Better known as Ibn BatÛta,
The Greatest of Moslem Travellers, A.D. 1304–77.

CHAPTER I.
THE WHIRLWIND FROM ARABIA AND WHAT FOLLOWED.

Marauder as he was, the Arab, like his half-brother the Hebrew, carried an ethical spark in his bosom which could be readily fanned into a consuming blaze. He was accustomed, in the silence of the stony waste and of the stars, to plunge into the depths of his own spiritual being, or to await, in patience, some portent from the unseen. Mohammed, a mystic, like unto the ancient prophets of Israel, hating false gods and illuminated by the “One All Merciful, Lord of Creation and Sultan of Life,” in trance, in ecstasy, and in paroxysms of enthusiasm, strove to purge his fellow countrymen of their vain worship of idols and false gods, and to lead them to the feet of the Almighty. At first he preached to closed ears; but persistence and enthusiasm prevailed: the religious intoxication of the Prophet was shared by the unconquered sons of the desert; the Arab took fire from the flaming words which fell from these inspired lips, and was eager to carry the message to the uttermost ends of the earth or to perish in the effort. Within ten years of Mohammed’s flight from Mecca (A.D. 622) all Arabia was won to the Monotheist by conviction or by conquest.

The combination of spiritual fervour with a prospect of worldly achievement is formidable. A year after the death of the Prophet, Kalid, riding against the embattled hosts of Persia (A.D. 633), broke into a chant which reveals a baser spring of action in the Arabian mind. “Behold the wealth of the land,” he sang; “its paths sweat fatness; food abounds as do stones in Arabia. It were a great thing to fight here for worldly goods; but to battle in a holy war is beyond praise. These fruitful fields and Paradise!!!” It was not religious fanaticism alone, although it was religious fanaticism in the main, which put an invincible scimitar into the hands of the tough, tenacious, untamed Arab. He was impelled by religious fervour, without doubt; but religious fervour had the strong support of a lusting after possessions, all the more tempting in contrast with the stinted boons of his desert home. And, should he fall in battle, was he not promised an immediate admission into Paradise with those sensuous enjoyments, which were most in contrast with the penury of the nomad tent, and which were most alluring to the imagination of the average sensual man?

When material greed supports spiritual fanaticism, there is no need to wonder at success. The Arab advanced against exhausted, loosely organised Empires, sprawling and decayed; he offered righteous government, a pure simple faith, with tolerance of the unbeliever under penalty of a light tribute. The requital of refusal was the sword. Damascus fell three years after Mohammed’s death (A.D. 635); Jerusalem, within two year; Egypt, six years later (A.D. 641), and Persia when the Prophet had only lain a decade in his tomb (A.D. 642). Not many years passed before Okba swept across North Africa, rode his steed far into the Atlantic tide, and waved his scimitar over the waste of waters, lamenting that it put a limit to victory. Thrice was the Mediterranean coast of Africa conquered, and thrice was the Arab well-nigh expelled; and then Greek and Roman and all civilized inhabitants of the coast, preferring the rule of the Moslem to that of the barbarous Berbers who had replaced him, welcomed the fourth invasion, and settled down under Arab rule. By the close of the century which in its youth saw the hurried night-flight of Mohammed from Mecca, the Moslem held sway from the Oxus to the Western ports of Barbary. At the beginning of the next century the great Iberian peninsula was added to the dominion of the Caliph; and, although Ironic Destiny turned back the triumph of the Prophet in the decisive battle of Tours (A.D. 732), a hundred years after his death, the great Iberian Peninsula was held by the Arab from sea to sea and as far north as the Cantabrian Mountains and the southern spurs of the Pyrenees; while the Koran was preached, although it did not everywhere prevail, east and west, over a broad belt more than seven thousand miles in length. The muezzin called the Faithful to prayers from the Atlantic to the Yellow Sea.

When a race, endowed with natural gifts, subdues an enlightened people, it becomes inseminated by the higher culture it encounters, and is stimulated to evolve an art, a literature, and a polished civilization of its own. So was it when Rome conquered Hellas; so was it when the Northmen established themselves in France and Sicily; so was it when the thundering steeds of the desert bore their wild riders north and east and west, and the ancient Parthian monarchy and the fairest, the wealthiest, and the most cultured of the Roman provinces fell before the triumphant Arab. Like the Norman, like the Roman, he had the natural gift of governing as well as a passionate wisdom. He steeped himself in the lore of Hellas; it was through him that the philosophy of Aristotle was transmitted to the Schoolmen; it was through him that St. Thomas Aquinas was able to construct that venerable philosophical system, based on the Peripatetic, which has received the sanction and endorsement of the Church of Rome; it was through him, therefore, that Dante beheld that “glorious philosopher,” that “guide of human reason,” that “Maestro di color che sanno,” “Master of those who know,” seated amid a philosophic family. The great names of Averrhoes, Avicenna, Avempace, Algazel, and Avicebron attest the freedom of Arab speculation in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries. Mohammedans were the begetters of chemical science; they eagerly pursued the study of botany; they contributed much to geography; they carried medicine far beyond the ancient limits of Galen and Celsus; they became bold, brilliant and successful operators, and introduced new methods into surgery; they cultivated letters and left a noble literature behind them; they were poets almost to a man: Princes wrote verses to the stars in some interval between private plot and public slaughter; water-carriers and camel-drivers vied with professional poets in singing the praises of love in those delicious hours when the refreshing breezes of the night might carry songs beyond the lattice of the harem to be received with the light laughter of girls; even the forbidden wine-flask became a theme for song. Much of Arabic love poetry is immortal, and few are the literatures in which it is surpassed. In Architecture and the Decorative Arts, the Arabs achieved inimitable elegance and grace; as workers in metal they were supreme. After a prolonged struggle, they subdued and civilized the wild Berber. They regarded the Jew as a brother, less well informed in sacred things than themselves; and they treated even the “tritheistic” Christian with forbearance. Indeed they were not too anxious to proselytize; for the unconverted were taxable, and they did not wish the sources of public income to dry up. But taxation was light, and, in the main, the Arab yoke was far from heavy. Slaves were treated with humanity, and might earn their freedom at any moment by a simple profession of faith: the Negro, the Spaniard, the Berber, the Turk, could acquire the full right of a man by the repetition of a short formula. During the declining years of the Byzantine Empire, and until Liberty and Literature arose in the Italian Communes, the Mohammedan bore the torch of learning and kept human justice enthroned.

But Islam was another illustration of the profound truth already recorded in this volume as one of the melancholy tenets of Buddhism: Every human institution bears within it the seeds of its decay. Though a sense of righteous dealing dwelt from of old in the bosom of the Arab, in his native desert the sword which executed it was held by his own right hand. The predatory tentsmen were divided into clans; and between the clans there were blood-feuds. They were a democratic people; but they had a deep reverence for men of noble blood; and their feuds were taken up by the chief men of the cities of Arabia, and by those leaders who, later, became the governors of new provinces. And the conquered Berbers had precisely the same characteristics: they also were predatory, democratic, and revered their noble families. Moreover, both races were readily moved to the more violent of the emotions of religion. Before long Moslem fought against Moslem, and a thousand forms of religious dissent weakened, although they did not destroy, the essential unity of Faith. Again, the extensive and rapidly acquired Empire was too vast and too ill-organized to be ruled by one, all-powerful Caliph. The centre of government was transferred, during the revolutions of Islam at variance with itself, from Damascus to Bagdad and from Bagdad to Cairo; but the Caliph of Cairo was defended by, and therefore in the hands of Mamelukes—slaves, bought in childhood and trained to arms. The Mameluke became the ruler; and, by the middle of the Thirteenth Century, the Caliph was a mere nominal Spiritual Head, far feebler than the Pope in Rome. For, distant provinces were continually falling away from central authority; and it was never long before the ally who came forward to support the Caliph found it to his advantage to turn against him. The Mohammedan world was divided, not merely between the Shiite and Sunnite sects, but between many ambitious and rival States. Long before the Fourteenth Century, Islam was past its prime. There was decay in matters political, in literature, and in art. Yet the amity in Islam was greater than its discord. The need of mutual protection against the Christian, and the duty of every Mohammedan to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in his lifetime, helped to preserve true brotherly feeling among all followers of the Prophet, whatever their rank, their wealth, or the colour of their skin. The study of the Koran implied a study of Arabic: there was therefore a common language to serve the needs of intercommunication. The Koran was carried into mysterious lands, known before its arrival only in the distortion of legend and in fables of romance. Passionate devotion to a Faith which antagonistic or far-separated races came to hold in common swept away these obstacles to commutual intimacy. Huge hosts of Pilgrims from many lands met at Mecca, and different caravans and different sects united in prayer and praise. Some had encountered peril by sea; all had baffled the craft or repelled the attack of robber-bands; all had endured trials of the desert; all had triumphed over those countless dangers which lurked along difficult ways. Thus, disciplined in endurance and accustomed to adventure, latent powers of mind and character were aroused. Strange sights awakened the curiosity of the trader; novel wares excited his cupidity and converted him into an explorer of the world. In spite of the intertwining of religious zeal with commercial instinct, Pagan princes saw their opportunity of enrichment, and welcomed the Arab, Moorish, or Persian merchant. And, in days of peace, the whole Mohammedan world was open to every Mohammedan traveller; rulers received him with elaborate courtesy and sped him on his way, rejoicing in gifts. It mattered not whether he entered the gateway of some princely residence, or stood on the threshold of some peasant’s hut; he was sure at least of welcome and refreshment. The trader might settle anywhere and find amity awaiting him; an honest man was an honoured guest in whatever land he might pursue his calling. A Christian, Missionary to the East, who died in Ibn BatÛta’s time, bears witness to the brotherly love which obtained among Moslems of different races. So we shall not marvel overmuch at Ibn BatÛta accomplishing what even to-day would be considered world-wide travel, or at his discovering children of the same father, who in their childhood watched the sun setting over Atlantic waters, prosperously dwelling in their maturity, one, where the dawn breaks from the Yellow Sea; one, where the oasis lies an incongruous and solitary blossom amid the sands of Sahara.

CHAPTER II. A RESOLUTE PILGRIM

Among Mohammedan pilgrims and travellers Ibn BatÛta stands without a peer. He was born in a city which was once an extreme outpost of Roman rule in Africa, the Ancient Tingis, the modern Tangiers, in the Sultanate of Fez, 24th February, 1304. He devoted his youth to the study of the Koran and its exegesis; becoming thereby an expert in theology and jurisprudence. For, throughout the Mohammedan world the Koran is the living fountain of all law and of all piety: hence Moslem theology and law are inextricably intertwined.

“Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us,” is one of the quaint metaphors of Sir Thomas Browne. The old Norwich physician is writing of the body; but his remark is profoundly true of the soul of men. By the time that BatÛta had reached the age of 21, he tells us that he was all aflame with “inner desire and determination to visit the Holy Places; tearing himself away from those who were dear to him, both male and female, and taking wing from home as a bird doth from its nest.” He started from his native city when not quite twenty-one years and four months old (14th June, 1325), making, first, for TlemÇen, the capital of a Moslem State 300 miles distant from Tangier. TlemÇen remains in the present writer’s memory as a gem set among the Algerian Mountains, remarkable for the ruins of MansÛra, which almost run up to its walls—a rival city built by a rival prince during a siege which dragged on longer than the ten years’ assault on Troy—remarkable also for a master-piece of decoration in that Thirteenth Century which was the great period of Moslem Architecture no less than of our own. In this beautiful city rested a Tunisian Embassy which had completed its mission and and was about to return; and this he joined. When he arrived at Bougie, he became a prey to fever; but the patient was a man of mettle and he pushed on. Fever was not the only foe. All North Africa was more or less unsafe, by reason of Nomadic Berbers and brigands; and hostilities were frequent between the States into which the great Empire of the Undivided Caliphate had broken up. The returning Embassy was exposed to danger on its journey “from the perfidy of Arabs.”

Arrived at Constantine, he received the first of those welcome donatives which it was incumbent on the Rulers of Islam to bestow. It was a scarf for head-gear; and tucked in its folds, with considerate delicacy, were two gold coins.

At Bona, the ancient Hippo, whereof once Augustine was bishop, fever again preyed on him, and he became so ill that he could only keep his saddle by taking his turban off and tying himself on with it; nor could he stand at all during the whole long journey to Tunis. When the Embassy arrived at its destination, the inhabitants came outside the walls to welcome the cavalcade. Weak, weary, and worn down by illness, unfriended and solitary, among strangers who were joyfully greeted by relatives and friends and fellow-countrymen; remote from all that was hallowed by family affection or endeared by early association, a terrible tempest of longing swept the bosom of our pilgrim. He saw all the others saluted: “there was no salutation for me” he says, “I knew no soul there. I burst into a flood of tears. A pilgrim saw this; he came forward and did me courtesy; nor did he cease to take me off my thoughts by his conversation until I was housed in the city.” This is the sole occasion on which we hear a word of home-sickness during a journey which lasted more than a score of years. The born traveller, like the born sailor, may feel the pang and have it renewed, but he brushes it aside. Moreover, we shall shortly find Ibn BatÛta setting up a travelling-home of his own.

