Continental Monthly Volume 1 Issue 3 by Various

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Let me resume the volume which I have laid down to pursue the foregoing
reflections, and, while the eastern storm drives through the autumn
woods, hurling its mingled volume of rain and leaves against my window,
ask the reader to look over my shoulder and follow with me for a while
the pilgrimage of Abou Abdallah Mohammed, better known under the name of
Ibn Batuta,--'may God be satisfied with him, and confound those who have
an aversion towards him!'--to apply to himself his own invocation in
favor of another.

Ibn Batuta, a native of Tangier, in Morocco, unquestionably takes the
first rank among the travelers of the Middle Ages, if we consider the
distances he traversed, the remote points he reached, or the number of
years consumed by his wanderings. From Pekin to Timbuctoo, from the
Volga to the Ganges, from Bukhara to Zanzibar, he vibrated to and fro,
making himself acquainted, with the exception of Christian Europe, with
the greater part of the known world. He touched, in many directions, the
borderland of darkness, beyond which the earth fell off precipitously
into chaotic depths which no mortal might explore. Having reached home
again after uncounted perils, he sat down to tell the story of his
adventures. Many of his notes had been lost by the way, and he was
obliged to depend mainly on his memory; but as this is a faculty which
all genuine travelers must not only possess, but cultivate by constant
exercise, his narrative is remarkably clear, complete, and truthful.

Born on the 24th of February, 1304, he set out, in his twenty-second
year, on a pilgrimage to Mecca, traversing the Barbary States and Egypt
on the way. Once fairly launched in the world, twenty-four years elapsed
before he again saw his native town. He explored the various provinces
of Arabia; visited Syria, Persia, and Armenia; resided for a while in
Southern Russia (Kipchak), then belonging to princes of the line of
Genghis Khan; traveled by land to Constantinople, where he was presented
to the emperor; repeated his pilgrimage to Mecca, and reached Zanzibar.
Then, returning, he made his way to Bukhara, and through Afghanistan to
the Indus; exercised, for two years, the functions of a _Kadi_, or
judge, at Delhi; was appointed by the Sultan Mohammed, the son of Togluk
Khan, on an embassy to the emperor of China, but, missing the Chinese
vessel, was obliged to remain a year and a half among the Maldive
Islands. Nothing daunted by the delay, he started again, by way of
Ceylon and the Indian Archipelago, and finally succeeded in reaching
Pekin. He appears to have returned to Tangier in the year 1349, and to
have taken up his residence soon afterwards in Granada, under the
protection of the caliph Yusef. His thirst for exploration, however, was
not yet quenched, and in two years he was ready to undertake a second
journey of greater difficulty and danger. Leaving Fez with a caravan, in
the year 1351, he crossed the Sahara, and spent three years in Central
Africa, visiting the great cities Melli and Timbuctoo. He was thus the
first to give the world an authentic account of those regions. His
descriptions correspond, in almost all respects, with those given by the
travelers of modern times.

Ibn Batuta returned to Morocco in 1354, and there remained until his
death, in 1378. During the year after his arrival, he dictated the
history of his travels to Ibn Djozay, a young Moorish poet, who, having
been unjustly treated by Yusef, in Granada, fled to Fez, where he was
appointed secretary to the Sultan, Abau Inau Faris. The latter, it
appears, commanded that the work should be written, and it was also, no
doubt, by his order that Ibn Djozay became the amanuensis of our
traveler. 'He was recommended,' says the introduction, 'to bestow great
care on the correctness and elegance of the style, to render it clear
and intelligible, in order that the reader may better enjoy the rare
adventures, and draw the greatest profit from the pearl, after it shall
have been extracted from its shell!' To Ibn Djozay, therefore, we are
indebted for the abundant poetic quotations interspersed throughout the
work--the ornaments which hang, sometimes with curious effect, on the
plain, straight-forward story which Ibn Batuta tells us. Making the
usual allowance for Oriental exaggeration, and the occasional confusion
which must occur in a memory so overcharged, we do not hesitate to
pronounce the work worthy of all credit. Burkhardt, Seetzen, and Carl
Ritter have expressed their entire confidence in the fidelity of the
narrative.

