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Ibn Battuta Quotes

1304–1369 Morocco

Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta (Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد ابن بطوطة‎) (born 24 February 1304 - year of death uncertain, 1368 or 1369) was a Moroccan Berber scholar and jurisprudent from the Maliki Madhhab (a school of Fiqh, or Sunni Islamic law), and at times a Qadi or judge. However, he is best known as a traveler and explorer, whose account documents his travels and excursions over a period of almost thirty years, covering some 73,000 miles (117,000 km).

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First of all, daughters of Kafir (Hindu) Rajas captured during the course of the year, come and sing and dance. Thereafter they are bestowed upon Amirs and important foreigners. After this daughters of other Kafirs dance and sing… the Sultan gives them to his brothers, relatives, sons of Maliks etc. On the second day the durbar is held in a similar fashion after Asr. Female singers are brought out… the Sultan distributes them among the Mameluke Amirs. On the third day relatives of the Sultan are married and they are given rewards.

Attributed

In India the infidels occupy one continuous piece of land and inhabit regions which are adjacent to those of the Muslims. The Muslims dominate the infidels; but the latter fortify themselves in mountains, in rocky, uneven and rugged places as well as in bamboo groves. In India the bamboo is not hollow; it is big. Its several parts are so intertwined that even fire cannot a£Fec£ them, and they are on the whole very strong. The infidels live in those forests which serve them as ramparts, inside which are their cattle and their crops. There is also water for them within, that is rain water which collects there. Hence they cannot be subdued except by means of powerful armies, who, entering those forests, cut down the bamboos with specially prepared instruments.

Attributed

The country we had to traverse was an impenetrable jungle of trees and reeds. The Sultan ordered that every one in the army, great and small alike, should carry a hatchet to cut down these obstacles. When the camp was struck, he set out on horseback towards the forest together with his soldiers who felled the trees from morning to noon ... they resumed cutting trees till the evening. All the infidels found in the jungle were taken prisoners; they had stakes sharpened at both ends and made the prisoners carry them on their shoulders. Each was accompanied by his wife and children, and they were thus led to the camp. It is the practice here to surround the camp with a palisade, called a katkar and having four gates. They make a second katkar around the king's habitation. Outside the principal enclosure, they raise the platforms about three feet high, and light fires on them at night. Slaves and sentinels spend the night here, each holding in his hand a bundle of very thin reeds. When the infidels approach for a night attack on the camp, all the sentries light their faggots, and thanks to the flames, the night becomes as bright as day, and the cavalry sets out in pursuit of the idolaters. In the morning, the Hindus who had been made prisoners the day before, were divided into four groups, and each of these was led to one of the four gates of the main enclosure. There they were impaled on the posts they had themselves carried. Afterwards their wives were butchered and tied to the stakes by their hair. The children were massacred on the bosoms of their mothers, and their corpses left there. Then they struck camp and started cutting down trees in another forest, and all the Hindus who were made captive were treated in the same manner.

Attributed

After five days’ travelling we reached ‘Ala al-Mulk’s province, Lahari, a fine town on the coast where the river of Sind discharges itself into the ocean. It possesses a large harbour, visited by men from Yemen, Fars, and elsewhere. For this reason its contributions to the Treasury and its revenues are considerable; the governor told me that the revenue from this town amounted to sixty lakhs per annum. The governor receives a twentieth part of this, that being the footing on which the sultan commits the provinces to his governors. I rode out one day with ‘Ala al-Mulk, and we came to a plain called Tarna, seven miles from Lahari, where I saw an innumerable quantity of stones in the shape of men and animals. Many of them were disfigured and their forms effaced, but there remained a head or a foot or something of the sort. Some of the stones also had the shape of grains of wheat, chickpeas, beans and lentils, and there were remains of a city wall and house walls. We too saw the ruins of a house with a chamber of hewn stones, in the midst of which there was a platform of hewn stones resembling a single block, surmounted by a human figure, except that its head was elongated and its mouth on the side of its face and its hands behind its back like a pinioned captive. The place had pools of stinking water and an inscription on one of its walls in Indian characters. ‘Ala al-Mulk told me that the historians relate that in this place there was a great city whose inhabitants were so depraved that they were turned to stone, and that it is their king who is on the terrace in the house, which is still called ‘the king’s palace.’ They add that the inscription gives the date of the destruction of the people of that city, which occurred about a thousand years ago.

Attributed

The king of China had sent valuable gifts to the sultan, including a hundred slaves of both sexes, five hundred pieces of velvet and silk cloth, musk, jewelled garments and weapons, with a request that the sultan would permit him to rebuild the idol-temple which is near the mountains called Qarajil [Himalaya]. It is in a place known as Samhal, to which the Chinese go on pilgrimage; the Muslim army in India had captured it, laid it in ruins and sacked it. The sultan, on receiving this gift, wrote to the king saying that the request could not be granted by Islamic law, as permission to build a temple in the territories of the Muslims was granted only to those who paid a poll-tax; to which he added, “If thou wilt pay the jizya we shall empower thee to build it. And peace be on those who follow the True Guidance.” He requited his present with an even richer one-a hundred thoroughbred horses, a hundred white slaves, a hundred Hindu dancing-and singing-girls, twelve hundred pieces of various kinds of cloth, gold and silver candelabra and basins, brocade robes, caps, quivers, swords, gloves embroidered with pearls, and fifteen eunuchs. As my fellow-ambassadors the sultan appointed the amir Zahir ad-Din of Zanjãn, one of the most eminent men of learning, and the eunuch Kafur, the cup-bearer, into whose keeping the present was entrusted. He sent the amir Muhammad of Herat with a thousand horsemen to escort us to the port of embarkation, and we were accompanied by the Chinese ambassadors, fifteen in number, along with their servants, about a hundred men in all.

Attributed

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Ibn Battuta (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.