The Caravan for Mecca was about to start from Tunis; and we find our jurisconsult become its Cadi, or justiciary. A hundred bowmen accompanied it through a district always perilous by reason of marauding nomads, who lurk among its hills. It was the rainy season; the weather turned so wet and cold that the caravan halted at Sfax, and remained there some time, hoping for improvement. Ibn BatÛta seized the opportunity to marry the first wife of whom we are told. She was a daughter of a syndic of Tunis; and probably this was his first, but far from being his last, entrance into matrimony. For he was a man of taste, and we shall find him, in the course of time, become an experienced Benedict, and by no means indifferent to the charms of his pretty slave-concubines. All delay was intolerable to BatÛta; so, accompanied by his bride, he set off at the head of an armed band, bearing its standard. He soon entered a district notorious for brigandage even to-day, when conquering France and Italy hold the land and bestow sanguinary lessons on wild tribesmen and robbers-in-blood. Fierce nomads hovered around the little company, awaiting an opportunity to attack; but happily the caravan caught it up at one of those tombs of saint or warrior which the Moslem holds in such veneration. Probably BatÛta’s father-in-law was in the caravan; for we are now told of dissensions between the two men, although there is silence as to the subject of dispute. If the Prophet granted the doubtful privilege of a plurality of wives, he mitigated the inconveniences of polygamy by extreme facility in divorce. BatÛta availed himself of this, and sent his bride back to her father. The ill-luck, which so soon attended this first matrimonial venture, did not deter him from a second experiment: he lost no time in marrying a fellow-countrywoman, presumably also a fellow-pilgrim; she was the daughter of a dignitary of Fez. The pilgrims halted a whole day to indulge in wedding festivity. On the 3rd April, 1326, nearly ten months after BatÛta’s departure from Tangier, the caravan drew up at Alexandria, and his long and not too safe journey along the southern coast of the “mid sea, moaning with memories,” was at an end.

Alexandria was, at that time, one of the great commercial centres of the world. Shipping from all Christendom and North Africa were to be found in its haven. BatÛta tells us that it surpassed all ports he ever saw, excepting Colon and Calicut in India, the Italian settlement in the Crimea, and Zaitun (Thsiuan-Cheu) at that time the great port of China. Alexandria was almost as remarkable for Moslem piety as for trade. BatÛta made a point of visiting a learned and pious person there, who, like all Mohammedan saints, was reputed to possess miraculous powers. The saint’s acuteness penetrated into the character of his visitor: he perceived a born-wayfarer in the prescriptive pilgrim, and told him that he had a taste for travel. “‘Yes,’ was my reply,” says BatÛta, “although at that time, I had formed no project of distant travel. ... ‘You will see my brother in Sind, another brother who is in India, and yet a third who is in China, and will bear my salutations to them.’ I was astounded at what he said, and made up my mind to visit these countries; nor did I give up my resolve until I had beheld all three men.” “Only strongly impassioned men may achieve great results,” says Mirabeau. We shall see what BatÛta’s passion was and what he accomplished.

His keen eye noted the glories of Alexandria; the great lighthouse of Ptolemy, in the last stage of decay, and that great column of Diocletian, mis-called Pompey’s Pillar. Stung more than ever by a divine gadfly, he must run all over Lower Egypt, visiting every living saint of renown and every relic of the past, especially such relics as were the tombs or dwellings of departed saints. The attention which holy men paid to their dreams and the confidence with which they interpreted them recall the Hebrew Scriptures. BatÛta tells us that he visited an unusually gifted and eminently holy seer; and from that time “good fortune attended me throughout my travels.” But our traveller was no mere inattentive dreamer: the minuteness and accuracy of his observations are remarkable; and his statements are fully confirmed in the literature of contemporary and later travel, and other records of the age in which he lived.

Among the places he visited, we find him at Damietta, where was preserved the cell of the Chief of the Calenders. The very name Calender recalls one’s youth and those fantastic fables of the “Arabian Nights” which delighted it. A Calender was a Moslem under vow to deliver himself from the allurements of earth and to consecrate his life to things spiritual. It was the usage of all Calenders to shave off beard and eyebrow; and BatÛta supplies us with a story to account for their disfigurement. The founder of the sect was a personable man, and a certain lady fell in love with him and pursued him in every conceivable way. But all her lures and devices coming to nought, she contrived a still more ingenious stratagem. She got an old woman, who, of course, could not read, to stop the beloved one, who was as good-natured as he was devout, when on his way to the mosque, and ask him to read a letter which she said she had received from her son. He complied, and then quoth the old woman: “My son has a wife who dwells in yonder house. Will you be so good as to read it in the passage so that she may hear what her husband says?” He agreed to this also; but no sooner had he crossed the threshold than the old woman clapped the door to, and the love-sick lady appeared, attended by her slaves, who forced him into an inner room. She cast herself at him, and began to take liberties with him. So he made the excuse that it was necessary for him to retire privately. No sooner was he alone, than he whipped out a razor which he had with him, and divested himself of beard and eyebrow. Then he presented himself before the enamoured woman, who was so disgusted at the disfigurement that she had him chased from the house. “Thus,” says BatÛta, “by Divine Providence, his chastity was preserved, and his sect shaved eyebrow and beard from that time forward.”

This is one of the many anecdotes which BatÛta thrusts into his narrative. It is much more amusing than most of them. All Orientals (and Moors are essentially Orientals) dote on pointless fable and wild romance. They are insatiate for marvel, and gulp down any stretch of fancy coloured by religion. BatÛta’s farrago of stories is, for the most part, silly. Happily, these legends are short. He wrought diligently in hagiology; he was a-gape for yarns, remembered them all and carefully recorded them; for they suited his own taste and that of his nation and time. They are the gatherings of a man profoundly learned in the Koran and Mohammedan lore; one concerned, like the Pharisees of old, with minor questions of the Law and minutiÆ of ceremonial observance; vexed, as it were, about tithes of small herbs. His main interest was his religion, and in his religion he was a meticulous pedant. He had a natural love of the miraculous, and religious credulity case-hardened it. Every mosque was a magnet to draw him from afar; he made a pilgrimage to every Mohammedan shrine he heard of; he cannot away without its legend. He reports wonders as dull as they are extravagant. They possess neither genius nor charm nor authority. Sometimes Oriental taste for the tawdry is to blame: sometimes he is flatly gulled. But, in mundane matters, restless impulses converted the credulous pundit into a man of the world. He records accurately what he actually saw and heard, or what he believed he saw and heard. He was interested in all that life had to offer; but supremely so in all that had to do with Islam.

From the mouths of the Nile, Ibn BatÛta approached that ancient land where mournful memorials stand out, clear and awful, in the flood of light; where every winding of the mysterious valley repeats the enigma of the tomb. He came to Cairo, and saw the Pyramids,

He tells us of all in architecture that struck him as worthy of mention, of the products of the soil, of the habits of the people, and of their government. He praises the emulation of the provincial Emirs of Egypt in good works and the building of mosques. He watches the gathering of great personages at the procession of the Mahmil, or drapery woven to cover that sanctuary at Mecca wherein lay the object of Arabian worship ages before Mohammed was born. For the Sacred Stone fell from Paradise with Adam; and the Archangel Gabriel carried it to him for the house which he built to God.

Magistrates and juris consults, the great officials of the Sultan and the Syndics of Corporations, some on horseback, some on foot, assemble at Cairo and await the Holy Drapery. The Emir who, this year, is to head the annual pilgrimage, arrives with attendant troops and camels and water-carriers. A conical box encloses the sacred cloth. All the nondescript population of the city follow it. By some trick of the camel-drivers, their beasts are urged to strange screeching; and the motley throng makes its slow progress round the city, a winding river of vivid colour and odd effect; a procession not without dignity, but which an ancient Athenian had perhaps found a tawdry show compared with the simple grace of the procession of the peplops in his City of the Violet Crown.

From Cairo, our pilgrim makes his way to Panopolis, then “a great town, fine and well-built,” and so to Syene, partly following the river where each new morning mocks the ruined temples, and partly taking short cuts across the desert.

A holy man told him that he would find it impossible to fulfil his pilgrimage just then; but he pushed across the unpeopled sands which lie between the Nile and the Red Sea, and, after a trying journey of fifteen days, found himself among a “black” race, called Bodjas, who were settled at Aidhab, at that time a port of considerable trade. These people wore yellow garments and affected the smallest of head-gear. They would seem to have preserved their independence by martial spirit; and, as is so often the case among a warrior-people, daughters were not allowed to succeed to property. At this moment, they were at war with the Mamaluke soldiery of Egypt; and it was impossible for pilgrims to get transport across the Red Sea.

CHAPTER III
A ROUNDABOUT PILGRIMAGE

Now, besides the shrewd reading of BatÛta’s character by the holy man of Alexandria, who saw in him the born traveller, another Sheik had also read his man aright and foretold that he should meet the seer’s brothers in widely separated parts of the world. Oracles are often suggestive and start the way to their own fulfilment. These predictions actually came about. BatÛta assures us that he had at the time no intention of running over nearly all of the known earth; but by now an inborn tendency to keep moving had developed into a veritable wanderlust. “A brief space,” sings Pindar, “a brief space hath opportunity for men; but of him it is known surely when it cometh, and he waiteth thereon.” BatÛta’s opportunity had come to him. Stopped from reaching Mecca during the present pilgrimage, he resolved to retrace his steps to Cairo, push on to Palestine, visit its sacred spots and the renowned cities of Syria, join the Syrian Caravan, and take the long, fearsome journey from Damascus over the Arabian waste. Here was occasion to visit holy places only less interesting to the Moslem than to the Christian, to wander at leisure in notable lands, and to compare the amazing ways of the tribes of men. He sold all that might encumber him, and returned to High Egypt. The Nile was in flood; he sailed down it, spent a night at Cairo, and pushed on, (A.D. 1326). There was a caravan-route to Palestine, north of Sinai, with stations in the desert. Each station had its KhÂn, or inn, an institution which afforded bed and stabling, but not food or fodder. But there was a shop at each station, where all that might be wanted was sold; and there was a water-cistern, free to all comers at the door of each inn. At the frontier of Palestine, there was a custom-house, and a passport must be produced before one was allowed to cross the boundary in either direction. At Khalil, a town of Hebron, remarkable for its beauty, and also for the unusual distinction of being well lit at night, BatÛta admired a mosque said to have been reared by those genii whom the wisdom of Solomon had made his servants, and whom he evoked by his mystic talisman. Passing through Palestine, our pilgrim visited those very few places the sanctity of which could be established by indisputable record and those very many places which owed their fame to rank imagination or crafty legend begotten of sordid avarice. He went to the birthplace of Jesus, because the Moslem regards Jesus as a fore-runner of Mohammed: and from Bethlehem he came to Jerusalem. He thought the Mosque there as fine a building as any on earth. It occupied one side of a vast courtyard, and its fretted walls and roof shone with gilding and vivid colours. In the middle of the Mosque was a rock, so brilliant in hue that no idea of its glory could be given. And this was the rock whence (so says tradition) Mohammed rode up to heaven on the sacred winged ass.

Tyre, “mother of cities fraught with pride,” Acre and Askalon were in ruins—the result of the Crusades. Tiberias rejoiced in a bathing-establishment. Having plenty of time to fill up before the Syrian caravan should leave Damascus, the pilgrim wandered hither and thither, backwards and forwards, and saw many famous cities, such as Beyrout, Tripoli, Aleppo, Baalbec, Emessa and Antioch. He found all the people who inhabited the district of Gabala sadly misguided; for they believed Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet to be a god. They neither purified themselves, nor prayed, nor fasted. They had turned mosques into cattle-sheds; and, should any pious wanderer wish to pray in one of the desecrated buildings, these heretics were wont to gibe at him and shout: “Don’t pray, ass that thou art; fodder shall be given thee.”

Nomads from Central Asia had penetrated Asia Minor and reached the Mediterranean shore. Here and there they had settled; just as Scythian and Hun, Goth and Vandal once forced their way into the Roman Empire and effected lodgement within it before they rose and overthrew it. But the Emirs, whatever their nationality, would seem to have maintained decent government. Sometimes the despotisms of Islam surprise us by such unexpected qualities as sagacity, prudence, and self-restraint. At Latakia, BatÛta found that, when anyone was condemned to die, the official appointed to superintend the execution was expected to go up to wherever the condemned man might be, return without apprehending him, and ask the Emir to repeat the sentence. Not until three such journeys had been made and the sentence thrice delivered was it carried out. On the other hand, secret murder was a favourite political engine. Our pilgrim beheld, on the heights of Lebanon, strongholds of that military sect, the Hashashin, to which we owe the word assassin. “They will admit no stranger among them, unless he be of their own body. The Sultan, El Malik El Nasir, uses them as his arrows; and, through them, he strikes down those of his foes that dwell afar from him; such, for instance, as may dwell in Persia or anywhere else. Various duties are allotted to different men among them; and when the Sultan wishes one of them to waylay some foe, he bargains as to the price of blood. Should the murderer accomplish his work, and return to safety, his reward is paid to him; and should he fail, his heirs receive it. These folk carry poisoned knives wherewithal to strike their prey.”

Laodicea would seem to have been held by a ruler who, like the robber-barons of Germany or the pirates of Dalmatia, was a terror to the trader: “he is said to take by violence all the ships he can.” Like all travellers, BatÛta is enthusiastic about the glories of Lebanon. He found it “the most fertile mountain on Earth, where are copious springs of water and shady groves; and it is laden with many kinds of fruit. And I beheld there very many of that host of hermits who have left the world that they may devote themselves to God.”

Two thousand feet above the sea-level lay Damascus, most ancient of cities, with a delightful climate and a productive soil. “The chief Mosque is the most splendid in the world, most tastefully built, excelling in beauty and grace.” His interest in mosques and public worship is inextinguishable; and he recounts the dramatic methods of a certain preacher. There dwelt at Damascus an imam whose orthodoxy was not above suspicion; indeed he had already suffered imprisonment on that score. It so fell out that, one Friday, I was at his preaching. He came down the stairway of the pulpit calling out: ‘God came down to the Earthly Paradise in the very same way as I am coming down.’ A theologian who was there denied this; and the congregation, set on the preacher and beat him. A complaint was made against this too literal expositor; he was cast into prison, and there he died.

