7 - The heartlands and beyond

Summary

THE TRAVELER

In the summer of 725/1325 a young man set out for Mecca from his birthplace, Tangiers, in present-day Morocco. The initial aim of the journey (rihlah) was to perform the pilgrimage. The traveler who undertook the rihlah often combined this religious objective with trade to finance the trip, with scholarly pursuits, or with professional posts such as that of judge or teacher in cities along the way. Rarely have such globe-trotters left accounts of their activities to posterity. In the present instance, however, the young scholar who would become celebrated in world travel literature as Ibn Battutah broke the mold of the traditional rihlah, combining his religious obligation with a remarkable thirst for adventure. He fulfilled his pilgrimage duty in the same year and then embarked upon a grand tour which did not bring him back to his native land until a quarter of a century later. He dictated his “description of the world” to a fellow scholar and died in Morocco in either 770/1368 or 779/1377.

Ibn Battutah possibly saw more of the eighth-/fourteenth-century world than any other traveler of his day. From North Africa his journeys took him to Mecca and Medina, thence to the Yemen, Mogadishu, and the trading posts of East Africa, Oman, and the Persian Gulf, across Asia Minor (or Anatolia) and then on through Persia and Afghanistan to Delhi, where he lived for several years.