Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Travels of Ibn Battuta

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

Subscribe to the podcast!  https://podfollow.com/everythingeverywhere/ Prior to the modern era, very few people traveled anywhere. It was rare for anyone to travel more than about 20 miles from where they were born.  However, there were a few people who managed to travel quite extensively. In particular, there was one man in the 14th century who might have traveled more than any other person up to that point in history. In fact, he was better traveled than even more people alive today. Learn more about Ibn Battuta and his extensive journeys around the known world, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. -------------------------------- Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Prior to the modern era, very few people traveled anywhere. It was rare for anyone to travel more than about 20 miles from where they were born. However, there were a few people who managed to travel quite extensively. In particular, there was one man in the 14th century who might have traveled more than any other person up to that point in history. In fact, he was better traveled than most people even alive today. Learn more about Ibn Batuta and his extensive journeys around the known world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. There's a lot that we know about the life of Ibn Batuta. But one of the things we know very little is about his upbringing. We know that he was born a Berber, who was born in the city of Tangiers and what is today Morocco in 1304. He came from a family of Islamic legal scholars, and his father served as a judge known as a Qadi. Based on his future life, he must have received an extensive education in the Maliki School of Islamic Law.

Before I get too much further into the story, I should explain his name. For the rest of the episode, I'll be calling him Ibn Batuta. However, his full name was much longer and much more complicated. His full name during his life would probably have been Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Batuta. In Arabic, Ibn simply means son of and Abu means father of. And it's common for a child to be named Abu when they're born even if they don't have children, on the assumption that they will be the name of their firstborn son. His complete full name would have been Shams al-Din, Abu Abdallah, Muhammad Ibn Abdallah,

Ibn Muhammad, Ibn Ibrahim, Ibn Muhammad Ibn Yusuf El-Lati, El-Tanji, And I'll not be saying that again. The real story of Ibn Batuta starts when he was 21 years old. As a well-educated young man from reasonably well-off family, he set off to conduct the Hajj in June of 1325, which is the pilgrimage to Mecca which all Muslims are supposed to make at least once in their life if they are able. The average length of the hajah from Tangiers at that time took about 16 months, traveling by land.

The trip that Ibn Batuta took to get to Mecca began a journey that would last almost his entire life. The trip he was going to take across North Africa was a dangerous one, but that pretty much described traveling everywhere in the world in the 14th century. He would often travel with caravans for safety, and he ended up taking his time. He spent two full months in Tunis and had extended stays in Tripoli and Alexandria. By the time he reached Alexandria, there was a bit of a change in his plans. The original tent of his trip was solely religious. However, he became fascinated with the people and places he encountered along the way. From Alexandria, he then went north to Jerusalem to visit the El Aska Mosque and then turned south to Mecca.

He spent a full month in Mecca and completed his haj. However, instead of turning around to go home, he joined a caravan that traveled to Baghdad. Before he got to Baghdad, however, he left the group and went on a six-month side trip into the modern-day country of Iran. He visited Isfahan and Shiraz as well as the city of Basra. When he finally got to Baghdad, he met with the Mongol ruler who ruled over the empire which encompassed modern-day Iraq and Iran, the ill-conate. This was one of the first, but not the last times that he would meet with local rulers on his travels. The longer he traveled and the further away

from home he was, the more of a curiosity and a novelty he became. From Baghdad, he went north to the cities of Tabriz and Mosul, before heading back to Baghdad and then to Mecca, where he completed his second Haj. It isn't known exactly how long he stayed in Mecca. It was somewhere between one and three years. However long he stayed when he left, he headed to Jeddah and traveled south by ship. He traveled to Yemen, where he visited Sana and Aden before crossing the sea to the Horn of Africa to Somalia. In Mogadishu, he found it to be a very wealthy city with many merchants and a thriving industry in cloth and fabrics. From here, he kept going south to Mimbasa and the trading island of Kilwa in what is modern-day Tanzania. Once the monsoon winds changed, he sailed north

to Oman, went through the Strait of Hormuz, and then crossed the Arras, and then crossed the Arabian Peninsula again to Mecca to complete the Hajj for the third time. Already, he was one of the best traveled people in the world, yet he was just getting started. He arrived in Mecca for his third Hajj in either 1330 or 1332. By this time, he had been traveling for five to seven years. He then set off on what would be his longest trip yet. He headed west from Mecca to Cairo and then went by ship to Palestine and then to Anatolia in modern-day Turkey.

