Stories from Islamic History (9 page)

Ibn Battuta once again embarked on a boat
headed for the Maldives, this time alone. It was a brief visit to
see his son, he told the decidedly mistrustful vizier and queen.
Five days later he was on his way back.

China has always been a tremendous attraction
for travelers. From the 4th to 7th
hijri
centuries (10th to
the 13th century CE), mutually reinforcing prosperity in the
Islamic lands under the Abbasids, and in China under the Sung
dynasty boosted Sino-Arab trade to heady heights. The Mongol Yuan
Dynasty took China in 677 AH (1279 CE), and despite the Mongol
devastations within
dar-us-Islam
, maritime trade continued
unabated. Omani and other traders continued their arduous, eighteen
month voyages as before.

Even though the Yuan never embraced Islam as
other Mongol dynasties that controlled Persia and Central Asia did,
they tended to trust Muslims more than they trusted their Chinese
subjects. The Muslims the Yuans met were men of their word,
merchants who did not err out of intoxication, and people whose
behavior in the spirit of the Quran was laudable by the principles
of Confucius. The Yuan's open-door policies filled their
bureaucracy with Muslims of all origins.

Ibn Battuta was lured toward China for the
same reasons he had been lured to Delhi: the prospect of
employment. He also had persisting memories of Burhan al Din - a
sage he met in in Alexandria, who two decades earlier had predicted
Ibn Battuta would one day visit India and China.

Ibn Battuta made his way to China all right,
but his reports do not flatter the land. He derides the severity of
Chinese maritime customs inspections: “
They order
the ship's master to dictate to them a manifest of all the
merchandise in it, whether small or great. Then everyone disembarks
and the customs officials sit to inspect what they have with them.
If they come upon any article that has been concealed from them the
dhow and whatever is in it is forfeit to the treasury. This is a
kind of extortion I have seen in no country, whether infidel or
Muslim, except in China
.”

After a sojourn of less than a year in China
“a rebellion broke out and disorders flared up," giving Ibn Battuta
a welcome excuse to quit the country. He left aboard a friend's
India-bound dhow. But in India, he met only ghosts of his past. "I
wanted to return to Delhi, but became afraid to do so." He sailed
on to Oman, and finding himself having fought his way to a dead end
once again, made his fourth
hajj
.

It was late spring in 748 AH (1348 CE), in
Damascus that Ibn Battuta learned that a son he had fathered there
died twelve years earlier and that his own father had died fifteen
years earlier. But a fellow Berber reported his mother still alive.
Ibn Battuta resolved to see her.

On his way back to Tangier Ibn Battuta found
that the good days were over in Cairo. Ibn Battuta describes the
city as a “honeycomb without honey.” The great builder, Mamluke
sultan al-Nasir Muhammad Qala'un had fallen nine years earlier to a
cabal of rivals, under whom the city's administration all but
collapsed.

In Taza, near Fez, Ibn Battuta learned death
had knocked on his mother's door before he had been able to return.
The purpose for which he had returned no longer present, having no
family in Tangier, and having nothing worthwhile to occupy himself,
he set his sights on taking part in
jihad
to defend the
frontier of
dar-us-Islam
against Christian Spain.

The one strong leader in the region, Abu
al-Hasan had consolidated central
maghrib
and sent an
expedition to retake Gibraltar, now under the suzerainty of the
king of Spain. Emboldened by the success of this move, he was
preparing another expedition to drive Christian knights out of
Castile.

Ibn Battuta’s descriptions of
al-Andalus
(Spain) are no less copious and rich than the
rest of the Rihala. The scenery has changed today only in that the
tracks he walked are now paved roads and in towns television
antennae clutter what were then unbroken roofscapes of red
tile.

The
jihad
eventually took place at Rio
Salado, but the sultan lost much of his army. Ibn Battuta
nevertheless came home unscratched.

***

Ibn Battuta had traversed the entirety of
dar-us-Islam
except that part almost the closest to his
home, but which, because of the difficulty of getting there was in
practical terms farther away than the rest.

