Ibn Battuta and his adventure | Hacker News Reader

Ibn Battuta and his adventure

jurnalanas.com

178 pointsjurnalanas38 comments

I researched this story previously, and it really is fascinating--especially as counterpoint to the stories of Marco Polo, a lot of which are, if not actually fabricated by the man himself and his colleagues[1], definitely "stretched" for truth to the extreme.

On the other hand, the documentation on Ibn Battuta's travels, even accounting for a large amount of historical skew, is informed by a lot more primary source material and other parties' accounts than Marco Polo's.

Because his writings are (in translation at least) incredibly accessible as stories, I've always hoped to see them getting assigned as reading to young primary school kids. A long time ago, I lobbied for that at some private/public schools in Colorado (and offered to help formulate curricula or engage with the material in after school history clubs), but because of some pretty blatant Islamophobia, nothing came of it. Ah well, boring, unengaging textbooks it is, then.

[1] http://www.davidmeyercreations.com/mysteries-of-history/was-...

You tried at least, which is more than most people do.

Is there a book you'd recommend for casual adult reading?

Tim Mackintosh-Smith's translation is eminently readable with comprehensive notes - https://www.amazon.com/Travels-Battutah-Macmillan-Collectors...

As ibn_ibid suggested, getting a translation of The Travels is really the best thing to do. It's a lovely read, with none of the archaic oddities of, say, more-or-less literal translations of Homer or older texts. I think that high quality is due to three things: an excellent translation by Mackintosh-Smith; the fact that the original material was written as reportage/prose, not poetry or correspondence; and that Ibn Battuta was just a damn good writer--Rusticello wrote like a paperback novelist forced to write nonfiction, and it showed.

Dunn's "The Adventures of Ibn Battuta" is also trenchant. But really start with The Travels.

Would you be so kind pointing me to these resources you have?

See my and others' comments elsewhere in this thread: most of the resources in question are the primary text and analyses of it.

because of some pretty blatant Islamophobia, nothing came of it

The Persians and Lysistrata were written and first performed during mortal conflicts with the Persian Empire and the city-state of Sparta, respectively and do not vilify the enemy. The Athenians were more advanced than the citizens of Colorado, it must be said.

You're taking it on OPs word that it was 'blatant Islamophobia' that prevented his plans from going through.

Changing a school curriculum, especially as an outsider, is incredibly difficult. Unless OP was told 'we don't like Muslims and don't want to hear their stories', I am incredulous that the real reason is blatant Islamophobia across the leaders of multiple private and public schools.

Bigotry was a sticking point; you're perfectly correct that there were many subsequent hurdles to cross had we not run into that one. It may not have worked out, and I agree that such changes are difficult.

In this case, however, it was reasonably blatant:

I spoke to the two leading (and, I believe, only) exclusively history teachers at the local public (middle and high) school. This was in a very small community: less than 10k population. One of them was an acquaintance of mine, and had indicated that they were having problems with student engagement. They were initially receptive given my previous work with them. To be clear, I wasn't coming at them with "here's a new entire curriculum I wrote; replace yours" or "you're doing it wrong", but rather an idea that we'd have a few weekend sit-down sessions together and come up with a way to structure some world history units around Ibn Battuta's writing as a jumping off point (not as the primary text, but as a means of creating engagement--think "you've read some of the textbook history of Somalia and the passages about it from 'The Travels'; explain how Ibn Battuta's observations reflect the economic, religious, and environmental realities discussed in $big_dry_textbook").

However, when I explained that this was a work by a Muslim scholar and that his religion was a frequent presence in his work, two things happened: my acquaintance immediately asked if it would be worth the time to "cut" around any references to Islam in writing by/about Ibn Battuta that we might use (taking for granted that it would be excised, just questioning the difficulty). Then, his colleague said, and I believe this is verbatim, "I'd rather not bring in [to the classroom] material from that faith." We gave up more or less immediately after that. Perhaps I should have negotiated differently or tried harder.

