Great Voyages: Traveler's Tips from the 14th Century: The Detours of Ibn Battuta

[Music] uh thank you all as well for coming tonight iben Ean [Music] good smart crowd unlike I batuta Marco Polo actually has a children's game named after him Marco Polo is a household name I batuta is less so and I'm not sure why that is but it's worth comparing the two since Marco Polo seems to be better known uh despite my best intentions in 1272 Marco Polo Venetian Merchant's son at the age of 17 left uh on a journey to China and returned 23 years later um and then uh if his story is to be believed in 1298 he uh was uh doing time in the genu prison and uh was uh encouraged to dictate his stories to a um minor author of Arthurian romances a fellon named rello of Pisa and um uh he uh Marco poo lived a a nice long life and died at the age of 69 in 1324 at about the same time U our hero uh one shiden Abu Abdullah Muhammad IB Abdullah ibraim ateni otherwise known as I batuta Was preparing at the age of 22 to head on his journey uh uh uh at first on pilgrimage to Mecca and what is now Saudi Arabia 30 years later after traversing the entire Eastern Hemisphere uh in what is uh more or less 40 modern countries logging in some 73,000 kilom he returned and uh like Marco Polo um upon his return was convinced by his Prince the Sultan of Morocco to dictate his travels to a an amenis a scholar who produced the book that we know as the travels of Marco Polo excuse me of of I batuta even I've fallen prey to that Wy Italian that fellow's name uh was IJ IB J and IB batuta then form a kind of partnership uh in these travels and for all that we talk of ibuta keep in mind as we proceed in this through this wonderful and frustrating book that some of it may also be the product of iban J's uh literary um production I batuta had gone clear across the known world and often into regions that were as foreign to him and his audience as China was to Marco Polo and his and yet because he was not blessed like Marco Polo and so many other fine people with the Good Fortune to have been Italian ibuta is not a household name still there are no children's games named for him let me explain to you uh very briefly the the road map for tonight uh what I'd like to do is give you a kind of Rapid Fire uh race at the at the risk of some travel sickness through IB bat's own itinerary uh to walk you through where he went and what what some of the things that happened to him when he traveled and then I would like to move on to uh the much advertised Travelers tips I have a small handful um which I hope will be um useful uh for you um let these are lessons we can all glean from ib's experiences that I think are especially worth remembering today uh his travels I should add have been translated into many different languages including English um the uh first three volumes were completed um uh the English translation that is um in the by the middle of the 20th century but it took until the year 2000 for for the final volume to be completed so just working with the book is something of an odyssey as I proceed through um through ib's travels it's important also that you realize um something you would confront if you had the book in front of you which is that the chronology of his travels is impossible to determine at some points indeed for for large sections of his travels um he provides dates but they often conflict and you'll you'll often find maps inde probably like the one I use here and certainly on the internet um Maps which attribute dates to certain legs of his journey um but those are scholarly speculation in some cases um it's hard to piece together exactly um the order of his visits this is this is exacerbated by the fact that when he wrote about a place he was writing in his old age uh and dictating it and he had passed through these places a couple of times so he um he may well be filling in um details that he only experienced later on in his journeys one final thing that's worth remembering as we begin is that I batuta was only intending to go on pilgrimage to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina when he stepped out of his door in Tanger in Morocco in June 1325 a journey that should have taken perhaps a 2-year round trip you have there on the right uh an illustr slightly fanciful illustration of uh that charlatan Marco Polo in um in in tartar Garb and an equally fanciful bust of I batuta we don't really know what he looked like and here is the map I promised the pilgrimage to Mecca or hedj was a duty for every Muslim who had the wealth and wherewithal to undertake it it could be performed as a private matter but it was also common and safer to undertake it as a member of part of an official Caravan in I P's day these were sponsored by The mamluk Sultans of Egypt who were also the nominal rulers of Arabia where Mecca and Mecca and Medina were located and the they were the recognized Protectors of the holy sites these great formal and well supplied Caravans left throughout the pilgrimage season from the principal cities of the region it's seems that when I batuta left tenir he was hoping to connect up with the official Caravan from Egypt but delays on his route across North Africa prevented him from getting to Egypt before the end of the official season among those delaying