearful of any criticism. "Not a
week passed," reported one observer, "without the spilling of much Muslim blood and the running
of streams of gore before the entrance of his palace." This included cutting people in half, skinning
them alive, chopping off heads and displaying them on poles as a warning to others, or having
prisoners tossed about by elephants with swords attached to their tusks. As Ibn Battuta reported
later,
"The Sultan was far too free in shedding blood... [He] used to punish small
faults and great, without respect of persons, whether men of learning or
piety or noble descent. Every day there are brought to the audience-hall
hundreds of people, chained, pinioned, and fettered, and [they] are ...
executed, ...tortured, or ...beaten." [Dunn, p. 201]
Thus, to work for this man was dangerous. But the rewards could be great.
In late 1334, Ibn Battuta went to Delhi to seek official employment and he signed a contract
agreeing that he would stay in India. He cleverly assembled gifts for the sultan: arrows, several
camels, thirty horses, and several slaves and other goods. Everyone knew that the Muhammad
Tughluq would give to his visitors gifts of far greater value in return!
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When he arrived in Delhi, Ibn Battuta was given a welcoming gift of 2,000 silver dinars and put up
in a comfortably furnished house. Muhammad Tughluq was not in Delhi, and so Ibn Battuta
waited. Muhammad Tughluq had received reports about this new arrival and hired Ibn Battuta
sight-unseen to the service of the state. He would receive an annual salary of 5,000 silver dinars to
be paid from two and a half villages located about 16 miles from the city. (State officials and army
officers were paid from taxes on crops produced in peasant villages rather than from the royal
treasury.) The average Hindu family lived on about 5 dinars a month.
Muhammad Tughluq returned in June. Ibn Battuta and the other newcomers went to greet the
ruler with their gifts. On a gold-plated throne sat a tall, healthy, white-skinned man.
"I approached the sultan, who took my hand and shook it, and continuing to
hold it addressed me most kindly, saying in Persian,... 'Your arrival is a
blessing; be at ease; I shall... give you such favors that your fellow-
countrymen will hear of it and come to join you.' ... Every time he said any
encouraging word to me I kissed his hand, until I had kissed it seven times,
and after he had give me a robe of honor, I withdrew." [Dunn, p. 198]
The next day the Sultan paraded into the city of Delhi. On some elephants were catapults that
threw out gold and silver coins to the crowd of on-lookers.
Mughal miniature painting showing a royal procession (1400s).
And so Ibn Battuta began working as a judge. Because he didn't speak Persian well, he was given
two assistants. The Sultan told him that "they would be guided by your advice, and you shall be
the one who signs all the documents." He also had plenty of time to join the Sultan and high
officials on elaborate hunting expeditions which required elephants, tents, and a huge number of
servants to carry all that was needed. Such extravagance and high living pushed Ibn Battuta into
debt eventually, but the generous Sultan gave him more to pay his debts. He even gave Ibn
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Battuta another job: to take care of the Qutb al-Din Mubarak mausoleum. Of course Ibn Battuta
asked for more money to take care of the tomb, not to mention money to repair his own home.
The money was given.
The Qutb complex of buildings in Delhi near Ibn Battuta's home included the Quwwat al-Islam
Mosque and the Qutb Minar, a 288 foot tower that until modern times was the tallest minaret in
the world.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qutb_complex#/media/File:Tomb_of_Altamash.jpg)
This building, the tomb of Iltutmish, was one of many buildings at the Qutb complex near Delhi.
By Bikashrd (//commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Bikashrd&action=edit&redlink=1) - Own
work, CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
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(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qutb_complex#/media/File:Qutub_Minar_in_the_monsoons.jpg)
This is the ginat Qutb Minar (minaret), shown among other ruins at the Qutb complex.
By Bikashrd (//commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Bikashrd&action=edit&redlink=1) - Own
work, CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
1,300 miles away from the capital, one of Muhammad Tughluq's governors rebelled against him
and proclaimed himself Sultan. This prompted him to bring his army south. During the next two
and a half years that the Sultan was away at battle, Ibn Battuta lived in Delhi. He acted as a judge
giving out punishments (such as eighty lashes with a whip for drinking wine!) and he took care of
the tomb which required 460 workers. His job of collecting debts from his villages was made
harder because of disastrous famine that hit North India in 1335 and lasted seven years.
"Thousands upon thousands of people perished of want," he told. He helped to give charity to
some of the poor.
The Sultan returned after an unsuccessful campaign against the rebellious army in the south.
Then army officers and a governor near Delhi also rebelled. The empire was disintegrating around
Muhammad Tughluq. This time he proved himself a skillful soldier and marched out to secure the
town. Ibn Battuta was witness to all this for future historians to read. The traitorous leaders were
captured and thrown to the elephants.
"They started cutting them in pieces with the blades placed on their tusks
and throwing some of them in the air and catching them. All the time the
bugles and fifes and drums were being sounded."