This interesting work was known to European scholars, until quite
recently, in a fragmentary condition, frequently disfigured by errors of
transcription. Since the French occupation of Algiers, however, two or
three perfect copies have been discovered, one of which, now in the
Imperial Library at Paris, bears the autograph of Ibn Djozay. The
publications of the _Societe Asiatique_ furnish us with the narrative,
carefully collated, and differing but slightly, in all probability, from
the original text. Let us now run over it, freely translating for the
reader as we go. The introduction, which is evidently from the elegant
hand of the amanuensis, is so characteristic that we must extract a few
Title and all, it opens as follows:

A PRESENT MADE TO OBSERVERS,
TREATING OF THE
CURIOSITIES OFFERED BY THE CITIES AND
OTHER WONDERS ENCOUNTERED IN
TRAVEL.

'In the name of God, the Clement, the Merciful: Behold what says the
Shekh, the judge, the learned man, the truthful, the noble, the devout,
the very benevolent, the guest of God; who has acquitted himself of the
visit to the holy places, to the honor of religion; who, in the course
of his travels, has placed his confidence in the Lord of all
creatures--Abou Abdallah Mohammed, son of Abdallah, son of Ibrahim
Allewatee Alhandjee, known under the name of Ibn Batuta: may God be
merciful to him, and be content with him, in his great bounty and
generosity! Amen.

'Praise be to God, who has subjected the earth to those who serve him,
in order that they may march by spacious roads--who has placed them on
the earth, and there located the three vicissitudes of their destiny:
the creation, the return to the earth, and the resurrection from its
bowels. He has extended it by his power, and it has become a bed for his
servants. He has fixed it by means of inaccessible mountains, of
considerable elevation, and has raised over it the summit of heaven,
unsupported by a pillar. He has made the stars to appear as a guide in
the midst of the darkness of the land and the sea; he has made a lamp of
the moon, and a torch of the sun. From heaven he has caused waters to
descend, which vivified the ground when it was dried up. He has made all
varieties of fruits to grow, and has created diversified regions, giving
them all sorts of plants. He has caused the two seas to flow--one of
sweet and refreshing waters, the other salt and bitter. He has completed
his bounties towards his creatures, in subjecting to them the camels,
and in submitting to them the ships, similar to mountains, serving them
as vehicles, instead of the surface of the desert, or the back of the
sea.'

After having, in like manner, pronounced a benediction on Mohammed, the
Prophet's friends, and all others in any way connected with him, he
greets the Sultan of Morocco with a panegyric so dazzling, so
unapproachable in the splendor of its assertions, that we must quote it
as a standard whereby all similar compositions may be measured, sure
that it will maintain its pre-eminence through all time.

'It is his reign (that of Abou Inau Faris) which has cured Religion of
her sickness, which has caused the sword of Injustice to return into the
scabbard whence it had been drawn, which has corrected fortune, when it
had been corrupted, and which has procured custom for the markets of
Science, formerly given up to stagnation. He has rendered manifest the
rules of piety when they would have been obliterated; he has calmed the
regions of the earth when they were agitated; he has caused the
tradition of acts of generosity to revive after his death; he has
occasioned the death of tyrannic customs; he has abated the flame of
discord at the moment when it was most enkindled; he has destroyed the
commands of tyranny, when they exercised an absolute power; he has
elevated the edifices of equity on the pillars of the fear of God, and
has assured himself, by the strongest evidences, that he possesses
confidence in the Eternal. His reign possesses a glory, the crown
whereof is placed on the forehead of Orion, and an illumination which
covers the Milky Way with the skirts of his robe; a beneficence which
has given a new youth to the age; a justice which incloses the righteous
within its vast tent; a liberality similar to a cloud which waters at
once the leaves that have fallen from the trees and the trees
themselves; a courage which, even when the clouds shed torrents of rain,
causes a torrent of blood to flow; a patience which never tires of
hoping; a prudence which prevents his enemies from approaching his
pastures; a resolution which puts their troops to flight before the
action commences; a mildness which delights to pluck pardon from the
tree of crime; a goodness which gains him all hearts; a science, the
lustre whereof enlightens the darkest difficulties; a conduct
conformable to his sincerity, and acts conformable to his designs!'

Let us here take a long breath, and rest a minute. O, Abou Inau Faris!
we envy the blessed people that were gathered under thy wing; we weep
for our degenerate age, wherein thy like is nowhere to be found. No
wonder that Ibn Batuta declares that he lays aside forever his pilgrim's
staff--that, after traversing the Orient, he sits down under the full
moon of the Occident, preferring it to all other regions, 'as one
prefers gold-dust to the sands of the highway.' We, too, had we found
such a ruler, would have laid aside our staff, and taken the oath of
allegiance.

