The perfection to which the Chinese of those days had carried the elegant and useful arts appeared extraordinary to our traveller, who dwells with vast complacency upon the beauty of their paintings and the peculiar delicacy of their porcelain. One example of their ingenuity amused him exceedingly. Returning after a short absence to one of their cities, through which he had just passed, he found the walls and houses ornamented with portraits of himself and his companions. This, however, was a mere police regulation, intended to familiarize the people with the forms and features of strangers, that should they commit any crime they might be easily recognised. Ships found to contain any article not regularly entered in the custom-house register were confiscated; “a species of oppression,” says our traveller, “which I witnessed nowhere else.” Strangers, on their first arrival, placed themselves and their property in the keeping of some merchant or innkeeper, who was answerable for the safety of both. The Chinese, regarding their children as property, sell them whenever they can get a purchaser, which renders slaves both male and female extremely cheap among them; and as chastity appears to possess little or no merit in their eyes, travellers are in the habit of purchasing, on their arrival in any city, a slave girl, who resides with them while they remain, and at their departure is either sold again, like an ordinary piece of furniture, or taken away along with them to be disposed of elsewhere. The severity of their police regulations proves that their manners had even then arrived at that pitch of corruption in which little or no reliance is to be placed on moral influence, the place of which is supplied by caution, vigilance, and excessive terror. Strangers moved about in the midst of innumerable guards, who might, perhaps, be considered as much in the light of spies as defenders. Fear predominated everywhere; the traveller feared his host, and the host the traveller. Religion, honour, morals had no power, or rather no existence. Hence the low pitch beyond which the civilization of China has never been able to soar, and that retrogradation towards barbarism which has long commenced in that country, and is rapidly urging the population towards the miserable condition in which they were plunged before the times of Yaon and Shan, who drew them out of their forests and caverns.
To proceed, however, with the adventures of our traveller. The first great city at which he arrived he denominated El Zaitūn, which was the place where the best coloured and flowered silks in the empire were manufactured. It was situated upon a large arm of the sea, and being one of the finest ports in the world, carried on an immense trade, and overflowed with wealth and magnificence. He next proceeded to Sin Kilan, another city on the seashore, beyond which, he was informed, neither Chinese nor Mohammedan ever travelled, the inhabitants of those parts being fierce, inhospitable, and addicted to cannibalism. In a cave without this city was a hermit, or more properly an impostor, who pretended to have arrived at the great age of two hundred years without eating, drinking, or sleeping. Ibn Batūta, who could not, of course, avoid visiting so great and perfect a being, going to his cell, found him to be a thin, beardless, copper-coloured old man, possessing all the external marks of a saint. When the worthy traveller saluted him, instead of returning his salutation, he seized his hand, and smelt it; and then, turning to the interpreter, he said, “This man is just as much attached to this world as we are to the next.” Upon further discourse, it appeared that the saint and the traveller had met before, the former being, in fact, a jogee, whom Ibn Batūta had seen many years before leaning against the wall of an idol temple in the island of Sindibur. Saints, as well as other men, are sometimes imprudent. The jogee had no sooner made this confession than he repented of it, and, retreating into his cell, immediately disguised himself, so that the traveller, who he suspected would forcibly follow him, could not upon entering recognise his person in the least. To infuse into his visiter’s mind the belief that he possessed the power of rendering himself invisible, he informed him that he had seen the last of the holy men, who, though at that moment present, was not to be seen. On returning to the city, our traveller was assured by the judge of the place that it was the same person who had appeared to him both within and without the cave, and that, in fact, the good man was fond of playing such tricks.
Returning to El Zaitūn, he proceeded towards the capital, and halted a little at the city of Fanjanfūr, which, from the number and beauty of its gardens, in some measure resembled Damascus. Here, at a banquet to which he was invited, the remembrance of home was forcibly recalled to his mind by a very affecting and unexpected meeting. He was sitting at table, among his jovial entertainers, when a great Mohammedan fakeer, who entered and joined the company, attracted his attention; and as he continued to gaze earnestly at him for some time, the man at length observed him, and said, “Why do you continue looking at me, unless you know me?” To this Ibn Batūta replied, by demanding the name of his native place. “I am,” said the man, “from Ceuta.”—“And I,” replied Ibn Batūta, “am from Tangiers.” By that peculiar structure of the mind which gives associations of ideas, whether pleasurable or painful, so thorough an empire over our feelings, the very enunciation of those two sounds melted and subdued the temper of their souls. The fakeer saluted him, and wept; and the traveller, returning his salute, wept also. Ibn Batūta then inquired whether he had ever been in India, and was informed that he had remained for some time in the imperial palace of Delhi. A sudden recollection now flashed upon our traveller’s mind: “Are you, then, El Bashiri?” said he; and the fakeer replied, “I am he.” Ibn Batūta now knew who he was, and remembered that while yet a youth without a beard he had travelled with his uncle, Abul Kasim, from Africa to Hindostan; and that he himself had afterward recommended him as an able repeater of the Koran to the emperor, though the fakeer, preferring liberty and a rambling life, had refused to accept of any office. He was now in possession, however, of both rank and riches, and bestowed many presents upon his former benefactor. To show the wandering disposition of the men, our traveller remarks that he shortly after met with the brother of this fakeer at Sondan, in the heart of Africa.
