0:02

Happy Saturday, everybody. We have a brand

0:04

new show launching on our network called

0:07

Everywhere. It's hosted by Daniel Scheffler,

0:09

and it's all about travel and not just the places

0:11

to go and the sites to see, but also it's

0:13

focused on Daniel's travel commandments.

0:16

These are things like thou shalt travel

0:18

with the conscience and thou shalt be polite

0:20

and how these things can become an ideal

0:23

travel strategy. And I am

0:25

on this show as well. Daniel and I do

0:27

a segment together where usually we talk about

0:29

the history of something that came up over the course of

0:31

him discussing his travels because he

0:33

has led a wildlife and has traveled all the

0:35

places and done some amazing

0:38

things that you would never expect. Uh.

0:40

And Daniel and I are rather fond of each other,

0:43

so it sometimes dissolves into giggles

0:45

or snarkiness, but we both

0:47

have a really, really good time, and I hope you have a great

0:49

time listening to it. So to go along

0:51

with the travel theme of Everywhere, today,

0:54

we are revisiting our previous episode

0:56

on famed traveler Ibn Batuta, which

0:59

originally came out in August of seventeen,

1:02

so enjoy and stay tuned at the end

1:04

for a peek at Everywhere. Welcome

1:08

to Stuff You missed in History Class, a production

1:11

of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works.

1:18

Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

1:21

I am Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly

1:23

Frying. So back in the spring of

1:26

we did a podcast on Jungha. Remember

1:28

Jengha I do? Indeed, Jengha

1:30

led a fleet of treasure ships on huge

1:33

and far reaching voyages from China

1:35

to Southern Asia, the Arabian Peninsula

1:38

and eastern Africa in the fifteenth

1:40

century. And one of the points we

1:42

made in that episode was that it wasn't

1:44

necessarily accurate to call Jungha

1:47

an explorer, because

1:49

he wasn't so much exploring as following

1:51

roots that were known already, and

1:54

we said that in some cases they were actually

1:56

roots that a man named Ibn Batuta had

1:58

traveled from the op Sit direction a

2:01

century before. Today,

2:03

we are finally going to talk about about

2:05

Abdellah, Mahabad Eben Abdellah, even Ibraheim

2:08

Alawatti Altanji iban Batuta, who

2:11

has been requested by some listeners, including

2:13

Julie and Jennifer, and he's commonly

2:15

just known as Ibn Batuta, like

2:19

Jungha, Hibn Batuta wasn't

2:21

so much an explorer. His travels

2:23

took him to places that were already known

2:25

within the Muslim world, and they were

2:27

part of that world. Mostly

2:30

he traveled along well traveled roots, but

2:32

these travels were extensive.

2:34

He was away from home for roughly twenty

2:37

four years and during that time

2:39

traveled through virtually every Muslim

2:41

nation and territory, becoming the

2:44

traveler of the age. Ibn

2:46

Batuta was born on February

2:48

four, which

2:51

was the year seven oh three in the Islamic

2:53

calendar. We found multiple different conversions

2:55

of the exact date in the Islamic calendar,

2:58

so keep that in mind. They offered

3:00

by one to two days, and I don't trust

3:02

my own conversion enough

3:05

to rely on that. He

3:07

was born in Tangier, which is a port city

3:09

in Morocco, and although it wasn't

3:11

Morocco's busiest port, Tangier's

3:14

position between the Mediterranean and

3:16

the Atlantic meant that it was a frequent

3:18

departure point for ships bound across

3:20

the Strait of Gibraltar to the Iberian

3:22

Peninsula or to other parts of Europe

3:24

and Africa. And this meant that

3:26

although Tangier was a Muslim city, it

3:29

also saw lots of Christian visitors

3:31

and merchants who arrived from places like Genoa,

3:34

Marseilles and Majorca. Apart

3:36

from the father and grandfather, who

3:38

were referenced in his name even

3:41

means son of we don't really

3:43

know a lot about Ibn Batuta's family.

