Ibn Battuta was a 14th-century Muslim traveler who covered 75,000 miles across various regions, including North Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, with most accounts based on his own autobiography. His influence as an Islamic scholar led him to numerous positions, such as being a qadi in India and the Maldives, albeit facing challenges due to his strict religious views. His travels have been recognized for providing valuable insights into historical cultures, despite criticisms regarding the authenticity of certain claims in his accounts.

1. IBN BATTUTA
BY ISRAIL

2. Who was Ibn Battuta?
• Ibn Battuta was a Muslim traveler who
lived in the 14th c., crossing 75,000 miles
in his 29 years of travel. Such a distance
was not traveled again until the steam
age.
• His travels took him from North Africa to
East Europe, the Middle-East, South Africa
and Asia, going as far as Beijing.
• He traveled three times the distance

3. Information about Ibn Battuta
• Mostly all information modern scholars have of Ibn
Battuta comes from his own autobiography which he
dictated after he was done traveling. He took no
notes during and dictated mostly from memory.
What he didn’t remember, he substituted with the
work of others. In his autobiography, there are many
places where his writing matches perfectly with the
work of another traveler/scholar.
• There are many scholars who argue he didn’t visit
some of the places he claims simply because of this,
but there is no definite answer.

4. Early Life
• Born in Tangier in Morocco.
• Born in to a family of Islamic legal scholars, called
Ulama, as a Berber, an indigenous ethnic group of North
Africa.
• He went to an Islamic school where he was raised as an
Ulama just like his family, attained a strict view of
Islamic life.
• He studied the Sharia until the age of 24, when he set
out on his first Hajj to Mecca. After over 5000 miles and
16 months, he arrived at Mecca at which point he
decided not to go back home, choosing to continue on
traveling.

5. • In Amikam Elad's article, “The Description of the Travels of
Ibn Baṭṭūṭa in Palestine: Is It Original?” he partially calls
into question the originality of Ibn Battuta's dictated
account
• Is Ibn Battuta a reliable source?
• How much of his travels actually occurred?
• Even assuming validity, does the way disorganized way in
which his book was dictated lower its credibility?
• General consensus by scholars

6. Influence of his travels
• Ibn Battuta was sought out in many places as an Islamic
scholar. Because Islam was still a spreading religion, he
encountered many places during his travels where he
made corrections and taught locals of the proper way of
the Muslim. In the Maldives, he was half-kidnapped, half-
bribed into staying on an island and became a Qadi, an
Islamic judge. He was a strict follower of the Qur’an and
forced locals to follow it a lot more strictly than they
usually did, which eventually led to his departure.

8. As a Qadi in India
• During his visit to India, Ibn Battuta managed acquire
a position as a Qadi in the Sultan of Delhi’s court.
• Spent 8 years as a Qadi in India. In his autobiography,
he often describes locals by how well they adhered to
Islam. While he describes most Asians and Asia as
infidels, he described India as “the greatest city of
Hindustan, and indeed of all Islamism in the East.”

10. Chief Qadi in the Maldives
 During his stay in the island, he was married in to the
local royal family and made Chief Qadi.
 In the 9 months he spent there, he regularly voiced his
discomfort at seeing topless women and the loosely
followed Sharia.
 He had to leave the island when his strict beliefs
became too much for the less pious locals

12. Reasons behind his influence
• He would often stop for weeks or months at a time
during his travels and discover local customs, art and
tradition. He was frequently accommodated by the
local Muslim rulers and as a devout Muslim, regularly
voiced his opinions on local Islamic traditions.
• Very probable that he had an effect on local cultures.
• He also became famous during his years of travel,
where his name began carrying influence which led
him to have a more lasting effect on the places he
visited.

13. Memorable Places Visited by Ibn Battuta
 He first started traveling when he was 20 years old in 1325,
intending to travel on a Hajj to Mecca.
 Ibn Battuta visited every Mohammedan Kingdom in his
lifetime, but also visited Constantinople, Ceylon and China in
his travels.
 When he visited Jerusalem, it was a small town with a
population of only 10,000
 He visited the territories of what is now 44 modern countries
and traveled the world for most of his adult life.

14. The Importance of Islamic Cultural Unity to the Travels
of Ibn Battuta
• Ibn Battuta was supported on his travels many times by the charity of
Muslims and Muslim rulers. For example early in his travels he was
given money and a new cloak by the Governor of the city of Constantine.
• The vast majority of the territory he visited was within Islamic world or
at least in the Islamic sphere of influence
• Ibn Battuta was a devout Suni Muslim and Islamic Scholar who visited
all the most holy places of Islam in his lifetime.
• His travels were facilitated by the dominance of Islamic culture in the
places he visited, and the protections of roads and caravans by Islamic
States.