I also spoke to the principal/lead teacher of a very small/remedial private school in my area, and he candidly indicated that his close relationship with some of his students' parents concerned him regarding the frequency of references to Islam throughout the source material. Unlike the other two, he actually took the time to read it, and gave a candid answer, which I appreciated.

Edit: missed details.

It would break both the "Muslim as cultural Other" narrative and, with all the accounts of saintly miracles, the scientific materialist narrative they are pushing as well. Unfortunately, the primary schools are going to prioritize goodthink over education.

I know people who would be interested in translating such writings for kids if they can get grants for it. I doubt the latter is hard.

Email me with address in profile. In short, we can discuss privately how Islamophobia will not be an issue with me and my clique. There is also a nascent Arabic pedagogy demand for private schools in the east coast US teaching to non natives and significant numbers non-Muslim I'll see if we can find you an audience.

I'm reading an abridged version of the Rihla right now and just finished the section on Syria. One interesting point is the system of "waqf" or charitable foundations, that apparently encompassed every aspect of society. He relates a story where he saw a servant boy in Damascus carrying a delicate Chinese plate down the street. He accidentally dropped the plate on the ground and it broke. A passerby told him to take the pieces to the "Charitable Foundation for Utensils" and they would give him the money to buy an equivalent plate. Ibn Battuta goes on to praise the person who set up this foundation, without knowing their identity, since if the boy had gone back home with the broken plate, he would have been scolded or whipped. It seems the sole purpose of the charity was to prevent these sorts of small mistakes from spoiling relations between people. I don't know why, but I just find this remarkable.

The way that Ibn Battuta adeptly navigates tricky social situations in faraway lands is notable as well. At one point he is pressured into being part of a mourning ritual which clearly offends him, but afterwards, still manages to secure a private meeting with the local governor, in which he advises him not to drink alcohol. He is thanked by the governor for this advice and the townspeople as well.

I recently read about usury. I never knew the proper history of the term. I was surprised by the human side of it in the middle ages.

I feel that a lot of ways of the past had high values for the human existence and is never passed down.

I recently read the IB text and loved it. Someone already mentioned the fact that IB has more historical material than Marco Polo, but there are a bunch of other contrasts as well.

Most importantly to me, Marco Polo follows a sort of ethnographic style which arranges the narrative around the description of all the peoples and regions he encountered. IB describes his journey linearly in chronological order, which makes more sense to the modern reader. Secondly, we get a much greater sense of the personality of IB in his travelogue. He talks about bursting into tears from loneliness, he talks about longing to be able to stay forever on an idyllic tropical islet, etc.

For those who are interested, my favorite medieval travelogues are:

- William of Rubruck [1] Friar who traveled to the court of the Mongols. Very sharp and strong personality. Featuring a three-way debate between Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists.

- Ibn Fadlan [2] Abbasid envoy to the Volga Bulgars. Featuring pre-Islamic Turks, Jewish Khazars, and of course the absolutely insane viking ship burial.

[1] https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/rubruck.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_ibn_Fadlan

> They had been observing us (in the palace) and drawing our portraits without our noticing it. This is a custom of theirs, I mean making portraits of all who pass through their country. In fact they have brought this to such perfection that if a stranger commits any offence that obliges him to flee from China, they send his portrait far and wide. A search is then made for him and where so ever the person bearing a resemblance to that portrait is found is arrested.

Facial recognition! How did this craft/profession arise historically?

> How did this craft/profession arise historically?

I suspect Battuta himself is suggesting why it started, right there - he's just swapping cause and effect, likely out of courtesy.

In college I researched Abd Allah Ibn Buluggin, the last of the Zirid rulers of Granada (ruled 1073-1090). He wrote a snarky memoir in exile (1091-1095) that describes his travels, a bit, but mostly lists all the people who did him wrong during his rule. It feels like you're reading the diary of a teenage girl who has been kicked out of the cool club. This led me down a rabbit hole of reading all sorts of Islamic scholars/travelers' works, and the overriding feeling in all of it is that we're all, deep down, pretty much the same. (you can read the diary here: https://books.google.com/books?id=ltcUAAAAIAAJ )

I was enchanted by Ibn Battuta’s travels, but I came away from them feeling that he was a bit of a jerk. Multiple times on his journey he’d marry a local woman, get her pregnant, and then move on, leaving her only a paltry sum to support herself and their kid.

