Ibn Battuta

“ From hence he proceeded through various districts, many of which were desert and uninhabitable, to Kufa and Hilla, whence, having visited the mosque of the twelfth imam, whose readvent is still expected by his followers, he departed for Bagdad. Here, as at Rome or Athens, the graves of great men abounded; so that Ibn Batūta’s sympathies were every moment awakened, and apparently too painfully ”

“ Batuta relates that during the interval of desolation the king mounted on the roof of his palace, and seeing the city empty and without fire or smoke said, "Now my heart is satisfied and my feelings are appeased."
Ibn Batuta was a member of this king's court, and had every opportunity of forming a just conclusion. He sums up his qualities thus: —
"Muhammad more than all men loves to bestow gifts and to shed blood. At his gate one sees always some fakir who has become rich, or some living being who is put to death. ”

“ This great man, who was accustomed to fast ten days at a time, and sit up all night, foresaw supernaturally the visit of Ibn Batūta, and sent forth four of his companions to meet him at the distance of two days’ journey, observing, “A western religious traveller is coming to you; go out and meet him.”
On arriving at the cell he found the sheïkh prepared to receive him; and with this great saint and101 his followers he remained three days. On the day of our traveller’s presentation the sheïkh wore a fine yellow garment, for which in his heart Ibn Batūta conceived an unaccountable longing ”

“ In journeying86 eastward from this place, Batūta proceeded through a desert lying between two ridges of mountains, inhabited by Hindoos, whom the traveller terms infidel and rebellious, because they adhered to the faith of their ancestors, and refused submission to the power of the Mohammedan conquerors of their country. Ibn Batūta’s party, consisting of twenty-two men, was here attacked by a large body of natives, which they succeeded in repulsing, after they had killed thirteen of their number. ”

“ Ibn Batuta made the voyage through the Malay Archipelago to China, and on his return he proceeded from Malabar to Bagdad and Damascus, ultimately reaching Fez, the capital of his native country, in November 1349. After a journey into Spain he set out once more for Central Africa in 1352, and reached Timbuktu and the Niger, returning to Fez in 1353. His narrative was committed to writing from his dictation. ”

“ On his recovery he obtained the new sultan’s permission to continue his journey, and embarking at Kawlam in Malabar, proceeded towards Hinaur. Ibn Batūta was seldom fortunate at sea. Sometimes he was robbed; at other times nearly drowned. The present voyage was the most unfortunate he ever undertook, for the ship being attacked100 and taken by pirates, he, as well as the rest of the passengers and crew, was robbed of all he possessed, and landed on the coast penniless and nearly naked. ”

“ Crossing this waste in a carriage drawn by camels, he arrived at Khavāresm, the largest city at that period possessed by the Turks. Here he found the people friendly towards strangers, liberal, and well-bred,—and no wonder; for in every mosque a whip was hung up, with which every person who absented himself from church was soundly flogged by the priest, besides being fined in five dinars. This practice, which Ibn Batūta thought highly commendable, no doubt contributed greatly towards rendering the people liberal and well-bred. ”

“ Sacrifices to Water-spirits |Stories of the Perseus and Andromeda type.| Ibn Batutah’s narrative of the demon lover and his mortal brides closely resembles a well-known type of folk-tale, of which versions have been found from Japan and Annam in the East to Senegambia, Scandinavia, and Scotland in the West. ”

“ While Arab learning flourished during the darkest ages of European ignorance, the last of the Arab geographers lived to see the dawn of the great period of the European awakening. Ibn Batuta went by land from Tangier to Cairo, then visited Syria, and performed the pilgrimages to Medina and Mecca. After exploring Persia, and again residing for some time at Mecca, he made a voyage down the Red sea to Yemen, and travelled through that country to Aden. Thence he visited the African coast, touching at Mombasa and Quiloa, and then sailed across to Ormuz and the Persian Gulf. ”