15. His Perception of Other Cultural and Religious
Practices
• Ibn Battuta visited the Turks and praised their commitment
to the Suni faith but was surprised that they ate Hashish
and thought nothing of it.
• When in Kaffa, a majority Christian trading town, Ibn
Battuta and his friend were offended by the very ringing of
Church bells.
• While visiting the Maldives he was made a Chief Judge due
to his knowledge of the Koran, anyone who failed to attend
prayer was whipped and he attempted (unsuccessfully) to
stop the practice of women going topless.

16. • Joshua Finkel's review of Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-
135,4 by H. A. R. Gibb in The Jewish Quarterly Review gives some incite
into Ibn Battuta's views on other cultures and religions.
• He is outraged by the overly respectful treatment of Jewish doctors in
the court of the Sultan Muhammad ibn Ayidin.
• He had a somewhat uncompromising stance on what is right in terms of
religion and practices.
• He was not afraid to speak his mind, which will gain him both respect
and troubles in his travels.
• Harry Norris's article “Ibn Battuta on Muslims and Christians in the
Crimean Peninsula” in Iran & the Caucasus, discusses Ibn Battuta's
experiences with the relationship between Muslims and Christians
• There were both Churches and Mosques in the area
• There was basic tolerance but still tension (Ibn Battuta almost started a
religious fight through his offense at church bells ringing)
• There was a similarity of religious art between Muslims and Christians in
the region to the extent that Norris even questions whether Ibn Battuta
visited a Mosque rather than the Christian church he reports he visited.

17. Travels in China
• The Prophet Muhammad had even encouraged travel
to China and said "seek knowledge, even as far as
China"
• Ibn Battuta was troubled by the "paganism" he saw in
China, and while he marveled at many things he did
not like staying in China as it was very different and
certainly not Muslim.
• He did not stay long in China, and wished to make
another Hajj and return home to Morocco.

18. Changes and Events Witnessed by Ibn Battuta
• Ibn Battuta witnessed the spreading of the Black Death in the Islamic
World, in Damascus he reported that the death toll was 2,000 a day, and in
Cairo 24,000 a day.
• Passing through Persia on his return trip from China he was surprised to
witness the powerful Ilkhan Empire falling apart with the assassination of
the Sultan, supposedly poisoned by one of his wives.
• D. O. Morgan's “Ibn Baṭṭūṭa and the Mongols” in the Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society explores Ibn Battuta's encounters with the Mongols
• Further explains the plagiarism in Ibn Battuta's account
• Ibn Battuta was received by the Khan of the Ilkhanate and traveled with his
daughter to Constantinople
• Puts forth that scholars are too critical of inconsistencies in Ibn Battuta's
work as it was confusing time in terms of Information about the world.

19. Impact On The World Today
• Ibn Batutta was ordered by the Sultan of Morroco to record
the tails of his travels around the world and a young writer,
Ibn Juzayy wrote down his account, along with hearsay and
a few borrowed stories of travel in a book called The Rihla,
after the general travel genre in the Muslim world at the
time.
• Ibn Battuta and his book had little initial influence until the
19th century, where copies of his book were found and
translated into French, German and English and finally
received attention by Scholars.
• Ibn Battuta's travels as a source of information on places
not well documented otherwise, like the places he visited in
Africa along the coast.

20. Bibliography
• Bartel, Nick. The Travels of Ibn Battuta. University of California, Berkeley: Center
for Middle Eastern Studies. 2012. Nick Bartel and ORIAS, U. C. Berkeley. Web. 3
April 2013. (http://ibnbattuta.berkeley.edu/index.html)
• Elad, Amikam. “The Description of the Travels of Ibn Baa in Palestine: Is It
Original?” The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No.
2 (1987), pp. 256-272. Web. 3 April 2013 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/25212152)
• Finkel. Joshua. “Ibn Battuta” Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-135,4 by
H. A. R. Gibb. The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Jan 1933), pp.
269-270. Web. 3 April 2013. (http://www.jstor.org/stable/1451595)
• Morgan, D. O. “Ibn Baa and the Mongols” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third
Series, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Apr., 2001), pp. 1-11. Web. 3 April 2013
(http://www.jstor.org/stable/25188080)
• Norris, Harry. “Ibn Battuta on Muslims and Christians in the Crimean Peninsula”
Iran & the Caucasus, Vol. 8, No. 1 (2004), pp. 7-14. Web. 3 April 2013
(http://www.jstor.org/stable/4030887)