He crossed the Black Sea and then began his exploration of Central Asia. However, before that began, he managed to join a group that contained the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor, and he traveled with them to Constantinople. It was his first trip outside of the Islamic world. He actually met with the Byzantine Emperor, Andronikos III, visited the Hagia Sophia, and spoke to Orthodox priests about his travels. After staying in Constantinople for a month, he left and made a massive overland trek through what is today Russia and Ukraine, north of the Caspian Sea.

He then turned south through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where he stopped, in Samarkhan, where he visited yet another Mongol ruler who ruled the Changatai Khanate. From there, he traveled to Kabul and Afghanistan, through Pakistan, and then to Delhi in India. If anyone were to make this trip today, it would still be quite an accomplishment. In Delhi, he became stuck in the court of the Sultan, Muhammad bin Tugluck. The Sultan was one of the richest men in the Islamic world, and he was also sort of insane. Ibn Batuta was there for six years, where he was recruited into service as Akadi or Islamic judge. He constantly flirted with being accused of treason and being a favored member of the Sultan's court.

He finally got out when a Chinese representative from the Yuan dynasty came to Delhi and requested that the Sultan open up an embassy. Ibn Batuta volunteered for the duty and used that as his excuse to leave. He was robbed by bandits heading to the coast and then one of the ships he was traveling with sank. He arrived in what is today the Maldives, where he was once again made by the local ruler to serve as an Islamic judge. He was there for nine months where he did something that he did in many of his length he stops. He got married. He actually was married many times, and each time he left wherever he was staying, he would get a divorce. In the Maldives, he had four wives.

When he left the Maldives, he went to Sri Lanka, up to what is today Bangladesh, and then down to Ache in Sumatra, Indonesia. And this was pretty much the easternmost limit of the Islamic world at that time. From Ache, he took a junk north, stopping in the Philippines, and finally reaching China. landing in the city of Kwanzu. He went south to Guangzhou and then all the way north to Beijing. It is hard to fathom just how far from home he was, especially considering the ancient world.

He was born in Tangiers, which is near the Strait of Gibraltar in the Atlantic Ocean. At this point when he was in China, he may have traveled further than any human in history. In 1346, 21 years after he began his adventure, he started back to the Middle East. On his way back he traveled mostly by ship, and in a much more direct route.

He bypassed India to avoid the Sultan and arrived in Damascus in 1348. There he found out that his father had died 15 years earlier. He also had arrived in the middle of an outbreak of the bubonic plague, which had spread through the Middle East. From here, he went back to Mecca to complete his fourth Hajj and then decided to return home. He made a side trip to Sardinia, and then finally arrived back in Tangiers in 1349. 24 years after he left. When he arrived, he had discovered that his mother had died just months before.

He was barely in Tangiers for a few days when he set out yet again. This time, he went north across the Strait of Gibraltar to the Muslim part of Spain known as Al-Andalus. He actually went to defend the region from an attack by King Alfonso the 11th of Castile, but Alonzo died from the plague, so Ibn Batuta just visited Valencia and Granada. He returned to Morocco in 1351, and then set out of the war. again, this time traveling south into the West African Sahara. He traveled by Camel Caravan down to Mali and Timbuktu. He finally arrived back in Morocco in 1354, where, as far as we know, his travels ended.

When he settled down on the advice of the ruler of Morocco, he began telling the tale of his adventures to a scribe that he had met in Granada. The resulting book was a Rila, which is an Arabic word for travelogue. The final product, when translated into English, was titled, A Masterpiece of a Masterpiece, to those who contemplate the wonders of cities and the marvels of traveling. This book is the only recorded accounting of his adventures. Based on what we know, he never took notes during his trip, and everything we know came from the account that he left after the fact.

It's estimated that the total distance traveled by Ibn Batuta was over 73,000 miles, or 117,000 kilometers. Just to put that into perspective, the distance traveled by Ibn Batuta was greater than the other contemporary travelers of his age Zhang He and Marco Polo combined. It probably wasn't for several centuries that anyone traveled further than Ibn Batuta, and even then that was done during lengthy ocean voyages. I traveled around the world almost nine years nonstop,

and I was able to use airplanes and I had the internet to communicate. Even I'm impressed by the travels of Ibn Batuta, who has to go down as one of the world's all-time greatest travelers. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. Associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Mindy Pollock over at Podchaser. She writes, Gotta have some way to learn about random facts before trivia night

or sitting down with the family to play Trivial Pursuit. Gary does a fantastic job breaking interesting worldly events and facts into bite-sized chunks. Thanks, Mindy. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility. Use your powers of knowledge for good instead of evil. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you too can have it read on the show. Thank you.