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118 T HEMES IN INDIAN H ISTORY – P ART II Source 2 2. Ibn Battuta’s Rihla The bird leaves its nest 2.1 An early globe-trotter Ibn Battuta’s book of travels, called Rihla, written in This is an excerpt from thea: Arabic, provides extremely rich and interesting details about the social and cultural life in the My departure from Tangier, my birthplace, took place on subcontinent in the fourteenth century. This Thursday ... I set out alone, Moroccan traveller was born in Tangier into one of having neither fellow- the most respectable and educated families known traveller ... nor caravan for their expertise in Islamic religious law or shari‘a. whose party I might join, but True to the tradition of his family, Ibn Battuta swayed by an overmastering impulse within me and a received literary and scholastic education when he was quite young. desire long-cherished in my Unlike most other members of his class, Ibn bosom to visit these Battuta considered experience gained through travels illustrious sanctuaries. So I braced my resolution to quit to be a more important source of knowledge than all my dear ones, female and books. He just loved travelling, and went to far-off male, and forsook my home places, exploring new worlds and peoples. Before he as birds forsake their nests ...et off for India in 1332-33, he had made pilgrimage My age at that time was trips to Mecca, and had already travelled extensively twenty-two years. in Syria, Iraq, Persia, Yemen, Oman and a few Ibn Battuta returned home in trading ports on the coast of East Africa. 1354, about 30 years after he Travelling overland through Central Asia, Ibn Battuta reached Sind in 1333. He had heard had set out. about Muhammad bin Tughlaq, the Sultan of Delhi, and lured by his reputation as a generous patron of arts and letters, set off for Delhi, passing through Fig. 5.3 Multan and Uch. The Sultan was impressed by Robbers attacking travellers, a his scholarship, and appointed him the qazi or judge sixteenth-century Mughal painting of Delhi. He remained in that position for several ➲ How can you distinguish the years, until he fell out of favour and was thrown into prison. Once the misunderstanding between travellers from the robbers? him and the Sultan was cleared, he was restored to imperial service, and was ordered in 1342 to proceed to China as the Sultan’s envoy to the Mongol ruler. With the new assignment, Ibn Battuta proceeded to the Malabar coast through central India. From Malabar he went to the Maldives, where he stayed for eighteen months as the qazi, but eventually decided to proceed to Sri Lanka. He then went back once more to the Malabar coast and the Maldives, and before resuming his mission to China, visited Bengal and Assam as well. He took a ship to Sumatra, and from there another ship for the Chinese port town of Reprint 2026-27