How Did Ibn Battuta Explore the World?

Throughout history, many people have left the mark on the world for one reason or another. From leaders of nations to military generals, scholars, religious figures, and even explorers. Of the latter category, many from the West may first think of famous explorers like Marco Polo or Christopher Columbus. But Europe wasn’t the only continent to give birth to such renowned adventurers. One particularly prominent explorer from outside the West was Ibn Battuta. He was a man of Berber descent born in Tangier under the reign of the Marinid dynasty in february of 1304. His family was made up of Islamic legal scholars who belonged to the Lawata Berber tribe. Ibn Battuta himself would likely have studied at a Sunni Maliki school and was offered a job as a religious judge, but he would soon realize that his heart yearned for much  more. By the age of 21, our protagonist decided that he was going to leave his typical life in Morocco and set off a pilgrimage to Mecca. This trip would usually take roughly 16 months to complete, but Ibn Battuta would not return to his home town for 24 years. “I set out alone, having neither a fellow-traveler in whose companionship I might find cheer nor a caravan whose part I join, but swayed by an over-mastering impulse within me and a desire long cherished in my bosom to visit these illustrious sanctuaries. So, I braced my resolution to quit my dear ones, female and male and forsook my home as birds did to 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.”

 As he describes in his own words, Ibn Battuta began his journey alone, during which he first travelled by land across the North African Coast, passing through Tlemcen Bejaia and Tunis. There in Tunis, he stopped for a couple of months before continuing on his voyage. He eventually arrived at the port of Alexandria in the spring of 1326, where it says, “he met two notable men who further fueled the fire of his desires”. One of these men, Sheikh Murshidi, is set to have interpreted the meaning of one of Ibn Battuta’s dreams, confirming that he was meant to be a world traveler. The other, sheikh Burhanuddin who is believed to have predicted Ibn Battuta’s destiny as a world traveler as well, even telling him, “ You must visit my brother Fariduddin in India, Rokanuddin in Sindh and Burhanuddin in China. Convey my greetings to them.” Ibn Battuta eventually did some exploring around Alexandria and then headed off for Cairo, where he remained for a month and at some point, met a man who warned him that he would only be able to arrive in Mecca if he travelled through Syria. Upon leaving Cairo which was the capital of Mamluk Sultanate, Ibn Battuta continued his adventure, though he at first remained within other Mamluk territories. Next, hoping to continue on towards Mecca, he travelled up the Nile Valley and eventually to the port of Aydhab. Showing up in the wrong place at the wrong time though, Ibn Battuta was forced to turn back to Cairo after running into a local revolt that prevented his journey further to Mecca. Recalling the message relayed to him by the mysterious man he met on his first Cairo trip, Ibn Battuta then headed to Damascus, stopping in Hebron, Jerusalem and Bethlehem along the way. Once in Damascus, he decided to stay for the entirety of Ramadan before moving along to Madina, which was another important Islamic site. Four days later, Ibn Battuta  would finally make his way to Mecca. Here with the long-awaited completion of the young man’s first pilgrimage, Ibn Battuta was given the honorific title of Haji. With his first significant goal achieved, many believed that he would now return home to Morocco. But this would not be the case for quite a while longer….

 Instead of going home, as 1326 near its close Ibn Battuta opted to join a caravan of fellow pilgrims on a trip elsewhere. They first passed through Najaf, where Ibn Battuta visited the mausoleum of Caliph Ali, and from there decided to part ways with the caravan which was intended to return to Baghdad. He instead voyaged next to Wasit, then along the Tigris River to reach Basra, eventually into Iran where he stopped at the town of Isfahan. From there he reached Shiraz and eventually did end up in Baghdad, but not until the early summer of 1327. Once he arrived at Baghdad, though the traveller, ran into a pretty important person. Abu Sa'id, the final Mongol leader of the  unified Il-Khanate, was fleeing for the North when Ibn Battuta ran into him and decided to accompany him on his journey- an offer that he just couldn’t pass up. But at some time along the way, as he would have done with the prior caravan, Ibn Battuta parted from the royal retinue and journeyed along the Silk Road until he reached Tabriz. He would soon become the guest of yet another prominent figure, this time when he travelled to Mosul where he was invited to meet with the Il-Khanate governor. From there Battuta left for the Cizre and Mardin, then Sinjar before heading back to Mosul to once more join another caravan of pilgrims.