The traveler gives us the day of his departure from home: June 14, 1325.
'I was alone,' says he, 'without a companion with whom I could live
familiarly, without a caravan of which I could have made part; but I was
forced onward by a spirit firm in its resolution, and the desire of
visiting the Holy Places was implanted in my bosom. I therefore
determined to separate myself from my friends of both sexes, and I
abandoned my home as the birds abandon their nest. My father and mother
were still alive. I resigned myself, with grief, to separate from them,
and this was a common cause of sorrow. I was then in my twenty-second
year.'

Having safely reached the town of Tlemeen, he found two ambassadors of
the king of Tunis, about to set out on their return, and attached
himself to their suite. On arriving at Bougie, he was attacked with a
violent fever, and was advised to remain behind. 'No,' said the
determined youth, 'if God wills that I should die, let me die on the
road to Mecca,' and pushed on, through Constantina and Bona, in such a
state of weakness that he was obliged to unwind his turban and bind
himself to his saddle, in order to avoid falling from the horse. He thus
reached Tunis, in a state of extreme exhaustion and despondency. 'No one
saluted me,' says he, 'for I was not acquainted with a single person
there. I was seized with such an emotion of sadness that I could not
suppress my sobs, and my tears flowed in abundance. One of the pilgrims,
remarking my condition, advanced towards me, saluting and comforting me.
He did not cease to cheer me up with his conversation, until I had
entered the city.'

In a short time, he seems to have recovered both his health and spirits;
for, on reaching the town of Sefakos, he married the daughter of one of
the syndics of the corporation of Tunis. This proceeding strikes us as a
singular preparation for a long and dangerous journey, but it is a
preliminary which would immediately suggest itself to a Mussulman of
good character. In fact, it was equivalent in those days--and still
would be, in some parts of the Orient--to a proclamation of his
respectability. Ibn Batuta, however, was not fortunate in this
matrimonial adventure. Two months afterwards, he naively informs us:
'There arose such a disagreement between myself and my father-in-law,
that I was obliged to separate from my wife. I thereupon married the
daughter of an official of Fez. The marriage was consummated at the
castle of Zanah, and I celebrated it by a feast, for which I detained
the caravan for a whole day.'

After this announcement, he is silent concerning his domestic relations.
Perhaps the number of his connubial changes was too great to be
recorded; perhaps no son was born to establish his honor among men;
perhaps, with increasing sanctity, he forswore the sex. The last
conjecture is probably correct, as it tallies with the reputation for
wisdom and purity which he gradually acquired.

Finally, in April, 1326, our traveler reached Alexandria, the first
strange city which impressed him by its size and splendor. 'Alexandria,'
says he, 'is a jewel whereof the brilliancy is manifest--a virgin which
sparkles with her ornaments. She illumines the Occident with her
splendor: she unites the most diverse beauties, on account of her
situation midway between the Rising and the Setting.' At that time the
celebrated Pharos was still standing, and the following description of
it, though not very clear, will interest the reader: 'It is a square
edifice, which towers into the air. Its gate is raised above the surface
of the earth, and opposite to it there is an edifice of similar height,
which serves to support planks, across which one must wait to arrive at
the gate of the Pharos. When these planks are taken away, there is no
means of crossing. Inside of the entrance is a space where the guardian
of the edifice is stationed. The interior of the Pharos contains many
apartments. Each of its four sides is a hundred and forty spans in
length. The building is situated on a high hill, one parasang from the
city, and on a tongue of land which the sea surrounds on three sides.
One can therefore only reach the Pharos from the land side, by leaving
the city. I directed my course towards the Pharos a second time, on my
return to the West, in the year 1349, and I found that its ruin was
complete, so that one could neither enter, nor even reach the gate.'