3:45

They were Sunni Muslims who were of an

3:48

indigenous North African people known

3:50

as the Latta, and several were

3:52

kadi's or judges, or they

3:54

were otherwise scholars of Islamic

3:57

law. Even Betuta's upbringing

3:59

was probably typical for a Muslim child

4:01

living in Northern Africa in the fourteenth

4:04

century. He would have attended school,

4:06

either at a mosque or through a private tutor.

4:09

His early education would have focused on the Koran,

4:11

along with subjects like arithmetic and grammar,

4:14

and literature and history. For

4:16

students from more prominent families, which

4:18

Ibban Batuta was more advanced,

4:21

study followed as children got older.

4:24

We do know for sure that Iban

4:26

Batuta's study of the Koran and of Islamic

4:29

law were really lifelong. He

4:31

learned the whole Koran by heart, and

4:33

he wrote of reciting it to himself

4:35

from beginning to end, as he traveled, sometimes

4:38

twice when he felt like he needed to bolster himself

4:40

up a little more. And when he was

4:43

twenty one by the Gregorian calendar

4:45

and twenty two by the Islamic Lunar

4:47

calendar, ibn Batuta began

4:49

preparing for the Hajj, the pilgrimage

4:51

to Mecca that is one of the five pillars

4:53

of Islam, and this was for him

4:55

a religious duty. It's an obligation

4:58

for all Muslims who are physically in fine, financially

5:00

able to go, and whose families won't

5:02

be harmed by their being away, And

5:05

it was also something he genuinely wanted to

5:07

do, describing himself as quote

5:09

swayed by an overmastering impulse

5:12

within me and a desire long cherished

5:14

in my bosom to visit these illustrious

5:16

sanctuaries. Ibn

5:18

Batuta's pilgrimage was also an

5:21

opportunity to further his education.

5:23

Although Tangier was a notable ports

5:26

city, it wasn't particularly known for

5:28

its scholars and it didn't have a college.

5:31

So Ibn Batuta's pilgrimage would

5:33

allow him to study with legal scholars

5:35

and with Sufi mystics and cities like Tunas,

5:37

Alexandria, and Cairo along the way.

5:40

Studying with more prominent scholars

5:42

was an opportunity for Ibn Batuta to

5:45

deepen his own knowledge of Islamic law.

5:47

It's the body of guiding rules and principles

5:50

that govern Muslims daily lives and worship,

5:52

also known as Sharia, and enhancing

5:55

his legal training would give him access to more

5:57

prestigious work. But this wasn't

5:59

simply a means to moving up a

6:01

career ladder, because the law ibn

6:03

Batuta was studying was rooted in the Islamic

6:06

faith and was inseparable from that

6:08

faith. His religious and legal

6:10

educations were also inseparable from

6:12

one another. On top

6:14

of the intertwined nature of

6:17

his religious and legal education,

6:19

the concept of seeking knowledge

6:21

is an important part of Islam in general.

6:24

Both the Koran and the Hadith, which is

6:26

a record of the sayings and actions of the prophet

6:29

Mohammed, have multiple references

6:31

to learning and seeking knowledge, including

6:34

how to seek knowledge in a way that's ethical

6:36

and compatible with Islam.

6:38

So essentially, seeking knowledge

6:40

is an act of worship, and it's incumbent

6:43

upon all Muslims to learn one

6:46

hadith that frequently comes up in relation

6:48

to Ibn Batuta is seek knowledge

6:50

even as far as China, although

6:53

there are some questions about whether that one is correctly

6:55

attributed, those same basic concepts

6:58

are definitely present in others. Iban

7:01

Batuta left for Mecca on June

7:03

fourteenth of thirteen twenty five, which

7:05

was the year seven twenty five in the Islamic

7:07

calendar. Although many pilgrims

7:10

traveled to Mecca as part of an official organized

7:13

caravan, and iban Batuta may have

7:15

been planning to join a caravan later

7:17

on in the journey, he initially set

7:19

off alone over land, following

7:21

the North African coast, and

7:23

even though iban Batuta embarked alone,

7:26

the Hajj is an annual religious observance,

7:29

so other Muslims were also setting out for

7:31

Mecca on their own pilgrimages, generally

7:34

following the same roads and routes through northern

7:36

Africa. So after about

7:38

three weeks he fell in with two companions,

7:40

although they separated after they both got

7:43

sick due to the severe summer heat.