Still proceeding on his way, he next arrived at the city of El Khausa (no doubt the Kinsai of Marco Polo), which he pronounces the longest he had ever seen on the face of the earth; and to give some idea of its prodigious extent, observes, that a traveller might journey on through it for three days, and still find lodgings. As the Chinese erect their houses in the midst of gardens, like the natives of Malabar, and enclose within the walls what may be termed parks and meadows, the population of their cities is never commensurate with their extent; so that their largest capitals may be regarded as inferior in population to several cities of Europe. However, the flames of civil war, which then raged with inextinguishable fury through the whole empire, prevented our traveller from visiting Khan Balik, the Cambalu of Marco Polo and the older geographers, and the Peking of the Chinese; and therefore he returned to El Zaitūn, where he embarked on board a Mohammedan vessel bound for Sumatra. During this voyage, in which they were driven by a tempest into unknown seas, both our traveller and the crew of the ship in which he sailed mistook a cloud for an island, and, being driven towards it by the wind, suffered, by anticipation, all the miseries of shipwreck. Some betook themselves to prayer and repentance; others made vows. In the mean while night came on, the wind died away, and in the morning, when they looked out for their island, they found that it had ascended into the air, while a bright current of light flowed between it and the sea. New fears now seized upon the superstitious crew. Escaped from shipwreck, they began to imagine that the dusky body which they discovered at a distance hovering in the sky was no other than the monstrous rock-bird which makes so distinguished a figure in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment; and they had little doubt, that should it perceive them, it would immediately pounce upon and devour both them and their ship. The wind blowing in a contrary direction, they escaped, however, from the rock, and in the course of two months arrived safely in Java, where our traveller was honourably received and entertained by the king.
Remaining here two months, and receiving from the sultan presents of lignum, aloes, camphire, cloves, sandal-wood, and provisions, he at length departed in a junk bound for Kawlam, in Malabar, where, after a voyage of forty days, he arrived; and visiting Kalikut and Zafār, again departed for the Persian Gulf. Traversing a portion of Persia and Mesopotamia, he entered Syria; and the desire of visiting his native place now springing up in his heart, he hastened, after once more performing the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, to embark for Barbary, and arrived at Fez in 1350, after an absence of twenty-six years. Though received in the most distinguished manner by his native sovereign, who, in his opinion, united all the good and great qualities of all the great princes he had seen, and believing, like a true patriot, that his own country of all the regions of the earth was the most beautiful, the old habit of locomotion was still too strong to be subdued; and imagining he should enjoy peculiar pleasure in warring for the true faith, he passed over into Spain, where the Mohammedans were then engaged in vanquishing or eradicating the power of the Christians. The places which here principally commanded his attention were, the Hill of Victory (Gibraltar), and Granada, whose suburbs, surpassing those of Damascus itself, and intersected by the sparkling waters of the Xenil, appeared to him the finest in the whole world.
From Spain Ibn Batūta again passed into Africa, apparently without at all engaging in the war against the Christians, and, after traversing the cultivated districts, entered the great desert of Sahara, through which he proceeded, without meeting with village or habitation for five-and-twenty days, when they arrived at Tagāzā, or Thagari, a place built entirely of rock salt. Proceeding onwards through the desert, in this portion of which there is neither water, bird, nor tree, and where the dazzling burning sand is whirled aloft in vast clouds, and driven along with prodigious rapidity by the winds, they arrived in ten days at the city of Abu Latin, the first inhabited place in the kingdom of Sondan. Here our traveller was so exceedingly disgusted with the character of the negroes, who exhibited unmitigated contempt for all white people, that he at first resolved to return without completing his design; but the travelling passion prevailed, he remained at Abu Latin fifty days, studying the manners and customs of the inhabitants. Contrary to the general rule, he found the women beautiful and the men not jealous; the effect, in all probability, of unbounded corruption of manners.
Proceeding thence to Mali, or Melli, and remaining there a short time, being honourably received and presented with valuable gifts by the king, he next departed for Timbuctoo, which at that time appears to have been quite an inferior place, dependent on Mali. Returning thence by the way of Sigilmāsa to Fez, in the year 1353, he there concluded his wanderings, and in all probability employed the remainder of his life in the composition of those travels of which we merely possess a meager abridgment, the most complete copy of which was brought to England by Mr. Burckhardt. The translation of this abridgment by Professor Lee, useful as it is, must be rendered greatly more valuable by extending the English, and rejecting the Arabic notes; and by the addition of an index, which would facilitate the study of the work. How long Ibn Batūta survived his return to his native country, and whether the travels were his own work, are facts of which nothing is known.
LEO AFRICANUS.
Born about 1486.—Died about 1540.