The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century (34 page)

The most memorable event of these months was his meeting with ’Ala al-Din Tarmashirin, Khan of Chagatay (1326–3?). Ibn Battuta names him as one of the seven mighty kings of the world, though in most respects he was the least of the lot. Alughu, a grandson of Chagatay (the second son of Genghis), founded the khanate in the 1260s in the aftermath of the border wars and dynastic quarrels that split the conqueror’s world empire into four kingdoms. The realm of the House of Chagatay encompassed an enormous region of desert, steppe, and mountain extending from the Amu Darya and Afghanistan to beyond the Irtisch River deep in the recesses of nomadic Asia. This was the geographic heart of the Mongol empire, but it was also the region where agrarian resources were most limited, where towns were most widely scattered, and where Turko–Mongol captains perpetuated the harsh ways of their ancestors long after their kinsmen in China and Persia were living in palaces and dining with lawyers and sycophantic poets.

Ibn Battuta celebrates Tarmashirin as “a man of great distinction” and “just in his government” because, like Ozbeg, he was the first of his dynasty to make Islam the official religion of state and only the second who would have paid much attention to an itinerant jurist from North Africa. Ibn Battuta stayed with the khan in his camp on the road southwest of Samarkand for 54 days in the cold late winter of 1333 (1335). When he left he was given 700 silver dinars, two camels, and a warm sable coat. Only later in India did he learn that perhaps within a few months of his departure from the
ordu
this khan “of vast kingdom and immense power” had been rudely overthrown by a treacherous nephew and a league of anti-Muslim commanders. The Moroccan had been lucky to see this tempestuous kingdom in a brief moment of unity under Islam, for in the aftermath of the rebellion civil war broke out and the realm was sheared in half, not to be reunited again.

Ibn Battuta crossed the towering Hindu Kush, the great divide
separating Inner Asia from the watershed of the Indus, in the late spring of 1333 (1335).
²⁴
He might have chosen any of several high passes through the mountains. Merchants running caravans from Transoxiana to Afghanistan routed themselves through one pass or another depending on the reports of snow, rock slides, or bandits. After camping for a few weeks at Qunduz not far south of the upper Amu Darya in order to graze his horses and camels and await the warm weather, the
faqih
, his slaves, and his learned associates ascended the northern slope through the gorges of the Andarab River valley. He crossed the divide at the 13,000-foot Khawak Pass. “We crossed the mountain,” Ibn Battuta recalls, “setting out about the end of the night and traveling on it all day long until sunset. We kept spreading felt cloths in front of the camels for them to tread on, so that they should not sink in the snow.”

Descending along the spectacular Panjshir Valley, the caravan passed through Charikar and onto the Kabul plain, where all the main mountain trails converged. At Ghazna Ibn Battuta and his friends were entertained by the Chagatay governor. Then, moving southwest-ward in the company of merchants driving 4,000 horses to market in India, they crossed the Sulayman Mountains by the main route through the Khyber Pass, or possibly by a more southerly road.
²⁵
Traversing a narrow gorge, they had a skirmish with a band of Afghan highwaymen, and later Ibn Battuta and some of his party became separated for a time from the main caravan. But these were minor adventures, and after a three- to four-month journey from the far side of the Hindu Kush, they rode into the Indus plain. Ibn Battuta tells us that he reached the great river on the first day of 734 A.H., or 12 September 1333.
²⁶

With this event, the first part of the
Rihla
comes to an end, signifying an important transition in Ibn Battuta’s career. During the three years between his departure from Mecca and his arrival at the banks of the Indus, he had become, with his slaves, his horses, and his pack train of expensive accoutrements, a traveler of considerable private means — but a traveler nonetheless. Except for his service as caravan
qadi
on the road between Tunis and Alexandria, he had never had any sustained employment in legal scholarship. Now, however, he was about to seek an official career. Word had gone round the mosques and
madrasas
of Islamdom that fortune and power were to be had in service to Muhammad Tughluq and the court of Delhi. The
Rihla
explains:

The king of India . . . makes a practice of honoring strangers and showing affection to them and singling them out for governorships or high dignities of state. The majority of his courtiers, palace officials, ministers of state, judges, and relatives by marriage are foreigners, and he has issued a decree that foreigners are to be called in his country by the title of ’Aziz (Honorable), so that this has become a proper name for them.

Gentleman, pilgrim, jurist, raconteur, world traveler, and guest of
amirs
and khans, Ibn Battuta had good reason to think he was just the sort of public servant Muhammad Tughluq was looking for.

