Rihla (Travels) — Excerpts (1354)¶

Author: Ibn Battuta (compiled by Ibn Juzayy) Type: Primary Source · Travel Account Source: Public domain — translated excerpts available via Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham University Era/Period: Era 2 — Middle Ages and Early Modern Period WH Standards: WH.6_12.1 · WH.6_12.4 ELA Standards: 9-10.R.9 · 9-10.IR.4

What This Text Is About¶

Between 1325 and 1354, the Moroccan scholar and jurist Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Battuta traveled approximately 75,000 miles — visiting the equivalent of 44 modern countries across North Africa, the Middle East, East Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China. His account, the Rihla ("Journey"), is the most extensive travel record of the medieval world — more than three times the distance Marco Polo traveled. Unlike Polo's merchant-focused account, Ibn Battuta was an Islamic legal scholar interested in Islamic courts, mosques, rulers, and scholars — giving his account a fundamentally different perspective on the same world.

Why this text matters: The Rihla is the primary source that demonstrates the Islamic world's centrality, sophistication, and geographic reach in the 14th century — a world most Western-focused history curricula treat as peripheral. It also raises fundamental IR.4 questions: Ibn Battuta observed and judged peoples by Islamic standards; his account contains both remarkable open-mindedness and clear prejudices. Reading it teaches students to evaluate sources by understanding who wrote them, for whom, and from what framework.

Read It¶

Public domain translation. Ibn Battuta dictated his account to Ibn Juzayy in 1355. Fordham Medieval Sourcebook.

On Leaving Home — The Journey Begins (1325)¶

At the age of twenty-one, I set out alone on foot for Mecca and did not return to my family until thirty years had passed. God knows what happened during that time. My object was religious zeal and I desired to visit the most distant countries.

Mali and the Court of Mansa Suleyman (1352)¶

The king, whose name is Mansa Musa, came from a race of kings called Banu Sulaymana. He has many slaves with whom he makes war against his enemies; these are black men, but among them are some Berbers and Arabs who fight on horseback and others who fight on foot. His army is large indeed.

In the city of Mali there is a great quantity of gold dust which is mined in mountains near it. The king has a mint where they make money out of this gold. They also have mines of salt in that country, which are worked by slaves and yield much profit to their masters.

On Constantinople or the Delhi Sultanate¶

In the city of Delhi, there are thousands upon thousands of merchants dealing in all manner of goods, such as silks from China, spices from the East Indies, perfumes from Arabia. The markets are full every day with people buying and selling, while others sit on the ground sewing and making clothes. There is a great diversity of peoples here, including Turks, Persians, Arabs, Indians, and many more.

ELA Standards This Connects To¶

R.9 — Ibn Battuta's Rihla makes an implicit argument throughout: that the Islamic world constitutes a coherent, sophisticated, and broadly unified civilization connected across enormous geographic distances. Students identify this argument and trace how he constructs it through selective observation and consistent evaluation criteria (Islamic law and scholarship).
IR.4 — The Rihla is the best IR.4 (source evaluation) exercise for Era 2: Ibn Battuta is a reliable reporter of what he observed, but what he chose to observe, how he evaluated it, and what he missed are all functions of his perspective as an Islamic legal scholar. Students practice lateral reading: Who is this person? What does he care about? What does his framework cause him to see and not see?
R.2 — The Rihla rewards inference work: what does Ibn Battuta take for granted that surprises us? What does he find remarkable that we would find ordinary? The gap between his assumptions and ours reveals both his world and ours.

WH.6_12.1 — The Rihla documents the technological and commercial infrastructure of the medieval Islamic world: the dar al-Islam (the "house of Islam") as a connected economic system; trade routes and goods; the sophistication of Islamic urban centers (Cairo, Mecca, Delhi, Timbuktu, Beijing); and the role of Islamic law in enabling cross-cultural trade.
WH.6_12.4 — Ibn Battuta's account documents cultural contact, exchange, and judgment across the medieval world — including his observations of practices he found admirable and practices he found scandalous. Students analyze how cultural contact works: what gets adopted, what gets rejected, and what determines the difference.