Islam has always been remarkable for charity. Damascus boasted many benevolent institutions. “As I was passing along a street one day,” says BatÛta “I saw a slave-child who had dropped a porcelain dish, made in China, which lay in pieces on the ground. A crowd gathered round the little Mameluke, and one of them said, ‘Pick up the pieces and carry them to the overseer of the Utensils Charity.’ This man took the little slave with him to the overseer, who at once gave him what money was necessary to buy such another dish. This is one of the best of these endowments; for the owner of the slave would doubtless have beaten him or scolded him severely. Moreover he would have been heart-broken. So the endowment really relieves sorrowful bosoms.” BatÛta gives more than one little indication that children (and even his own wives occasionally) could touch his heart. The Moslem can be very pitiful; he usually treats his slaves kindly; and one does not wonder that our pilgrim speaks warmly about the piety and high civilization of Damascus in his time. He was licensed to teach in that beautiful city; but found time to visit the cavern which is one of the places where Abraham is said to have been born, and the grotto where Abel’s blood was still to be seen; “for his brother dragged him thither.”

BatÛta started with the Pilgrim’s Caravan to the Holy Cities on September 1st, 1326. Many hundreds of perilous miles lay before him. The mere solitude of the desert always inspires insupportable dread, and to secure a sufficient supply of water is a problem not always to be solved. BatÛta was told how, during one pilgrimage, water gave out, and “a skin of it rose to a thousand dinars; yet both seller and buyer perished.” Ancient travellers always speak with awe of the weird noises which suddenly break the silence of the desert and inspire a new dread. Shifting sands cause these sounds. BatÛta tells us of one huge sandhill called The Mount of Drums, because the Bedouins “say that a sound as of drums is heard there every Thursday night.” But this particular pilgrimage, although made along a difficult and dangerous route, was comparatively uneventful, as were all the journeys BatÛta made to Mecca. He gives small space to it, and we shall find the record of a much livelier and more interesting pilgrimage from Damascus in the pages of Varthema. The journey was often one of perils, grave and manifold.

CHAPTER IV
GLIMPSES OF ARABIA, PERSIA AND EAST AFRICA IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

After duly visiting the tomb of the Prophet at Medina and performing the prescribed rites at Mecca, BatÛta, still insatiate of travel, joined the Persian caravan on its homeward journey, and soon came to the place where, to this day, the devil is lapidated. “It is a great collection of stones. Everyone who comes to it hurls one. They say there was once a heretic who was stoned to death there.” From Medina, Central Arabia was crossed, and a journey of 600 miles brought the caravan to a town in the Nedjd which was one of the claimants to the possession of the bones of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet. Where Ali really was buried is unknown. But the excited mind worked a great effect on the body here, for, on a certain night of the year devoted to religious revival, “cripples were brought to the tomb, even from far-away lands, and were laid on it soon after sunset. Then there was praying and reciting of the Koran and prostrations; and, about midnight the halt rose up, sound and hale.”

At Bussora, the port so opulent and its trades so flourishing in the days of Haroun-al-Raschid, one dared not venture to travel abroad without the protection of a Bedouin escort: “There is no journeying possible in these parts except with them.” Yet traces remained of the former wealth of the city. “Bussora is richer in palm-trees than any place in the world. Its people are generous and friendly to strangers. One of the finest mosques is paved with red pebbles. And therein is kept that beautiful copy of the Koran which Othman was reading when he was murdered; and the stain of his blood is on it yet.”

In this district he came across vestiges of the worship of Baal. Certain of the fanatical sect called HaÏderia lit a fire of wood, ate of the burning embers, rolled in them, and then trampled them with bare feet until all flame was put out. Later on, he saw the same strange feat done by the same strange sect in India, when there came to a place near Delhi, where he was encamped, men led by a very black man and wearing collars and bracelets of iron. “They stayed all night with us. Their chief asked me for wood to light a fire for them to dance by, and I requested the deputy-ruler of that part to let them have it. After the second evening prayer, the pile was lit, and, when the wood had become burning charcoal, they struck up music and began to dance into the fire; and they rolled themselves in it. Then their head-man asked me for a tunic, and I gave him one of very fine make. He put it on, rolled in the fire, and beat the embers so that the fire ceased to flare, and it went out. He then brought the tunic to me, and I found it to be undamaged. And thereat I marvelled greatly.” And between these two experiences he came across HaÏderia in Eastern Persia at Turbet-HaÏdarj: “They wore an iron collar, and, what is stranger still, their virilia are incarcerated to ensure their chastity.”

He now sailed down the united Tigris and Euphrates and along the coast of Persia in a small boat, and, landing at a port, travelled across the plains of Southern Persia, with high mountains right and left. He found the ways in mountainous LÂristÂn cut through the rocks. These parts were governed by a tributary ruler. “In every one of the stations in this country are cells made ready for those bent on religious undertakings and for travellers. Every newcomer is provided with bread, flesh, and sweetmeats.” After two months of travel, BatÛta came to Ispahan, in the heart of Persia. The Sultan had already provided him with money to cover the cost of his wanderings in Persia. Eastern rulers regarded munificence as a duty: Eastern travellers claimed it as a right. From Ispahan he went southward to Shiraz, which he found a large and well-built city, but inferior to Damascus. “The inhabitants are honest, religious, and virtuous, especially the women. I went thither in order to visit that paragon of saints and of those that have the power to work miracles, Majd OddÎn. I put up therefore at the College which he founded. He was judge of the City: but, being advanced in years, his brother’s sons took on his duties for him.... He is much venerated by the Emirs of that land, so that, when they are before him, they lay hold of both their ears; which is the mark of devotion due to the Sultan.”

At El Hilla, on the banks of the Euphrates, he found a curious belief that the last of the Imams was still alive and dwelt there; but that he was invisible to mortal eye. “Every day, a hundred armed men come to the portal of the mosque. They lead with them a beast saddled and bridled; and a gathering of folk beat drums and blow trumpets. They cry aloud: ‘Come forth, Lord of the Times; for the earth is filled with evil doing and deeds of shame. Now is the hour for thee to appear, so that, through thee, Allah may divide the truth from the lie.’ They wait on until night, when needs must that they go home.”

“It is an uncontrolled truth,” says Swift, “that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents.” Ibn BatÛta, theologian, jurist, and, by this time, experienced man of the world, knew his powers; and one of his powers was knowing how to employ the rest. We now find him accompanying the Tartar Ruler of Persia, the “Sultan of the Two Iraks and KhÔrasÂn, to Tabriz, whither the monarch marched with his army.” Tabriz is not more than a hundred miles from Armenia and the Caspian Sea. BatÛta tells us how his eyes were dazzled by the lustre of precious jewels which well-dressed slaves purchased to decorate their Tartar mistresses. The Sultan gave him a fine dress and other handsome presents; and he resolved to make a second pilgrimage to Mecca; whereupon the Sultan ordered that he should be provided with all that was necessary to further such a worthy end. But, before starting he had time to travel along the banks of the Tigris as far north as Diarbekir; for he wished to visit a saint and worker of miracles, reputed “not to break his fast during forty days at a stretch, save with a crust of barley bread.” On getting back to Bagdad he found the caravan ready to start, and took his departure with it.

Persia, exhausted by the long struggle with the Roman Empire, fell an easy prey to the Arabs; and, although it enjoyed a second era of power and prosperity under the Caliphs of Bagdad, first Seljuk Turks conquered it, and then Mongolians, under Chinghiz KhÂn, which, being interpreted, is the Great KhÂn, no other than the “Tartre Cambyuskan” of Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale, the “Cambuscan” bold of Milton’s II Penseroso. Mongolians had now possessed the land for little less than a century, and they and the Sultans of Egypt held each other in dread. Religious differences have always been convenient as a war-cry; and, from of old, religious unity has been wont to fulfil some of the functions of our modern patriotism. The Caliph at Cairo was the head of the Orthodox Sunnites, Moslems who hold the Sunna, or body of tradition which professes to preserve such teaching and laws as the Prophet gave by word of mouth as of equal authority with the Koran; but the Tartar Sultan of Persia was a Shiite, or one of those who reject the Sunna, and hold that Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet, was Mohammed’s legitimate successor. Hence BatÛta found the Shiite Sultan putting pressure on the Sunnites of the great cities of Bagdad, Shiraz, and Ispahan to make them renounce the form of faith sacred to them because it was that of their fathers and further endeared because the Caliphate at Bagdad had brought such lustre to the Persian name.

Our pilgrim arrived at Mecca, for the second time, without meeting with any remarkable adventure in crossing Central Arabia. One is surprised to find so restless a spirit content to remain three years in Mecca. But BatÛta was a theologian and jurist; one, moreover, who held the outward observances of Islam in high respect; and he dwelt during the whole of that time at a Mohammedan theological school. And now the old passion for travel returns, and he is completely in its grip. He is away to Jidda on the Red Sea, embarks on one of those Eastern ships which were even more wretchedly built and worse navigated than those of the Western nations, and is forced by tempest into a port between Aidhab and Suakin. Nothing daunted, he puts to sea again and arrives in Arabia the Happy. A Cadi welcomes the distinguished sage and traveller, entertains him for three days, and, on the fourth, takes him to the court of the Sultan at Zebid, one of the chief towns of Yemen. BatÛta a true Oriental delights in pomp and ceremony, and describes the audience in full.

“The Sultan is to be saluted by touching the ground with forefinger, raising it to the head, and saying ‘May Allah give thee enduring rule.’ This I did, copying the Cadi; who seated himself at the right hand of the Sultan, and told me to be seated facing him. The monarch sat on a daÏs, which was covered with ornamental silk stuff; and right and left of him stood his warriors. Around him are sword and buckler-bearers; nearer are bowmen; and in front of these, on either side, the chamberlain, the first men of the State, and the private scribe. Djandar, the Emir, is also present before him and the officers of the guard; but the latter keep their distance. When the Sultan takes his seat, all cry aloud, ‘In the name of Allah!’ and they repeat this when he rises; so that all who are in the Hall of Audience know precisely when he sits down and when he rises. Directly the Monarch is seated, all those who are wont to visit the Court and do him obeisance, come in and salute him. This done, each takes his allotted place to right or left, nor does he leave it or sit down unless commanded to do so. In the latter case, the Sultan says to the Emir Djandar, who is Chief Constable of the Palace, ‘Tell such an one to be seated.’ And the man so commanded comes forward a little way and sits down on a carpet in front of and between those who are grouped to right and left. Meats are then brought forth; and these are of two kinds, one kind being for the many, the other kind for people of importance, that is to say, the Sultan, the Chief Justice, the principal Sheriffs, jurisconsults and guests. The other sort of viands serves for the rest of the Sheriffs, jurisconsults, judges, sheiks, emirs, and officers of the army. Everyone takes the place allotted to him at the feast and everybody has room enough. I found the same form observed at the Court of the Sultan of India; and I know not which monarch hath copied it from the other.”

After visiting several cities of Yemen, which were flourishing centres of trade at that time, BatÛta reached Aden, “a large city, but without water, and nothing can grow there. Rain is caught and stored up in tanks, and that is the only water to drink. But rich traders make their abode in Aden, and hither vessels come from India.”

Now the Arabs had sought for wealth in the products of Ethiopia; they had advanced along the Eastern Coast of Africa, and had established ports considerably south of Zanzibar. BatÛta had a fancy to see these tropical parts; so he sailed from Aden as far as Kiloa or Kilwa, which is nine degrees south of the equator. The ship touched at various ports where there were Arab settlements; some of them by no means salubrious or agreeable. At Zeila, he experienced “an unbearable stench from decaying fish and the blood of camels, which are slaughtered in the streets:” At another station, Mogdishu, he was received with much civility. “When a ship draws up, the young men of the place come forth, and each accosts a trader, and becomes his host. Should there be a theologian or a man of station on board, he is taken to dwell with the Cadi. When it was known that I was there, the Cadi came to the beach, and his students with him, and I took up my abode with him. He led me to the Sultan who is styled the Sheik.... A servant brought vegetables and fawfel-nut ... and rose-water to us ... and this is the highest honour that can be done to a stranger.... The people are far too fat, because they gorge. One of them will eat as much as a whole congregation of worshippers ought to do.” From Mogdishu, the ship went on to Mombasa and Kiloa for a cargo of ivory. BatÛta tells us of the productions of tropical East Africa, and how “the greatest gift to the peoples here is ivory, which is the tooth of the elephant.”

From Kiloa, he coasted back to the straits of Bab-el-Mandel, ran along the Gulf of Aden, and landed at Zafar, in Oman. He tells us, as does Marco Polo, how the natives feed their cattle on fish. Zafar “is a filthy place, plagued with flies by reason of the markets for fish and dates. Copper and tin pieces of money are used. The heat is so great that those who dwell there must bathe several times a day; and they suffer greatly from elephant’s leg (elephantiasis) and from ruptures. It is indeed beyond a marvel that they will hurt no one unless it be to return some hurt done to them. Many Sultans have tried to subdue them, yet naught but bale have they gotten thereby.”

BatÛta travelled past the shores of Oman in a small coaster which touched at many ports. He found the banana, the betel-tree, and the cocoa-nut flourishing in this corner of Arabia, and describes them and their uses. Wishing to see what the hinterland was like, he took a seven-days’ journey from the coast, but found that it took six days to cross a desert. The inland people would seem hardly to have emerged from primitive promiscuity; for he tells us that “there wives are most base and husbands shew no sign of jealousy.” Jealousy as to the harem is an excellent masculine virtue to our good Moslem.