1
. William Woodville Rockhill (trans. and ed.).
The Journey of William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts of the World
(London, 1900), p. 94.

2
. “Rumi” is usually to be translated as “Greeks,” but at other points in the narrative IB uses the term when he means Genoese. See Gb, vol. 2, p. 467n.

3
. W. Heyd,
Histoire du commerce du Levant au moyen-âge
, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1936), vol. 2, pp. 172–74.

4
. IB associates a visit to Sudak with his later trip from Astrakhan to Constantinople. Other than inserting Sudak into the itinerary, he says nothing about a detour into the Crimea. More plausibly, IB passed through Sudak on his way from Kaffa to al-Qiram. See Gb, vol. 2, p. 499n and Hr, pp. 470, 478–79.

5
. B. D. Grekov and A. J. Iakubovskij,
La Horde d’Or
, trans. F. Thuret (Paris, 1939), p. 91.

6
. Rockhill,
William of Rubruck
, p. 49.

7
. Ibid., p. 57. Marco Polo also describes the wagons.
The Book of Ser Marco Polo
, trans. and ed. Henry Yule, 2 vols., 3rd edn, rev. Henri Cordier (London, 1929), vol. 1, pp. 252–55.

8
. The caravan might conceivably have crossed the Kerch Strait east of al-Qiram, then approached Azaq from the south. Some topographical hints in the
Rihla
, however, argue for the northern route. Hr, pp. 470–71.

9
. Rockhill,
William of Rubruck
, pp. 67, 85.

10
. Ozbeg led unsuccessful invasions of Ilkhanid territory in 1319, 1325, and 1335. J. A. Boyle, “Dynastic and Political History of the Ilkhans” in
The Cambridge History of Iran
(Cambridge, England, 1968), vol. 5, pp. 408, 412–13; Bertold Spuler,
Die Goldene Horde
(Leipzig, 1943), pp. 93–96.

11
. IB states that he arrived at Bish Dagh on 1 Ramadan, which was 27 May 1332 or 6 May 1334.

12
. At this point in the narrative IB claims to have made a journey, all within the month of Ramadan, from Ozbeg’s camp to the middle Volga city of Bulghar and back again, a total distance of more than 800 miles. Stephen Janicsek has argued convincingly that this trip never took place. “Ibn Battuta’s Journey to Bulghar: Is it a Fabrication?”
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
(October 1929), pp. 791–800. Janiscek shows that IB’s cursory description of both Bulghar and the Land of Darkness beyond (to which he does not claim to have gone but only heard about) are based on earlier geographical writings in Arabic. He also points out that
IB could not possibly have made the journey in anywhere near the time he allots to it and that he says virtually nothing about his route, his companions, his personal experiences, or the sights he would have seen along the way. The Bulghar trip is the only section of the
Rihla
whose falsity has been proven beyond almost any doubt, though the veracity of some other journeys may be suspected, such as the trip to San’a in the Yemen. We must remember, however, that the
Rihla
was composed as a literary survey of the Islamic world in the fourteenth century. It was well known among literate Muslims that Bulghar was the most northerly of Muslim communities. Moreover, several medieval geographers wrote in fascination about the frigid Land of Darkness, that is, Siberia. If IB did not go to Bulghar, he might nonetheless satisfy his readers’ expectations of a book about travels through the Dar al-Islam by saying that he did. Scholars of the
Rihla
are generally in agreement that the Bulghar detour is a fiction. Gb, vol. 2, p. 491n and Hr, pp. 471–73. Also, because of IB’s rich and detailed description of life in Ozbeg’s
ordu
, we may suppose that he remained there throughout Ramadan 1332 (1334).

13
. A letter addressed from one Byzantine monk to another and dated 1341 has confirmed that at that time a daughter of Andronicus III was married to Ozbeg Khan. R. J. Loenertz, “Dix huit lettres de Gregoire Acindyne, analysées et datées.”
Orientalia Christiana Periodica
23 (1957): 123–24; also Hr, pp. 474–76. “Bayalun” is a Mongol name, not a Greek one. Paul Pelliot,
Notes sur l’histoire de la Horde d’Or
(Paris, 1949), pp. 83–84.

14
. Mehmed Izzeddin, “Ibn Battouta et la topographie byzantine,”
Actes du VI Congrès Internationale des Études Byzantines
, 2 vols. (Paris, 1951), vol. 2, p. 194.