factors was the terrible heat of a North African Summer from which iutu grew ill at various stages and was forced to rest also among them was the fact that he contracted a marriage with the daughter of a merchant from Tunis in North Africa always a disaster only to formally separate from her after a squabble with her father but our hero seems not to have been too heartbroken as he almost immediately contracted another marriage with the daughter of a religious scholar from his native Morocco who he knew better and he celebrated this one perhaps with a little vengeful uh celebration with a big old party for the whole Caravan that lasted uh one entire day when is forced to assume that this second marriage stuck this time since as was proper of course he does not mention his wife in his writings uh ever again IB patut arrived in Egypt nearly 10 months after he had left tenir but his goal of Mecca still beckoned rather than sail up the Nile as was often done here I'll refer to the map again rather than sail up the Nile as was often done he decided instead to take the land route heading south along the west coast of Egypt until he reached the Red Sea crossing point of UB which is whoops which is located here from which pilgrims took ships to jeda on the Arabian Coast the opposite Coast a short trip to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina it seems to have been around this time that IB bat's plans for a pilgrimage however expanded into something rather different per perhaps because he was finally confronted with the reality that his trip after all was nearly over according to his own account IB batuta had a dream one night while staying at the house of a revered holy man in the dream he was swept away on the wings of a giant bird that bore him first to Mecca then to Yemen and finally to a distant Eastern lands before abandoning him in a dark and Misty country the next day his host inter interpreted the dream to mean that he would indeed visit the holy cities wander about Yemen Iraq the lands of the Turks and finally India where he would remain for some time this of course is precisely what happened but when he arrived at the Red Sea Coast he found that all the available boats had been destroyed in a conflict between the local authorities and The Sultans so no one was able to make the crossing to Arabia he might actually need a bird to get across so styed he headed back down the river to Cairo from there he wandered around Syria as far north as ale leppo um obviously a an older photograph and then in September 1326 he caught up with the annual Syrian Pilgrim Caravan that was leaving from Damascus a month later he was finally completing the rights and rituals of his first pilgrimage in Mecca it would not be his last it moved him terribly and he pauses from his narrative to comment on the Majesty of God and of the Holy the the glory of the Holy sights and the way in which it infected him and the pilgrims he saw around him with a desire uh to remain close to them clearly in any case the journey to Mecca had had a transformative effect on him for his pilgrimage Duty once realized UTA did not do what most pilgrims did in his situation he did not go home instead he caught a lift with a caravan returning to Iraq and during the next few months made excursions into Persia modern Iran which at at the time was controlled by Mongol descendants of the great conqueror chingis Khan known as the ilhan in Iran he visited Shiraz Isfahan and tab in the north and that is a photograph of one of his famous covered sus and also Northern Iraq before looping back to Baghdad the historic heart of the Islamic World in ima's time just a shadow of its former glorious self and he pauses to comment on uh the fate of great cities Upon returning to Mecca ibuta adopted the role of a Pious Sojourner what's called a muar and stuck around the holy Precinct to complete the pilgrimage rituals in 1328 29 and 30 during his this last pilgrimage season major disturbances broke out between the ruler of Mecca and the representative of the Egyptian Sultan so I batuta decided to take a break setting sail for Yemen and points South I batuta was not he reveals a fan of SE travel and for good reason it was a dreadfully dangerous thing to do merchants much preferred uh carrying things Overland uh and having to put up with Bandits then uh having to deal with uh the um insecurities and uh R random delays of sea travel and um judging from some of imus's comments some of the some of the craft he actually stepped aboard didn't instill confidence in him in the Red Sea after currents reefs and wing and winds ping-ponged his boat you can see in the Red Sea the south of Mecca ping-ponged his boat uh down the Red Sea uh he must have been grateful to make landfall finally on the east African Coast visiting Mogadishu and Mombasa and Kila an important medieval trading station far to the South uh before returning to the Arabian coast and Oman his account of this period is very sketchy it looks very nice on the map but in fact we have only the detail that he had left Mecca in 1330 and then returned there in 1332 uh as brackets for this uh East African detour it was at the end of the pilgrimage of 1332 that IB batuta perhaps mindful of the dream of the bird and the prediction that had been made