The First And Greatest Islamic Travel Writer

E arly in the fourteenth           Battuta’s name famous in the West  century there was something     over the past decade. In 2001 his  in the air. In 1336             book Travels with a Tangerine: A   Petrarch, an Italian scholar          Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn    wrote the first European travel       Battuta was published by John      account. His journey was modest:      Murray, London. It is an account   he merely climbed a mountain and      of his journey following the       looked down from the peak at his      first leg of Ibn Battuta’s epic    companions who had refused to         journey (just from Tangier to      follow him. He wrote                  Constantinople – Ibn Battuta       disparagingly of his cowardly         eventually covered three times     friends and so a rich tradition       the ground covered by Marco Polo)  of European travel writing was        and is a marvelous transportation  born. Little did Petrarch know,       both across a territory largely    as he toiled up Mount Vetoux,         unknown to the Western reader,     that the first and arguably the       namely north Africa and the near   greatest ever Islamic traveler        East, and between the 14th         and chronicler of times and           century and the present day. The   places Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn      book spread Ibn Battuta’s name     Battuta was engaged in a journey      more widely than ever before.      that would take him 29 years. It                                         would also make him a legendary       Not much is known about Ibn        travel writer, respected in           Battuta; all that we know of him   Islamic history for taking the        he tells us himself. He was born   message of Islam wherever he          in 1304 and died some time         went.                                 between 1368 and 1377. He was a                                          Berber Sunni Islamic scholar and   A great historian, traveler and       jurisprudent from the Maliki       storyteller of our own era, Tim       Madhhab, a school of Fiqh (Sunni)  Mackintosh-Smith, has made Ibn        law and at times a Qadi or judge.  But it is his work as an explorer     primary source of information      and travel writer that earned him     about his journeys. The title of   lasting fame. His various             the work may be translated as A    accounts document his travels and     Gift to Those Who Contemplate the  excursions over a period of           Wonders of Cities and the Marvels  almost thirty years, covering         of Traveling, but is most often    some 73 000 miles (117 000 km).       referred to simply as the Rihla    Ibn Battuta’s journeys covered        or Journey. While apparently       almost the entirety of the known      fictional in part, the Rihla       Islamic world at that time, and       still gives as complete an         beyond. His travels took him          account as exists, of these parts  through north and west Africa,        of the world in 14th century. For  through southern and eastern          centuries his book was             Europe, the middle east, the          practically unknown even in the    Indian subcontinent, central and      Islamic world, but in 1800 it was  south-east Asia and China.            rediscovered and translated into                                         several European languages.        At the insistence of the Sultan                                          of Morocco, Abu Inan Faris, Ibn       Although hazardous in the          Battuta dictated accounts of his      extreme, Ibn Battuta survived all  travels to a scholar named Ibn        his journeys unscathed. He died    Juzayy, whom he had met while in      in Morocco at a ripe old age (for  Granada, the seat of Islamic          those times) of over 60. He        Spain. The account, written by        succumbed to the same disease      Ibn Juzayy and interspersed with      that claimed his mother's life --  the latter’s own comments, is the     the Black Plague.                  About the Author: Justine has been a journalist for 20 years and is a contributor to Just The Planet, the online luxury travel magazine for independent travelers. Published At: www.Isnare.com