Remaining about five weeks in Constantinople, where, owing to the difference of manners, language, and religion, he does not appear to have tasted of much pleasure, he returned to Mohammed Uzbek, whose bounty enabled him to pursue his journey towards the east in a very superior style. The country to which his desires now pointed was Khavāresm, the road thither traversing, during the greater part of the way, a barren desert, where little water and a very scanty herbage were to be found. 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. Next to the refinement of the people, the most remarkable thing he observed at Khavāresm was a species of melon, green on the outside, and red within, which, being cut into thin oblong slices and dried, was packed up in cases like figs, and exported to India and China. 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. Leaving this ancient seat of oriental learning, he proceeded to Māwarā El Nahr, the sultan of which was a just and powerful prince, who received him hospitably, and furnished him with funds to pursue his wanderings. He next visited Samarkand, Balkh, and Herat, in Khorasān; and scaling the snowy heights of the Hindoo Koosh, or Hindoo-Slayer, so called because most of the slaves attempted to be carried out of India by this route are killed by the severity of the cold, he entered Kabul. Here, in a cell of the mountain called Bashāi, he found an old man, who, though he had the appearance of being about fifty, pretended to be three hundred and fifty years old, and assured Ibn Batūta that at the expiration of every hundred years he was blessed with a new growth of hair and new teeth, and that, in fact, he was the Rajah Aba Rahim Ratan of India, who had been buried in Mooltam. Notwithstanding his innate veneration for every thing saintly, and this man bore the name of Ata Evlin, or “Father of Saints,” our honest traveller could not repress the doubts which arose in his mind respecting his extraordinary pretensions, and observes in his travels that he much doubted of what he was, and that he continued to doubt.
Ibn Batūta now crossed the Indus, and found himself in Hindostan, where, immediately upon his arrival, he met, in a city which he denominates Janai, one of the three brothers of Borhaneddin, the Egyptian saint, whose prediction, strengthening his natural bent of mind, had made a great traveller of him. Traversing the desert of Sivastān, where the Egyptian thorn was the only tree to be seen, and then descending along the banks of the Sinde, or Indus, he arrived at the city of Lahari, on the seashore, in the vicinity of which were the ruins of an ancient city, abounding with the sculptured figures of men and animals, which the superstitious natives supposed to be the real forms of the ancient inhabitants transformed by the Almighty into stone for their wickedness.
At Uja, a large city on the Indus, our traveller contracted a friendship with the Emīr Jelaleddin, then governor of the place, a brave and generous prince, whom he afterward met at Delhi. In journeying 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. In the course of this journey he witnessed the performance of a suttee, and remarks upon the occasion, that these human sacrifices were not absolutely required either by the laws or the religion of Hindostan; but that, owing to the vulgar prejudice which regarded those families as ennobled who thus lost one of their members, the practice was greatly encouraged.
On arriving at Delhi, which, for strength, beauty, and extent, he pronounces the greatest city, not only of all Hindostan, but of all Islamism in the east, he resorted to the palace of the queen-mother and presenting his presents, according to custom, was graciously received and magnificently established by the bounty of that princess and the vizier. It is to be presumed, that the money he had received in presents from various princes on the way had exceeded his travelling expenses, and gone on accumulating, until, on his arrival at Delhi, it amounted to a very considerable sum; for with his house, costly furniture, and forty attendants, his expenditure seems greatly to have exceeded the munificence of his patrons; indeed, he very soon found that all the resources he could command were too scanty to supply the current of his extravagance.
Being of the opinion of that ancient writer who thought a good companion better than a coach on a journey, Ibn Batūta appears to have increased his travelling establishment with a mistress, by whom he seems to have had several children, for shortly after his arrival at the capital, he informs us that “a daughter of his,” evidently implying that he had more than one, happened to die. At this time our worthy theologian was so deeply intoxicated with the fumes of that vanity which usually accompanies the extraordinary smiles of fortune, that, although by no means destitute of natural affection, nothing in the whole transaction appears to have made any impression upon his mind except the honour conferred upon him by the condescension of the vizier and the emperor. The latter, then at a considerable distance from the capital, on being informed of the event, commanded that the ceremonies and rites usually performed at the funeral of the children of the nobility should now take place; and accordingly, on the third day, when the body was to be removed to its narrow house, the vizier, the judges, and the nobles entered the chamber of mourning, spread a carpet, and made the necessary preparations, consisting of incense, rose-water, readers of the Koran, and panegyrists. Our traveller, who anticipated nothing of all this, confesses ingenuously that he was “much gratified.” To the mother of the child the queen-mother showed the greatest kindness, presenting her with magnificent dresses and ornaments, and a thousand dinars in money.