 The timeline of the next leg of his journey is slightly disputed, but Ibn Battuta eventually made his way back to Mecca in 1327 and likely stayed until either 1328 or 1330. Over the next year or so, he found himself at the port of Jeddah from which he voyaged along the Red Sea coast until he stepped into Yemen, next exploring some of its important cities and even meeting Mujahid Nur Al-Din Ali, the ruler of the Rasulid Dynasty. After this, Ibn Battuta likely arrived in either Sana’a or Aden, then took a ship from Aden to Zeila. After a week in the latter, he moved on to Cape Guardafui, where he stayed an additional 7 days. By 1332, he would arrive in Mogadishu where he stayed for a bit before voyaging on to Mombasa and the Swahili Coast. He then traveled to Kilwa, back to Oman followed by the Strait of Hormuz, and yet again back to Mecca. And as though he had not already travelled more than many ever would in their entire lives, Ibn Battuta was still far from done. His next stretch of adventure took him across the Red Sea and up the Nile Valley toward Cairo again, from which he journeyed to Palestine, and eventually to the port of Latakia. From there, he went by ship to Alanya, then by land to Egirdir where he spent that year’s Ramadan. After its end, there’s a period of Ibn Battuta’s travels that are a bit tricky to understand and were possibly told out of order, but according to the man himself, he left Egirdir for Milas, then made his way to Konya, eventually ending up in Erzurum, and finally to Birgi. This seems a bit jumbled and out of order, but it is the path that Ibn Battuta says he took.

Over the next leg of his journey, he visited Iznik, Bursa, the Beylik of Aydin, Ephesus, Izmir and Balikesir. Finally departing from Anatolia through Sinope, Ibn Battuta went by sea to the Golden Horde and eventually the port of Azov. From Azov, he made his way to Majar, Mount Beshtau, Bolghar, and finally Astrakhan. He then somehow convinced OzBeg Khan, who he had been with at the time, to allow him to accompany Princess Bayalun, Khan’s pregnant wife, back to Constantinople where she would give birth. Upon their arrival, Ibn Battuta was able to meet Emperor Andronikos The third of Byzantium before visiting the Hagia Sophia and opting to stay in the city for a full month. Once he was ready to leave Constantinople, Ibn Battuta set his sights on Sarai al-Jadid, followed by the Bukhara and Samarkand, where he would meet yet another Mongol ruler in the latter before heading off now for Afghanistan along his way to India. Delhi would hold his first significant Indian adventure as he met the remarkably wealthy Sultan of Delhi, Muhammad bin Tughluq. The sultan quickly took a liking to Ibn Battuta, and the now-seasoned explorer was given the job of qadi, essentially a judge, in Delhi. While this was a great honor, it was a bit difficult for Ibn Battuta to do much from his position to enforce Islamic law due to the general opinion of it in Indian outside of Delhi. Eventually, the adventurer would continue his journey into the rest of India nonetheless, although it appeared that his position in Delhi wouldn’t help him much outside of the sultan’s court.

At some point while in India, Ibn Battuta was kidnapped by a group of Hindu rebels and robbed. Luckily, he would eventually be freed to return to his travels, at which point he made his way to modern-day Pakistan where he visited the shrine of Baba Farid and then found his way to Hansi and Sindh. After completing his exploration of India, the traveler wanted to leave for another pilgrimage to Mecca, but the Sultan of Delhi had other plans for his new judge. It wasn’t until 1341 that Ibn Battuta would be allowed to leave, and only because he was tasked with joining a Chinese embassy that was hoping to rebuild a Himalayan Buddhist temple. While travelling with the embassy, he was once again kidnapped and robbed, and now separated from his fellow travelers. Nevertheless, the experienced adventurer would catch up with the others less than two weeks later, from which point they would make their way to Khambhat and the Calicut, where he would yet again become the guest of a local monarch. Once he was ready to leave Calicut, Ibn Battuta faced even more bad luck as one of the ships he and his group had taken to reach the city had been destroyed by a storm while the other was taken by some of his companions without him on board. At this point, he was determined not to return to Delhi, although he was essentially stuck  in Southern India as he sought the protection of the contemporary Sultan of Nawayath. But, when the sultan and his sultanate as a whole ultimately collapsed, the traveller now had to leave India altogether, and he eventually found himself on the Maldive Islands for the next 9 months after being convinced by the local leadership to become their chief  judge.