Crossing the Persian Gulf, the island of Hormuz was reached, whither traders had recently migrated from old Hormuz on the Persian mainland. Vases and lamp-stands of rock-salt were among the manufactures of this important mart and port of call; and hard by were the renowned fisheries for “orient pearl.” He was told, and believed, that the divers remained two hours under water, and was astounded to see people amusing themselves by crawling from orbit to orbit of the battered skull of a spermaceti whale which had been washed ashore.

Crossing the narrow strait to Persia, he hired an escort of Turkoman settlers, “a hardy and brave race, who occupy these parts and know the roads. Without them, there is no travelling.” His object in returning to Persia was to visit a man of saintly repute who dwelt far away in LÂristÂn. It took four days to cross a waterless desert where the Simoon blows in summer, “and kills everyone in its path; and their limbs drop away from the trunk.” At Lar, the capital, he found the saint in his cell, seated on the ground. He was clad in an ancient garment made of wool. Yet he was in the habit of giving costly presents, and had food and fresh clothing ready for all who visited him.

CHAPTER V
TO INDIA BY WAY OF CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE STEPPES

BatÛta joined the Persian Caravan to Mecca, and once again journeyed across the territory of the Wahabi in Central Arabia. This, his third pilgrimage, over, he resolved to see India. But the wretched ship in which he put forth was storm-tossed, and finally driven into a little port on the Egyptian coast. So he made across the desert, seeing, now and again, the tents of a few wandering Arabs or an ostrich or gazelle. After much hardship, he reached Syene and travelled once more along the banks of the Nile to Cairo. And now the fancy seized him to revisit Asia Minor, see Southern Russia and Turkestan, and get to India over the Hindu KÛsh. He retraced his old route through Palestine and Syria as far as Latakia. There he embarked on a Genoese vessel for AlÂia, on the south coast of Asia Minor, which he calls “RÛm, because it belonged of yore to the Romans; and, to this day many of them dwell here under the protection of the Moslems.” He was now farther north than he had been before. One of the petty Sultans gave him and those who were with him the usual gracious greeting of the East, and furnished them with provisions. On reaching Anatolia, he found the country broken up into a multitude of contending States, many of these being held by Turkomans. The secular efforts of the keepers of wandering herds on the Steppes of Asia to settle in the rich, civilized countries of Europe and Asia had established the nomad in Persia and Asia Minor. Successive waves of conquest had swept over the fair lands south of the Oxus and Caspian, and, one by one, the victorious tribes settled down and received a higher civilization than their own from the subjugated tillers of the soil. But now the Empire of the Seljuk Turks was broken into fragments. Among the new rulers the Ottoman Turks, a small class of the tribe of Oghuz, were gradually and with difficulty gaining territory and power in Asia Minor. But there was as yet no hint that they were destined to inherit the Roman Empire of the East and to rule from the Danube to the Euphrates. Some of these little States were ancient provinces, with splendid and busy cities that rivalled Cairo in wealth and beauty. Some were carved out of the mouldering Byzantine Empire; some had been torn from Persia. There were also solitary fortresses and towns held by Turkomans who lived by rapine and piracy; and some States only preserved their precarious existence by the aid of a force of slaves who had been purchased or torn from their Christian parents in childhood and rigidly trained to military life. These Mamelukes were sent by their overlord, the Sultan of Egypt.

Yet the tradition of good government was far from being lost. The new rulers were vigorous and prudent. It would seem that one of the secrets of Ottoman success lay in that close supervision of subordinates which recent conquest requires. Consequently, on the whole, the country was prosperous. BatÛta found that the ruler of one province never remained more than a month in one place. He moved about to inspect fortresses and see the condition of various districts. This man had besieged a city for twelve years. It is not without precedent in Moslem history for a siege to last longer than that of Troy; a fact which shows how little the husbandman was interfered with in these local wars. Even in France at the close of the Dark Ages, the tiller of the soil was safe from the invader of his field if he laid his hand on the plough. BatÛta wandered at large, and was received in all places with warm hospitality. On landing, he took up his abode in the college of a sheik; and, on the second day, a poorly-clad man came to invite him and those who were with him to a feast. He wondered “how so poor a man could bear the charges of feasting us, who were many.” The sheik explained that the man was one of a society of silk-merchants who had a “cell” of their own. The guests were received with much courtesy and hospitality, and were liberally, supplied with money to cover their travelling expenses. BatÛta learned that, in every town of the Turkomans, there was constituted a brotherhood of young men to supply strangers with food and other necessaries. A president, styled The Brother, was elected by those of the same trade, and even a foreigner might occupy the post. Each guild built a “cell” for itself in which food, a saddled steed, and all that might be wanted by travellers was stored. One of the duties of a President was to call daily on the members of his guild or brotherhood, and assist them in their diverse needs. Every evening the brotherhood returned his call; and whatsoever had not been needed was sold to support the “cell.” Should any traveller have arrived during the day, he was entertained. Otherwise “the brotherhood of youths” spent the evening in song, dance, and feast. On one occasion, directly BatÛta’s party arrived at the gate of a city, two knots of men rushed to seize the bridles of their horses, and there was a struggle between them. This proceeding greatly alarmed the travellers, the more so that none of them was able to speak the language. But a man who knew Arabic came forward to assure them that there was no cause for fear. The rival parties were two brotherhoods disputing as to which should entertain the travellers. The antagonists cast lots, and the travellers went to the cell of one guild on the first day and to that of the other guild the next day. At another time, BatÛta put up at the “cell” of one who was a member of a society of youths and who had a great number of disciples distinguished by their coarse ragged mantles and closely fitting hose. The petty Sultans, too, would provide horses or provisions.

The ruler of Bigni, a man proud of the possession of “a stone which had fallen from heaven,” gave BatÛta gold, clothes, two horses and a slave. Although a severe Sunnite, our traveller shows no great religious hatred to Shiites, Jews, or Christians; but he liked to keep heretics and infidels in their place. He tells a story which is instructive as to the medical attainments of the Jew and the relations between Jew and Moslem. At Bigni an old man came and saluted the Sultan. All rose to do him honour. “He sat himself on the daÏs, opposite the Sultan, and the readers of the Koran were below him. I asked the sage, ‘who is this sheik?’ He smiled and kept silent; but when I asked again, he replied: ‘he is a Jewish physician of whom we all have need. That is why we rose when he came in.’ Whereat I fumed, and said to him: ‘thou dog, son of a dog, how darest thou, a mere Jew, to seat thyself above the readers of the Koran?’ I had raised my voice, and this astonished the Sultan, who asked why I had done so. The sage told him, and the Jew was humbled, and went away very much cast down. When we returned, the sage said to me: ‘well have you done! Allah bestow his blessing on thee! None other but thou had dared to speak thus to the Jew. Thou hast taught him to know his place.’”

Language-difficulty caused some embarassment during this long journey through Asia Minor; so an interpreter, who had done the pilgrimage to Mecca and who spoke Arabic, was engaged by BatÛta’s party. But the Hadji cheated them abominably; so one day they asked him what he had stolen from them that day. The thief, quite unabashed told them the precise amount; “whereat we could but laugh and put up with it.”

BatÛta embarked from Sinope, on the southern shore of the Euxine, for Sodaia, in the Crimea. Sodaia was one of the great ports of the world. Venice had established a factory there a century back, but had been ejected. The Crimea was chiefly in the hands of the Genoese, who were established at Caffa; but the Italian cities were in pressing danger of ejection and of losing their Levantine and Euxine trade. After suffering much distress on the voyage and “only just escaping from being drowned,” we find BatÛta at Caffa; and for the first time suffering from the annoyance of those Christian bells which have been a nuisance, not merely to Moslems, but to the more sensitive among European ears from the days when they were perhaps necessary, yet when Rabelais objurgated them in his chapter on the “Island of bells,” to these modern times of clocks and watches. In all these cosmopolitan towns, each nation occupied a separate fortified quarter. The trade of Southern Russia was great; and one is surprised to find that horses were exported to India.

BatÛta made across a land where the quiet air was no longer annoyed by the insistent clang which was an insult at once to his faith and his ears. He found Southern Russia a plain without hill or tree. Waggons might travel for six months through a green desert, the silence broken only by lowing of cattle, hoarse voice of an occasional herdsman, or languid stir of some collection of huts which passed for a town. Cattle were protected by severe laws severely enforced. “Should a beast be stolen, the thief must return it with nine more. If unable to furnish these, his children are taken into slavery; and, if he have no children, he is slaughtered like a sheep.... The only fuel is dung.”

BatÛta was bent on visiting Uzbek KhÂn, the powerful Tartar who now represented the dynasty founded by Chinghiz KhÂn, the blacksmith. Uzbek was one of the seven mightiest monarchs of the world, the others being the Sultan of the West; the Sultan of Egypt and Syria, the Sultan of the two Iraks (Persia and Mesopotamia), the KhÂn of Turkestan, the Sultan of India, and the Emperor of China. Our traveller hired a waggon, and, after many monotonous days, arrived at the camp of the KhÂn. He was amazed to behold “a city in motion; complete in its streets, mosques, and cooking houses.” Nor was he less bewildered at the consideration given to women by all men, from the KhÂn downwards, and at seeing them going about unveiled, yet “religious, charitable, and given to good works.” The wife of an Emir would ride, magnificently attired, in a coach. “Often she is accompanied by her husband; but one would take him for a mere attendant.” Uzbek KhÂn was “wont to give audience on Friday, his four wives, unveiled, sitting enthroned to right and left of him, a son on either side, and a daughter in front. Princes and Emirs are gathered around. People enter into the presence in order of rank. When a wife comes in, he takes her by the hand and leads her to her throne. Each wife has a separate abode; and not to visit these ladies is looked upon as a breach of good manners.” It is evident that the ancestral habits of a nomadic people were carefully preserved under conditions which were rapidly changing. The Sultan sent his visitor a horse, a sheep, and koumiss in a leathern bottle.

BatÛta wished to see for himself the great change in the length of day and night which takes place as one travels northward. So Uzbek sent him to far-distant Bulgar, on the Volga, a place in the latitude of Newcastle. Here he was told of a “Land of Darkness,” which lay forty days’ journey to the North. “Traders alone go there; and only in big companies. Dogs draw them over the ice in sledges; and the travellers must take all food and wood for fuel with them. The dogs are fed before anyone, and experienced dogs, who have done the journey several times, are chosen to lead the pack. On arriving at the proper place, each trader puts down his goods and retires. Next day, he finds furs put down as barter. Should he be content with these, he carries them off; but should he not be satisfied, he leaves them where they are, and more are added. But sometimes the natives will take back their own goods, and leave those of the traders. The traders never see anyone, and know not whether they deal with human beings or with demons.” Strange as this practice seems, there is other evidence that exchange of goods was made in this way in very high latitudes. Sledge-dogs were used very much farther south than they are to-day. BatÛta speaks of the Russians as being “Christians with red hair, blue eyes, ugly, faithless, and rich in silver shrines.”

When BatÛta returned to Uzbek, he went on to Astrakhan with him. “Here the Sultan dwells in very cold weather.... The city is on one of the great rivers of the world (the Volga), which is crossed by laying thousands of bundles of hay on the ice.”

Now, the third of Uzbek’s four wives was a daughter of the Christian Emperor of Constantinople. History makes no mention of this lady; but there is no reason to doubt the fact, however surprising; for, since 1265 A.D. the Byzantine Emperor had more than once given a natural daughter or legitimate sister in marriage to powerful Mongolian Sovereigns, in order to get their support against the encroaching Turks of Asia Minor.

This particular lady was expecting her confinement and desired to return home for the event. She had requested the KhÂn to allow her to do so, and he had sanctioned the journey. BatÛta saw an opportunity of seeing the famous Christian metropolis, if the KhÂn would allow him to join the escort. Such a petition from a foreign stranger naturally aroused suspicion as to his motives; but BatÛta was skilful in allaying this; and we find him setting forth with a parting gift from the KhÂn of a fine dress, several horses, and cash. Even the KhÂn’s ladies and his sons and daughters gave him presents. The princess was escorted by 500 horse and 4,500 foot. The KhÂn, accompanied by his head-wife and heir-apparent rode with her the first stage; the heir-apparent and his suite went on the next stage of a journey that took two months. For some reason or other a very round-about route was chosen; first a waterless, uninhabited waste was crossed; then the Caucasus approached to within a day’s march. When a border-fortress was reached, the escort returned; and now the real motive of the lady becomes discernable. The unhappy woman had been the victim of state-craft, a puppet danced off to a semi-barbarian husband in the interests of Constantinople. In spite of the respect paid to women in her new abode, she was heartily sick of Tartar discomfort and Moslem ways. Accustomed to the luxurious ease and refinements of the Byzantine Court, she loathed the uncouth manners of a half-tamed people and their rough life. She sighed for the amenities of her father’s palace and the high civilization of his city. She left her travelling mosque at the fortress, drank wine, and is said to have eaten swine’s flesh. From BatÛta’s point of view, she relapsed into infidelity; yet he has no bitter word to cast at her. When a day’s journey from her native city, a younger brother came to meet her with 5,000 cavalry, all in shining armour. Next day the heir-apparent arrived with 10,000 cavalry, and when quite near to Constantinople, the greater part of the population turned out, decked in their best, and shouting so that it was difficult to decide whether they or the drums made most noise. The parents came forth from the gate in full royal state, and the poor released princess threw herself on the ground before them, kissed it, and even kissed the hooves of their horses. All the bells of Constantinople were a-ringing, and the royal party entered the city with glittering pomp.