Key Vocabulary¶

Term	Definition
Rihla	Arabic word for "journey" — also the genre of Islamic travel literature Ibn Battuta's account represents
Dar al-Islam	The "house of Islam" — the connected world of Islamic civilization that Ibn Battuta could travel through using shared law, language (Arabic for scholarship), and customs
Hajj	The pilgrimage to Mecca required of every Muslim who is able — what originally sent Ibn Battuta traveling; he never stopped
Qadi	Islamic judge — Ibn Battuta's profession; he served as a judge in multiple countries throughout his travels
Mali Empire	The West African empire that Ibn Battuta visited (1352–53), ruled by Mansa Musa's successors — one of the wealthiest and most sophisticated states in the 14th-century world

Key Passages¶

On Cairo (1326):

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

On Mali (1352):

The negroes [sic] are seldom unjust, and have a greater abhorrence of injustice than any other people. Their sultan shows no mercy to anyone who is guilty of the least act of it. There is complete security in their country. Neither traveller nor inhabitant in it has anything to fear from robbers or men of violence.

On a practice he finds scandalous (Mali):

Among their bad qualities are the following: The women servants, slave-girls, and young girls go about in front of everyone naked, without a stitch of clothing on them... Their women show no bashfulness before men and do not veil themselves... I could not accustom myself to it and left the town, after staying there three nights, moved by shame and disgust.

Why these passages matter: The first passage shows Ibn Battuta's capacity for awe at urban sophistication. The second shows his genuine admiration for West African justice — remarkable for the era. The third shows his limits: he is a product of his framework, and women's dress codes matter to him more than other aspects of culture. Together they show how to use a biased source productively: you can trust his observations of what he saw; you must evaluate his judgments through his perspective.

Comparison: Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo¶

Both traveled in the 14th century; both left famous accounts. They saw different worlds:

	Ibn Battuta	Marco Polo
Origin	Morocco (Islamic world)	Venice (Christian Europe)
Route	Africa, Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, China	Europe to China, back
What he noticed	Courts, scholars, mosques, Islamic law, justice systems	Trade goods, rulers, military power, wealth
Distance traveled	~75,000 miles	~15,000 miles
Perspective	Insider in the Islamic world; outsider in Hindu/Buddhist areas	Outsider in the Mongol/Chinese world
Reliability	High for observation; must evaluate judgments	Some sections disputed; some probable exaggeration

Studio Ideas¶

"The World Ibn Battuta Saw" — EQ: What does the Islamic world of the 14th century look like from inside it? · Standard: WH.6_12.1 + WH.6_12.4 · Demo Mode: Visual/Creative (map Ibn Battuta's route on a blank world map — mark the cities he describes as sophisticated and wealthy. What does this map tell you about which parts of the 14th-century world were most connected and prosperous?)
"Source Evaluation: What Ibn Battuta Sees" — EQ: What does a source's perspective cause it to find and miss? · Standard: IR.4 + R.9 · Demo Mode: Portfolio Annotation (choose three Ibn Battuta passages — one where you trust his observation completely, one where you can see his Islamic-scholar framework shaping his judgment, and one where you think he's wrong. For each: explain what in his background causes him to see this way)
"Two Travelers, Two Worlds" — EQ: Does the traveler's origin determine what they find? · Standard: WH.6_12.4 + R.9 · Demo Mode: Written Assessment (compare Ibn Battuta's and Marco Polo's accounts of any place or topic that both describe — what does each find interesting? What does each miss? What does the comparison reveal about how perspective shapes observation?)
"What Makes a Civilization?" — EQ: By whose standards does a society count as "civilized"? · Standard: WH.6_12.4 + W.4 · Demo Mode: Verbal Conversation (Ibn Battuta judges societies by Islamic legal standards; Kipling judges by European imperial standards. Compare their evaluation criteria. Then: Is there a standard for evaluating societies that isn't itself culturally biased? If so, what is it?)

Why This Is Relevant Today?¶

Ibn Battuta traveled 75,000 miles across three continents in the 14th century — more than any traveler before him — and was welcomed in Muslim courts from Mali to China because the Islamic world of his era shared a common language, legal framework, and intellectual culture that cut across political borders. That cosmopolitan Muslim world — diverse, intellectually alive, and in many ways more connected than the fragmented European kingdoms of the same period — challenges the Western assumption that the "Middle Ages" were universally dark and backward. The Rihla is relevant today for several reasons: the societies Ibn Battuta described are ancestral to countries that Western foreign policy often treats as monolithic; his account is a useful counter to that flattening. The Rihla also raises questions about who gets to travel freely and who doesn't — Ibn Battuta moved through borders that no longer exist in a world organized around different assumptions about belonging. In a world where passport privilege determines how far you can go and how you're treated when you arrive, his freedom of movement is worth reflecting on.