“ Ibn-i-Masud went out to search, and found him at last, in the midst of a pile of corpses. The chief of the idolaters was still breathing. Ibn-i-Masud placed his foot on the dying man's neck, even as one stamps on a viper, but just as he leant over, Abu Jahal, to brave him, seized him by the beard, and gazing at his conqueror, with a mad look of impotent rage, he shouted, the death-rattle sounding in his throat: 'Hast ever seen such a noble fellow as I, murdered by such vile ploughmen?'
To put an end to the infidel's insults, Ibn-i-Masud cut off his head and brought it to the Prophet. ”

“ That al-Farabi should have been so incisive a writer, so wide a thinker and student; that Ibn Sina should have been so keen and clear a scientist and logician; that Ibn Rushd should have known—really known—and commented his Aristotle as he did, shows that the human brain, after all, is a sane brain and has the power of unconsciously rejecting and throwing out nonsense and falsehood. ”

“ Ibn Batuta returned to Morocco in 1354, and there remained until his death, in 1378. During the year after his arrival, he dictated the history of his travels to Ibn Djozay, a young Moorish poet, who, having been unjustly treated by Yusef, in Granada, fled to Fez, where he was appointed secretary to the Sultan, Abau Inau Faris. The latter, it appears, commanded that the work should be written, and it was also, no doubt, by his order that Ibn Djozay became the amanuensis of our traveler. ”

“ We must take the Qur’anic expressions as names and not as indicating attributes to us. It is true that his creed shows signs of a philosophical width lacking in Ibn Hazm. Like the Mu‘tazilites, e.g. Abu Hudhayl, he defines largely by negations. God is not this; is not affected by that. It is even phrased so as to be capable of a pantheistic explanation, and we find that Ibn Rushd wrote a commentary on it. But it may be doubted whether Ibn Tumart was himself a pantheist. All phases of Islam, as we have seen, ran toward that ”

“ Chewing the life-giving weed, all were sure that they could perform prodigies of energy and strength, that life was a delicious thing, the days and years of their troubles as nothing.
But viewing this and having none, and trudging moodily along toward his waiting-place in front of the mosque, Ibn was truly depressed and out of sorts. The world was not right. Age and poverty should command more respect. To be sure, in his youth perhaps he had not been all that he might have been, but still, for that matter, had many others so been? ”

“ He centered all his attention upon the highest problems of the human intellect, and was at a loss to conceive how any one could spend his life in trifling pursuits or in the study of philology, mathematics, theoretical medicine, or law, instead of directing his mind to the holiest task of life. This task, according to the view of Ibn-Daud, consists in philosophical study, because its object is the knowledge of God, and herein lies man's superiority over the world of created things. ”

“ Ibn Batútah tells us that in Malabar everything was borne upon men’s backs. In Central Africa the kinglet rides a slave, and on ceremonious occasions mounts his Prime Minister. I have often been reduced to this style of conveyance and found man the worst imaginable riding: there is no hold and the sharpness of the shoulder-ridge soon makes the legs ache intolerably. The classicists of course find the Shaykh of the Sea in the Tritons and Nereus, and Bochart (Hiero. ii. 858, 880) notices the homo aquaticus, Senex Judćus and Senex Marinus. ”

“ This change was marked by Al-Ghazzali, and his book 'The Destruction of the Philosophers.' He died in A.D. 1111, and then the works of Al-Farabi, Ibn-Sina, and the "Brothers of Purity," wandered out to the far West, to seek for appreciation among the Muslim, Jews, and Christians of Spain. And for a brief time they found it there, and in the twelfth century found also eloquent expounders at the mosque-schools of Cordova, Toledo, Seville, and Saragossa. Of these the most famous were Ibn Baja, Ibn Tufail, and Ibn Rushd (Averroës) . ”

“ I hate to kill thee because I see thou art wise and brave. Wouldst thou let me go back with thee that I may arrange terms with thee and pay tax for my townsmen, of whom those who stay will be considered dhimmis, and those who flee will not be interfered with? The city I will turn over to thee." Ibn-Budail returned with him and took Jai; and the Persian fulfilled his promise, saying, "I saw that ye, people of Iṣbahân, are mean and disunited. Ye, therefore, deserve what I did with you."
The territory of Iṣbahân pays kharâj. ”