BatÛta was unwilling to enter “IstambÛl” without the Emperor’s special sanction; it was not too safe a place for a Moslem. Andronicus PalÆologus the Younger gave him a safe-conduct; but he was searched for concealed arms at the fifth gate—a practice which, afterwards, he found to obtain in India. As he passed through the gateways the guards muttered: “Saracens! Saracens!” And Saracens they had indeed occasion to hold in mortal horror and dread.

Our pilgrim-traveller gets sadly muddled about names and dates just here. Evidently, he derived the information he gives us from a Jew, who acted as interpreter, and who either spoke Arabic imperfectly or heartily enjoyed “pulling his leg.” And as to dates, just here, BatÛta’s memory fails him a little. He was told that the Pope of Rome paid an annual visit to Santa Sophia, and was received with the greatest veneration and ceremonial. And he calls the Emperor Andronicus, “George.” Andronicus plied him with eager questions as to Jerusalem and the Holy Places of Palestine. He only saw the outside of Santa Sophia.

Now, the Princess made open objection to return to her husband, and had her will. She gave BatÛta a money-present for his services; but the Byzantine Empire was in decay, and, to his loss in exchange, the coins debased. He returned Eastward with a small escort, and met Uzbek KhÂn at Sara. We read in Dan Chaucer how

Nothing will content him but to see those famous cities beyond the Oxus, and Balk, with its great mosque of the precious pillars, before he proceeds to India. He travels 40 days through a desert. The whole district is one vast desolation; and he tells us how Chinghiz KhÂn, the blood-stained blacksmith, a conquering hero, a strict Moslem, and therefore “a man of liberal mind,” subdued district after district until he was lord of China and the Middle East; how he carried off the youth of BokhÂra and Samarkand, KhÔrasÂn and Irak, and slaughtered and pillaged so that he left nothing but ruin behind him. BatÛta visited the Great KhÂn of Turkestan and more than one camp of petty rulers.

“The purple robe makes Emperors, not priests,” said Ambrose the Bishop of Milan to the Emperor Theodosius; and the Emperor remarked how hard it was for a ruler to meet with an outspoken and unfearing man. BatÛta tells us of an amusing incident which indicates, not merely how an imam could be outspoken to a king, but also that, if Mohammedanism had admitted of a sacerdotal hierarchy, the same exercise of priestly authority which cast Theodosius prostrate and weeping before the Altar at Milan and kept Heinrich shivering in the snows of Canossa, while awaiting the condescension of Hildebrand, would have obtained in the Moslem as in the Christian world. When Tirim Siri KhÂn wished prayers to be delayed until he should come to the mosque, the imam bade the messenger return to the KhÂn and ask him whether prayers were ordered of God or of him, and commanded the muezzin to summon the faithful as usual. After the second prostration the KhÂn arrived, meekly remained at the doorway, and joined in the prayers. When worship was over, he grasped the hand of the imam, who laughed heartily, and the twain sat together afterwards, BatÛta being with them. The KhÂn told the traveller to declare to his countrymen how the Ruler of the Turkomans had sat with a poor man of the poorest Persians. This worthy imam lived by the labour of his hands, and refused all the gifts his sovereign offered him. No wonder that warm friendship sprang up between these two men, and that both were respected and obeyed. But greater regard was paid to the statutes than to this monarch even; for, after BatÛta left, Tirim Siri broke a law laid down by his grandfather and therefore was deposed.

In one province he found “a laudable practice. A whip is hung up in every mosque, and whoever stays away from worship is beaten by the imam before all the congregation, and fined to boot, the fine going towards the upkeep of the mosque.” The time came when BatÛta, clothed with authority, itched to exercise it in the same praiseworthy way.

BatÛta now visits Herat, turns north-westward to Meshed, the capital of KhÔrasÂn and holy city of the Shiites, thence travels to Jam, the birthplace of Jami, the Persian poet, and at Tus finds the tomb of the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid, who died there when on a military expedition. Now, Haroun-al-Raschid was a Sunnite; so the orthodox “place lighted candles on his grave, but the followers of Ali (Shiites) are wont to give it a kick.” One recalls the story of how, when the Indian Emperor had his attention drawn to a dog defiling the grave of a heretic, he remarked that “the beast resembles orthodoxy.” Heterodox or orthodox, according to point of view, here were flourishing colleges filled with students, and saintly men dwelling in secluded cells. To work miracles has always been a distinction of the saint; but the Eastern saint was also permitted to live on to an age incredibly ripe. BatÛta is always running across some man of the age attained by old Parr, and upwards. A century and a half is a moderate number of years for these holy beings, and BatÛta accepts it as veridical; especially when corroborative evidence is given. But three and a half centuries claimed by a man who is no Struldbrug, but looks not more than fifty, staggers even him. The impostor assures his visitor that every century he grows a fresh crop of hair and cuts a new set of teeth, and that he had been a RÂja who was buried at MultÂn in the PunjÂb. “I very much doubted as to what he might really be; and I do so to this day.”

CHAPTER VI
AN EASTERN DESPOT

He waited forty days for the snows to melt on the “Hindu KÛsh—the Slayer of the Hindus, so called because most of the slaves brought from India die here of the bitter cold thereof.” The Afghans were at that time subjects of the KhÂn of Turkestan (Transoxiana); a turbulent, violent race, impatient of the slightest curb. Bandits attacked the party he joined in the KÂbul pass; but bow and arrow kept them at a distance. Fierce invaders had poured down the mountain passes from Afghanistan from the end of the twelfth century and established a Mohammedan Empire at Delhi.

BatÛta passed into Sind. At the Indian border the usual written description of his personal appearance and the object of his visit was sent to the Sultan. There was a system of stations at a short distance from each other, and couriers of the Sultan went to and fro, some on horseback, some on foot. To secure rapid transit, each courier was provided with bells attached to a whip, so as to announce his approach to a station and to warn the courier there to be ready to go on with the royal despatch.

Now, the Mohammedan Sultan of Northern India was a striking illustration of the fact that humanity is not necessarily coupled with generosity. Mohammed Tughlak was renowned throughout the Moslem world for his lavish munificence; but the cold-blooded cruelty of the despot was not less great than his bounty. BatÛta not merely wished to see India; he hoped to achieve lucrative establishment at the Moslem Court. At MultÂn he found a body of adventurers, who sought to place their talents at the service of the Sultan, and awaited his invitation to court. Any shipwrecked sailor, even, had only to make his way to Mohammed Tughlak to be relieved. BatÛta has tales of him which we may believe at our pleasure. The Sultan told one of his courtiers to go to the treasury and take away as much gold as he could carry. He took so much that he fell under its weight. The Sultan ordered the coins to be gathered together, weighed, and sent to him. Once he had one of his Emirs put into a balance, and gave him his weight in gold, kissing him, and telling him to bestow alms for his soul’s welfare. He kissed the feet of a “theologian and gatherer of traditions,” and presented him with a golden vase filled with gold coins.

On the way, BatÛta saw one of the three brothers whom the Sheik at Alexandria had prophesied he should meet, and found him “a man very much broken by temptations of the devil. He would not allow any one to touch his hand or even to draw near him; and, should anyone’s garb chance to touch his, he washed it immediately.” On the road from MultÂn to Delhi, BatÛta was most hospitably received by the Emirs. But Northern India was no more reduced to order by the Mohammedan Sultan than by the Emperor SÎlÂditya in Hiuen-Tsiang’s time. Between MultÂn and Delhi, while travelling with a party of twenty-two, BatÛta found two horse and twenty foot opposing their progress. Our pilgrim was a many-sided man, quite capable of taking his share in a fight. The robbers lost one of their horsemen and twelve of their foot, and then fled from the field.

When Ibn BatÛta arrived at the Moslem capital, which was ten miles to the south of the Delhi of our day, he found that the Sultan was not there. But great honour was done to the man whose fame as theologian, jurist, traveller and three-fold hadji had preceded him. He was received and entertained by the Sultan’s Mother and the Vizier, and received a welcome present of money in return for the presents he had brought with him.

A month and a half after his arrival a child of one of his numerous marriages died. She was a little less than a year old. “The vizier gave her funeral honours as if she had been a child of high rank in that country, with incense, rose-water, readers of the Koran, and panegyrists. And the vizier paid all the costs thereof, giving money to the leaders and food to the poor. This was done by the Sultan’s orders. And the Dowager Sultana sent for the mother of the child, and gave her valuable dresses and ornaments; which was much to her solace.”

News now came that the Sultan was drawing near; so the vizier and others set forth to meet him. Everybody, the adventurers in search of employment included, bore presents to the palace, of which the sentries at the palace-gateway took note. When the Sultan arrived, these gifts were spread out before him, and the travellers were presented to him in order of rank. BatÛta was received with special marks of approval. The Sultan graciously condescended to take his hand, promised to see to his interests, and gave him cloth of gold which had adorned his own person. Each visitor had a horse and silver-saddle sent him, and was appointed either judge or writer. BatÛta was made Judge of Delhi, with a stipend and the rents of three villages attached to his office. When the messengers brought news of these appointments, the new functionaries were expected to kiss the hooves of their horses, go to the palace, and invest themselves with their robes of office.

BatÛta gives an account of the Sultan which is confirmed by Ferishta, the Moslem historian. Mohammed was a typical Oriental sovereign of the first order, that is to say, a man of letters and learning, “approachable, one of the most bountiful of men, splendid in his gifts (where he took a fancy).” But despotism breeds tyranny, and tyranny, brutality. “Notwithstanding his humility, justice, kindness to the poor, and marvellous open-handedness, he was swift to shed blood. Hardly a day went by without someone being slaughtered before the gates of his palace. Often have I seen people suffer there, and their bodies left where they fell. Once, as I rode up, my horse plunged and quivered with fear. I looked ahead, and saw something white lying on the ground. I asked what it might be. One who was with me replied: ‘it is the trunk of a man who has been dismembered.’ It made no difference whether the offence were great or small; the punishment ordered by the Sultan was the same. He spared none on account of his learning, his upright character, or his position. Daily, hundreds of prisoners were brought to the audience-chamber, arms chained to neck, and feet pinioned. Some were killed, some tortured, some severely beaten. He sat in his Audience Hall every day, Fridays excepted, and had everybody in prison brought before him. But Friday was a day of respite for them; then they kept calm and purified themselves.

“The Sultan had a brother. Never have I seen a finer man. The monarch suspected that he had plotted against him. He questioned him concerning this; and, for fear of being put to the torture, the brother made avowal. But, in fact, whoever should deny any charge of this kind which the Sultan might choose to make would most assuredly be put to the torture; and death is usually chosen. The Sultan had his brother’s head cut off in the middle of the courtyard, and, as is the custom, there it remained three days. This man’s mother had been stoned to death in the same place two years before; for she had confessed to adultery or some debauchery.... On one occasion, when I was present, some men were brought forward and charged with having conspired to kill the vizier. They were sentenced to be thrown to the elephants. These beasts are trained to put an end to culprits, their feet being shod with steel with a sharp edge to it. They are guided by riders, take up their victim with their trunks, hurl him up into the air, thrust him between their fore-feet, and do to him just what the riders bid them, and that is whatever the Sultan has ordered. If the command be to cut the victims to pieces, the elephant shall do this with his tools, and then shall cast the pieces to the crowd gathered around; but if it be to leave him, he is flayed before the monarch, his skin stuffed with hay, and his flesh given to dogs.”

This genial sovereign had craftily contrived to bring about the death of his father and a brother by the collapse of a pavilion. But the reign of every Sultan was polluted by parricide or fratricide in the frantic struggle for the throne. And, even more than has been the case throughout history, all the ostentation, luxury, and culture of the Court, the powerful, and the wealthy, was as fine meal ground from the ear which the humble had sown and reaped. The people were crushed, enslaved, outraged and despoiled.

A case was brought before our judge which reveals that the trial by ordeal, of which Hiuen-Tsiang told us, was still employed. A woman reputed to be a Goftar, that is to say, a witch who could kill anyone by a glance, was brought before BatÛta on the charge of having murdered a child. Not knowing what to do, he sent her on to the vizier, who ordered four large water-vessels to be tied to her, and the whole bundle to be thrown into the Jumna. Had she sunk, she would have been deemed innocent and pulled out. Alas! she floated; so she was taken away to be burned.

One day, two Yogis, master and disciple, arrived at the Sultan’s court. Their heads and armpits were bare, the hair having been removed by means of some kind of powder. They were received with much respect; and BatÛta was treated to an exhibition of that Eastern skill in jugglery which astonished all ancient travellers. The disciple assumed the shape of a cube, rose in the air, and floated over the heads of the spectators. Our judge was so frightened at this uncanny trick that he fainted. When he came to, the disciple was still up above his head. The head-conjurer then cast a sandal to the ground. It rebounded, hit the cube, which descended, and lo! there was the disciple again. BatÛta’s heart beat at such a rate that the Sultan ordered a powerful drug to be given him, and told him that he should have been shewn more astounding things, but that he feared for his wits. Probably, however the illusion was produced, our traveller saw something very much like what he describes. Marco Polo and other old travellers tell of the astounding feats they saw, and Jehangir, fourth in succession of the Great Moguls, devotes several pages of his diary to a careful record of many similar marvels which he would seem to have observed closely.9 We shall hear of something stranger yet, which befel BatÛta in China.