of him many years before in Egypt made his most fateful decision yet to go to India what's more he decided not to go the usual Way by boat from Yemen rather he decided to go Overland and here we confront one of the Great mysteries of iat's travels for he did for he did go Overland to India from Arabia but he did so through Egypt and Anatolia modern turkey this as you might see from the map is not the direct route to India indeed it is squarely in the wrong direction India is over here all we know is that his his attempt to set sail from Aiden in Yemen was denied him for unclear reasons and so instead he crossed back to Egypt making his way to Cairo from there he passed again into Syria boarding a genoise ship there are Italians even in this story Bound for the Anatolian Coast he then spent the next two years roaming about Anatolia what was in effect Islam's Wild West a Rough and Ready Frontier Zone between the Islamic world and the Christian greek-speaking Byzantine Empire or what was left of it here IB batuta encountered a kind of great cultural laboratory of ethnic intermingling and religious transformation where a largely nomadic Turkish Muslim Elite mixed with Greek and Armenian townsmen and peasants it was a world that amazed and befuddled him it was for example in Anatolia that he first heard the wooden clappers that churches used to Mark prayer times rather like Bells were used in the west and it was a realm in which Turkish a language he did not speak was the lingua franka it was a world in which being a Muslim scholar any Muslim scholar really carried a certain amount of cache and so I batuta was able to gain access to the courts of a number of the petty Turkish rulers and princes of the region among these was a certain Prince named orhan who showered him with gifts as did orhan's wife IM muda didn't know it at the at the time but this royal couple happened to be you know rather young glamorous couple happened to be the rulers of a dynasty that would come to be known as the ottoman Dynasty which would rule in Europe Africa and Asia from his own day until after World War I from Anatolia ibuta took a ship North across the Black Sea to kafa in the Crimea long a trading center for the genoise again with the Italians but now solidly in the hands of a Mongol Governor this Governor welcomed the Moroccan scholar with delight he invited his guests to accompany him further Inland to the lower vulga where he was to meet with his master Sultan USC the ruler of that branch of the Mongol Enterprise known as the golden horde I neglected to mention one of the Turkish principalities he visited was that of the Emirate of cona um the city you see here I'm sorry to be as as if if I appear to be showing holiday snaps of iut here but I I wanted to give a a sense of the the different geographies and different architectures that he would have encountered along the way huta encountered Sultan USC not in his sedentary Capital the bustling town of new Sarai on the vulga in southern Russia but rather in his encampment in the countryside known as an ordo with his family and tribal vassals the Ordo was a vast City on the Move in which everything people animals mosques shops even kitchens were born on tens of thousands of wagons and many thousand more followed Along on horse horseback or on foot Sultan USC's family included one of his wives bolon the daughter of the Byzantine emperor or King of the Greeks as ibuta demotes him as Bayon was pregnant she wished to have the baby in Constantinople the capital of the Empire and so it happens that a delegation to the great Christian city was being prepared as ibuta arrived as you might imagine he managed to Weedle his way into the Entourage and spent about a month in Constantinople and in viron before returning to new Sarai here's a Florentine map from 1422 of Constantinople as it would have looked before it was conquered by the Ottomans in 1453 it was during his return trip uh to narai that im batuta a native Moroccan I want to remind you encountered what he called the coldest weather of his life he describes the water he used in his prayer Evolutions freezing as it fell off his fingertips and shaking ice crystals constantly out of his beard he wore so many layers of Furs that he had to be lifted bodily into his saddle like a like a toddler in a snowsuit onesie you know he needed help uh and that's where I sort of admire UTA because he's for being such a good sport with the the sort of many indignities that he had to put up with in these uh in these travels of his from new Sarai IM batuta set out the next leg of his journey taking him east across 40 days of desert into a region he calls turkistan a vague term meaning Central Asia across the oxis river there he was hosted by another Mongol Sultan and visited the jewel cities of samand and bukara before passing into Afghanistan where his party was styed by the pro ECT of crossing the hindukush mountains little hillocks in Winter no less they waited until the warm weather stuck but still needed to spread felt cloth before their camels so they would not sink too deeply in the snow in the mountain passes they passed through Cabell and eventually by September of 1333 had reached the borders of his stated destination India it is at this point that in manuscripts of the