Totally agree. And the amount of sexual access these upper class medieval Muslims had is pretty insane. Not only does IB marry women and leave them, he buys "slave girls" all the time on the cheap.

Why do you think non-muslim communities of that time were any different. Do you when USA end slavery or when they recognize women as full human beings?

حبيبي I read his comment many times but I do not read that what you read. He doesn't say other communities were strictly superior.

Sounds a lot like Kerouac's "On the road", that heralded masterpiece of '60s counterculture.

To IB's defense, he did make a point to seek after his lost progeny on the way home. One son of his in Damascus had died, and another in Maldives he decided was better off staying with his mother for reasons he doesn't mention. Moreover, there are at least three separate towns he visits where he mentions that it was the custom of the women of that place to marry travelers and then divorce them rather than leave (Oulata, the Maldives, and another town in Iraq I can't remember the name of). So you might be applying presentism there, even though I agree with the spirit of what you're saying.

Another travelogue ~ 100 years earlier. Ibn Jubayr goes from Cordoba to the Haj and on to a crumbling Baghdad (pre-mongol - interesting).

Stops in norman sicily on the way back: https://www.amazon.com/Travels-Ibn-Jubayr-J-C-Broadhurst/dp/...

Ibn Fadlan is a similar Arab "travelogue": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_ibn_Fadlan

He gets to meet a bunch of Volga Vikings and sees a ship burial.

I had read Marco Polo's story as a kid. It was somewhat entertaining, IIRC, whether made up or not.

What are some other good travel tales from classical or medieval times?

Polo family was uneducated?!

ابن بطوطة

جوجل ترجمة لانقاذ :)

I'd have expected Google to be written as غوغا

I have no idea what you wrote, but as somebody who grew through decades of bakeji and '?', I love how modern systems are finally mature enough to deal smoothly with non-ASCII languages.

It's "Ibn Battuta" in Arabic.

If only it was easier to switch mid word from ltr to rtl text selection and deletion

I am learning arabic, it's getting easier to recognize letters but it's impossible for me to guess how a word might sound when there are no diacritics

Eg: I'd have read the first word as alif+ba+noon = ABN

It's difficult even for native users, so don't worry too much!

Great job reading the letters though! Learning a language that uses a different alphabet is a tough endeavor (I've tried!).

When diacritics are not present, you need to guess what the word is based on context.

Two examples:

هناك علم على غصن الشجرة

هناك علم في ذلك الكتاب

Notice that the word "علم" is present in both sentences. But once you read the sentences, you'll end up realizing that the words are different. If diacritics were present, this would be immediately obvious!

The two sentences, translated, are:

There is a flag on the tree branch.

There is knowledge in that book.

The word "علم" means either "flag" or "knowledge/science" in these two sentences.

Shukran I really appreciate the welcoming attitude and the explanation! Copying this in my todo.md file so I can keep it for future reference

If it doesn't bother you, do you happen to know a good online arabic dictionary, possibly showing letters separatedly and pronounciation

The best general online dictionary I know of in Arabic is https://www.almaany.com/ar/dict/ar-ar/. They have an English-to-Arabic version here: https://www.almaany.com/en/dict/ar-en/.

Two good English-to-Arabic dictionaries:

* https://en.bab.la/dictionary/english-arabic/

* https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-arabic/

The best learner's dictionaries I could find:

* http://arabic-dictionary.lingualism.com/

Al Jazeera has an excellent Arabic learning website that uses clips from their shows and news programs to teach the language: http://learning.aljazeera.net/en/. One cool thing is that they include diacritics in all of the text to avoid the problem we were discussing above.

Feel free to contact me (@aksiksi on Twitter) if you have any further questions. I would be glad to help you as much as I can :)

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