Our new-made judge was not only a restless being, but one possessed by an immoderate desire to do things on a big scale. His qualities were exaggerate, and a virtue tended to swell into an iniquity. One pious pilgrimage to the Holy Places did not suffice him: he must visit them again and again. We shall see how fully he availed himself of the liberty in marriage, divorce, and concubinage accorded by his creed. Egoism was a strong element in his character. He could not set bounds to his expenditure. In a word, he borders on megalomania. In a short time, his debts are four and a half times his total income. His excuse is that he was ordered to attend the Sultan in an expedition to put down an insurrection. Many servants are required in India; but his retinue was immense. He was ingenious enough to escape from his difficulties. Mohammed Tughlak plumed himself on his real or supposed proficiency in Persian and Arabic and on his patronage of letters. BatÛta went to him with a panegyric in Arabic so adroitly expressed that he charmed His Majesty. Then BatÛta laid bare his distress. The Sultan paid his debts and dismissed him with the same warning which Mr. Micawber gave David Copperfield. The judge was excused from accompanying his Master, and was given charge of a tomb and the theological college attached to it.

Encouraged by the Sultan’s liberality, perhaps incited by his example in prodigality, and untaught by his recent dilemma, he arranges everything on a stupendous scale. “I set up 150 readers of the Koran, 80 students, 8 repeaters, a lecturer, 80 conventuals, an imam, muezzins, reciters selected for their fine rendering, eulogists, scribes to note down absentees, and ushers. All of these were men of breeding. And I set up an establishment of menials; such as footmen, cooks, messengers, water carriers, betel-servers, swordsmen, javelin-men, umbrella-carriers, hand-washers, criers, and other officials—460 of them, all told. The Sultan commanded me to supply 12 measures of meal and an equal quantity of meat daily at the tomb. This seemed to me a pitifully small amount.... I made it 35 measures of meal, and 35 of meat, and sugar, sugar-candy, butter, and fawfel-nut in due proportion. Thereby I fed all comers.”

There was some excuse for the expenditure on food. Famine is the recurrent curse of countries with imperfect means of transport, and “the land suffered from famine at this time. Thus suffering was relieved; and fame of it borne afar.” But BatÛta does not conceal his having used money which his friends lent him during his stay at Delhi. Indeed he vilifies them for expecting him to return any part of it. He tells his tale in the tone of a man who believes himself to have been treated ungenerously and unjustly.

Later on in his narrative, he has occasion to refer to the fact that at some time during the few years of his residence at Delhi he added to the number of his wives by marrying the daughter of the Emir of Mobar, in Southern India. “She was a religious woman, who would spend the whole night in meditation and prayer. She could read, but not write. She bore me a female child; but what is become of either of them is beyond my ken.” The indelicacy of the dress of women in Delhi shocked him: “they merely cover the face, and the body from the navel downwards only.” He tried to get them to robe themselves completely, and failed.

It seems that the capricious Sultan had placed much confidence in a certain holy man; but suspicion of the sheik’s fidelity was aroused, and spies were set to take note of his visitors. Among his friends and visitors was BatÛta. Everybody on the list was ordered to appear at the fatal portal. BatÛta thought his last hour had come and betook himself to his prayers; he repeated “God is our succour and exceeding help” no less than 33,000 times in a single day; he fasted for four days, taking nothing but water and expecting the executioners every moment. He alone escaped the fatal scimitar.

He had seen enough of Imperial caprice to know that respite was not security, or innocence a lasting defence. He resigned his office and went to a worker of miracles, “the saint and phoenix of his time,” who was one of his friends. He gave all that he possessed to holy men; put on the robe of an ascetic, and ate nothing but rice. But the blindfold goddess had him on her wheel, and was to give it many a turn yet. Five months passed, and then the Sultan sent for him and gave him a gracious reception. But he deemed it wise to return to his rigorous life, and was more severe in it than before. Yet forty more days passed, and then the Sultan again commanded his presence.

There was now a much greater trade with China than in the time of Hiuen-Tsiang. An Embassy, headed by a high mandarin, had come from China (A.D. 1342) with presents of 100 male slaves, 50 slave-girls, rich dresses, quivers of gold, and jewelled swords. In a certain lower reach of the Himalaya was a plain which had been overrun by the Moslem conquerors. Once a Buddhist temple stood there; and Chinese pilgrims were wont to journey across Thibet to pray at the sacred spot. Moreover the inhabitants of the district were cut off from their wonted toil in Thibetan fields beyond the border. The place was secured by Nature from any attack from the North; and the Great KhÂn of China begged that restrictions should be removed and permission given for the temple to be rebuilt. The Sultan was willing to grant the request on certain pecuniary conditions, but he cast about for some one to accompany the returning embassy and represent him at the Chinese Court. Who so suitable as BatÛta, a man of the world, experienced in travel, highly educated, and sharp-witted? His innocence was established. Such a degree of asceticism, so long endured, was proof of piety. The Sultan ordered him to go. The garb of the ascetic was thrown off. He would feel more secure in China than at Delhi.

CHAPTER VII
PERILS BY LAND AND SEA

Our ambassador sets off with the returning mission attended by two favourites of the Sultan, and a guard of 1,000 horse. He has charge of gifts which far surpass the Chinese presents—100 horses of the best breed, richly caparisoned, 100 Hindu singing and dancing girls, robes of rich brocade, jewelled arms, instruments of gold and silver, silks and stuffs, and 1,700 rich dresses.

He has not travelled 100 miles from Delhi when he finds a district in revolt against the Mohammedan conquerors. The Hindus are besieging a city; the cavalry attending the embassy rushes at the investing forces, loses many men, but leaves not an enemy alive. The news is sent to the Sultan, and a halt is made for his instructions to arrive. BatÛta is sitting in the grateful shade of a garden when word comes that a fresh body of Hindus is attacking a village hard by. He rides off with an escort to see how he may help. The insurgents are already fleeing from a hot pursuit, and he finds himself left with only five others and a few mounted men. His horse gets its fore-feet wedged between some stones, and he has to dismount; his companions ride off, and he finds himself alone. Suddenly, two score of the enemy’s horse appear and ride at him. He is stripped to the skin, bound, and threatened with death. He is unable to talk the language of his captors, is kept a captive during two days, and then they ride away. He shuffles off to a neighbouring jungle, and hides there. He cautiously tries every foot-track to find that not one of them but leads to some enemy village or to some village in ruins. He keeps himself alive by sucking wild fruit and chewing leaves. Seven days have passed, and he is quite exhausted, when he sees “a black man, carrying a small water-vessel and walking by aid of an iron-tipped staff.” The man is a Mohammedan, and gives him water and pulse, which he has with him. BatÛta tries to walk with him; but he is too weak and faint; his feet totter, and he falls to the ground. The “black man” throws him across his shoulders; all consciousness is lost, and he comes to himself at the Imperial gateway one daybreak, the East aglow with the rising sun. That good Samaritan, the “black man,” stands out in bright relief from a background of crime and cruelty and shadows of feet swift to shed blood.

Mohammed Tughlak received BatÛta more kindly than ever, gave him handsome compensation, and commanded him to return to the Embassy. On his way to Cambay, we hear more of Yogi magicians and how they will remain long time without food. “I have seen, in the city of Mangalore, a Moslem who had learned of these folk. A sort of platform was set up for him; and thereon he had stayed 25 days, neither eating nor drinking. Thus did I leave him; and I know not how long he kept there afterwards. It is said that they make up pills, and, after swallowing one of them, can do without food or drink. They foretell hidden things. The Sultan honours them and admits them to his society. Some among them eat vegetable food only; and these are the greater number. There are among them those who can slay a man by a glance at him. The common people hold that, if the chest of the dead man be opened, no heart is to be found within; for it has been consumed. Women do this in the main, and such an one is called a hyÆna.”

BatÛta’s chief interest was in Islam; but he noted natural products carefully and was alive to the odd. North of the Hindu KÛsh he had seen a woefully obese man; and now, on this 1,500 mile journey to Calicut, he came across the ruler of a small State, “a black giant,” who thought little of devouring a whole sheep at a sitting.

He took ship near Goa, and the craft ran along the Malabar coast, “the land of black pepper.” Twelve kinglets ruled as many states in Malabar at that time, and each king had an army of from 5,000 to 50,000 men at his command. Many ancient polyandric practices were retained; which explains why each RÂja was succeeded by a sisters’ son. No landing was made until a king’s son had been handed over as a pledge of safety. Many Arab traders had settled in the ports, and become wealthy. Punishment, swift and severe, followed on the smallest infringement of meum and tuum. We are told how a Hindu noble, out riding with his father-in-law, who was no less a personage than the RÂja, picked up a mango which had dropped from an overhanging tree. The RÂja ordered that both he and the mango should be cut into two halves, and half of the mango and half of the culprit laid on either side of the public way precisely where the enormity had been done. One may suspect that the son-in-law was not wholly persona grata to the despot.

The Embassy had to tide over three months at Calicut awaiting the season for the sailing of the fleet of junks from China. There were thirteen of them at Calicut, and they also traded to Hili and Quilon. He tells us that the biggest junks were as floating cities. They would carry a crew of 1,000 men, whereof 400 were soldiers. The junk was worked by oars and sails of bamboo-matting, slung from masts varying in number from three to twelve, according to the size of the junk. Ten to thirty men stood to pull at each oar. Garden-herbs and ginger were grown on deck, and on it, too, were houses built for the chief officers and their wives. The quarters of the junk were three-fold, fastened together by spikes. Each junk of the biggest size was accompanied by three tenders of progressively diminishing proportions. Needless to say, the commander of a junk was a very important functionary. Often more than one junk would be owned by a single Chinaman. But then, “truly the Chinese are the wealthiest people on earth.”

Our ambassador sent his servants, slave-girls and baggage on board; but the cabin was too small to hold both concubines and luggage; so the skipper advised him to hire a kakam or junk of the third size. This he did on a Thursday, the kakam took in its cargo, and he remained on shore the next day for public worship.

During the night, the terror of the sea fell on them all. A violent storm came on, and the waters shook the land. Some of the junks contrived to get away from the perilous neighbourhood of the shore to more open water; but one of them was wrecked, and only a few swimmers managed to escape. The kakam, with all his worldly goods and slave-concubines in it, had disappeared; but it had been seen making for the open. The body of an envoy was washed ashore, with the skull smashed in. A guardian Eunuch was also cast up, a nail driven right through the brain from temple to temple. Down came the Zamorin to the scene of disaster, Comedy attendant on Tragedy, for he braved the tempest clad with a loin-cloth, the scantiest of head-gear, and a necklace of jewels, but the insignium of royalty, the umbrella, was somehow held up over his sacred head. BatÛta cast himself on his prostration-carpet, which was all that was left to him, excepting ten pieces of gold and his servant, a freed slave, who immediately made off. Some pious people gave him small coin, which he kept as treasure, for it would bring blessing with it.

We are told of the noble deed of a simple Moslem sailor during this great storm. “There was a girl on board who was the favourite of a merchant. The merchant offered ten pieces of gold to anyone who should save her. A sailor, hailing from Hormuz, did save her; but he refused the reward, saying, ‘I did it for the love of God.’”

The junk which held the precious gifts for China was seen to go down outside the port; and BatÛta heard that the little boat which held all his slave-concubines and worldly goods had contrived to gain the open sea, and might conceivably put in at Quilon. He set off at once, and arrived there after a ten days’ journey. He found the Chinese Embassy there. They had suffered shipwreck, but their junk had not broken up and was being refitted.

It did not require the advice proferred him by his co-religionists to deter him from returning to the capricious, passionate lord of Delhi. He bethought him of JamÂl OddÎn, ruler of Honowar, a man of sense and understanding, whom he had visited on his way to Calicut. It casts a pleasant ray on the Mohammedan occupation of India, that there were no fewer than 44 schools set up in the busy little capital of a small State, and that of these no fewer than 11 were for girls. Now JamÂl OddÎn knew the uncertain temper of the Lord of India quite as well as BatÛta, and did not give him too hearty a welcome. So to appease offended Heaven, or to rehabilitate himself by an evidence of piety, he repaired to a mosque and read the Koran from end to end once, and ultimately twice, a day. Now, there were 52 ships being fitted out to attack the island of SindÂbÛr; and JamÂl evidently thought that BatÛta might prove useful, for he commanded him to accompany him on this expedition. BatÛta tried to read the future by a time-honoured method of divination. He opened the Koran at random, and his eye fell on a promise of Allah to aid his servant. This was satisfactory to JamÂl OddÎn as well as to himself.

After strenuous resistance SindÂbÛr was carried by assault, and BatÛta, who was something of a warrior, received a slave-girl, clothing and other presents from his patron. He remained on the island with JamÂl OddÎn for some months, and then got permission to go to Calicut. For the Chinese fleet would be returning to India by this time, and he might get news of his little junk. At Calicut, he learned that his kakam had reached China, that his property had been divided up, and that his pretty concubine had died on the voyage. “I felt very much grief for her.” He went back to the island to find the city besieged by Hindus.

Now he had heard marvellous things concerning the Maldives, an archipelago of small islands lying S.S.E. of India, near the equator. The inhabitants, under British rule to-day, had accepted Islam. He found that before he or anyone was allowed to land he must show himself on deck; “for although the islands are multitudinous, each lies close to its neighbour, and folk knew one another by sight.” He speaks of the inhabitants as “pious, peaceable, and chaste. They never wage war. Prayers are their only weapons. Indian pirates do not alarm them; nor do they punish robbers; for they have learned that sudden and grievous ill will come to evil-doers. When any of the pirate-ships of infidel Hindus pass by these islands, whatsoever is found is taken, nor will anyone stand out.” But, in spite of the moral reflection indulged in by the islanders, BatÛta traces their policy of non-resistance to physical feebleness. And “there is one exception to it. Should a single lemon be taken woe befals the offender. He is punished and forced to listen to a homily. The natives delight in perfumes and in bathing twice a day, which the heat forces them to do; yet trees give delicious shade. Their trade is in ropes, which they make of hemp, and which are used for sewing together the timbers of ships of India and Yemen; for if a ship strike against a rock, the hemp allows of its yielding, and so saves it from going to pieces, which is not the case when iron nails are used. Shells are used for coin, and palm-leaves are used for all writing, except for copying out the Koran; and the instrument used has a sharp point.”