7:45

One companion actually died and the other

7:47

returned that person's body home. A

7:50

little later in the journey across northern Africa,

7:53

ibn Batuta fell ill as well, one

7:55

of several serious illnesses he contracted

7:57

during his travels. When someone

8:00

suggested he stay in a town for a while

8:02

to recover, ibban Batuta replied,

8:04

if God decrees my death, it shall be

8:07

on the road with my face set towards the land

8:09

of Hijas. As

8:11

he traveled, Ibban Batuta would stop for a

8:13

time in cities and towns, and the length

8:15

of his stay would depend on everything from his

8:17

health to the travel conditions to whether

8:20

there were important scholars in residents.

8:22

For example, he spent two months in Tunas

8:25

studying at the College of the Booksellers

8:27

and being appointed Kadi of a pilgrim

8:29

caravan. When he left there, he

8:32

also entered into a marriage contract

8:34

with the daughter of a Tunisian official who

8:36

was part of that caravan. The

8:38

two men eventually had some kind of falling

8:40

out and broke that contract. Shortly

8:43

thereafter, Ibban Batuta entered into a marriage

8:45

contract with a different woman, the daughter

8:47

of another pilgrim who was a scholar from Fizz,

8:50

and she would be the first of several wives and

8:52

concubines, some of them enslaved

8:54

that Ibban Batuta would bring into his life.

8:57

Ibban Batuta and the company of pilgrim

9:00

he was traveling with arrived in Alexandria

9:02

at the Nile River delta in the early spring

9:05

of thirty six. He stayed

9:07

there for about a month, visiting holy

9:09

sites, studying, and also doing some sight

9:11

seeing, including touring the city's textile

9:13

district, but eventually he decided it

9:15

was time to move on again. The timing

9:18

of his journey and the time that he'd spent

9:20

in Alexandria meant that at this point he

9:22

wasn't lined up with the season for

9:24

pilgrimage caravans anymore, so there

9:26

was no official company for him to join.

9:29

He was once again on his own.

9:32

His plan was to follow the banks of

9:34

the Nile River south to a town near

9:36

the modern border with Sudan, and

9:38

from there he would travel overland to

9:40

the Red Sea, board a boat to

9:42

Jetta and travel overland from

9:44

there to Mecca. The

9:47

trip up the Nile took about three weeks,

9:49

but then when he got to the Red Sea, it turned

9:52

out that most of the boats in the port had

9:54

been destroyed during a dispute between

9:56

the local ruling family and the governor,

9:59

so he had to turn back. This time, taking a boat

10:01

down the Nile, getting back to Alexandria

10:03

in about eight days, spending one

10:06

night there before leaving for Syria.

10:08

And the reason he only spent one night was

10:10

that at this point the season for official

10:13

travel to Mecca was approaching, and

10:15

he thought if he made good enough time, he could

10:17

join a caravan leaving out of Damascus.

10:20

On the way. He stayed for about a week in Jerusalem,

10:23

but even so he got to Damascus with

10:25

enough time to spare that he stayed there

10:27

for nearly a month. Although he

10:29

had been continuing his studies throughout the

10:31

trip. In Damascus, he continued them formally,

10:34

earning several official certifications

10:36

in different law texts. In

10:38

Damascus, Ivan Patuta finally did

10:40

join an official caravan bound for Mecca

10:43

that he stayed with for the rest of the

10:45

trip there, which we will talk about after

10:47

a quick sponsor break.

10:57

Ivan Patuta set out with a large

10:59

caravan of pilgrims from Damascus

11:01

on September one, thirty six.

11:04

This was more than a year after leaving

11:06

his home in Tangier. He doesn't

11:08

specifically say how many people were

11:11

in this caravan, but it was likely several

11:13

thousand. Official caravans traveling

11:15

to Mecca were in our very large.

