The Travels of Ibn Battuta

Rajab 725 AH – 757 AH58 items

pilgrimagereligion
A caravan on the road to Cathay, from the Catalan Atlas attributed to Abraham Cresques, Majorca, 1375. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
A caravan on the road to Cathay, from the Catalan Atlas attributed to Abraham Cresques, Majorca, 1375. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Tangier to China and back, 1325–1354

In June 1325 a young legal scholar from Tangier set out alone to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. He came home twenty-four years later, having crossed the Islamic world from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean and beyond: the Swahili coast, the steppe of the Golden Horde, Delhi, the Maldives and China. A last journey took him across the Sahara to Mali. By Ross Dunn’s reckoning he covered some 117,000 kilometres (73,000 miles) through lands that are now about 44 countries.

Dates in the Hijri calendar

The Rihla, the book he dictated in Fez, dates his journey in the Islamic (Hijri) calendar: he left Tangier on 2 Rajab 725. So every date here is entered as Hijri, and the app converts it: 2 Rajab 725 is 14 June 1325 (Julian). The app uses the tabular calendar, a fixed 30-year cycle, while months in his day began with the sighting of the new moon, so a day can be off by one: he says he left on a Thursday, and the tabular date falls on a Friday.

How it is built

Each leg is a period drawn on the map as a route through its main stops, and the stops inside it are points. The chronology follows Dunn’s The Adventures of Ibn Battuta and the Hakluyt Society translation. The Rihla’s own dates do not always add up, above all between 1328 and 1333, so a reconstructed date carries a year or a month, not a day, and the notes say where scholars doubt he went at all.

Threads to follow

  • pilgrimage: the hajj to Mecca, and other holy places

  • law: his career as a qadi, from Delhi to the Maldives

  • monarchy: the sultans and khans whose courts he visited

  • maritime: the dhows and junks of the Indian Ocean

  • religion: the Sufi saints he sought out

  • family: his marriages, children and losses

I set out alone, having neither fellow-traveller in whose companionship I might find cheer, nor caravan whose party I might join, but swayed by an overmastering impulse within me and a desire long-cherished in my bosom to visit these illustrious sanctuaries. So I braced my resolution to quit all my dear ones, female and male, and forsook my home as birds forsake their nests. — Ibn Battuta, translated by H. A. R. Gibb (Hakluyt Society, 1958)

Items

  1. Across the Maghrib to Egypt

    9 months, 25 days · Tangier to Alexandria, 1325–1326

  2. Leaves Tangier for Mecca

    Tangier

  3. Tlemcen

    Tlemcen

  4. Alone in Tunis

    Tunis (the medina)

  5. Egypt, Syria and the first hajj

    7 months, 16 days · Alexandria to Mecca by way of Damascus, 1326

  6. Alexandria and a saint’s prophecy

    Alexandria

  7. Cairo, “mother of cities”

    Cairo (al-Qāhira)

  8. Ramadan in Damascus

    Umayyad Mosque, Damascus

  9. Medina

    The Prophet’s Mosque, Medina

  10. First hajj

    The Kaaba, Mecca

  11. Iraq and Persia

    ≈ 11 months, 19 days · Mecca to Iraq, Persia and back, 1326–1327

  12. Najaf and the shrine of ʿAlī

    Shrine of ʿAlī, Najaf

  13. Basra’s ungrammatical preacher

    Old Basra, near az-Zubayr

  14. Baghdad under the Mongols

    Baghdad

  15. A night in Tabriz

    Tabriz

  16. Studying in Mecca

    ≈ 11 months, 24 days · The Kaaba, Mecca

  17. Yemen and the Swahili coast

    ≈ 1 year, 6 months · Yemen, the Swahili coast, Oman and the Gulf

  18. Aden

    Aden (Crater)

  19. Mogadishu

    Mogadishu

  20. Mombasa

    Mombasa

  21. Kilwa

    Kilwa Kisiwani

  22. Dhofar and Oman

    Ẓafār (al-Balīd), Dhofar

  23. Anatolia

    ≈ 1 year, 11 months · Across Anatolia to Sinop

  24. Konya and the tomb of Rūmī

    Tomb of Rūmī, Konya

  25. Bursa and Orhan

    Bursa

  26. With the Golden Horde

    7 months, 26 days · The Golden Horde and Constantinople

  27. Astrakhan

    Ḥājjī Tarkhān (Astrakhan)

  28. Constantinople

    Constantinople

  29. Central Asia and the Hindu Kush

    ≈ 9 months, 11 days · Central Asia and the Hindu Kush to the Indus, 1332–1333

  30. New Saray

    New Saray (Sarāy al-Jadīd)

  31. Bukhara in ruins

    Bukhara

  32. Tarmashirin’s camp and Samarkand

    Samarkand

  33. Qadi of Delhi

    ≈ 7 years, 4 months · Delhi

  34. Reaches the Indus

  35. Falls from favour

    Delhi

  36. The embassy comes to grief

    ≈ 6 months, 24 days · Delhi to Calicut with the embassy to China, 1342

  37. Sent as envoy to the Yuan emperor

    Delhi

  38. Shipwreck at Calicut

    Calicut (Kozhikode)

  39. Qadi of the Maldives

    7 months, 27 days · Malé (Maḥal), Maldives

  40. Ceylon, Bengal and the sea to China

    ≈ 1 year, 8 months · Ceylon, Bengal and Sumatra to China, 1344–1345

  41. Adam’s Peak

    Adam’s Peak (Sri Pada), Sri Lanka

  42. Shah Jalal at Sylhet

    Shrine of Shah Jalal, Sylhet

  43. The way home

    ≈ 3 years · The way home: China to Fez, 1346–1349

  44. China

    ≈ 4 months, 27 days · In China: Quanzhou, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and the claimed journey to Beijing

  45. Zaytun, the great port

    Zaytūn (Quanzhou)

  46. Hangzhou

    Khansā (Hangzhou)

  47. The Black Death in Damascus

    Umayyad Mosque, Damascus

  48. Last hajj

    The Kaaba, Mecca

  49. Home in Fez

    Fez

  50. Across the strait to al-Andalus

    Across the strait to al-Andalus, 1350

  51. Across the Sahara to Mali

    ≈ 1 year, 10 months · Across the Sahara to Mali and back, 1352–1354

  52. Taghaza, a town of salt

    Taghāzā salt mines

  53. Walata

    Īwālātan (Walata)

  54. At the court of Mansa Sulayman

    8 months, 4 days

  55. Timbuktu

    Timbuktu

  56. Takedda and the sultan’s summons

    Takedda (Azelik?)

  57. The journeys end in Fez

    Fez

  58. Dictating the Rihla

    ≈ 1 year, 10 months · Fez