“ On the freedom of the will especially he left him. For Ibn Arabi, the doctrine of the oneness of all things had involved fatalism. Whatever happens is determined by the nature of things, that is, by the nature of God. So the individuals are bound by the whole. Abd ar-Razzaq turned this round. His pantheism was of the same type as that of Ibn Arabi; God, for him, was all. But there is freedom of the divine nature, he went on. It must therefore exist in man also, for he is an emanation from the divine. His every act, it is true, is predetermined, in time, in form, and in place. ”

“ The author of the story, Ibn Tufail, though he is generally not reckoned among the most prominent in that brilliant array of Arabian philosophers for whom Spain became the rallying-point in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, yet his name will outlive centuries. For the romance which he has given to the world is a work of everlasting beauty, of immortal freshness; one that will never grow stale in the flight of ages. ”

“ This is the form of the Aristotelian doctrine as it had been transmitted through Ibn Sina; the Agent Intellect is one, but it is as by emanation present in each, so that the quickening power in each one is part of the universal Agent Intellect. But Ibn Rushd differs from his predecessors in his treatment of the passive intellect, the 'aql hayyulani, which is the seat of latent and potential faculties upon which the Agent operates. ”

“ Quoth the jeweller to Khalifah, "Bismillah, mount this mule." Replied he, "I won't; for by Allah, I fear she throw me;" and quoth Ibn al- Kirnas, "By God, needs must thou mount." So he came up and mounting her, face to crupper, caught hold of her tail and cried out; whereupon she threw him on the ground and they laughed at him; but he rose and said, "Did I not tell thee I would not mount this great jenny-ass?" Thereupon Ibn al-Kirnas left him in the market and repairing to the Caliph, told him of the damsel; after which he returned and removed her to his own house. ”

“ He emphasized this point strongly in opposition to a certain class of his co-religionists in Spain who had a positive dislike for philosophy. Ibn-Daud was well acquainted with the reason for their mistrust of independent research. "There are many in our time," he remarked, "who have dabbled a little in science, and who are not able to hold both lights, the light of belief in their right hand and the light of knowledge in their left. Since in such men the light of investigation has extinguished the light of belief, the multitude think it dangerous, and shrink from it. ”

“ In the hands of the philosophers properly so called it developed an Islamic neo-Platonism which received its final form at the hands of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) , and in this form exercised a powerful influence over Latin scholasticism. Transmitted in another atmosphere it affected Sufism or Muslim mysticism, and was mainly responsible for the speculative theology which that mysticism developed. In a modified form some of the resultant principles gathered from these two sources finally entered into orthodox Muslim scholastic theology. ”

“ Thus preserved, the Khavāresm melon was thought equal to the best dried fruits in the world, and regarded as a present worthy of kings.
From hence Ibn Batūta departed for Bokhāra, a city renowned throughout the east for the learning and refinement of its inhabitants, but at this period so reduced and impoverished by the long wars of Genghis Khan and his successors, that not one man was to be found in it who understood any thing of science. ”

“ Ibn Batutah writes Ammán, but the best dictionaries give “Oman.” (N.B.—Mr. Badger, p. 1, wrongly derives Sachalitis from “Sawáhíly”: it is evidently “Sáhili.”) The people bear by no means the best character: Ibn Batutah (fourteenth century) says, “their wives are most base; yet, without denying this, their husbands express nothing like jealousy on the subject.” (Lee, p. 62.)
20. The name I have said of a quasi historical personage, son of Joktan, the first Arabist and the founder of the Tobbá (“successor”) dynasty in Al-Yaman; while Jurham, his brother, established that of Al-Hijaz. ”

“ In logic, physics, and metaphysics he followed al-Farabi closely. But we can see how the times have moved and the philosophies with them. The essential differences have appeared and Ibn Bajja can no longer, with a good conscience, appear as a pious Muslim. The Sufi strain also is much weaker. The greatest joy and the closest truth are to be found in [251] thought, and not in the sensuous ecstasies of the mystic. The intellect is the highest element in man’s being, but is only immortal as it joins itself to the one Active Intellect, which is all that is left of God. ”