11:18

First they went to Medina, which is about eight

11:21

hundred twenty miles or roughly hundred

11:23

kilometers away from Damascus,

11:26

and the travel there took about fifty days.

11:29

Once they're pilgrims took part in several

11:31

days of religious rituals, including at

11:33

the Mosque of the Profit, and then

11:35

from Medina it was another two hundred

11:38

miles or three hundred twenty kilometers

11:40

to Mecca, where Ibn Batuta finally

11:42

arrived in October of thirteen twenty

11:44

six. After the Hajj,

11:47

which involves several days of religious observances

11:49

and rituals, most pilgrims returned

11:52

home, but even Batuta did

11:54

not. Early in his journey, he'd

11:56

had a dream of a great bird sweeping

11:58

him away over a far day stints.

12:01

He had also meant an ascetic who told him

12:03

that he would meet and offer greetings to the ascetics

12:05

three brothers, one in India when in

12:07

sind and one in China. Sind

12:10

is now Pakistan. But aside

12:12

from these more romantic ideas,

12:14

Ibn Batuta thought that if he continued

12:16

to travel, he could continue to learn

12:19

and to find work as a Kadi, and

12:21

instead of turning west toward home, he went

12:23

north and then east toward what's now a Rock

12:25

in the company of returning pilgrims from

12:28

that region. Although he did

12:30

make several stops along him away, his

12:32

primary goal at this point was to visit

12:34

the city of Baghdad. Baghdad

12:36

had been besieged and then sacked during

12:38

the Mongol invasion in twelve fifty eight,

12:41

and that was a little less than seventy years

12:43

before Ivan Batuta's arrival. That

12:46

sacking is generally considered

12:48

to be the end of the Islamic Golden

12:50

Age, so when Iban Batuta

12:52

went there, he was envisioning it as sort

12:55

of witnessing one of the great

12:57

cities that had been He also

12:59

stopped in most of the major cities in

13:01

the area and took a tour up the Tigris

13:03

River. From there, he returned

13:06

to Mecca with another Hajj caravan,

13:08

this time staying for at least a year, during

13:11

which time he both studied and performed

13:13

the rituals associated with the lesser

13:15

pilgrimage a number of times. He

13:18

left Mecca again in either thirteen twenty

13:21

eight or thirteen thirty exactly

13:23

when is a little bit unclear, but whichever

13:25

it was. He spent the next two

13:27

years traveling mainly by boat

13:29

to cities along the Red Sea, the Persian

13:32

Gulf, and the Arabian Sea. He

13:34

went as far south as Kilwa on

13:36

the African coast in what's now Tanzania,

13:39

but was at the time part of the Kilwa

13:41

sultan It. After two years

13:43

of mostly seafaring wandering,

13:46

he once again joined a pilgrimage

13:48

caravan Sebecca, traveling over land

13:50

across the entirety of the Arabian

13:52

Peninsula before observing

13:54

the Hajj for a third time. By

13:57

this point, Ivan Batuta had learned

13:59

that the Alton of Delhi, Mohammed Togluk,

14:02

had invited scholars to India,

14:04

and that many who made their way there were finding themselves

14:07

with prestigious appointments that came along

14:09

with lavish gifts. The Sultan

14:11

had made a practice of specifically filling

14:13

posts with foreign visitors, and even

14:16

Batuta hoped to be one of them. But

14:18

to get there and to get an appointment, he

14:21

needed a guide who spoke Persian New

14:23

India well and had contacts

14:25

there who could help Ibn Batuta on his way.

