Ironduke

Ibn Batuta: AD 1325-1354

In 1325 Ibn Batuta sets off from home in Morocco to go on pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. He accompanies a caravan to Alexandria and Cairo on what is a standard journey for any serious Muslim. But Ibn Batuta's adventure differs from others in one major respect. It is twenty-four years before he gets back to Morocco, and he has spent the time in almost continuous travel.

After his pilgrimage he tours southern Persia and Iraq, then crosses the Persian Gulf to Yemen before travelling down the east coast of Africa to Kilwa. After a return visit to Mecca, he makes his way up through Syria and into Anatolia - where he finds the Ottoman Turks beginning to expand their territory.

Ibn Batuta's next ambition is to visit two of the most vigorous Muslim powers of his day, the Golden Horde in southern Russia and the Tughluq dynasty in Delhi. His journey to the capital of the Golden Horde at Sarai Berke takes him through the Genoese port of Caffa on the Black Sea. In his first experience of a Christian city, he finds the sound of the church bells unsettling - a culture shock experienced in the other direction by many arriving for the first time in a Muslim town today, with the muezzin's call to prayer amplified from the minaret of every mosque.

Travelling from Bukhara through the Hindu Kush, Ibn Batuta reaches India in 1333.

The Moroccan traveller, learned in Muslim law, is taken into the service of the Tughluq sultan of Delhi. He spends much of the next twelve years in India, interrupted by occasional trips. One takes him to Ceylon, another to Sumatra and on to China.

Eventually Ibn Batuta takes a meandering route homewards. He is in Syria and Egypt while the Black Death is raging. From Egypt he makes another quick pilgrimage to Mecca before finally sailing home along the north African coast (via Sardinia, for travel remains irresistible). He reaches Morocco in November 1349. But his most ambitious journey, most nearly deserving the name of exploration, remains ahead.

In 1352 Ibn Batuta sets off south through the Sahara to visit the African kingdoms in the region of the Niger. He reaches Mali and its eastern neighbour, as yet less powerful but growing in prestige - the Songhay kingdom, with a capital on the Niger at Gao.

Ibn Batuta's detailed descriptions of these African territories are the main written source of information about them (one of the tasks, surely, of a successful explorer). By 1354 the great traveller is back in Fez. On the command of the sultan he dictates the story of his travels to a royal scribe.