travels volume 1 ends and volume two commences signifying an important shift in Ian bat's story indeed in the printed Edition more than 400 pages are devoted to ib's Indian stay or nearly 40% of the entire book in the 10 years he stayed in India imut did not in fact travel around all that much in South Asia tending to remain in Delhi where he lived in the service of its Sultan in India he encountered a Frontier Zone not dissimilar to that of Anatolia though more urbanized here too a Muslim minority ruled over in fact a Turkish Muslim minority ruled over a vast non-muslim majority of musl Hindus towards the end of his stay he fell in with a holy man who had become an enemy of the Sultan of Delhi and he felt obliged to withdraw from his service but the sultan eagerly sought his return anyway he tried first to buy his service back with gifts but I batuta piously refused the sultan eventually won him back by appealing to his by now well-known weak spot he invited him to travel an embassy from China it seems had recently arrived bearing gifts and the sultan needed to outfit a return Embassy to accompany them the the ambassadors back to their King ibuta jumped at the chance and was put in charge of the gifts 1500 pieces of luxury cloth gold and silver vessels 100 thoroughbred horses 100 male slaves 100 Hindu singing girls and 15 Unix this was no simple fruit basket imuta was obliged to travel with a staff just to Wrangle the gifts and a whole Fleet of Chinese junks was required to transport the entire delegation home in the end though it didn't matter as the delegation waited in the great Port of cut on the south western coast for the next suitable sailing weather a VI ENT storm struck and the ships were demolished and almost everyone perished IM batuta bited his time on the Malibar Coast but eventually set sail into the Indian Ocean for the Muslim Islands known today as the malds this is a rather lovely photo uh of the Maldives from space um there they are rings of small Islands you can see surrounded by Crystal Blue shallow water uh I on a day like today so that I wouldn't depress you all I didn't put any photographs actual photographs of the Maldives because they're too sunny and too beautiful but he makes note of the Ring structure of these islands and comments on how every island appears to be alike but each has its own unique differences he stayed there for 18 months and made a living serving the community as a kadi or Muslim judge a post he had also held in Delhi in the Mal uh in the Maldives he got married a few times but had to leave abruptly when the Winds of local politics turned against him he set sail for Sri Lanka then back to India and after a brief light operatic interlude involving pirates onward to Bengal Sumatra Java whose Hindu Sultan warmly hosted him and finally China imb's Chinese Adventures are in fact very skeletal and almost certainly largely invented he seems certainly to have stopped uh at the Chinese Port known to Medieval Arabs as zun that isan zo in China where there had been Middle Eastern Merchant communities for centuries he may also have visited Canton just to the South but most Scholars doubt that he truly made it to Khan bik modern Beijing the capital of the emperor of China he seems to have dilly-dallied a bit on the south coast and then decided to return home in stages I realize now a map would be handy so there you have um the the trip through Indonesia and then up to the southwestern Coast excuse me Southeastern coast of China I bat's Narrative of his return journey is sadly dry and straightforward probably because he felt he had described these areas sufficiently when detailing his outbound Journey he returned to Calicut and from there set sail for Yemen where he arrived in April of 1347 14 years after he had first arrived in India by January of 1348 maybe the map will be useful again he was in Baghdad and heading up the Euphrates he crossed into Syria and reached Damascus there he learned his father had died 15 years earlier and a son some years before his mother still lived from Damascus he decided to go on pilgrimage to Mecca once more because why not after all and by the winter of 1349 he was like a dictionary Morocco bound sailing across the southern coast of North Africa disembarking at Tunis for supplies and making a quick pit stop in Sardinia because Italians once he arrived in Morocco he learned that sadly his mother too had died probably of the plague by November 1349 he was in Fez the capital of his future Patron the Sultan of Morocco and just as the book oozes into one of IB J's fome pager poems in honor of the suan seemingly about to conclude with a satisfying flourish one reads with a bit of a Sinking Feeling one must admit the remarkable words let us Return To The Narrative of our travels indeed the story continues after paying his respects to his ruler in Fez he stopped in tenier to visit his mother's grave after a brief illness he crossed over to Spain in 1350 known in Arabic as Al andalus although much of the Peninsula had been conquered by Christians by that time one last Muslim Kingdom managed to hold on at Granada and this was I bat's principal goal he did not linger and he did not linger there however and crossed back to Morocco and made one last journey Crossing with a merchant