14:28

His initial plan seems to have been to

14:30

try to find such a guide in Jetta

14:33

and then to have a relatively straightforward

14:35

sea voyage to India. But he couldn't

14:37

find someone with the skills and connections

14:39

that he needed, so instead he set

14:42

off on a much much more circuitous

14:45

route overland, perhaps thinking

14:47

that he might meet someone along the way. He

14:50

first made his way back to Cairo and from

14:52

there to the port city of Latakia

14:54

on the Syrian coast, before taking a

14:56

ship across the Mediterranean Sea

14:58

to Alanna in Anna Tolia on

15:00

the coast of what is now Turkey,

15:03

and he then undertook a very roundabout

15:05

two year trek that went to Constantinople,

15:08

through the Byzantine Empire, across

15:10

the Asian Step, and then through

15:12

Afghanistan, finally crossing

15:14

the Indus River in thirty three or

15:16

thirty five. He essentially

15:18

went quite far to the north, following a

15:21

zigzagging path between the Black Sea

15:23

and the Caspian Sea before dropping

15:25

southeast into India. If

15:27

you look at a map, this was not

15:29

just an indirect way to go. Crossing

15:32

the Asian Step was also far

15:35

more difficult than going by sea or

15:37

by following some of the other overland routes.

15:40

Taking the path that was both the long way

15:42

and the hard way may have been because

15:45

Matuta had already seen several

15:47

of the cities along the Arabian Sea that

15:49

they would have passed through if he had gone

15:51

that way instead, he had resolved

15:54

to never travel a path that he had traveled

15:56

before if there was some other

15:58

option available. That seems

16:00

like it would get so problematic in a hurry,

16:03

and apparently it did. There

16:06

are there are lots of maps of his voyages

16:08

online and there is very little

16:11

like the arrow going two

16:13

directions on the same bath, and when

16:16

it is it's usually like okay, yeah, that's there's not

16:18

really a different way to go. Iba

16:21

Batuta spent about eight years in

16:23

India, where he was named Cutty of Delhi,

16:25

although for his first several months there he

16:28

spent his time accompanying the Sultan

16:30

on hunting expeditions rather than hearing

16:32

legal cases. He also had

16:34

some trouble with money. He had purchased

16:36

gifts for the Sultan, including horses,

16:39

camels, and enslaved people along

16:41

the way with the hope that it was going to help

16:43

him secure a good appointment, and

16:45

although his appointment as Cutty came

16:47

with an income, he just didn't have the same

16:50

pool of wealth as many of the other Deli

16:52

elite to draw from, and he

16:54

was expected to maintain an opulent lifestyle

16:57

and to spend some of his income on gifts

16:59

and pay to others, so he was soon

17:01

in debt. Apart from

17:04

his financial problems, says, years in India

17:06

overall also weren't particularly

17:08

easy due to a combination of famines,

17:11

uprisings, and political intrigue.

17:14

At this point, India had a majority

17:16

Hindu population that was being ruled

17:18

by a minority Muslim government,

17:21

which leads to ongoing uprisings

17:23

and religious violence. Around

17:25

thirteen forty, ibn Batuta

17:28

was appointed to lead an envoy from Delhi

17:30

to China, and he left in the summer

17:32

of thirteen forty one. He

17:34

was tasked with ensuring the safety of a

17:36

huge retinue, including hundreds of people

17:39

and gifts including textiles, dishware,

17:41

and weapons. Although they traveled

17:44

under armed guard, they were attacked by Hindu

17:46

insurgents only a few days out from

17:48

Delhi. Ibn Batuta was attacked

17:51

and robbed a second time while waiting for

17:53

reinforcements after that first incident,

17:55

and then he became lost for six days

17:58

after escaping from his captor. After

18:00

this inauspicious beginning, the

18:03

expedition ended disastrously

18:05

in early thirty two, when the

18:07

whole fleet of four ships

18:09

at this point they had moved to a sea voyage,

18:12

was forced aground and wrecked in

18:14

a storm off the port of Calicut on

18:16

the southwestern coast of India. Most

18:19

of their retinue was also killed

18:21

in this storm and shipwrecks, including

18:24

the other two highest ranking officials

18:26

that had been dispatched from Delhi. Edmund

18:28

Btuta only survived because he had

18:30

moved from the junk where the diplomatic

18:33

envoy was supposed to be sleeping, to another

18:35

ship because the room that was assigned to him

18:38

on the diplomatic junk was just too

18:40

small for his taste. Although

18:42

he wanted to return to Delhi and tell the

18:44

Sultan what had happened, he didn't

18:46

feel like he could, at least not right away.