BatÛta sailed among these islands during ten days, and took up his abode on one, the sovereign of which was a woman. For the lady’s husband had died, leaving no male issue; so she married her vizier who, in reality, ruled. BatÛta took the full license accorded in Islam. He married the four legal wives permitted, and took to himself some concubines also, “all pleasant in conversation and of great beauty.” He must have divorced his previous wives before being able to do this. Marriage in the Maldive Islands was facile and cheap. Only a small dowry was demanded for a handsome woman; but it was required that the stranger should divorce the wife on leaving the land, and by no means take her with him. But, should he not desire to marry, there was no difficulty in getting a woman to cook for him at a very small wage. Wives were less companionable here than in most parts of the world, since women and men took their meals apart; nor could BatÛta get his women-folk to break the custom of their country—a custom which Varthema speaks of, nearly two centuries later, as obtaining in South West India. BatÛta had been appointed judge, and another thing that troubled him was the irregular attendance of the lax Moslems of his island at the mosque. He was very eager that such flagrant non-observance of religious duty should be duly punished; and he urged that the best way would be literally to whip the recalcitrants to attend on public worship.

Now BatÛta’s wives had powerful relatives. The sister of one of his wives at Delhi was wife to the Emir of Mobar; to whom, therefore, BatÛta was doubly related. He had become a power in his island, and the vizier grew jealous and suspicious. Might not the stranger conspire to bring an army over from the coast of Coromandel? When BatÛta saw what was going on, he acted at once. “I divorced all my wives,” he says, “save one, who had a young child, and I went on to other islands of that great multitude of them.” From one of these, he shipped for Mobar; but the wind changed, and he was driven to the coast of Ceylon and in no small danger of drowning. The governor of the port came sailing by, and refused a landing; for he was no friend to Moslem skippers. BatÛta won him over by telling him that he was on his way to visit the Sovereign of Mobar, that he was related to him by marriage, and that the whole cargo of the ship was intended as a present for that potentate. The Ceylonese RÂja of the district was on good terms with his Moslem brother of Mobar, so BatÛta was allowed to land. He found, like Marco Polo, that Ceylon was divided among four kinglets. He of the district soon sent for him, and gave him hospitality. He admired the famous herds of elephants, the troups of chattering monkeys, the pool of precious stones, and the luxuriant vegetation and glorious scenery of Ceylon. He scaled that iron chain, which still exists, to reach the top of Adam’s peak, and gives us the measure of the print of Adam’s foot, on hard rock; for in Ceylon, as elsewhere, supernatural vestiges are to be found. He visited Colombo and several other places in the island, and then set sail for the coast of Coromandel.

But, while crossing the strait, “the wind blew strong, and the ship was nearly swamped. Our skipper was a lubber. We were driven near perilous rocks, and barely escaped going to pieces; and then we got into shallow water. Our ship grated against the bottom, and we were face to face with death. Those on board threw all that they had into the sea, and bade farewell to one another. We cut down the mast and cast it onto the sea, and the sailors made a raft. The beach was eight miles off. I wanted to get down to the raft. I had two concubines and two friends with me. These latter exclaimed: ‘would you get down and leave us?’ I had more regard to their safety than to my own; so I answered: ‘Get down, both of you, and the young girl whom I love with you.’ My other young girl said: ‘I can swim. I will fix ropes to the raft and swim alongside these people.’ My two comrades got down, one of the young girls being with them; and the other swam. The sailors tied ropes to the raft, and so helped her to swim. I gave them whatever of value I had in the way of jewels, amber, and other goods. They got to shore safe and sound, for the wind was in their favour. But I stayed aboard the ship. The skipper got to shore on a plank. The sailors took the building of four rafts in hand; but night came on before they had finished, and the ship was filling. I got up on the poop, and remained there until morning. Then several idolaters came to us in their barque. And we got safe to land.”

His connexion, the Emir, received him warmly. This potentate was about to attack a Hindu Power; and, while he was away on this expedition, BatÛta travelled about. He tells us that he came across a fakir with long hair, who sat and ate in the society of seven foxes, and who kept a “happy family”—a gazelle and a lion together. The Emir was a ruthless tyrant, butchering women and children. Yet BatÛta had no scruple in proposing a scheme to him for the conquest of the Maldives, where he had received so much kindness, and where he had left wives and paramours. But pestilence came and swept away most of the inhabitants of the district, including the Emir. The new ruler wanted to carry out the scheme for occupying the Maldives; but BatÛta got fever badly, and very nearly died. When sufficiently recovered, he received permission to recuperate his energies by taking the long voyage round Cape Comorin to Honawar, where he wished to meet his old friend, JamÂl OddÎn, again. But, from time immemorial, the sea had been a no-mans province, infested by pirates; and the calling, continuous or accidental, of sea-thief was then as honourable as it was ancient. His ship was attacked by twelve Hindu craft, and taken after a severe battle. BatÛta was stripped of his jewels and all his belongings, and set on shore with a pair of breeches on. He lost the notes of his travels with his other belongings. Out of the way of direct business, the robbers could be merciful, and there was no reason why they should take his life. He made his painful way to Calicut, and put up at a mosque—always the asylum of the indigent. Some of the lawyers and traders here had known him at Delhi. They clothed, fed, and housed him. What was he to do? He dared not return to Delhi. A son had been borne to him by a Maldive wife. He had a desire to see the child. The vizier was dead; but the queen had married again, and he wondered what sort of reception he should get. Paternal tenderness prevailed: “I went there on account of my little son; but when I had seen him, I left him with his mother, out of kindness to her.” He was hospitably entertained, but stayed a very few days. The new vizier furnished him with those provisions which every traveller by sea must purchase for himself and carry with him in the fourteenth century; and he set sail for Bengal, where he arrived after 43 days at sea (A.D. 1341).

CHAPTER VIII
OFF TO MALAYSIA AND CATHAY

BatÛta speaks of Bengal as the land of plenty. Everything was cheaper there than anywhere else in the wide world. He picked up a very beautiful slave-girl for a trifle. But the muggy climate made Bengal “a hell full of good things.” The Sultan was in revolt against his lord-paramount at Delhi; and as BatÛta was a prudent person, held Mohammed Tughlak in wholesome awe, and could not predict the issue of the contest, he did not visit the Bengalese Court. He went up to the hill-country, half-way to the Himalayan giants, instead; for he desired to see an aged holy man who dwelt there, one who was reported to take no food excepting a little milk, and that only every ten days, and to sit upright all night. This old sheik was a seer, and foretold events which should befall his guest and which he declares really happened. BatÛta was proud to be justly hailed as “the greatest traveller of all the Arabs.” He returned from the hills to visit a city not far from modern Dacca.

We next find him on the Indian Ocean, standing off the Nicobar Islands, probably because his ship needed a fresh supply of water. The inhabitants were fearful of strangers, would not allow any ship to sail in front of their houses, had the fresh water required brought down to the shore by elephants, and traded by signs; for nobody could speak their language. The men went about naked, and the women wore a girdle of leaves only. All were remarkable for the ugliness of their dog-like faces. BatÛta was told that a man might be the husband of 30 or more of these beauties. Adultery was severely punished, the male offender being hanged, unless he could find a friend or a slave willing to suffer in his place; the woman being trampled to death and her body cast into the sea. The king came down to the beach with an escort of his relatives, all mounted on elephants. He wore a coloured silk turban and a goat-skin tunic, with the hair turned outwards, and he bore a short silver spear in his hand. The usual gifts were presented in dumb-show. “These folk work magic on any ship that withholds presents; and it is wrecked.”

Moslem traders called any part of the Malaysian Archipelago, Java; but the port to which our traveller next came was really in Sumatra. The Emir of the Mohammedan sovereign received the visitors with customary Eastern munificence and gave them rich dresses. Our traveller speaks highly of the Sultan as being a cultivated man who loved the society of the learned and enjoyed discussion with them. A modern writer says that the humblest man he ever knew was a duke, and BatÛta might have said the same of some rulers. The humility of the Sultan of Sumatra was so great that he walked to prayers every Friday! BatÛta took a long journey inland, and tells us of frankincense, clove, nutmeg, mace, and other products of Sumatra, and of how a man is sacrificed by the natives at the foot of the camphor-tree to ensure its good bearing.

He was eager to reach China—that land of strange ways and peculiar civilization in Farthest East. The complaisant Sultan gave him passage in one of his own junks, provided him with stores for the voyage, and ordered a guide-interpreter to attend on him. In three and a half weeks, he came to a place which he calls Kakula, and which may have been on the mainland. Here he was well received by the pagan king, and chanced to be present at a curious proof of devotion to royalty. “One day, a man made a long speech, not one word of which I understood. He held a knife in his hand, which he grasped firmly, and cut off his own head, and it fell to the ground.” This sounds incredible; but it is a fact. The feat was done by means of apparatus. A sickleshaped knife was attached to a stirrup. The suicide placed his foot in the latter, gave it a sharp jerk, and the knife shore off his head. Our traveller was told that the deed was done to make manifest the great loyalty of the victim, and that his father and grandfather had made the same praiseworthy exit from life in honour of the king’s father and grandfather. Their families received compensation from the kings. A similar case of self-execution was authentically recorded in the last century.

The Eastern Ocean was so calm that the junk had to be towed by boats. Marco Polo had the same experience in these seas. BatÛta touched at Kailiki, a port of Tawalisi, probably Tonquin; but no one is quite sure where this land lay. Even the Sulu Islands have been suggested! The king was as powerful as the Emperor of China. His people were idolaters after the manner of the Turks, and BatÛta reports a conversation with his Amazonian daughter, introducing a few words of their language. This princess could write, but not speak Arabic. Some discredit has been thrown on this part of his narrative, mainly on the ground of language, but also because what he has to say about her recalls very ancient classical stories. But we must recollect that BatÛta is relying on his memory at a time when the events belonged to a far-distant past; that his work was dictated; and that it was edited by the Secretary to the Sultan of Fez. He confesses that he did not understand very well what the princess said to him. And the language she spoke may have struck him as like Turkish in sound, and hence is given in some sort of imitation of that tongue. The more one studies ancient travellers and pilgrims the more assured one becomes of their essential sincerity and the general accuracy of their observation. We know very little indeed about the Nomadic penetration of the Far East. That this princess was able to write a little Arabic, would seem to show that there was considerable Arab trade with Tawalisi.

This lady was governor of the port, a post which her father had given her as the reward of her powers in battle. For, once, when her father’s army was on the point of defeat, she routed the enemy, and brought back the head of their leader. She commanded an army, whereof one regiment was of women. Neighbouring princes had wished to marry her, but had withdrawn their pretensions; for she insisted that first they should overcome her in the lists; and they were afraid of the ignominy of being vanquished by a woman. She was amazed at the wealth of India, and said to BatÛta: “I must conquer it for myself.”

Favourable winds and strenuous use of the oar brought the junk to China. He found that he had to pass through a stringent customs-house; and that a register was taken of all who left or arrived at a Chinese port. The captain was held responsible for his crew and passengers, and to this end an official list was essential. Should the traveller elect to stay with some other trader, his host took care of his money and goods, but was bound to return them at the close of the visit, with a deduction for necessary expenditure. Any deficiency must be made good. But the trader might, if he chose, put up at an inn. BatÛta was surprised to find paper-currency. He admired the big poultry; but not the dirty cotton-clothes of the Chinese, nor their relish for the flesh of dogs and swine. As in Hiuen-Tsiang’s time, they burned their dead. A portrait of every traveller was taken without his knowing it, and thus, should an evil-doer try to escape from justice from one province to another, he was readily discovered. There were many Moslem traders in China; most of these had settled there; and Jews had found a home in China for eleven centuries.

Travelling in China was “safer and more agreeable than in any other land on earth. Although it takes nine months to cross this country, one need have no fear on the journey, even though one should have wealth in one’s care. There is an official with troops, both horse and foot, at each hostelry to keep matters in order. This official, accompanied by his scribe, comes to the hostelry every evening; and the scribe writes down the name of every guest, seals up the list, and locks the door. They come again in the morning and go over the list and the inmates; and a man goes with the travellers to the next hostelry and returns to the officer with proof that they have arrived.... The traveller can buy all he needs at these inns.”

BatÛta visited the great port of Zaitun (Touen-chow), whence, among other manufactures, “clothes of gold and satyns riche of hewe”10 were shipped. Perhaps there was no port in the world with so big a trade as Zaitun. BatÛta thought so: “The harbour is one of the greatest on the earth—I err—it is the greatest. There I have seen an hundred junks of the biggest size at one time, and more smaller ones than could be numbered.... Here, as in every Chinese city, every citizen has a garden and a field, and his house stands in the middle of the land he owns. For this reason, the cities of China are very much spread out.” At Zaitun, he had the good fortune to meet, in the Moslem quarter, the ambassador who had been sent to Delhi; and now great folk began to make his acquaintance. Among his visitors was “one of the merchants to whom I owed money when I ran into debt on my arrival in India, and who had shown more breeding than the rest of my creditors.” The Head Mandarin wrote to the Emperor to ask permission for the traveller to visit him at his capital; and, while awaiting a reply, allowed him to travel by water-way far inland from Canton, and provided him with an escort. At Canton, he found temple-hospitals for widows and orphans, the blind, crippled, and infirm.

He tells how the sailors stood up amidship to row, and the passengers sat fore and aft. He visited one of those wonderful saints who claimed incredible years. The holy man told him that he was one of the saints whom he had visited in India. This man had the reputation of being able to induce visions. Possibly he united the qualifications of skilled hypnotist and skilled liar.

