Skip to content

[Sultan al-Malik az-Zahir was a] most illustrious and opened-handed ruler . . . He was constantly engaged in warring for the Faith (Jihad against the infidels) and in raiding expeditions . . . His subjects also take a pleasure in warring for the Faith and voluntarily accompany him on his expeditions. They have the upper hand over all the infidels in their vicinity, who pay them poll-tax to secure peace.

— Ibn Battuta Attributed

Another quote →

More quotes by Ibn Battuta

Traveling - it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.

After this I proceeded to the city of Barwan, in the road to which is a high mountain, covered with snow and exceedingly cold; they call it the Hindu Kush, that is Hindu-slayer, because most of the slaves brought thither from India die on account of the intenseness of the cold.

Not a week passed without the spilling of much Muslim blood and the running of streams of gore before the entrance of his palace. This included cutting people in half, skinning them alive, chopping off heads and displaying them on poles as a warning to others, or having prisoners tossed about by elephants with swords attached to their tusks.

I arrived at length at Cairo, mother of cities and seat of Pharaoh the tyrant, mistress of broad regions and fruitful lands, boundless in multitude of buildings, peerless in beauty and splendour, the meeting-place of comer and goer, the halting-place of feeble and mighty, whose throngs surge as the waves of the sea, and can scarce be contained in her for all her size and capacity."

All Ibn Battuta quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ibn Battuta (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.