15
. IB’s reporting of his itinerary from Astrakhan to Constantinople is blurry and confused. There is, however, no reason to doubt that he and the princess traveled by way of the northern and western shores of the Black Sea. See Gb, vol, pp. 498–503n; and Hr, pp. 476–79.

16
. Gb, vol. 2, p. 500n. The complexities of IB’s itinerary along the western rim of the Black Sea are analyzed in H. T. Norris, “Fact or Fantasy in Ibn Battuta’s Journey along the Northern Shores of the Black Sea,” in
Ibn Battuta: Actes du Colloque international organizé par l’Ecole Supérieure Roi Fahd de Traduction à Tanger les 27, 27, 29 octobre 1993
(Tangier, 1996), pp. 11–24; and “Ibn Battuta’s journey in the north-eastern Balkans,”
Journal of Islamic Studies
5, 2 (1994): 209–220.

17
. IB presents detailed vivid, and generally accurate descriptions of the Byzantine court and the city’s important buildings. The account, however, is also muddled by errors, puzzling observations, and impossible stories. He informs us, for example, that the Latin Pope made an annual visit to Constantinople! The supposed meeting with the ex-emperor Andronicus II (whom IB calls George, when his monastic name was Antonius) is only the most egregious of his misunderstandings. Hrbek (Hr, p. 481) believes that IB had a meeting with someone important but fabricated his identity in order “to add a further item to his collection of personal acquaintances with sovereigns.” Neither Gibb nor Hrbek believe that the itinerary can be rearranged to place IB in Constantinople before February 1332.

18
. According to the letter of Gregoire Acindyne, she was with Ozbeg in 1341. See note 13.

19
. Hr, p. 477.

20
. Ibid., p. 482.

21
. Scholars formerly believed that both Old and New Saray were founded in the thirteenth century, the one by Batu, the other by his brother Berke. But recent numismatic evidence suggests that Ozbeg not only made his capital at New Saray but founded the city as well.

22
. On this scholar, Grekov and Iakubovskij.
La Horde d’Or
, pp. 157–58.

23
. IB’s journey through Khurasan is doubtful. His itinerary is confusing and his description almost devoid of personal details. He mentions only one stopover between Bistam in the western part of Khurasan and Qunduz in northern
Afghanistan, the straight line distance between them being more than 700 miles. He would also have had to undertake this excursion at top speed in order to sandwich it into his own chronological scheme. Gibb (Gb, vol. 2, p. 534) believes that this section of the narrative is “highly suspect” but offers no case. Most of the descriptive material is taken up with an account of the popular rebellion that gave rise to the Sarbadar state, one of the kingdoms that seized a share of greater Persia following the collapse of the Ilkhanate in 1335. The revolt began in 1336. IB was in India by that time and does not claim to have witnessed any of the events he describes. See J. M. Smith, Jr.,
The History of the Sarbadar Dynasty 1336–1381 A. D
. (The Hague, 1970).

24
. Gibb (Gb, vol. 2, p. 531) proposes that IB crossed the Hindu Kush at the Khawak Pass about the end of June. IB’s reference to snow and cold weather in the pass, however, suggests a month no later than May. See J. Humlum,
La géographie de l’Afghanistan
(Copenhagen, 1959). The Arabic passage of the
Rihla
Gibb translates “we stayed on the northern side of the Hindu Kush until the warm weather had definitely set in” may be rendered “until the warm weather had begun to set in.” D&S, vol. 3, p. 84.

25
. IB’s route from Kabul to the Indus is a puzzle owing to the uncertain identity of several place names as well as his failure to say precisely where he reached the river. Gibb, Mahdi Husain, and Peter Jackson have analyzed the problem and each arrives at a different conclusion. The issue pivots on the identity of “Shashnagar,” which IB claims to have passed through on his road from Kabul to the river. If this locality is Hashtnagar, a district near Peshawar (in northern Pakistan), IB is likely to have crossed the Sulayman Mountains through the Khyber Pass. MH, pp. 1–2. If, however, it is to be identified with Naghar, a place south of Kabul, he probably entered the Indus plain in the Bannu (Banian) district about 100 miles south of Peshawar. Peter Jackson, “The Mongols and India (1221–1351)”, Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1977, p. 224. To complicate the problem further IB tells us that he spent 15 nights crossing a “great desert.” Gibb (Gb, vol.3, p. 591n) believes that he probably traveled through the desert south of Ghazna and reached the Indus in the Larkana district of Sind, that is, less than 300 miles from the mouth of the river.