. Ibn Battuta’s Rihla . An early globe-trotter Ibn Battuta’s book of travels, called Rihla, written in Arabic, provides extremely rich and interesting details about the social and cultural life in the subcontinent in the fourteenth century. This Moroccan traveller was born in Tangier into one of the most respectable and educated families known for their expertise in Islamic religious law or shari‘a.
True to the tradition of his family, Ibn Battuta received literary and scholastic education when he was quite young. Unlike most other members of his class, Ibn Battuta considered experience gained through travels to be a more important source of knowledge than books. He just loved travelling, and went to far-off places, exploring new worlds and peoples. Before he set off for India in - , he had made pilgrimage trips to Mecca, and had already travelled extensively in Syria, Iraq, Persia, Yemen, Oman and a few trading ports on the coast of East Africa.
Travelling overland through Central Asia, Ibn Battuta reached Sind in . He had heard about Muhammad bin Tughlaq, the Sultan of Delhi, and lured by his reputation as a generous patron of arts and letters, set off for Delhi, passing through Multan and Uch. The Sultan was impressed by his scholarship, and appointed him the qazi or judge of Delhi. He remained in that position for several years, until he fell out of favour and was thrown into prison.
Once the misunderstanding between him and the Sultan was cleared, he was restored to imperial service, and was ordered in to proceed to China as the Sultan’s envoy to the Mongol ruler. With the new assignment, Ibn Battuta proceeded to the Malabar coast through central India. From Malabar he went to the Maldives, where he stayed for eighteen months as the qazi, but eventually decided to proceed to Sri Lanka. He then went back once more to the Malabar coast and the Maldives, and before resuming his mission to China, visited Bengal and Assam as well.
He took a ship to Sumatra, and from there another ship for the Chinese port town of Source Fig. . Robbers attacking travellers, a sixteenth-century Mughal painting How can you distinguish the travellers from the robbers? The bird leaves its nest This is an excerpt from the Rihla: My departure from Tangier, my birthplace, took place on Thursday ...
I set out alone, having neither fellow- traveller ... 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 ... My age at that time was twenty-two years.
Ibn Battuta returned home in , about years after he had set out.