Caravan to sigil masasa on the fringes of the Saharan Desert and then to the Muslim kingdom of Mali where eventually he received word from the Sultan in Fez that his presence was requested back home no doubt the sultan planned to have to have him meet with iban J to record his remarkable Adventures before any harm should befall him and so I bat's travels and his book The travels was completed IB J proudly tells us in closing on 13 December 134 1355 almost exactly 658 years to the day day even just Rec counting the story I'm exhausted this is the point where you may engage in a seventh inning stretch and where I would like to move on from a description of the narrative and the world that he passed through that iuta pass through onto some of the Travelers tips um that I promised tip number one keep an open mind now this of course is good advice for any traveler but I'm afraid IM vuta teaches us by negative example in this case for with him it seems you can take the scholar out of Morocco but you can't take the Morocco out of the scholar throughout his travels ibuta was confronted with many different cultures that flouted his own cultural conventions that he grew up with and he usually didn't approve of what he saw on the whole despite how much I admire the man he does emerge from his writing is a slightly uptight individual but those were the times he lived in now I think actually this can be explained because to his audience even batuta was first and foremost a member of the Learned class and more specifically a judge an expert in Islamic law and ideally such men were held to be living exemplars of what they considered proper Muslim practice such men as he could Brook no outrages to propriety it was incumbent upon him to point out when he thought bad Behavior was happening in Mali in Western Africa for example he confides in us the reader that as for the women they have no shame before men and they do not Veil themselves despite their punctiliousness of our prayers whoever wants to marry one of them does so but the women do not travel with their husbands even if one of them wanted to her family would prevent her women there have friends and companions among men not of their kin and in the same way men make Companions of women who are not their kin a man can go into his house find his wife with her man friend and he not disapprove he then relates the following Tale one day one day after getting his leave after getting his leave to enter I called upon the judge of the town of iatan which is ulat in morania today I found him with an extraordinarily handsome young woman when I saw her I hesitated and started to turn back and but she just laughed at me and showed no embarrassment the judge said to me why are you turning back she is my friend I was astonished at the two of them for he was a jurist and a pilgrim I had been told that he he had asked the sultan for permission to go on pilgrimage that year with his woman friend I do not know if this woman was the one in question or not but he was denied and similarly one day I called upon Al still in uh Mali one day I called upon Abu Muhammad yandan alfi in whose company we had arrived here and found him sitting on a rug in the middle of the room was a bed with a canopy upon which sat a woman and a man talking together I said to him who is this woman she's my wife he said and uh what about the man with her with her I asked he is her friend he replied are you happy with this I asked you who have lived in our lands and know the content of religious law it's an interesting phrase there he told me the companionship of women and men with us is a good thing and an agreeable practice nothing suspicious about it our women are not like the women of your lands I was astonished at his foolishness I left him and did not return to him again he invited me back numerous times but IB batuta adds clucking his tongue when suspects I never accepted similarly in the in the Maldives where you could you will recall he served for some months as a judge he was constantly at odds the local custom of women to go about be breasted in public managing to convince them to C their tops only when they went to see him in his capacity as judge but this was not I want to stress here these are funny stories but I want to stress that this was not because he was approved he uh has no problem with with sex and sexuality he exols at length the beauty and delights of the women of the Maldives and their virtues as companions and wives and mothers rather it was because such Behavior seemed to threaten the imperative that IM bat's Moroccan Society placed upon female Chastity women virtue to him must be policed rigorously or else honor kinship and identity itself were at risk so to IB batuta his African friends response to effectively chill out about women could only be condemned as foolish and lacks attitudes about modesty in the Maldives was just courting disaster in fact though one of the greatest and most distinctive features of imb's travels is its inadvertent celebration of variety within Islamic civil ization the unity and diversity of Islam to use a common cliche that is from Tanger to Indonesia Muslims could almost always agree that they were participating in a shared Venture called Islam even if the ways in which these diverse Muslim