Travels of Ibn Batuta in Asia and Africa

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Travels of Ibn Batuta in Asia and Africa

Ibn Battuta was the Arab equivalent of Marco Polo. He traveled around the world and has much to say about peoples of the world.

A few lines from the Editors;

In his book he not only lays before us a faithful portrait of himself, with all his virtues and his failings, but evokes a whole age as it were from the dead....It is impossible not to feel a liking for the character it reveals, generous to excess, bold (did ever medieval traveller fear the sea less?), fond of pleasure and uxorious to a degree, but controlled withal by a deep vein of piety and devotion, a man with all the makings of a sinner, and something of a saint."

SELECTIONS

Page 30 - On Slavery

...There was consequently less stigma attached to slavery, and in no other society has there been anything resembling the system by which, as has been shown in the preceding section, the white slaves came to furnish the privileged cadre whence the high officers of state, commanders, governors, and at length even Sultans, were exclusively drawn.

The following story, told by a theologian of the third century, represents without serious distortion the relation, as numerous parallels in Arabic literature indicate, often existed between master, wife and slave.

I saw a slave-boy being auctioned for thirty dinars, and as he was worth three hundred I bought him. I was building a house at the time, and I gave him twenty dinars to lay out on the workmen. He spent ten on them and bought a garment for himself with the other ten. I said to him "What's this?" to which he replied "Don't be too hasty; no gentleman scolds his slaves." I said to myself "Here have I bought the Caliph's tutor without knowing it." Later on I wanted to marry a woman unknown to my cousin (i.e. my first wife), so I swore him to secrecy and gave him a dinar to buy somethings, including some of the fish called haziba. But he bought something else, and when I was wroth with him he said "I find that Hippocrates disapproves of haziba." I said to him "You worthless fool, I was not aware that I had bought a Galen," and gave him ten blows with the whip. But he seized me and gave me seven back saying "Sir, three blows is enough as a punishment, and the seven I gave you are my rightful retaliation." So I made at him and gave him a cut on the head, whereupon he went off to my cousin, and said to her "Sincerity is a religious duty, and whoever deceives us is not one of us. My master has married and he swore me to silence, and when I said to him that my lady must be told of it he broke my head." So my cousin would neither let me into her house nor let me have anything out of it, until at last I had to divorce the other woman. After that she used to call the boy "The honest lad," and I could not say a word to him, so I said to myself "I shall set him free, and then I shall have peace."

Page 123 - On Turks

Note that Ibn Batuta refers to today's Turks as Turkmen. You'll see that when he crosses into the Black Sea steppes he'll call the Turkic peoples of that region "Turks".
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LA SUITE ICI: Medieval Sourcebook: Ibn Batuta (1307-1377 CE): Travels