Journey

Ibn Baṭṭūṭa — qāḍī, exile, envoy (1333–1347)

Stops (13)

1. Tangier · home · left 1325

   He left Tangier in 1325 at twenty-one intending the hajj and did not see it again for twenty-four years, by which time he had travelled perhaps a hundred and twenty thousand kilometres. Eight of those years were in India. He dictated the Rihla after coming home for good, and he is buried in the town he left.

2. Bahāuddin Zakariya & Rukn-e-Ālam · in through Sindh, 1333

   In through Sindh and the Indus, along the road to Delhi, learning on the way how a stranger got on at the Tughluq court: extravagantly, and dangerously. He had already been travelling for eight years when he crossed the Indus, and he stayed in India for eight more — longer than anywhere else on the journey.

3. Qutb complex, Delhi · Delhi, qadi of the capital

   Delhi under Muhammad bin Tughluq, who made him qadi of the capital on a colossal salary. He describes a sultan of “boundless liberality and unbounded cruelty” — gifts and executions from the same hand — and eventually fell under suspicion himself. He was made judge of a city whose language he did not speak, and he says so.

4. Daulatabad · Daulatabad, the transfer

   Daulatabad, the second capital, on the road south. He is one of very few eyewitnesses to the forced transfer of Delhi's population to the Deccan, and his account of the road and the abandoned houses along it is the most concrete evidence for what that scheme actually cost. The scheme was reversed within a few years, and his account of the road is the most concrete evidence for what it cost.

5. Khambhat / Cambay · Cambay

   Cambay, the great Gujarat port, “one of the finest cities in the world” for its merchant houses and its mosques built by shipowners. That the great buildings were paid for by shippers rather than by the state is the clearest statement anyone makes about who actually financed a medieval Indian port.

6. Kozhikode / Calicut · Calicut and the shipwreck

   Calicut, where the China embassy ended in disaster: the junks carrying the sultan's gifts, his own slaves and his goods were wrecked in the roads while he was ashore at Friday prayers, and he was left with nothing. He dared not go back to Delhi after losing an imperial embassy's cargo.

7. The Maldives · the Maldives, qadi again

   He went to the Maldives instead and was made qadi there for about eighteen months, married into the ruling family, tried to enforce prayer attendance and a dress code on a population that ignored him, and left after quarrelling with the vizier. It is the only place he ever administered on his own authority.

8. Adam's Peak / Sri Pāda · Ceylon and the Peak

   Ceylon, and the climb up Adam's Peak by the chains and iron pegs fixed for pilgrims — already old when he used them. He records the footprint on the summit that Muslims read as Adam's and Buddhists as the Buddha's, without preferring either reading, and describes the pearl fishery in the Palk Strait.

9. Madurai Meenakshi · Madurai and the sultanate

   Back across to the Coromandel and up to Madurai, then held by the breakaway Ma'bar sultanate under Ghiyath al-Din, whose brutality he describes at length and whose court he was attached to briefly. He caught a fever there, and the sultanate he describes was destroyed by Vijayanagara within forty years.

10. Sonargaon · Sonargaon in Bengal

    Sonargaon, “a hell full of good things” — meaning cheap food and an unbearable climate, the phrase everyone quotes. He took ship from here for Sumatra after going up into the hills of Sylhet, and Bengal is the last Indian coast in his account. He took ship from here for Sumatra, and Bengal is the last Indian coast in his account.

11. Hazrat Shāh Jalāl, Sylhet · Shah Jalal at Sylhet

    He went a month up into the hills of Sylhet expressly to see the Sufi Shah Jalal, who he says knew he was coming and sent disciples to meet him. Shah Jalal's is still the most visited shrine in Bengal, and the visit is a good illustration of what the Rihla is actually organised around: a network of shaikhs rather than of cities.

12. Ilamuridesam (Lamuri / Lambri, Aceh) · Samudra-Pasai

    Samudra-Pasai in northern Sumatra, a Muslim sultanate on the pepper coast, where the ruler fitted him out for the last leg to China. It is the earliest attested Muslim state in Southeast Asia and his notice of it is among the first from outside. It is the earliest attested Muslim state in Southeast Asia and his notice of it is among the first from outside.

13. Quanzhou · Quanzhou

    Quanzhou, the great southern Chinese port, where he found a Muslim quarter with its own qadi and shaikh and claims to have met a man from his own home town. Whether he reached China at all has been doubted; what is certain is that the network he describes — Arabic-speaking judges in Chinese ports — is independently attested in Chinese sources.