societies enacted their Islam in practice might vary IM batuta did indeed come to note and appreciate this diversity over the course of his travels it's just that as a self-appointed Exemplar of what he believed to be proper Islamic practice he had his limits and to Modern Travelers I would make a similarly mixed message by all means Hold On Tight to your principles but be prepared to challenge them and in doing so either change them or reinforce them all the more above all however embrace the advice of imb's African colleague and learn to chill out when appropriate confronting diversity may not always be pleasant but it does make us better humans which brings us to the next tip go to school now my employers will not like to hear this but it is my own belief that you do not need to actually attend a college to become an educated and enriched World citizen however in the case of imuda his example clearly shows the advantages of being both educated and in being the product of an institution of Higher Learning indeed I think it is safe to say that had imuta not been an educated man his whole Venture would have been impossible let me explain what I mean by that I batuta was a member of the Learned class of Islamic Society known in Arabic as the now for those of you who might know a little Arabic the concept of learning that is embedded in that term is which is specifically religious learning in Islamic law Theology and the study of scripture the kind that can only be acquired through long and careful study of of texts under the guidance of a master such as I do with my graduate students in in mut's day such an education usually took place in institutions known as madrasas uh which were not simply colleges as they are sometimes called today but specifically Oles for the study of the religious sciences and Islamic law one did not really graduate from a madrasa per se instead you became certified that you had become an expert in a certain body of texts as taught by a certain master and that therefore you were authorized to in turn teach these texts to other students so unlike our system today it didn't matter so much where you went to school pen or even Harvard if you wanted to or who you studied with it also gave you the authority to hold down certain ilm related jobs such as in in vut's case uh working as a kot or judge who interpreted Islamic law and applied its teachings in real world settings for the faithful whether they wore shirts in his presence or not and being a member of the UL was thus a lifelong Duty you did not stop learning once you left the madrasa indeed most Scholars were enjoyed to refine and expand their knowledge by studying with as many different Masters and poking about in as many different libraries as possible this was called the T or search for knowledge and to do that one had to travel so I P's education uh made his journey possible in two ways one in the pragmatic sense it put him it plugged him into a network of other Scholars with whom he could communicate find Hospitality um and um uh and lodging um throughout his travels um from Tang to Indonesia he could count upon there being since Arabic was the language of Education he count upon uh their being uh like-minded individuals in all the major places he went where there were Muslims in need of interpreters of Islamic law with whom he could communicate and who might offer him Hospitality I should add that imuta was Al also a Sufi that is a member of a Brotherhood of Islamic Mystics which provided yet another network of far-flung contacts and expectations of hospitality that he could lean upon rather like the rotary club or the pen Alumni Association today thus throughout his travels we find I batut lodging not just in campsites or hostels such as existed in abundance in the medieval Islamic world but also in the private homes of Scholars and Mystics and in the student lodgings at madrasas and Sufi meeting houses that could be found nearly everywhere on a more philosophical level I bat's education also prepared him to be a better traveler to appreciate the world around him in ways that others might not it was his education that made him acknowledge the sacred sites he visited and which gave them an added resonance it was his education that made him weep to see the state into which Baghdad had fallen since its Glory Days and it was his education that thrilled him when he was confronted with the world's wonders pyramids cities castles mountains tombs rivers and on and on and could with his own eyes experience him firsthand without the cosmopolitanism that his education brought him I batuta would never have made it out the door in brief I muta shows us that a well-rounded education doesn't just give you the skill to navigate the world but perhaps more importantly the heart with which to appreciate it tip number three bring snacks you laugh food was huge huge put it this way to read the book of Marco Polo the Italian Merchant's son the world was about distances and prices and commodities for I batuta the cosmal and Scholar the world was made rich with God's Bounty which should be enjoyed as often as possible and in large quantity loved food and loved telling people about what he ate he loved its grains and nuts its bizarre fruits and exotic vegetables leaves and stocks