 His later resignation was likely a product of growing political tension caused by his actions as chief judge in the newly Islamic realm, and he soon left the islands to reach Sri Lanka, where circumstances once again were not in his favor as his own ship was nearly totaled and another vessel trying to rescue him was overcome by pirates. Through all of this, Ibn Battuta was still hoping to reach China, as he had originally planned to do when released by the Sultan of Delhi, but he next had to take some detours first to the Madurai Kingdom, then to the Maldives, and finally the port of Chittagong. He subsequently made his way to Sylhet where he became a guest of Shah Jalal in 1345. From there, the journey continued to the Samudra Pasai Sultanate and then Malacca where he met the local ruler. Three days later, he departed and then finally landed in China. Arriving in Quanzhou in 1345, Ibn Battuta was given a theatrical welcome by the native Muslim merchants and enjoyed his stay by exploring the town and even visiting the Mount of the Hermit. After wrapping up his trip in Quanzhou, Ibn Battuta continued his voyage through China, now reaching Guangzhou, at which he stayed for a couple of weeks before moving on to Fuzhou where he made a new friend and travel companion, Al-Bushri, who would join him on a visit to Hangzhou; which Ibn Battuta noted was one of the largest cities he had ever stepped foot in. After attending a banquet for a nearby Yuan Mongol leader, Ibn Battuta would finally arrive in Beijing where he styled himself as the long-lost ambassador from Delhi, earning him yet again more invitations from local authorities. He then backtracked until he reached Quanzhou once more and left now for Southeast Asia and his return home, at long last, to Morocco, it was now 1346 and Ibn Battuta was homebound. He arrived in Damascus on his way back to Morocco in 1348 and then took off for Homs where he was forced to take a pause due to the rapidly spreading Black Death all around him. 

Once he was able to travel again, he went back to Damascus, then to Gaza, and next to Abu Sir, before returning once again to Mecca for a pilgrimage, then to Sardinia, and finally entering his hometown in Morocco in 1349. Upon his arrival back in Tangier, Ibn Battuta learned that his mother had passed away only a few months prior, and his father had actually died 15 years before. Although understandably saddened by this news, Ibn Battuta no longer had anything tying him down to Morocco, and only a few days after his homecoming, he left for a second time. Now, he made his way to the Iberian Peninsula where he arrived in al-Andalus with the intention of joining a group of other Muslims who hoped to defend the port of Gibraltar after King Alfonso The Eleventh of Castile and Leon had openly threatened to attack it. Alfonso had died by the time they arrived and there was no longer a need to defend Gibraltar. Instead, then, Ibn Battuta simply kept travelling, going next to Valencia and Granada. The eager explorer then returned to Morocco to do some local adventuring, stopping next in Marrakech and Fez before leaving for Sijilmasa in 1351, where he stayed for a few months. At the start of 1352, Ibn Battuta’s next destination was Taghaza. After a short stay there, he left for Tasarahla where he and his accompanying caravan had water sent from Oualata to meet them. After reaching Oualata themselves, the group moved on. Nonetheless, he then journeyed through the Mali Empire. After arriving in and departing from Gao, heading next to Takedda, Ibn Battuta received a message from the Sultan of Morocco, demanding that he return to his hometown. The now-famous traveler agreed to do so and arrived back in Morocco in 1354, at which point he would then go on to write a travelogue about his entire life so far, giving marvelously detailed accounts of all that he had experienced throughout his travel across the globe. It is a thanks to his own works in The Rihla that we now know the fascinating and vastly impressive life and legacy of Ibn Battuta, who would die in 1369 and go on to be one of the most remarkable, though maybe sadly underrated, explorers to ever walk, sail, and ride around the Earth.