Imaginary interview with Ibn Battûta
by Charactorium · Ibn Battûta (1304 — 1368) · Exploration · 6 min read
At dusk, in a shaded courtyard in Fez, an old man in a white turban unrolls the roads of the world from memory. Nearly thirty years of dust and seas are still written on his face. He agrees to retrace, one last time, the path that led him from Tangier to the ends of China.
—How did a simple pilgrimage to Mecca turn into a life of travel?
I left alone, at twenty-one, leaving Tangier without a companion to cheer me, without a caravan whose route I could follow, driven by a desire long cherished in my heart to visit the illustrious sanctuaries. The hajj was to take me a season, perhaps two. But when I reached Mecca in 1326 and saw the faithful flocking from all lands of Islam, I understood that God had opened before me a door too vast to close. Every pilgrim from Yemen, India, or Khorasan carried an entire country within him. I told myself it would be ungrateful to turn back when the entire Dar al-Islam awaited me. So I postponed my return, and that postponement lasted twenty-eight years.
God had opened before me a door too vast to close.
—What feeling filled you, as a young man, when you turned your back on your home?
My heart burned, I will not hide it. Leaving one's parents for the road is like tearing a tree from its soil: you do not know if it will take root elsewhere. But a jurist from Tangier knows that knowledge and faith are sought along the paths, not under the family roof. I mounted my steed at dawn, after the fajr prayer, to enjoy the cool before the heat, and I did not look back, for the traveler who turns around too much loses the courage to go forward. I did not know then that my mother would die before my return, and my father long before her. Had I known, perhaps I would have hesitated. But God, in His wisdom, veils the future from the traveler, so that he may walk.
—How did you become a judge at the court of the Sultan of Delhi?
When I arrived in India in 1334, my training as a Maliki jurist preceded me like a safe-conduct. Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq sought foreign scholars to serve his justice, and he appointed me qadi of Delhi, granting me lands and a salary worthy of a prince. I accepted, for a man of law does not refuse to apply the sharia where he is called. But this sultan was like a bottomless sea: generous in the morning, terrible in the evening. He distributed gold by the handful and had his opponents impaled before his palace. I lived for years suspended between favor and terror, knowing that a single whim of his could cast me from the magistracy to the dungeon, or worse.
This sultan was like a bottomless sea: generous in the morning, terrible in the evening.
—Why did you agree to serve a prince you knew to be so dangerous?
You speak as a man who has never been hungry on a distant road. A traveler far from his country has only his knowledge for bread. The post of qadi in Delhi offered me a livelihood, lands, and the means to continue my journey toward the East. To refuse would have offended Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq, and no one offended that man without paying with his head. So I dispensed justice according to the Book, striving to remain just without displeasing the master, which is the most difficult art I know. When at last he sent me as an ambassador to China, I saw the merciful hand of God: an honorable pretext to leave his court alive and take to the sea again.
—You crossed so many seas and deserts; which passage tested you most?
The cold, strangely, more than thirst. I had known the burning deserts of Arabia, where the sand bakes the skin and one dreams of a gulp of water. But when I crossed the steppes of Crimea in the depths of winter, in a cart covered with furs and pulled by horses and camels, I thought my limbs would shatter like glass. I had never experienced anything like it, and I noted it so that no one would believe the traveler spared the rigors of the North. On the seas, I knew the light dhows of the Indian Ocean, which dance on the wave like a leaf in the wind, and the Chinese junks, those floating fortresses as high as palaces. Every crossing teaches humility: man is but a grain entrusted to the breath of God.
Every crossing teaches humility: man is but a grain entrusted to the breath of God.
—What did you say about distant lands like China, which few Muslims had seen?
China amazed and troubled me at the same time. It is, of all the countries I have traveled, the safest for the traveler: one can journey there for nine months without fear for life or property, so great is the order under the Yuan empire. In Quanzhou, a great port teeming with merchants, I found established Muslim brothers, mosques, and caravanserais for foreigners. And yet my soul was uneasy there, for everything was paganism and idols, so far from the Dar al-Islam that had carried me thus far. I hurried to find a city where the khatib pronounced the Friday sermon, for it is by the name cited in the khutba that a traveler recognizes in which house of the world he finds himself.
—Do you remember your arrival at the court of Mali, after crossing the Sahara?
In 1352, I crossed the great desert with a caravan, toward the empire of Mali and its sovereign Mansa Suleyman. What I saw of justice there filled me with admiration: the country was so safe that neither traveler nor inhabitant had to fear thief or brigand, and the sultan did not forgive the unjust, whatever their rank. That is a virtue that many princes of the East should envy. But other customs deeply shocked me, I who am a Maliki jurist: the women appeared before the sultan without veils, as if modesty had no law. I could not restrain my disapproval, and I spoke it aloud.
The country was so safe that neither traveler nor inhabitant had to fear the brigand.
—How did you react when the Sultan of Mali corrected your judgment?
I had believed, in my pride as a scholar from the North, that I could correct the customs of this people in the name of God's law. But Mansa Suleyman reminded me, with a dignity I will not forget, that these customs were ancient in his country, perhaps older than my own knowledge. I had to bow my head. Travel teaches this too: you set out believing you carry the light, and you discover that every land burns its own lamp. Yet I faithfully recorded what I saw in Mali, the good as well as what seemed blameworthy to me, for the duty of the witness is not to judge the whole earth, but to report it as it offers itself to his eyes. God alone knows the depths of hearts and the truth of customs.
—After so many years, what decided you to set down your memories in writing?
I would never have thought of it alone. When I finally returned to Morocco in 1354, after twenty-eight years of absence, I was no more than a weary man, rich only in what my memory had stored. It was the Marinid sultan Abu Inan who ordered it: that I should dictate everything, from the first step out of Tangier. I was given a talented scholar, Ibn Juzayy, with his calamus trimmed and his parchment, and for months I poured into his ear the cities, the sultans, the seas, and the deserts. Thus was the Rihla born. Without this order from the prince, all of it would have died with me, like a lamp blown out. A travel account, you see, is a caravan entrusted to the generations.
A travel account is a caravan entrusted to the generations.
—How did you feel entrusting a lifetime of memories to another?
A strange shyness, at first. How to lodge thirty years in the memory of a single man, and pass them through the calamus of another? Ibn Juzayy wrote while I spoke, and sometimes I saw astonishment on his face, as if I were telling him the marvels of a dream rather than the facts of my life. I feared I would not be believed, for the traveler who returns is always taken for a liar in the eyes of those who have never left their doorstep. But Sultan Abu Inan wanted this testimony, and I dictated as best I could, adding nothing that God could reproach me for. The Rihla is not my work: it is what my eyes received and my tongue rendered, from Mali to the gates of China.
—If you could have imagined that people would read you for centuries, what would you have wanted to convey?
I am only a humble qadi of Tangier, and it is not fitting to pretend to last beyond one's time; that belongs only to God. But if I could dream that a reader opens the Rihla long after my death, I would want him to find this: that the land of Islam is as vast as divine mercy, stretching from threatened Andalusia to the ports of China, and that a man of faith can travel it, finding brothers, a mosque, a madrasa everywhere to welcome him. I would want him to feel, beneath the dust of words, the smell of caravanserais and the cold of the steppes. And that he understand that one does not travel to flee one's home, but to grasp how great God's world is.
One does not travel to flee one's home, but to grasp how great God's world is.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Ibn Battûta's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.