18:49

Not only had the entire retinue and all

18:52

of its goods been lost on his watch, but

18:54

he would also have to explain why he

18:56

had survived while the other officials

18:58

had not. He had also lost

19:01

nearly everything he had in that storm.

19:04

He wound up stranded for months before finally

19:06

finding passage to Honavar on the western

19:08

coast of India on a fleet of ships

19:11

that belonged to the Sultan. Once

19:14

he got there, though, the situation was not

19:16

much better. He had hoped to find

19:18

a patron and some kind of appointment

19:20

that would allow him the time and

19:22

the resources to figure out what he should

19:24

do next, and perhaps even to recoup

19:26

some of his lost income. Instead,

19:29

he wound up spending most of the summer

19:31

of thirteen forty two and devotional seclusion,

19:34

praying and reciting the Koran twice through

19:36

every day. He was basically offered

19:39

housing in a like this one person's

19:41

room, and he was like, yeah, I don't really have work for

19:43

you. You can stay here, though, so he

19:46

basically stayed there in prayer for months,

19:48

and finally he decided to go to China

19:51

on his own, staying for a time

19:53

in the Maldives and acting again as

19:55

Cutty before going on to China by sea.

19:58

By this point he had been to so many places

20:01

and could tell stories of so many other courts

20:03

that he was received enthusiastically and

20:05

he was compensated generously. Once

20:09

he left the Maldives. There's some dispute

20:11

about exactly how far into China

20:14

he did go, in part because he didn't

20:16

give a lot of detail about China

20:18

when he wrote about his travels. This

20:20

lack of detail has led some critics

20:22

to suggest that he did not go to China at

20:25

all. And while he probably did

20:27

not get nearly as far as

20:29

the account of his trip suggests, with some

20:31

of that probably being embellished when it was being

20:34

written, he almost certainly did

20:36

visit the more southeastern parts of China.

20:39

His lack of detail is more likely

20:41

because the Muslim population there was relatively

20:44

small, and that was really what he was most

20:46

interested in learning from and writing

20:48

about. So he just had a lot less

20:50

interest in China and a lot less to

20:53

say about it. And it was after

20:55

visiting China that iban Batuta decided

20:57

at last to return home after

21:00

undertaking the Hajj one last time.

21:02

We're going to talk about all of that after we

21:04

have a little sponsor break.

21:14

Finally abandoning the idea of returning

21:16

to India to explain what had happened to the

21:18

convoy, Ibn Matuta began

21:20

working his way toward home in thirteen

21:22

forty seven by way of one last

21:25

pilgrimage to Mecca that would be his fourth

21:27

during his lifetime. Rather

21:29

than waiting for the next pilgrimage season,

21:31

he took a wandering route through Persia, Iraq,

21:34

Syria, and Egypt, and in Damascus,

21:36

Syria, he learned that his father had

21:38

died about fifteen years before.

21:42

He decided to travel to Aleppo in

21:44

the summer of which

21:46

turned out to be just as the Black Death

21:48

began moving through the region, and

21:51

for the next several months, his travels took him

21:53

through cities and towns that were ravaged

21:55

by the plague. For a time,

21:57

he got ahead of the spread of the disease, but it

21:59

caught up with him again in Mecca, where

22:01

he spent four months awaiting the Hajj.

22:05

After his fourth hodge, he began traveling

22:07

finally towards Tangier, but

22:10

once he arrived there after his decades

22:12

of absence, he learned that his mother had

22:15

died of the plague only about six

22:17

months before. Iban

22:19

Batuta didn't stay at home for long. He

22:21

soon set out once again for a brief tour

22:24

of Granada across the Strait of Gibraltar,

22:26

followed by a return to Africa and

22:28

a tour to the south, crossing the Sahara

22:30

Desert to the Kingdom of Mali and the

22:33

city of tim bucktwo. Iban

22:35

Batuta finally returned to Fez,

22:37

which was then the capital of Morocco, in

22:39

thirteen fifty four, and as

22:41

far as we know, he spent the rest

22:43

of his life in or near Morocco.

