After this announcement, he is silent concerning his domestic relations. Perhaps the number of his connubial changes was too great to be recorded; perhaps no son was born to establish his honor among men; perhaps, with increasing sanctity, he forswore the sex. The last conjecture is probably correct, as it tallies with the reputation for wisdom and purity which he gradually acquired.
Finally, in April, 1326, our traveler reached Alexandria, the first strange city which impressed him by its size and splendor. 'Alexandria,' says he, 'is a jewel whereof the brilliancy is manifest—a virgin which sparkles with her ornaments. She illumines the Occident with her splendor: she unites the most diverse beauties, on account of her situation midway between the Rising and the Setting.' At that time the celebrated Pharos was still standing, and the following description of it, though not very clear, will interest the reader: 'It is a square edifice, which towers into the air. Its gate is raised above the surface of the earth, and opposite to it there is an edifice of similar height, which serves to support planks, across which one must wait to arrive at the gate of the Pharos. When these planks are taken away, there is no means of crossing. Inside of the entrance is a space where the guardian of the edifice is stationed. The interior of the Pharos contains many apartments. Each of its four sides is a hundred and forty spans in length. The building is situated on a high hill, one parasang from the city, and on a tongue of land which the sea surrounds on three sides. One can therefore only reach the Pharos from the land side, by leaving the city. I directed my course towards the Pharos a second time, on my return to the West, in the year 1349, and I found that its ruin was complete, so that one could neither enter, nor even reach the gate.'
Commencing with Alexandria, Ibn Batuta is careful, in every city which he visits, to give an account of the distinguished shekhs or imams, with characteristic anecdotes of their saintly or miraculous lives. The value and interest of these sketches reconcile us to the brevity of his descriptions. He tells us, for example, that the kadi (judge) of Alexandria, who was likewise a master of the art of eloquence, 'covered his head with a turban which surpassed in volume all the turbans then to be seen. I have never beheld, neither in the East nor the West, one so voluminous. He was one day seated in a mosque, before the pulpit, and his turban filled almost the entire space.' At the town of Fooah, in the Delta, on his way to Cairo, occurred his first marvelous adventure. 'During the night,' says he, 'while I slept on the roof of the dwelling of the shekh Abou Abdallah, I saw myself, in a dream, carried on the wing of a great bird, which flew in the direction of Mecca, then in that of Yemen; then it transported me to the East, after which it passed towards the South; then it flew again far to the East, alighted upon a dark and misty country, and there abandoned me. I was amazed at this vision, and said to myself, "If the shekh can interpret my dream, he is truly as holy as he is said to be." When I presented myself, in the morning, to take part in the early prayer, he charged me to take the lead, in the quality of imam. Afterwards he called me to him, and explained my dream; in fact, when I had related it to him, he said: "Thou wilt make the pilgrimage to Mecca, thou wilt visit the tomb of the Prophet, thou wilt traverse Yemen, Irak, the country of the Turks, and India; thou wilt remain a long time in the latter country, where thou wilt see my brother Dilehad, who will extricate thee from an affliction into which thou shalt fall." Having spoken, he provided me with money, and small biscuits for the journey. I said my farewells and departed. Since I left him, I have experienced nothing but good treatment in the course of my travels, and his benedictions always came to my aid.'
Passing over the traveler's visit to Damietta and the other towns of the Delta, let us hear his enthusiastic description of Cairo, at the time of its greatest prosperity: 'Finally, I reached the city of Cairo, the metropolis of the country and the ancient residence of Pharaoh the Impaler; mistress of rich and extended regions, attaining the utmost limits of possibility in the multitude of its population, and exalting itself on account of its beauty and splendor. It is the rendezvous of travelers, the station of the weak and the powerful. Thou wilt there find all that thou desirest—the wise and the ignorant, the industrious and the trifling, the mild or the angry, men of low extraction or of lofty birth, the illustrious and the obscure. The number of its inhabitants is so considerable that their currents resemble those of an agitated sea, and the city lacks very little of being too small to contain them, notwithstanding its extent and capacity. Although founded long since, it enjoys a youth forever renewed; the star of its horoscope does not cease to inhabit a fortunate house. It is in speaking of Cairo that Wasr ed-deen has written:
"It is a paradise in truth; its gardens ever smile,
Adorned and fed so plenteously by all the waves of Kile,
Which, fretted by the blowing wind, from shore across to shore,
Mimic the armor's azure scales the prophet David wore;
Within its fluid element the naked fear to glide,
And ships, like winged heavenly spheres, go up and down the tide.'"