and Roots its roasted meats and steamed fishes its sauces and creams its Aromas and textures the musky scent of melons and the different textures of their flesh the crunch of pastries the tartness or sweetness of beverages the tricks of its preparation and the Delights of its final preparation uh presentation he recommended egyp as a place perfectly soothed to travel thanks to the frequency of markets and diversity of food stuffs to be found up and down the Nile Valley Syria too abounded in gardens and Orchards and in India well any Foodie in any Century who spent time in South Asia will have thought they had died and gone to heaven ibuta stayed in India for a longer sojourn than in any other region this was ostensively because of his job as a but one wonders whether the palace kitchens of the Sultan of Delhi weren't partly to blame too Foods were Commodities Foods were gifts Foods were medicine Foods were aphrodisiacs Foods evoked poems so why bring snacks the problem was the world was unreliable as much as some areas were Bountiful to Travelers others were wanting and the exigencies of travel were such that food water and supplies were never fully predictable even in well supplied regions like India but Bandits Pirates shipwreck and storms could leave any traveler stranded as we've seen in Northwest India for example he was captured by Bandits for some days but eventually released into the Wilderness by his captors with nothing but his trousers for over a week he wandered about the countryside living off of leaves and berries and hiding in thickets and abandoned wells until he stumbled into a village with a Muslim governor who brought him to Safety in the Sahara on the road to aatan in morania Water Supplies were evenly spaced upon the road with some regularity except for the last stage before the city there 4 days out from the city tribal guides called Tech sheefs had to be booked in advance to ensure that they would bring out water to the traveling party or else they would simply die given worries like these it is probably no accident that tals of hardship of hunger thirst of extreme heat and cold and sickness are as common as imb's luscious Tales of food and drink perhaps worse still were those situ and this is what why I chose this illustration perhaps worse still were those situations where it was the food and not the lack of it that was the problem this was the case in the Crimea of the golden horde where ibuta was forced to his horror to contemplate the nuances of Mongol Cuisine they do not eat bread or any solid food but they prepare a dish from something like Millet in their country which they call Doogie they put water in a pot over the fire and when it has boiled they pour into it some of this Doogie then every man has given his portion in a bowl and they pour over it curdled milk to drink sometimes they drink it with fermented Mar's milk which they call cumis this is a c this is certainly a variety of deprivation that anyone trapped on a transatlantic flight on certain airlines can sympathize with bring snacks people plan on changing your plans this should be an easy one for all of us to understand in a quickie as I mentioned above the world is unrel viable ships can be unavailable companions can go missing supplies can be cut off winds can suddenly die Bandits Pirates weather delay and disease were common features of ima's travel experience almost as much as they are to ours he mentions at least a dozen instances during which illness or injury laid him low sometimes for months on end but these were but speed bumps to a determined traveler like he although he confesses to wrenching homesickness at certain points of his narratives ibuta never let these obstacles turn him back instead he turned aside waited patiently and found another route to take so bad luck will happen but never fear if our plan a doesn't work out we will always have our plan B and it'll be great finally make friends another good bit of Life advice I remember as a graduate student being involved in um giving lectures on a cruise ship um uh in the Mediterranean um and I thought it was going to be great um but I was poor and alone uh and didn't know a soul but the the beauty of such a gig is that you meet interesting people uh fellow people who are interested in travel and the uh and the past and Antiquities and as a graduate student I particularly appreciated their tendency to buy me drinks so it was a a wonderful uh lesson to me the importance of having companions when you travel but friends are not just there to buy you drinks of course as I've noted in UTA could rely upon networks of Scholars and sufis to provide a certain level of hospitality in most of the places he traveled and most of these people were not people he considered friends in in any sense however there are a few individuals that I batuta does take note of as his particular companions who often played crucial roles in his travels indeed the book opens with the following Melancholy reflection I left my birthplace tenier in June 1325 I departed alone without the companionship of a fellow Traveler or in the Assembly of a caravan I resolved to leave my loved ones behind male and female and abandon my home as birds do their nests my parents were still alive and parting from them was a hardship I