When our traveller returned to Canton he received permission to visit the capital. He journeyed many days by land and along the Imperial Canal. He speaks rapturously of the fertility and charm of the country he passed through. Everywhere he was treated with the deepest respect. But there was a drawback: everywhere Paganism was flourishing. He met a fellow-believer, the brother of one of the seers of Egypt, a man greatly esteemed by the Chinese, and later on one particular prophesy was completely fulfilled, for he came across another brother, whom it was also foretold he should meet, on the borders of Sahara.

While attending the court of the viceroy at Hang-chow, he was eye-witness to a remarkable feat, of which he gives as circumstantial an account as one would expect to get from a man of the fourteenth century. “It was in the hot season, and we were in the courtyard outside the palace. A juggler, a slave of the KhÂn, came in, and the Emir commanded him to show some of his marvels. Thereupon the juggler took a wooden bowl with several holes made in it, and through these holes long thongs were passed. He laid hold of these thongs, and threw the bowl up into the air. It went so high that we could no longer see it. There was only a little of the end of the thong left in the juggler’s hand. He ordered one of his boy helpers to lay hold of it and mount. The boy climbed up the thong, and he also went out of sight. The juggler called him three times; but no reply came; so he seemed to get into a great rage, snatched up a knife, and laid hold of the thong; and he also was no longer to be seen. After a time, down came one of the boy’s hands, then a foot, than the other hand, then the other foot, then the trunk, and, lastly, the head. And now, down came the juggler, panting, and his clothes in a bloody state. He kissed the ground in front of the Emir and said something to him in Chinese. The Emir gave him some order, and he then took up the severed parts, laid them together properly, gave a kick, and behold! the boy got up and was before us again. I was so astounded that my heart beat violently, as it did when the Sultan of India had a similar trick done before me. A drug was given me, which set me right again. The Khazi AlfkaouddÎn was next to me. ‘By Allah!’ said he, ‘as for me I believe there has been neither going up nor coming down, nor cutting to pieces, nor making the boy whole again. It is nothing but trickery.’”

We must not forget that BatÛta was more than inclined to superstition, that he was very perturbed by what he saw, or thought he saw, that the “magician” had boys with him, who probably assisted in this trick, and that it is part of the conjurer’s art to divert the attention of spectators while in the actual performance of his feats. And the event was reduced to writing years after it was observed. Moreover, one of the earlier investigations of the Society for Psychical Research shewed that, on an occasion when a clever amateur conjurer, not known to be such, invited highly educated and observant witnesses to a supposed spiritualistic sÉance, and received their accounts of what they believed themselves to have seen, written independently of each other and immediately after the event, “not one of the detailed reports is accurate throughout, and scarcely one of them is accurate in even all the points of importance.”11 But we have it on the authority of the Professor of Chinese at Cambridge that P’u Sung-ling, the author of the Liao Chai, relates having seen the complete trick, as BatÛta describes it, in the seventeenth century,12 except that, in this case, the boy came out of a box. These are, perhaps, the most remarkable of many similar mystifications, some of them related by quite respectable witnesses, from the 13th century down to our own time.13

He tells us of the excellent workmanship of Chinese artisans, and how they worked in chains for a period of ten years. At the end of that time, they were free to go about in China, but not to leave the frontiers. At 50, they became absolutely free men, and were maintained at the public cost, old age pensioners, in fact, in this early fourteenth century. And the pension was not merely given to these slave-workers, but to nearly all Chinese.

He admired the gay life on the canal, crowded with the boat-houses of the people—a teeming happy population, dressed in bright colours, and pelting one another in pure fun with oranges and lemons. Hang-chow had within its great encircling wall six towns, each guarded by walls. At Khaniku or Khanbalik (Pekin?) he was present at the obsequies of a great dignitary, whom he believed to be the Tartar Emperor; but that was not so, for the Emperor, who had ascended the throne 14 years before BatÛta’s arrival, reigned 21 years after his departure. But he certainly was present at the funeral of some great Tartar; for his account of the interment of the Tartar dignitaries of China is confirmed by at least one other early traveller. He tells us of how the dead man’s concubines and horses were buried with him, alive, in the same grave. He relates, not very correctly, the ceremonies observed at the court of the Emperor. Apparently his recollection becomes confused with that of the court-usage at Delhi and Yemen. In any case, it is possible that he only had an interview with some viceroy, concerning whom he was misinformed or somehow mistook him for the supreme KhÂn.

A revolt against Tartar rule took place about this time, so BatÛta thought it prudent to leave China. He embarked on a junk which belonged to the King of Sumatra, whom he had visited on his way out, and “whose servants are Mohammedans.” On the voyage the junk laboured through a terrific storm. The mirage of a big mountain was also seen. The sailors took this for the fabled roc, with which the Arabian Nights Entertainment made our Childhood acquainted.

He remained in Sumatra three months, the guest of the monarch who had before entertained him; and was fortunate in witnessing the nuptials of the heir-apparent. First came dancers and merry minstrelsy; then the bride, conducted from the apartments of the women by forty richly adorned ladies, who carried her train. For this high occasion, they had removed their veils. The bride went up on a platform; and the bridegroom rode up, in all the pride of armour, of a stately elephant, and of his own self-importance. One hundred youths of quality, beardless like himself, attended him on horseback. They were clad in white, their caps being a glitter of gold and jewels. Largess was scattered among the crowd. The prince now went up to his father, kissed his foot, and ascended the platform. Then the bride rose and kissed her groom’s hand; he sat beside her, and he and she put betel and fawfel into one another’s mouth. Then the covering of the platform was let down, and the whole structure, with bride and bridegroom on it, was carried into the palace. Finally, a feast was given to the crowd.

From Sumatra, BatÛta voyaged in a junk to the Malabar coast of Southern India, and thence sailed to Arabian Zafar (A.D. 1347), both well-remembered places, coasted to Hormuz, wandered over the Two Iraks (Persia and Mesopotamia) once again; made across Asia Minor to Tadmor and as far north as Aleppo. At Damascus he got the first news of home he had received during his wanderings; his father had lain fourteen years in his quiet grave at Tangier. The Black Death was raging at Damascus. It slew twenty-four hundred of the inhabitants in a single day. So BatÛta made his way to Egypt through Syria and Palestine, and went on to Mecca by way of the Red Sea and Jidda. This was the fourth of his pilgrimages. On his return to Cairo, he found the Black Death wasting the population. Mocking, lethal, invisible, this awful plague was rapidly sweeping westward and destroying whole families. Agnolo da Tura of Siena tells us that he had to bury five of his sons in the same grave with his own hands, and that his was no exceptional case. BatÛta left Cairo for Jerusalem and returned from Palestine to Egypt by sea. He now felt a desire to see his native land again. He took ship to Sardinia, and, wishing to see the island, let the vessel he had voyaged in go to Tunis. He was lucky, for it was taken by Christians. He managed to reach Tunis in another ship, and got to Fez overland on Nov. 8th, 1349; having been on his travels nearly a quarter of a century. He presented himself before the Sultan, and was received as was befitting so pious a pilgrim and distinguished a traveller.

CHAPTER IX
MOORS OF SPAIN AND NEGROES OF TIMBUKTU

But BatÛta’s travels were by no means at an end. He made a filial visit to the place where earth that “makes all sweet” had closed on his father’s history. Once at Tangier, the temptation was strong to cross the Straits and visit the shrinking Moslem dominion in Spain. He landed where his compatriots had landed to conquer the Peninsula—at Gibraltar (Jabal Tarik, the Hill of Victory). He saw a cousin by his mother’s side, who had settled here; ran all over Moorish Andalusia, visiting renowned cities that still remained in Mohammedan hands; and came to lordly Grenada, where the Alhambra must have been nearing its completion. He returned to Fez by way of Ceuta.

His energy was unabated; his thirst for travel unquenched; he could not settle down. In February, 1352, he is off again; this time for Central Africa. At Tafilelt, on the borders of Sahara, he meets another brother of the Sheik at Alexandria; and so another prophecy is fulfilled. In mid-Sahara, he finds an oasis with a “village on it where there is nothing good. The mosque and the houses are built of blocks of salt and are covered with camel hide. There is no tree, for the soil is pure sand; but there are mines of salt.” He had dropped on those dwellings of rock-salt of which Herodotus wrote seventeen hundred years before him. But only the underlings of traders abode there; and dates and camel’s flesh were their fare. Here was the salt-supply for the wild tribes of Sahara. They cut the blocks of it into a certain shape and used this as money. The caravan with which BatÛta travelled suffered severely here from the vileness of the water.

When Tashala was reached, the caravan rested three days to make ready for a vast and solitary tract of desert “where there is no water, nor is bird or tree to be seen, only sand and hills of sand, blown about by the wind in such wise that not the smallest vestige of a track remains. Wherefore, no one can travel without guides from among the traders; but of these there are many. The sunlight there is blinding.... Evil spirits have their will of that man who shall travel by himself. They enchant him, so that he wanders wide of his path, and there he comes to his end.”

A long journey across this great waste of sand brought the caravan to another oasis, where pits had been dug to fill with water, and where negroes took care of a store of goods out in the open. These negroes did not show the deep respect due to the superior white race; but BatÛta had a fancy to learn all about them, so he stayed on, and put up with their want of manners for two whole months. Traces, at least, of polyandry were to be found here; for a sister’s son succeeded to property, and everybody took the name of a maternal uncle. The women were good looking, but, alas! they were far from shy; they did not even wear a veil, notwithstanding their accompanying the men to the mosque. Traders might take them for their wives; but must leave them behind on their departure. Our zealous Moslem, experienced in matrimony as he was and so excellent a judge of concubines—all of them sacred property and his very own—was greatly shocked at yet another instance of the freedom in manners of women and absence of jealousy in the husbands among certain Mohammedan peoples. A man might have a woman visit him, even with her husband there, and in the presence of his own wife; and a man might go home to find one of his male friends sitting alone with the wife of his bosom. But what would perturb an ordinary man causes no flutter in this degenerate breast. “He quietly takes a seat apart from them until the visitor goes away.” BatÛta’s sense of delicacy was much offended when, calling on a former host of his, who was a judge moreover, he found that a handsome young woman had also made a call and was still there. He upbraided his friend roundly, and the only reply he got was that it was the custom of the country. This was too much: he broke with the judge.

A long, difficult, but quite safe journey brought him and three companions to Malli. Here he was seriously ill, and the sickness lasted many weeks; “but Allah brought me back to health.” A few white people dwelt at Malli, of whom the judge was his host. “‘Arise,’” said the judge to him one day when the Sultan had given a feast, “‘the Sultan hath sent thee a gift.’ I fully looked for a rich dress, some horses and other valuable gifts; and lo! there were but three crusts of bread, a piece of dried fish, and a dish of sour milk. I smiled at people so simple and the value they gave to such rubbish.” Experience of spendthrift Oriental Courts and the lavish munificence of princes in other parts of the Mohammedan world had spoiled him for the simplicity of Central Africa. He often saw the Sultan after this incident; but sorely as his self-love was wounded by such a contrast to the honour always paid to him hitherto, he held himself in until his fury reached fever-heat and it became impossible to keep a bridle on his tongue any longer. Then he rose to his feet: “I have travelled the world over,” said he; “I have visited the rulers thereof; I have stayed four months in thy dominions; but no gift, no suitable food has come to me from thee. What shall I say about thee when men shall question me concerning thee?” A horse and good provisions, and a supply of gold now came from this “greedy and worthless man”; before whom the negroes presented themselves in the worst of their beggarly garments, probably as a sign of their humility; for they “crawled to his presence, beating the ground with their elbows and throwing dust on their heads.” However the “greedy and worthless” Sultan is allowed at least one small virtue: he kept the land in order; the traveller there had no fear of robbers, and if any one chanced to die, his property was handed over to his lawful successors. And the people had a great virtue also; they were constant in their attendance at the mosque; and if a son did not learn the whole of the Koran by heart, his father kept him shut up until he had done so. Yet, in spite of such praiseworthy piety, they let their little daughters and slaves whether male or female, go about quite naked. BatÛta remarks that here cowries were used as coin. Travellers in the Niger District during the third decade of the last century found that many of the habits and customs described by BatÛta still obtained there.

From Malli, our traveller journeyed on to the banks of the Niger, and saw, with surprise, its great herds of hippopotami. He visited Timbuktu, and believed he was journeying along the banks of the Nile; a pardonable mistake; for the Niger takes a general direction towards the North-East in this part of its course. He now returned to Fez by a different and more easterly route (A.D. 1355).

He had traversed the entire Mohammedan world, and beyond it to wherever a Mohammedan was to be found. He had visited several far-separated places several times, and had obeyed the obligation to visit Mecca oftener than the most zealous Moslem was wont to do. The Sultan commanded that an account of his travels should be recorded. The Sultan’s Secretary edited the work, and thought to embellish a plain tale by overloading it with literary pinchbeck and by dragging in irrevelant quotations from the poets. The last words of the work are: “Here ends what I have put into form of the words of Sheik Ibn Abdulla Mohammed, whom may Allah honour! There is no reader of intelligence but must grant that this Sheik is the greatest traveller of our days; and should any one dub him the greatest traveller of all Islam, it were no lie.”14

Ibn BatÛta was 51 at the end of his recorded journeyings. In spite of the racket of thirty years, spent in unceasing travel, of shipwreck and battle, of privation and fevers and much suffering of many kinds, all of which he brushes lightly aside as matter of small moment, his natural vigour remained such that he lived three years beyond the allotted span. The “fitful fever” of his life ceased in the year 1377.