About book The Adventures Of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler Of The Fourteenth Century, Revised Edition, With A New Preface (2004)
Ibn Battuta set off from Tangier in 1325, visiting Egypt, Mecca, Syria, Iraq, Anatolia, the Central Asian steppe, India, the Maldives and possibly China before returning home nearly twenty five years later. After additional trips to Spain and West Africa he settled down and his story was turned into a Rihla (travel narrative) by Ibn Juzayy.The Adventures of Ibn Battuta follows Ibn Battuta's travels chronologically, but doesn't stay narrowly focused on the details of his career. It offers extensive background information and is an approachable introduction to the world of classical Islam as well as a lively and entertaining travel narrative.Dunn uses direct quotations from and simple summaries of the Rihla, but he also works in information from other sources to produce an account that is comprehensible and satisfying to a modern reader. (References and discussions of details are relegated to chapter endnotes.) And he engages in speculation about events and thoughts not covered by the Rihla, but without any fictionalisation or dramatisation."He spent two weeks with Qutb al-Din in Isfahan, enjoying the preserved watermelon and other fruits of the Isfahan plain laid out at the zawiya's table. At this point in history the city was not the noble capital it had been under the Seljuk Turks and would be again under the Shi'i Safavids. Because of a sad inclination among the inhabitants to engage in violent factional rows, coupled with the turmoil of the early Mongol years, the city was only beginning to recover some of its earlier vigor. Perhaps dissatisfied with what the town had to show him of Persian culture, Ibn Battuta decided to travel another 300 miles south to Shiraz, chief city of the province of Fars."Dunn provides information about the people Ibn Battuta met and the places he visited and background on the broader history, society and culture. So the opening chapter "Tangier" looks at the geography of the city and the Straits of Gibraltar and the history of the Almohad dynasty, for example, while the chapter on Persia and Iraq begins by describing the impacts of the Mongols and Turks on Mesopotamia. More general material includes explanations of the different schools of Islamic law, Sufism, the role of Arabic, and other aspects of the common culture of the Islamic world.The result makes The Adventures of Ibn Battuta almost a guide to the Islamic world in the second quarter of the 14th century. With the travel and biographical material providing an extra attraction — Ibn Battuta's adventures get more exciting than the consumption of watermelon! — it would make an excellent entry work for those with no background knowledge of Islam or Islamic history.
This book was assigned to my daughter for her AP World History course, and looked interesting so I decided to read it and found it worth the time. Ibn Battuta was the Marco Polo of the Muslim world in the 14th century and traveled from his home in Morocco across the Middle East, up to the Caucuses, then down to India and crossed the fault lines of various dynasties and cultures.Some points I found interesting:- During his travels Battuta was not treated as a Moroccan, but as a member of Dar al-Islam, the wider Muslim world. The religion had an remarkable unifying influence.- During Battuta's time, education was widespread, but the purpose of education was not to think and question, but rather to memorize and pass along the accepted Islamic truths- The Sufi movement personalized Islamic study, and held that an individual Muslim could achieve direct and personal relations with God.- Mamluks (meaning slave in Arabic) were from the Asiatic steppes, brought into Syria and Egypt, and then trained for service to the Mamluk empire. The idea was that they would be in service to the empire vs. to the local population and influence.- Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem important in Muslim faith as the location where Muhammed was transported from Mecca by the Angel Gabriel and then met God in the Seventh Heaven of Paradise.- Descriptions of Yemen during Battuta's travels very similar to today in terms of the tribal divisions and power struggles- Battuta had some great adventures with some comic tones, such as this experience while on the Black Sea: "We were in sore straits and destruction visibly before our eyes. I was in the cabin, along with a man from the Maghrib named Abu Bakr, and I bade him go up on deck to observe the state of the sea. He did so and came back to me in the cabin saying to me, 'I commend you to God.'"- Battuta visited Constantinople when the Byzantines still had influence, but the Turkish Muslim tide was moving, and shortly after the Ottoman Empire would move west and control most if not all of the former Greek lands.
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Memulakan tahun 2014 dengan bacaan yg baik.Walaupun aku tak menyukai keseluruhan isi buku ini. Keseluruhan isi buku ini hanyalah memberi gambaran sudut sosio-politik zaman ibn battuta dalam rangka menyangkal kesahihan catatan pengembaraan musafir agung islam ini.oleh kerana aku belum pernah membaca karya asal ibn battuta yg berjudul'rihla' itu, membaca kritik ini sama seperti kita membaca ruangan komen yg melarat di youtube tanpa menonton sedikitpun video pencetus polemiknya. sama sekali tak masuk akal.jika aku ingin memulakan pemburuan buku tahun ini.senarai teratasnya adalah buku asal ibn battuta : RIHLA The Travels of Ibn Battutah
—Adi
When I met Professor Dunn, he was already being called American's foremost authority on Ibn Battuta. As we discussed our mutually favored subject, I will never forget how he commented, "I believe I can say that I know just how a Maliki scholar in the 14th century would think."Ibn Battuta's name should be as familiar to Near and Middle Eastern school children as Marco Polo's does to Western pupils. Born half a century after the Venetian traveler, Abu Abdallah ibn Battuta was in face more widely traveled: "Ibn Battuta traveled to, and reports on, a great many more places than Marco did, and his narrative offers details, sometimes incidental bits, sometimes in long disquisitions, on almost ever conceivable aspect of human life in that age, from the royal ceremonial of the Sultan of Delhi to the customs of women in the Maldive Islands. . . ." Ibn Battuta traveled for 29 years, only going home once briefly. The narration of these travels is known in Arabic by the literary term "rihla."Anyone who is seriously interested in Muslim history should read this rihla, something else entirely than The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century by Ross Dunn. That latter book is the appropriate and recommended companion to Ibn Battuta's rihla. Ideally, both books should be open at once. Dunn has his own voice: his affection for the traveler pervades the book, in spite of tiny barbed witticisms, which are not always unwarranted.Most importantly, there is a lot that the modern, Western reader will find not just exotic but strange. Dunn helps explain what is going on, and he does so without being pedantic or condescending. When I first read about Muhammad Tughluq,the ruler in whose court Ibn Battuta found himself for an extended period, he struck me as outrageous and horrifying. Wish I'd had my professor's book then. Dunn succinctly calls Tughluq the "odd duck of fourteenth century rulers." Tughluq was a religious scholar who learned Arabic in order to read religious texts; as a ruler he scandalized his subjects with "policies that were visionary, extreme, and unfathomable." Court subjects like Ibn Battuta lived under horrendous stress: skinning his critics alive was among the least imaginative methods Muhammad Tughluq had of keeping them in line. Dunn provides insight into this enigmatic psychotic as into the entire fabric of the world that was Ibn Battuta's destiny to explore.If you love all that is exotic in the Muslim past, definitely pick up this book along with Ibn Battuta's rihla. Such a double read would be the mother of magic carpet rides.
—Julia Simpson-Urrutia
Ross Dunn presents an absolutely fascinating window into the Muslim world of the 14th century through a novel-esque retelling of Ibn Battuta's travel journals. While Ibn Battuta struck me as something of a jerk, his travels throughout the Muslim world were fascinating. Islam may have spread West by the sword, but it spread East by the trading-ship. The legal scholar from Western Africa follows trade routes from Morocco to the Middle East to India and possibly beyond, finally returning home to write his memoirs. It's a good read.
—Kevin Bensema