had to Bear indeed we were all afflicted by the sorrow of Separation I was at the time 22 years old roughly the age of some of my departing seniors thus at the beginning of his journeys I batuta was all alone but soon he had joined with others from the natur natural need of companionship and security along his way thereafter he seems always to have been in the company of others in Caravans or was himself responsible for others who traveled with him as servants or slaves when he arrived in the Frontier Zone of Anatolia he had an Entourage of 10 persons traveling with him at all times 10 people by the time he I only have three uh by the time he had reached India this had increased to 40 persons of which he called 10 companions the remainder being servants and slaves we're not told how long they've been with him or where he picked them up or why except for one man who sort of becomes the emblem of companionship throughout the book um imut sort of Silent Sancho Panza he never speaks this is a guy named Abdullah alusi a fellow scholar whom he met in Cairo after his attempt to reach India from Yemen had failed and had decided to go Overland in that strange route they shared a sedan chair on the trip from Central Asia to India possibly just to stay warm but undoubtedly because their companionship made such a journey seem quicker I batuta said of him that he continued to accompany for many years until he left until we left the land of India he adds later that tueri had gone to Goa in in Western uh India and died there I batut a menues i j is often portrayed as the unsung hero of I B's travels since he wrote them down in the form that we have them today but I wonder about this guy atusi this man who accompanied our hero for so many years who shared space with him and food and all the burdens of the road must have shaped IM bat's travels in subtle ways too through his own tall tales and travelers tips so far as we know he never wrote anything down but in Reading I matuta I cannot help but speculate about the Wonders that the travels of Abdullah atusi would have contained if we only had them so make friends and keep them close over the course of 30 years from Morocco to China and Back Again by camel mule horse and the shoulders of saints and servants who carried him by boat raft da junk sedan chair and covered wagon hi batuta traveled distances and embraced Adventures that make no those of that Venetian poer Marco Polo look like a day in the park of course given the complexities of ima's travels and the challenges he met I could have listed many other Travelers tips than the handful I mentioned tonight Pack Light you get what you pay for be nice to Italians all words to live by but I batuta and IB J's collaborative record of his travels offer us something unique which influenced my choices of tips tonight namely it evokes a world of travel that is in most respects lost to us now true now it takes much less than 30 years to travel to China and back again though it sometimes doesn't feel that way but I patut had the advantage of traveling mostly through borderless lands true he did like us once or twice have to suffer the indignities of baggage searches and Customs control but he needed no passports or visas and was rarely held in suspicion because of his Creed or country of origin indeed quite the opposite now this would be a different story of course if he for example tried to travel around France in the 14th century but that is part of my point that Islamic civilization With a Little Help from Mongol Empire Building created a uniquely unified International or at least trans Regional Zone in which someone like I batuta could travel with some comfort and security find work get married and raise his family tens of thousands of miles away from his home over most of his Living Years True thanks to technological changes since the 1300s we no longer need s uh need such a context to recreate even bat's travels indeed we no longer need to travel at all it could be argued pretty soon someone from Morocco or China could be watching the video of this talk as soon as it hits the web but as any traveler knows that is no substitute for real travel for meeting people for inhabiting Landscapes and their histories for testing our limits and expanding our Horizons on unfamiliar ground great voyages make great nourishment just go walk around the galleries of This Magnificent museum for inspiration but to make that kind of travel suc successful we still need to heed the kinds of Travelers tips that veterans like imuta offer us they help us travel well and most importantly they help us get home again and maybe that is the final and most important bit of advice to ponder from the travels of ID batuta of Tangier who left his home as an unknown 20-some but made it back again as one of the as one of the greatest Travelers of any age thank [Applause] you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Penn Museum

Views: 56,320

Keywords: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Penn Museum, Philadelphia Museums, Philadelphia Museum, Ibn Battuta (Author), Ibn Battuta, Moroccan, Travel, Paul Cobb, Islamic History, University of Pennsylvania, sultan, Traveler

Id: 0v23vZqs8RI

Length: 49min 9sec (2949 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 13 2013