Commencing with Alexandria, Ibn Batuta is careful, in every city which
he visits, to give an account of the distinguished _shekhs_ or _imams_,
with characteristic anecdotes of their saintly or miraculous lives. The
value and interest of these sketches reconcile us to the brevity of his
descriptions. He tells us, for example, that the _kadi_ (judge) of
Alexandria, who was likewise a master of the art of eloquence, 'covered
his head with a turban which surpassed in volume all the turbans then to
be seen. I have never beheld, neither in the East nor the West, one so
voluminous. He was one day seated in a mosque, before the pulpit, and
his turban filled almost the entire space.' At the town of Fooah, in the
Delta, on his way to Cairo, occurred his first marvelous adventure.
'During the night,' says he, 'while I slept on the roof of the dwelling
of the shekh Abou Abdallah, I saw myself, in a dream, carried on the
wing of a great bird, which flew in the direction of Mecca, then in that
of Yemen; then it transported me to the East, after which it passed
towards the South; then it flew again far to the East, alighted upon a
dark and misty country, and there abandoned me. I was amazed at this
vision, and said to myself, "If the shekh can interpret my dream, he is
truly as holy as he is said to be." When I presented myself, in the
morning, to take part in the early prayer, he charged me to take the
lead, in the quality of _imam_. Afterwards he called me to him, and
explained my dream; in fact, when I had related it to him, he said:
"Thou wilt make the pilgrimage to Mecca, thou wilt visit the tomb of the
Prophet, thou wilt traverse Yemen, Irak, the country of the Turks, and
India; thou wilt remain a long time in the latter country, where thou
wilt see my brother Dilehad, who will extricate thee from an affliction
into which thou shalt fall." Having spoken, he provided me with money,
and small biscuits for the journey. I said my farewells and departed.
Since I left him, I have experienced nothing but good treatment in the
course of my travels, and his benedictions always came to my aid.'

Passing over the traveler's visit to Damietta and the other towns of the
Delta, let us hear his enthusiastic description of Cairo, at the time of
its greatest prosperity: 'Finally, I reached the city of Cairo, the
metropolis of the country and the ancient residence of Pharaoh the
Impaler; mistress of rich and extended regions, attaining the utmost
limits of possibility in the multitude of its population, and exalting
itself on account of its beauty and splendor. It is the rendezvous of
travelers, the station of the weak and the powerful. Thou wilt there
find all that thou desirest--the wise and the ignorant, the industrious
and the trifling, the mild or the angry, men of low extraction or of
lofty birth, the illustrious and the obscure. The number of its
inhabitants is so considerable that their currents resemble those of an
agitated sea, and the city lacks very little of being too small to
contain them, notwithstanding its extent and capacity. Although founded
long since, it enjoys a youth forever renewed; the star of its horoscope
does not cease to inhabit a fortunate house. It is in speaking of Cairo
that Wasr ed-deen has written:

"It is a paradise in truth; its gardens ever smile,
Adorned and fed so plenteously by all the waves of Kile,
Which, fretted by the blowing wind, from shore across to shore,
Mimic the armor's azure scales the prophet David wore;
Within its fluid element the naked fear to glide,
And ships, like winged heavenly spheres, go up and down the tide.'"

Ibn Batuta's description of the pyramids is very curious, and we can
account for it on no other supposition than that he merely saw them in
the distance (probably from the citadel of Cairo), relying on hearsay
for further particulars. After stating that they were built by the
ancient _Hermes_, whom he supposes to be identical with Enoch, as a
repository for the antediluvian arts and sciences, he says: 'The
pyramids are built of hard, well-cut stone. They are of a very
considerable elevation, and of a circular form, capacious at the base
and narrow at the summit, _in the fashion of cones_. They have no doors,
and one is ignorant of the manner in which they have been constructed.'

In his journey up the Nile, Ibn Batuta never fails to give an account of
every Moslem saint or theologian whom he meets, but only in one or two
instances does he mention the antiquities, which, in that age, must have
been still more conspicuous than now. He even passes over the plain of
Thebes without the slightest notice of the great temple of Karnak.
Disappointed in his plan of crossing the Red Sea to Jidda, he returned
to Cairo, and at once set out for Syria. Here, the first place of
interest which he visited was Hebron, where he performed his devotions
at the tombs of the patriarchs. We learn that there were archaecological
writings in those days, for he quotes from a work entitled 'The Torch of
Hearts, on the Subject of the Authenticity of the Tombs of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob.' Unfortunately, the evidence adduced would not be very
satisfactory to us, for it rests entirely on the following statement
made by Mohammed to a certain Abou Horairah: 'When the angel Gabriel
took me on the noctural journey to Jerusalem, we passed above the tomb
of Abraham, and he said to me, "Descend, and make a prayer of two
genuflexions, for here is the sepulchre of thy father Abraham!" Then we
traversed Bethlehem, and he said also, "Descend, make a prayer of two
genuflexions, for here was born thy brother Jesus!"'

Of Jerusalem, which he calls 'the noble, the holy--may God glorify it!'
he says: 'Among the sanctuaries on the borders of the valley known under
the name of Gehenna, east of the city and on an elevated hill (the Mount
of Olives), one sees an edifice which is said to stand on the spot
whence Jesus ascended to heaven. In the middle of the same valley there
is a church where the Christians worship: they affirm that it contains
the sepulchre of Mary. There is also another church, equally venerated,
to which the Christians make a pilgrimage. The reason whereof, however,
is a lie, for they pretend that it contains the tomb of Jesus. Each
person who goes thither as a pilgrim is obliged to pay a certain tribute
to the Mussulmans, and to undergo divers sorts of humiliations, which
the Christians perform very much against their will. They there see the
place where the cradle of Jesus stood, and come to implore his
intercession.'