The Emperor Mohammed having been absent from Delhi ever since our traveller’s arrival, he had hitherto found no opportunity of presenting himself before the “Lord of the World;” but upon that great personage’s returning, soon after the funeral, the vizier undertook to introduce him to the presence. The emperor received him graciously, taking him familiarly by the hand, and, in the true royal style, lavishing the most magnificent promises. As an earnest of his future bounty, he bestowed upon each of the many travellers who were presented at the same time, and met with the same reception, a gold-embroidered dress, which he had himself worn; a horse from his own stud, richly caparisoned with housings and saddle of silver; and such refreshments as the imperial kitchen afforded. Three days afterward Ibn Batūta was appointed one of the judges of Delhi, on which occasion the vizier observed to him, “The Lord of the World appoints you to the office of judge in Delhi. He also gives you a dress of honour with a saddled horse, as also twelve thousand dinars for your present support. He has moreover appointed you a yearly salary of twelve thousand dinars, and a portion of lands in the villages, which will produce annually an equal sum.” He then did homage and withdrew.
The fortune of Ibn Batūta was now changed. From the condition of a religious adventurer, wandering from court to court, and from country to country, subsisting upon the casual bounty of the great, he had now been elevated to a post of great honour and emolument in the greatest city then existing in the world. But it is very certain he was not rendered happier by this promotion. The monarch upon whose nod his destiny now depended was a man of changeful and ferocious nature, profuse and lavish in the extreme towards those whom he affected, but when provoked, diabolically cruel and revengeful. In the very first conference which our traveller held with his master after his appointment, he made a false step, and gave offence; for when the emperor had informed him that he would by no means find his office a sinecure, he replied that he belonged to the sect of Ibn Malik, whereas the people of Delhi were followers of Hanīfa; and that, moreover, he was ignorant of their language. This would have been a good reason why he should not in the first instance have accepted the office of judge; but, having accepted of it, he should by no means have brought forward his sectarian prejudices, or his ignorance, in the hope of abridging the extent of his duties. The emperor, with evident displeasure, rejoined, that he had appointed two learned men to be his deputies, and that these would advise him how to act. He moreover added, that it would be his business to sign all legal instruments.
Notwithstanding the profuse generosity of Mohammed Khan, Ibn Batūta, who seems to have understood nothing of domestic economy, soon found himself prodigiously in debt; but his genius, fertile in expedients, and now sharpened by necessity, soon hit upon an easy way of satisfying his creditors. Observing that, like most of his countrymen, Mohammed Khan was an admirer of Arabian poetry, more particularly of such as celebrated his own praises, our theological judge, whose conscience seems to have been hushed to silence by his embarrassments, composed in Arabic a panegyric upon his patron, who, to borrow his own expression, “was wonderfully pleased with it.” Taking advantage, like a thoroughbred courtier, of this fit of good-humour, he disclosed the secret of his debt, which the emperor, who now, no doubt, perceived the real drift of the panegyric, ordered to be discharged from his own treasury; but added, however, “Take care, in future, not to exceed the extent of your income.” Upon this the traveller, whether pleased with his generosity or his advice we will not determine, exclaims, “May God reward him!”
No great length of time had elapsed, however, before Ibn Batūta perceived that his grandeur had conducted him to the edge of a precipice. Having, during a short absence of the emperor, visited a certain holy man who resided in a cell without the city, and had once been in great favour with Mohammed himself, our traveller received an order to attend at the gate of the palace, while a council sat within. In most cases this was the signal of death. But in order to mollify the Fates, Ibn Batūta betook himself to fasting, subsisting, during the four days in which he thus attended, upon pure water, and mentally repeating thirty-three thousand times that verse of the Koran which says, “God is our support, and the most excellent patron.” The aquatic diet and the repetitions prevailing, he was acquitted, while every other person who had visited the sheïkh was put to death. Perceiving that the risks incurred by a judge of Delhi were at least equal to the emolument, Ibn Batūta began to feel his inclination for his own free roaming mode of life return, resigned his perilous office, bestowed all the wealth he possessed upon the fakeers, and bidding adieu to the splendid vanities of the world, donned the tunic of these religious mendicants, and attached himself during five months to the renowned Sheïkh Kamāleddin Abdallah El Ghazi, a man who had performed many open miracles.