22:46

The Sultan Abu Nan asked him

22:48

to write an account of his journey, and

22:51

in doing this, iban Batuta worked with an amanuensis

22:53

ibban Juse, who was also a court

22:56

poet. Iban Jus made

22:58

his language poetic, added some

23:00

actual poems, and probably embellished

23:02

a few things, while also bringing iban

23:04

Matucha's account in line with literary

23:07

standards of the time. The end

23:09

result of all this work was finished

23:11

on December fifty

23:13

five. It's full Arabic title

23:16

roughly translates to a gift

23:18

to those who contemplate the wonders of cities

23:20

and the marvels of traveling. It's

23:23

more commonly known as the RelA, although

23:25

RelA is really a genre essentially

23:27

a travelog within Islamic

23:30

literature. Given Matuta's RelA

23:32

Chronicles has traveled through essentially

23:34

the entire fourteenth century

23:36

Muslim world. He had gone

23:39

seventy five thousand miles

23:41

or a hundred and twenty thousand kilometers,

23:43

that is three times farther than Marco

23:46

Polo's journeys and three times

23:48

the circumference of the Earth. Along

23:50

the way, he visited what's now forty

23:53

different modern countries. He met

23:55

at least sixty heads of state and a

23:57

wealth of lesser leaders and dignitaries,

24:00

and he served as an advisor to at

24:02

least twelve different rulers.

24:04

He also met all three brothers

24:06

of the Ascetic that he had heard

24:09

about so early in his journey,

24:11

and did indeed offer them greetings. The

24:14

RelA is about one thousand pages

24:16

long, and since he was reconstructing

24:18

it from memory after the end of his travels,

24:20

it's chronology is sometimes a little bit

24:23

mixed up or vague, but otherwise

24:25

it stands as a wide ranging account

24:27

of what the Islamic world was like in the fourteenth

24:30

century. The world was and

24:32

still is huge, but it is not

24:34

at all monolithic. It's people are

24:36

united by the core belief in the Koran and

24:38

by the idea that the tenets of Islam create

24:41

a bond that is greater than ethnicity.

24:43

Or race. Yeah, if you're if

24:45

you're looking at the chronology of his travels

24:48

and you kind of go, does that make sense? You

24:51

may have even thought, does that make sense? In some of

24:53

this episode so far? It's because he was basically

24:55

reconstructing it later on,

24:59

and and sometimes I was talking about places

25:01

that he passed through more than one time, So sometimes

25:03

a little seems a little mixed up. As

25:06

iban Batuta traveled, he observed

25:08

the diversity of Islam, seeing

25:10

how it was filtered through Arab, Persian,

25:12

Turkish, and Mongol cultures. He

25:15

wrote about how people worshiped, how

25:17

they interpreted the law, and what their

25:19

holy sites were like, along with describing

25:22

the cities themselves, in their cuisine and

25:24

their environment, and things like whether they

25:26

were clean. The book gradually

25:28

reveals some of iban Batuta's personality

25:31

and tells us a little about the worldview of

25:33

an educated, devout fourteenth

25:35

century Muslim. He was

25:37

a pious man who could sometimes come

25:39

off as a bit of a busybody, even beyond

25:42

what might be expected of a man whose

25:44

job was to be a judge. But

25:46

he was also gregarious and highly

25:48

curious about the world. Otherwise,

25:51

though there's really very little about his personal

25:53

life. For example, he married at

25:55

least seven women, and he had children with

25:57

at least some of them, in addition to having new

26:00

risk concubines, although none

26:02

of these people play a part in the text beyond

26:04

the mention of their marriage or occasionally

26:06

their death. And we also get

26:09

nothing about his homecoming and what happened

26:11

when he met friends and family that he'd been separated

26:13

from for almost a quarter of a century,

26:16

or when he learned how many of them had died

26:19

in the Black Death. And this

26:21

was really typical of writing at the time.