And Muhammad Tughluq began to lash out at real and imagined enemies.
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Even Ibn Battuta came under suspicion. While living in Delhi, Ibn Battuta married a woman and
had a daughter by her. This woman was the daughter of a court official who had plotted a
rebellion and was executed by the Sultan. But the most serious problem for Ibn Battuta was his
friendship with a Sufi holy man. This holy man refused to have anything to do with politics and
tried to live a religious life. He snubbed the Sultan and refused to obey the Sultan's commands. In
retaliation Muhammad had the holy man's beard plucked out hair by hair, then banished him
from Delhi. Later the Sultan ordered him to return to court, which the holy man refused to do. The
man was arrested, tortured in the most horrible way, then beheaded.
Take a side trip to read about Ibn Battuta's comments on torture.
(https://orias.berkeley.edu/resources-teachers/travels-ibn-battuta/travels-ibn-battuta-side-
trips#side_trip_torture)
The following day the Sultan demanded a list of friends of the holy man, and Ibn Battuta's name
was included. For nine days he remained under guard imaging in horror that he would be
executed, too.
"I recited [lines of prayer] 33,000 times and ... fasted five days on end,
reciting the Koran from cover to cover each day, and tasting nothing but
water. After five days I broke my fast and then continued to fast for another
four days on end." [Dunn, p. 209]
He rid himself of his possessions, and donned the clothes of a beggar. He was given permission to
join a hermit who lived in a cave outside of Delhi. He lived like that for five months.
Then Ibn Battuta was called back to the palace. Fearfully he returned, and was greeted warmly.
But determined to avoid further troubles, got up enough courage to ask the Sultan (now in a good
mood), if he could make another hajj.
But the Sultan had another task in mind, one that Ibn Battuta found fascinating. Knowing of Ibn
Battuta's love of travel and sightseeing, the Sultan wanted to make Ibn Battuta ambassador to the
Mongol court of China. He would accompany 15 Chinese messengers back to their homeland and
carry shiploads of gifts to the emperor. Now he was given an opportunity to get away from
Muhammad Tughluq and to visit further lands of Islam in a grand style! It was an offer too exciting
- and too dangerous - to refuse.
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(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samosa#/media/File:Samosasindia.jpg)
These are samosas or - as Ibn Battuta called them - sambusak. Variations on this dish are common
from western Persia all the way down into southeast Asia and parts of China.
By kspoddar - on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/feastguru_kirti/2246211725/in/photostream/), CC
BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)
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(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betel#/media/File:Betel_leafs_Selling.JPG)
These are betel leaves for sale at a modern market. They are still grown and chewed (along with areca
nuts) in many parts of the world. Chewing betel, like chewing tobacco, has been linked to oral cancers.
By Augustus Binu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mydreamsparrow)/ www.dreamsparrow.net
(http://www.dreamsparrow.net)/ facebook (https://www.facebook.com/DreamSparrowPhotography) -
Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)
What did Ibn Battuta eat while in India?
Ibn Battuta described a royal meal: bread (in thin round cakes); large slabs of meat (sheep); round
dough cakes made with ghee (clarified butter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarified_butter))
which they stuff with sweet almond paste and honey; meat cooked with ghee, onions and green
ginger; "sambusak" (triangular pastries made of hashed meat and cooked with almonds, walnuts,
pistachios, onions, and spices put inside a piece of thin bread fried in ghee - also known as
"samosas"); rice cooked in ghee with chicken on top; sweetcakes and sweetmeats (pastries) for
dessert. They drank sherbet of sugared water before the meal and barley-water after. Then they
had betel leaf and areca nut (a mild narcotic). (Gibb, Vol. III, pp. 607 - 608)
He also described the following: mango; pickled green ginger and peppers; jack-fruit (like a large
melon weighing three to four pounds) and "barki" (like a yellow gourd with sweet pods and
kernels) - "the best fruits in India"; tendu (fruit of the ebony tree); sweet oranges; wheat, chickpeas
and lentils, and rice which was sown three times a year! Sesame and sugar cane were also sown.
He said the Indians ate millet (a type of grain) most often and he especially liked pounded millet
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made into a gruel (porridge) cooked with buffalo's milk. They also ate peas and mung beans
cooked with rice and ghee which the Indians ate for breakfast every day. Animals were fed barley,
chickpeas, and leaves as fodder and even given ghee. (Gibb, pp. 609 - 612)
On a hunting trip with the Sultan Muhammad Tughluq, he describes the following food: flesh of
sheep, fattened fowls, cranes, and other kinds of game.
A favorite dish of the Muslim community in Kerala in the southern state of India (where Ibn
Battuta had his disastrous ship-wreck) is rasoi (made of rice, lamb, grated coconut and onion). Ibn
Battuta noted that Muslim women ate separately from the men in India, as in most of the Muslim
countries he visited.
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