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Ibn Battuta's family made their living as scholars and judges of the Islamic legal system. The young Ibn Battuta followed the family tradition and recieved a good education.
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At the age of 21, Ibn Battuta left Tangier to make the hajj. It was both a holy journey and an adventure. The trip by land from Tangier to Mecca was a 3,000 mile journey across the coastal plains, deserts, and mountains of Mediterranean Africa. Ibn Battuta joined a caravan and spent eight to nine months reaching Egypt.
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In Egypt, Ibn Battuta visited Cairo and toured the Nile Valley in early summer 1326. He probably attended lessons on the shari’a at the madrasas, or colleges for the study of law and the religious sciences.
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There he visited with legal scholars, and after he joined pilgrimage caravan to Mecca. As he was traveling through Muslim countries he was treated with kindess and hospitality-especially welcomed into at the Sufi lodges. In Damascus, Ibn Battuta prepared for the hajj. Every member of the hajj party had to
carry most of his or her own supplies southward across the Arabian desert. A generous donor provided bn Battuta with a camel and money for the pilgrimage. -
The journey from Damascus to Medina was about
820 miles and took 45 to 50 days. Medina is the second most holy city for Muslims. It was Mohammed’s
home for a time, and he is buried there with his wife Fatima. -
He eached Mecca in Mid October 1326 after visiting Medina and the tomb of the Phrophet Muhammad along the way- he participated in the rites of the great pilgriamged or hajj for the first time. The final trek to Mecca was a dusty journey across 200 miles of desert. He had earned the title al-Hajj, which gave him respect in learned circles, and was now ready to
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He set out for north Baghad in Novemnber 1326 after completing the religious observances, he traveled for a year in Persia visiting cities. Traveling on to Baghdad, Ibn Battuta found a city recovering from the Mongol invasion of 1258. Mosques were being restored and scholarly learning was progressing.
Persian culture. -
Returning across the Arabian Desert, Ibn Battuta went back to Mecca, which he reached in the fall of 1327. After making a second hajj, he remained in Mecca for at least one year, possibly three
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In 1330, Ibn Battuta reports that he went to the Red Sea port of Jidda and boarded a ship of a type called a dhow. These vessels had wooden hulls made of planks that were tied together with cords of fiber and triangular sails. Ibn Battuta became seasick and had to be put ashore. After that, he traveled to Aden,
the great commercial port at the junction of the Red and Arabian Seas. -
He returns back to Mecca in the winter for his third pilgrimage by crossing the Arabian desert.
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He arrives in Delhi. He led an entourage south across the steppe then crossed the Hindu Kush. When he descended into the Indus Valley, he joined other Muslims who looked to India and the Muslim Ruler there for emplyoment. He met with the Sultan who generously appointed Ibn to be judge and he served in in that post until 1341. Under the rule of Muhammad Ibn Tughluq, he sent Ibn to deliver gifts to the Emperor of China in exchange for the envoys they had sent. Ibn left Delhi in August 1341.
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He found it to be a tropical paradise that had converted to Islam. The Madives needed a qadi, and Ibn Battuta neded a job. He served in that position until August 1344, at which time he became deeply involved in local political intrigues that ultimately forced his departure.
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He reached the southwest coast of China. He visited Guangzhou and Quanzhou. Although he claimed to have reached Beijjing, many scholars are skeptical because his departure from India in the fall of 1346 did not give him enough time. In December 1346/ January 1347, Ibn returned to the coast of India. Then he began his long journey that would ultimately take him back to Tangier, Morrocco.
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From Cairo, he made his fourth and final pilgrimage to Mecca. After completing the rituals, he returned to Cairo and departed from Egypt sailing along the coast of North Africa.
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He reached Tunisia. Soon arriving at his home in Tangier, he learned that his mother had died weeks before his arrival. He went on to Fez, the capital of Marinid Morocco and arrived in November 1349. He had traveled for 24 years in Asia and Africa.
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He decided to make one last great journey and visit the empire of Mali, the only major Islamic land that he had not visited. After traveling around the Niger River to visit the important cities of Timbuktu and Gao, he was back in Fez by 1354.
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After Ibn's return to Morocco, Sultan Abuinan ordered him to produce a rihla (a grenre of travel literature that focused on religious pilgrimage) based on his travels. A young Andalusian scholar helped hiim work on the manuscript between 1354 and 1355.
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He died in 1368 and 1369. He owes the revival of his reptuation as the greatest traveler of the Pre-Modern Era to Russian scholars, a circumstance that would probably come to be a great surprise to a man who spent his last years in obscurity as a minor qadi in a Moroccan town