On 1st Muharram 752 AH (28 February 1351 CE),
Ibn Battuta accompanied a caravan, to cross the Sahara and reach
Mali and
bilad al-sudan
, "the country of the blacks." Today
Tuareg guides in their indigo blue still make that camel trek, from
Goulemine in Morocco, near his departure point of Sijilmasa - then
prosperous but now deserted. The crossing takes sixty three
days.

It was not out of casual curiosity that Ibn
Battuta went in this direction. Central West Africa was in the
midst of an unusual boom. Mali produced more than half of the
world’s supply of gold. Had the demand for gold from
dar-us-Islam
been all there was, Mali would have maintained
a prosperous but stagnant economy. But there was far greater demand
for gold. The Christian lands of Europe were converting to stable
but foreign gold from local but volatile silver. The effect on Mali
was an economic boom.

The caravans of camels that carried gold to
Morocco also carried the region's other exports, such as hides,
nuts, ostrich, ivory and salt. In the opposite direction went
cotton textiles, spices, finished jewelry, grain, dried fruit,
horses and the metals West Africa lacked: silver, copper, and
iron.

The Mali-Morocco trade was dominated by
Berber merchants, who had settled in the savannas south of the gold
fields. Muslim traders arrived, settled among the locals, built
masjids and called people to prayer. Muslim concepts of fair trade
and philanthropy not only attracted people to Islam but also
brought order to what was hitherto a free-for-all chaos. Mansa
Musa, the king of Mali became a legend by distributing so much gold
in Cairo en route to
hajj
in 724 AH (1324 CE) that he
depressed the market.

An example of the extraordinary range of
Islamic economics of the times is found in the fact that cowry
shells from Maldives were used as money in Sudan and Mali, and gold
from Mali turned up as currency in the Maldives, 9000 kilometers
and an ocean away.

The new wealth supported stronger armies,
whose conquests in turn enlarged the tax base to include more
farmers and herders; and as with other expansions of Islam,
conversion brought the need for administration, for
qadi
s,
for
ulema
, and all administrative infrastructures which Ibn
Battuta eyed.

The first stop for Ibn Battuta’s caravan was
Taghaza. The next stage, from Taghaza to Walata, was some eight
hundred kilometers broken by only one oasis. The terrain was so
barren and chance of becoming lost so great that a relief-convoy
system had evolved. Caravan leaders would hire a local Mustafa
tribesman to act as a takshif, a messenger who, for a high fee,
would precede them and inform the merchants of Walata of the
caravan's coming. Those merchants then equipped a convoy of
water-bearers to march out four days and meet the incoming caravan.
The takshif was paid only when the two groups met. Sometimes when
the takshif perishes in this desert and the merchants of Walata
know nothing of the caravan, most of those in the caravan also
perish.

Ibn Battuta remained in Mali for fifty days,
and then took to the Niger River, which he mistook for the Nile
since it flows eastward through Mali before abruptly turning south
into Nigeria. He writes copiously about this region, especially its
Arabic language and Islamic culture, and recounted stories about
cannibal tribes in the south. Timbuktu was at Ibn Battuta’s time
only emerging as a fabled center of Islamic learning and
culture.

In Dhul
Hajj
754 AH (January 1354 CE)
Ibn Battuta arrived back in Fez, never to leave again. His travels
had became well known in his native place, and he received an
enthusiastic welcome from Sultan Abu Inan, who deemed his
experiences worth recording. The job was assigned to the scribe and
poet Ibn Juzayy.

Thus came out “
Tuhfat al-Nuzzar fi
Ghara'ib al-Amsar wa-'Aja'ib al-Asfar
” (A Gift to Those Who
Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling),
which is today known by its generic title Rihala.

Ibn Battuta died in 770 AH (1369 CE) at the
age of 65. His death came eleven or twelve years after he finished
dictating the Rihala.

At a time when the fastest humans could
travel was astride a galloping horse, travelling one lakh twenty
thousand kilometers in thirty years is truly remarkable. It
averages eleven kilometers a day for almost eleven thousand days.
Ibn Battuta, crossed more than forty countries in today's map, met
about sixty heads of state and served as advisor to two dozen of
them. Yet he never, not even once managed to stick on to a steady
job!