26:23

It was not considered really appropriate

26:25

to be talking about your personal business in public

26:28

anyway, so it would have been doubly inappropriate

26:30

if he had filled his book up with

26:32

a lot of personal details about his life.

26:35

So like that is not a typical at all. Also,

26:38

when we say he comes off sometimes it's a bit of a

26:40

busy body. The story that to me typ

26:42

of eyes at the best is there was there's one part

26:45

in his relo or he writes about going

26:47

into a bath house and some of the men

26:49

didn't have waste coverings on, and

26:51

his response to this was to go to the

26:54

governor of the town and to tell the governor

26:56

of the town that there were some men in the

26:58

bath house that didn't have waste coverings on, and

27:00

then get the governor all riled up

27:02

about it, followed by

27:05

a crackdown on whether there

27:07

were waste coverings in the

27:09

bath houses. On the one hand, there

27:13

was just expected that men would

27:15

have waste coverings on.

27:17

On the other hand, there were definitely a lot of

27:19

people involved in the situation who were like man

27:21

Ivan Batuda business. He

27:24

went right to escalation on that one. Yeah.

27:27

So the a lot of people in

27:30

their descriptions of Ivan Beatuda

27:32

use words like kind of a fuss budget

27:35

or a little judgmental uh,

27:38

and that that kind of uh.

27:40

That kind of account is why. So

27:42

this book was largely unknown

27:45

until the nineteenth century and even in

27:47

the Arabic speaking world. Although

27:49

various additions exist in libraries

27:51

in North Africa and the Middle East dating

27:54

from the time after it was written, it does

27:57

not seem to have been very widely read

27:59

between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries.

28:02

However, in a weird turn of events,

28:04

French scholars found five

28:06

manuscripts in Algeria after

28:08

the French occupied Algeria in the eighteen

28:11

thirties and these scholars began trying to

28:13

piece together translations. A lot

28:15

of the first translations in English were

28:17

very heavily abridged, unsurprisingly

28:19

because it is a thousand pages long and

28:22

a complete English language translation.

28:24

Projects started in nineteen twenty nine

28:27

the Hackleyott Society, which is an English

28:29

society that publishes scholarly editions

28:31

of primary source texts about travel

28:33

m geography, which is an amazingly

28:36

specific mission. UH

28:39

published the first three volumes

28:41

by the mid twentieth century, but the fourth

28:44

volume didn't come out until I think nine four.

28:47

And it's actually unclear when even

28:49

Batuta died, although it was in

28:52

the year seven hundred in the Islamic calendar,

28:54

which would have been thirteen sixty eight or thirteen

28:56

sixty nine. A two man

28:59

tangier is tradeally considered to

29:01

be his, but we don't actually know

29:03

if that's the case today. There's

29:05

also a shopping mall named for him in Dubai

29:08

and its courts are all themed

29:10

after places that he went, and

29:13

UH A lot of commentators are like, I'm

29:16

not sure if I Tuda thought would have thought this was

29:18

cool or not? Yeah,

29:20

he like he did. I mean, obviously he

29:23

traveled for almost a quarter

29:25

of a century in a time when travel was a

29:27

lot more uncomfortable and

29:29

and time consuming than it is in a

29:32

lot of the world today. But

29:34

the like the fact that, um, he

29:37

was so particular about

29:39

things. Uh sometimes people are like what I Betuda

29:41

walk in here and be like, oh, yeah, this is cool.

29:44

I like to look at this place. Or would he be more like, M

29:46

I'm not sure, we don't know, I

29:49

don't really now. Thank

29:56

you so much for joining us on this Saturday.

29:58

If you have heard an email address

30:01

or a Facebook you are l or something similar over

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the course of today's episode, since it is

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from the archive that might be out of date now,

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you can email us at history podcast

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at how Stuff Works dot com, and you can find

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us all over social media at missed in

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History. And you can subscribe to our

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30:42

I'm Daniel Scheffler and I have some

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strong feelings about travel. I

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Cold Everywhere. I've

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spent the majority of my life circling the globe.

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In fact, let's throw out that word

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