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126 THEMES IN INDIAN H ISTORY – P ART II 5. Ibn Battuta and the Excitement of the Unfamiliar By the time Ibn Battuta arrived in Delhi in the fourteenth century, the subcontinent was part of a global network of communication that stretched from China in the east to north-west Africa and Europe in the west. As we have seen, Ibn Battuta himself travelled extensively through these lands, visiting Source 6 sacred shrines, spending time with learned men and Nuts like a man’s head rulers, often officiating as qazi, and enjoying the cosmopolitan culture of urban centres where people who spoke Arabic, Persian, Turkish and other The following is how Ibn Battuta languages, shared ideas, information and anecdotes. described the coconut: These trees are among the These included stories about men noted for their most peculiar trees in kind piety, kings who could be both cruel and generous, and about the lives of ordinary men and women; and most astonishing in anything that was unfamiliar was particularly habit. They look exactly like date-palms, without highlighted in order to ensure that the listener or any difference between the reader was suitably impressed by accounts of them except that the one distant yet accessible worlds. produces nuts as its fruits and the other produces 5.1 The coconut and the paan dates. The nut of a coconut Some of the best examples of Ibn Battuta’s strategies of representation are evident in the ways in which tree resembles a man’s head, for in it are what look he described the coconut and the paan, two kinds of like two eyes and a mouth, plant produce that were completely unfamiliar to and the inside of it when it is his audience. green looks like the brain, and attached to it is a fibre which looks like hair. They Source 7 make from this cords with The paan which they sew up ships instead of (using) iron nails, and they (also) make from it Read Ibn Battuta’s description of tpaan: cables for vessels. The betel is a tree which is cultivated in the same manner as the grape-vine; … The betel has no fruit ➲ What are the and is grown only for the sake of its leaves … The comparisons that Ibn manner of its use is that before eating it one takes Battuta makes to give his areca nut; this is like a nutmeg but is broken up until it readers an idea about is reduced to small pellets, and one places these in his what coconuts looked mouth and chews them. Then he takes the leaves of like? Do you think these betel, puts a little chalk on them, and masticates them are appropriate? How along with the betel. does he convey a sense that this fruit is unusual? ➲ Why do you think this attracted Ibn How accurate is his Battuta’s attention? Is there anything you description? would like to add to this description? Reprint 2026-27