I have not space to follow our traveler through all the cities of the
Syrian coast, northward to Aleppo, but I can not omit offering one
flower from the garland of poetical quotations which Ibu Batuta (or
rather his amanuensis, Ibn Djozay) hangs on the citadel of the latter
capital. I presume the city then occupied the same position as at
present, on a plain surrounding the rocky acropolis, which is so
striking and picturesque a feature as to justify the enthusiasm of the
Oriental bards. Djemal ed-deen All, however, surpasses them all in the
splendor of his images. Hear him:--

'So lofty soars this castle, so high its summit stands,
Immense and far uplifted above the lower lands,
It lacks but little, truly, that with the heavenly sphere
Around the earth revolving, its towers would interfere.
And they who dwell within it must seek the Milky Way;
There is no nearer cistern which win their thirst allay:
Their horses there go browsing, and crop the stars that pass,
As other beasts the blossoms that open in the grass!'

After this flight, I think I can afford to omit the string of quotations
concerning Damascus, which is celebrated with an equal extravagance. Ibn
Batuta gives a very careful account of the great mosque, including its
priests and scholars. During his stay the plague raged with such
violence that the deaths at one time amounted to two thousand a day. He
relates one circumstance which shows that even religious intolerance
vanished in times of distress. 'All the inhabitants of the city, men,
women, large and small, took part in a procession to the Mosque of
El-Akdam, two miles south of Damascus. The Jews came forth with their
Pentateuch, and the Christians with their Gospel, followed by their
women and children. All wept, supplicated, and sought help from God,
through the means of his Word and his prophets. They repaired to the
mosque, where they remained, praying and invoking God, until three
o'clock in the afternoon. Then they returned to the city, made the
prayer of Friday, and the Lord consoled them.'

On the 1st of September, 1326, he left Damascus, with the great caravan
of pilgrims, for Mecca. He enumerates all the stations on the route, and
his itinerary is almost identical with that which the caravan follows at
the present day. Much space is devoted to a description of the religious
observances which he followed; and, singularly enough, if any
confirmation of his fidelity as a narrator were needed, it is furnished
by the work of Captain Burton. The account of the sacred cities of
Medineh and Mecca corresponds in every important particular with that of
the modern traveler. Thus the integrity of Ibn Batuta, like that of
Marco Polo, is established, after the lapse of five hundred years.

In speaking of the chair of Mohammed, which is preserved in the mosque
at Medineh, he relates the following beautiful tradition: 'It is said
that the ambassador of God at first preached near the trunk of a
palm-tree in the mosque, and that after he had constructed the chair and
transported it thither, the trunk of the palm-tree groaned, as the
female camel groans after her young. Mohammed thereupon went down to the
tree and embraced it; after which it remained silent. The Prophet said,
"If I had not embraced it, it would have continued to groan until the
day of the resurrection."'

After faithfully performing all the observances prescribed for the
pilgrim to Mecca, Ibn Batuta left that city and returned to Medineh. He
then crossed the Arabian peninsula in a north-eastern direction, to the
city of Meshed Ali, near the Euphrates, and thence descended that river
to Bassora. Here he gives us two amusing anecdotes, which reflectively
illustrate his shrewdness and the sturdiness with which he maintained
his religious views. 'The inhabitants of Bassora,' says he, 'are gifted
with a generous character. They are familiar with strangers, rendering
them that which is their due, in such a manner that no one finds a
sojourn among them tiresome. They make their Sunday prayers in the
mosque of the Prince of Believers, Ali. I once attended the prayers in
this mosque; and when the preacher arose and began to recite the sermon,
he made numerous and evident faults. I was surprised thereat, and spoke
of it to the judge Hodjat-ed-deen, who answered, "In this city, there is
no longer an individual who has any knowledge of grammar." This is an
instruction for whoever reflects thereon, and let us praise God, who
changes things and reverses the face of affairs! In fact, this city of
Bassora, the inhabitants whereof had obtained preeminence in grammar,
which there had its origin and received its development,--this city,
which gave to the world the master of this noble science, whose priority
no one contests,--does not now possess a single preacher who pronounces
the Sunday sermon according to grammatical rules!

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