This story is derived from :

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200004/the.longest.hajj.the.journeys.of.ibn.battuta.part.2-from.riches.to.rags.makkah.to.india.htm

“All clear,” the flare indicated. The
cavalcade had been on the road for two days and nights, proceeding
by stealth, through the rugged country, avoiding settlements, and
transversing the most solitary passes of the rugged country. The
hardships were severe, but none in the entourage complained.

It was midnight when they finally left the
hills and rode in pitch darkness to the city of Granada.

The leader of the cavalcade ordered his
retinue to halt and remain concealed.

Taking four or five of his trusted
lieutenants with him, he advanced to the city gates and struck on
it repeatedly with the handle of his scimitar.

"Who is it that knocks at this unseasonable
hour of the night?" the warder, woken up from his slumber,
demanded.

"Your king," the visitor replied. Then in a
haughty tone, he commanded, "Open and admit him."

The warder opened a wicket and held forth a
light. Recognizing the untimely visitor, he opened the gate and let
the cavalier in. The entourage did not waste time, and galloped in
haste to the hill of the Albaycin.

Enroute, they banged loudly at doors,
ordering tenants to rise and take arms for their lawful sovereign.
Most inmates paid heed to the summons. Very soon, trumpets
resounded, and the dark avenues were lit up by gleams of torches.
By daybreak, a sizable army had grouped, ready to meet their foe on
the opposite height of the Alhambra.

***

Boabdil, the son of Muley Abul Hassan, had
rebelled against his father. So serious had hostilities escalated
that a bloody battle ensured in the streets of the city, ending
only when the old king was forced to flee outside the city walls.
Boabdil’s ensuing reign was so corrupt and despotic that people
gathered around the old Muley Abdul Hassan once again. Boabdil, to
show his prowess to the people, marched over the border to attack
the city of Lucena. This was a foolhardy move, for he was assailed,
his army put to the rout, and he himself taken prisoner by the
forces of Ferdinand of Aragon.

To regain his liberty Boabdil acknowledged
himself a vassal of the Spanish monarch and agreed to pay tribute.
On his release he made his way to the city of Granada, but was so
violently assailed by the people that the streets of the city ran
blood.

Boabdil the Unlucky, as he was now called,
found it advisable to leave the capital and fix his residence in
Almeria, a city just as splendid as Granada, and whose residents,
for some strange reason remained devoted to Boabdil.

As the years went on Muley Abul Hassan became
stricken with age. He grew blind and bed-ridden with paralysis. His
brother Abdullah, known as El Zagal, or "The Valiant," the
commander-in-chief of the Moorish armies, assumed duties as the
sovereign and zealously took up the quarrel with his nephew
Boabdil. He surprised the young king at Almeria, drove him out as a
fugitive, and took possession of that city. At a later date he
endeavored to remove him by poison, and this attempt forced Boabdil
to undertake the enterprise mentioned above.

***

The bugle sounded and the encounter took
place in the square before the principle masjid. Hand to hand, the
two kings fought till they were separated by their followers. The
followers took over the conflict, and spilled it to the streets.
For days the violence went on, such hatred existing between the two
factions that neither side gave quarter. All this while, Ferdinand
was close by, observing the spectacle with glee.

Boabdil was the weaker in men. Fearing
defeat, he sent for assistance to Don Fedrique de Toledo. Ferdinand
had instructed the Don to give what aid he could to the young king,
the vassal of Spain. He responded to Boabdil's request by marching
with a body of troops to the vicinity of Granada.

Ferdinand was not too far behind, and with a
large army marched upon the seaport of Malaga. El Zagal sought to
ally with Boabdil to unite their forces against the common foe.
Boabdil however spurned the overtures with disdain.

El Zagal marched against the enemy all by
himself, hoping to surprise them in the passes of the mountains and
perhaps capture King Ferdinand himself. The enemy however came to
know of his well-laid plan, attacked and defeated him.

The news of this disaster preceded El Zagal
to Granada. Victory has a thousand friends, but defeat is an
orphan. The people closed their gates on El Zagal, the disgraced.
The position of Boabdil and El Zagel were now reversed – Boabdil
was firmly in seat at Granada, El Zagal had to make do with
Almeria.