Ibn Battuta

Not much is known about his personal life since the only source of information about Ibn Battuta is his book ‘Rihla’ and according to the book, Battuta got married to the royal family in Maldives when he was working there as a judge.

The exact cause of his death is unknown and according to historians the year of his death is also a matter of dispute. It could be sometime between the years 1368 or 1369.

Ibn Battuta was born on February 25, 1304, in the city of Tangiers in Morocco, in a family which had descended from the African tribal clan known as ‘Berbers’. He belonged to a family of legal scholars who served as judges at the time.

Although it is not known exactly where he studied; it is speculated that he was a student of the Sunni Maliki school of thought. Ibn Battuta also received education in literature at the school.

In the year 1326, when Ibn Battuta was 21 years old, he undertook his first voyage and it was a long journey to the holy city of Mecca. It was a pilgrimage but during the stay in Mecca, he also travelled to nearby Damascus in order to learn from scholars and earn diplomas.

The journey to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina set him on his path of being the exemplary traveller that he turned out to be. At the end of his pilgrimage, Ibn Battuta was honoured with the title of ‘El-Hajji’.

At a time when mostly merchants travelled the world, Ibn Battuta was one who made a living out of travelling to different countries. He earned an income through handsome gifts from rulers as well as from his status as a man of letters. He travelled to Taizz in present day Yemen and Aden after staying in Mecca till 1330.

In the year 1331, Ibn Battuta travelled to Mogadishu in Somalia which was an extremely prosperous city at the time under Abu Bakr ibn Sayx ‘Umar and following that visit he went to Mombasa and Kilwa, which was being ruled by the ‘Kilwa Sultanate’ at the time. Battuta noted that the town planning in Kilwa was quite advanced.

Ibn Battuta wanted to be employed by the India’s Mohammad bin Tughlaq of the ‘Delhi Sultanate’ and in order to reach India he first went to Anatolia in 1332, which was then fragmented into pockets of smaller power centres in the years prior to the rise of the Ottoman Turks.

In 1334, he travelled to the iconic city of Constantinople and got an audience with the ruling king, Andronikos III Palaiologos, as a part of Sultan Oz Beg Khan’s entourage which was sent to the city in order to witness the birth of his grandson. The Sultan’s daughter was married to the Roman emperor.

Following his journey to Constantinople in 1334, Battuta started his long awaited journey to India and like so many travellers of the time he used the route via the ‘Hindu Kush Mountains’. In September of that year; Battuta finally reached Delhi and presented himself to the king of the Delhi Sultanate, Muhammad bin Tughlaq.

Ibn Battuta’s most important work in his lifetime has to be the travelogue ‘Rihla’ in which he provided a vivid account of his journey throughout the Islamic world at the time. He travelled extensively for a period spanning thirty years and the travelogue contains vivid descriptions of the culture and lifestyle prevalent in those areas.