Imaginary interview with Ibn Battûta
by Charactorium · Ibn Battûta (1304 — 1368) · Exploration · 5 min read
It is in a house in Fez, late afternoon of the year 1355, that Ibn Juzayy meets the traveler he has been tasked with writing down. On the low table, the reed pen and papers await, and the ink is already drying at the edge of the inkwell. The two men have known each other for months: day after day, the scholar collects the words of this man from Tangier who returned after twenty-eight years of wandering, by order of the sultan Abu Inan. Today, Ibn Juzayy wants not only the routes and city names — he wants the man.
—Sheikh Abu Abdallah, before I transcribe your first words, tell me: when you left Tangier in 1325, did you know where this departure would lead you?
No, my friend, I knew nothing. I was twenty-one years old and had but one desire: to perform the hajj and kiss the Black Stone. I set out alone, with no companion to enjoy, with no caravan whose route I could follow. But no sooner had I reached Mecca, in 1326, than a new hunger seized me — that of seeing what lay beyond the next mountain, and then the one after that. What was meant to be a pilgrimage of one season became the affair of my life. God alone knew then that He would make me cross so many seas and so many deserts before bringing me back to die in my homeland.
What was meant to be a pilgrimage of one season became the affair of my life.
—You left your mother, your father, your city. On the roads, did you never regret having yielded to this desire?
Many times my heart ached. The first separation was the hardest: I wept as the walls of Tangier faded from sight, and the caravaners had to console me like a child. But at each new city, each scholar met in a madrasa, each sultan who welcomed me to his table, regret gave way to wonder. I understood that God had placed brothers on my path whom I would never have known had I stayed home. You who record my words know how many friends I mourned along the way — but I do not regret the road. The regret I kept for those I did not see alive again.
—Tell me about Delhi. You became qadi to Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq — was it the honor one imagines, or something else?
It was both, and that is what made it terrible. The sultan showered me with gifts: a judge's office, a considerable salary, lands, presents worthy of a prince. But this man was as unpredictable as a storm. In the morning he would raise a man to the highest honors, in the evening have him thrown to the elephants. I lived years at his court with a knot in my stomach, never knowing if the day's generosity hid the next day's death sentence. I saw viziers tremble and learned heads fall. To serve such a master is to sleep near the lion: he feeds you with his hand, but that same hand can crush you.
To serve such a master is to sleep near the lion.
—How does a man maintain his integrity as a judge when the master who pays him can kill him on a whim?
One entrusts oneself to God, and learns to be silent in time. My Maliki legal training had given me the law; the court of Delhi taught me prudence. I dispensed justice as best I could, but there were days when I preferred to withdraw into devotion rather than face the sultan's mood. In the end, I understood I had to leave: I seized the first mission he entrusted to me, an embassy to China, as one seizes a rope stretched over a precipice. Leaving that court was as much a deliverance as a peril. Better the storms of the ocean than the favor of a mad prince.
—You crossed the Sahara to Mali in 1352. In your accounts, you praise the sultan's justice but blame his customs. How do you explain that?
Because both things were true, and I want you to write only the truth. The land of Mansa Sulayman was safer than any other I have seen: neither traveler nor inhabitant had to fear thief or bandit. This is a people who love justice more than any other, and their sultan does not pardon injustice, whatever the rank of the guilty. But my jurist's eye was struck by certain practices — women appearing before the sovereign unveiled, customs I deemed contrary to the law. I said so, and the sultan reminded me that these customs were ancient in his land. I praised what was praiseworthy and blamed what seemed blameworthy to me.
I praised what was praiseworthy and blamed what seemed blameworthy to me.
—You, the jurist of Tangier, facing an empire of Black Africa — did you not, along the way, doubt your own certainties?
Travel humbles the man who thinks he knows everything, my friend. I left Tangier convinced that the right path was the same everywhere; the roads taught me that the Dar al-Islam is vast and diverse, and that God has permitted a thousand ways to be faithful. In Mali, I saw people of exemplary piety — they taught the Quran to their children and chained them if they neglected to memorize it. And yet their customs disconcerted me. I learned to distinguish what touches the heart of faith from what is merely human habit. I did not renounce my certainties, but I stopped believing that my way was the only one.
—You experienced the burning deserts of Arabia and the snows of Crimea. Which memory, among all, struck you the most?
The cold, without hesitation — I who thought I knew everything about the harshness of the elements. In Crimea, I traveled in a cart covered with furs, pulled by horses and camels across a frozen steppe. I wore three fur coats and two lined trousers, and still struggled to mount a horse because I was so bundled up. Never had the sands of Arabia, where the heat melts the brain, tested me so much. That is where I understood how diverse God's earth is: the same human body must face fire on one side, ice on the other. Without the caravans and the kind people who took me in, I would have perished twenty times on those roads.
Never had the sands of Arabia tested me as much as the snows of Crimea.
—How does a lone man survive such distances? You spoke to me of the ships of China with a wonder I would like to understand.
One survives by never truly being alone. I attached myself to caravans for safety, stayed in caravanserais and madrasas, confided in sailors who knew the winds. At sea, I embarked on those Arab dhows and especially on the great junks of China, immense vessels carrying hundreds of men, cabins, and even potted gardens on deck. I had never imagined that human hands could build such floating fortresses. And China itself: the safest and best country for the traveler, where one can journey nine months without fear for life or property. The world, you see, is full of wonders for those who dare to lose themselves in it.
—You returned to Morocco after twenty-eight years. That return you had so dreamed of — how did you experience it, in truth?
In ashes, my friend. I had crossed the world dreaming of my mother's arms, and I learned upon arrival that she had passed away a few months earlier; my father had died many years before. All those roads to return to graves. The house of my childhood was full of absences. I understood that the traveler pays for his wonder with a price he only measures upon return: while he discovers the world, his own world fades behind him. That is why, when the sultan ordered me to dictate my memories, I accepted almost with relief. At least what I had seen would not die with me.
All those roads to return to graves.
—And that is why we sit here, you and I, this reed pen between us. What do you want these pages to keep of you?
That you write what I saw, not what men would like to hear. I have no science to transmit like the great doctors of the law; I have only roads, faces, strange customs, and wonders. Sultan Abu Inan charged you with trimming my confused speech, giving it the beauty of the language I do not have — and you do it better than I dared hope. But I beseech you: do not cut out what might seem unbelievable. I promised to speak the truth, even at the cost of being taken for a liar. This book, this Rihla, is all that remains to me of the twenty-eight years I lived.
Write what I saw, not what men would like to hear.
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.