Now, besides the shrewd reading of Batûta’s character by the holy man of Alexandria, who saw in him the born traveller, another Sheik had also read his man aright and foretold that he should meet the seer’s brothers in widely separated parts of the world. Oracles are often suggestive and start the way to their own fulfilment. These predictions actually came about. Batûta assures us that he had at the time no intention of running over nearly all of the known earth; but by now an inborn tendency to keep moving had developed into a veritable wanderlust. “A brief space,” sings Pindar, “a brief space hath opportunity for men; but of him it is known surely when it cometh, and he waiteth thereon.” Batûta’s opportunity had come to him. Stopped from reaching Mecca during the present pilgrimage, he resolved to retrace his steps to Cairo, push on to Palestine, visit its sacred spots and the renowned cities of Syria, join the Syrian Caravan, and take the long, fearsome journey from Damascus over the Arabian waste. Here was occasion to visit holy places only less interesting to the Moslem than to the Christian, to wander at leisure in notable lands, and to compare the amazing ways of the tribes of men. He sold all that might encumber him, and returned to High Egypt. The Nile was in flood; he sailed down it, spent a night at Cairo, and pushed on, (A.D. 1326). There was a caravan-route to Palestine, north of Sinai, with stations in the desert. Each station had its Khân, or inn, an institution which afforded bed and stabling, but not food or fodder. But there was a shop at each station, where all that might be wanted was sold; and there was a water-cistern, free to all comers at the door of each inn. At the frontier of Palestine, there was a custom-house, and a passport must be produced before one was allowed to cross the boundary in either direction. At Khalil, a town of Hebron, remarkable for its beauty, and also for the unusual distinction of being well lit at night, Batûta admired a mosque said to have been reared by those genii whom the wisdom of Solomon had made his servants, and whom he evoked by his mystic talisman. Passing through Palestine, our pilgrim visited those very few places the sanctity of which could be established by indisputable record and those very many places which owed their fame to rank imagination or crafty legend begotten of sordid avarice. He went to the birthplace of Jesus, because the Moslem regards Jesus as a fore-runner of Mohammed: and from Bethlehem he came to Jerusalem. He thought the Mosque there as fine a building as any on earth. It occupied one side of a vast courtyard, and its fretted walls and roof shone with gilding and vivid colours. In the middle of the Mosque was a rock, so brilliant in hue that no idea of its glory could be given. And this was the rock whence (so says tradition) Mohammed rode up to heaven on the sacred winged ass.
Tyre, “mother of cities fraught with pride,” Acre and Askalon were in ruins—the result of the Crusades. Tiberias rejoiced in a bathing-establishment. Having plenty of time to fill up before the Syrian caravan should leave Damascus, the pilgrim wandered hither and thither, backwards and forwards, and saw many famous cities, such as Beyrout, Tripoli, Aleppo, Baalbec, Emessa and Antioch. He found all the people who inhabited the district of Gabala sadly misguided; for they believed Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet to be a god. They neither purified themselves, nor prayed, nor fasted. They had turned mosques into cattle-sheds; and, should any pious wanderer wish to pray in one of the desecrated buildings, these heretics were wont to gibe at him and shout: “Don’t pray, ass that thou art; fodder shall be given thee.”
Nomads from Central Asia had penetrated Asia Minor and reached the Mediterranean shore. Here and there they had settled; just as Scythian and Hun, Goth and Vandal once forced their way into the Roman Empire and effected lodgement within it before they rose and overthrew it. But the Emirs, whatever their nationality, would seem to have maintained decent government. Sometimes the despotisms of Islam surprise us by such unexpected qualities as sagacity, prudence, and self-restraint. At Latakia, Batûta found that, when anyone was condemned to die, the official appointed to superintend the execution was expected to go up to wherever the condemned man might be, return without apprehending him, and ask the Emir to repeat the sentence. Not until three such journeys had been made and the sentence thrice delivered was it carried out. On the other hand, secret murder was a favourite political engine. Our pilgrim beheld, on the heights of Lebanon, strongholds of that military sect, the Hashashin, to which we owe the word assassin. “They will admit no stranger among them, unless he be of their own body. The Sultan, El Malik El Nasir, uses them as his arrows; and, through them, he strikes down those of his foes that dwell afar from him; such, for instance, as may dwell in Persia or anywhere else. Various duties are allotted to different men among them; and when the Sultan wishes one of them to waylay some foe, he bargains as to the price of blood. Should the murderer accomplish his work, and return to safety, his reward is paid to him; and should he fail, his heirs receive it. These folk carry poisoned knives wherewithal to strike their prey.”
Laodicea would seem to have been held by a ruler who, like the robber-barons of Germany or the pirates of Dalmatia, was a terror to the trader: “he is said to take by violence all the ships he can.” Like all travellers, Batûta is enthusiastic about the glories of Lebanon. He found it “the most fertile mountain on Earth, where are copious springs of water and shady groves; and it is laden with many kinds of fruit. And I beheld there very many of that host of hermits who have left the world that they may devote themselves to God.”
Two thousand feet above the sea-level lay Damascus, most ancient of cities, with a delightful climate and a productive soil. “The chief Mosque is the most splendid in the world, most tastefully built, excelling in beauty and grace.” His interest in mosques and public worship is inextinguishable; and he recounts the dramatic methods of a certain preacher. There dwelt at Damascus an imam whose orthodoxy was not above suspicion; indeed he had already suffered imprisonment on that score. It so fell out that, one Friday, I was at his preaching. He came down the stairway of the pulpit calling out: ‘God came down to the Earthly Paradise in the very same way as I am coming down.’ A theologian who was there denied this; and the congregation, set on the preacher and beat him. A complaint was made against this too literal expositor; he was cast into prison, and there he died.
Islam has always been remarkable for charity. Damascus boasted many benevolent institutions. “As I was passing along a street one day,” says Batûta “I saw a slave-child who had dropped a porcelain dish, made in China, which lay in pieces on the ground. A crowd gathered round the little Mameluke, and one of them said, ‘Pick up the pieces and carry them to the overseer of the Utensils Charity.’ This man took the little slave with him to the overseer, who at once gave him what money was necessary to buy such another dish. This is one of the best of these endowments; for the owner of the slave would doubtless have beaten him or scolded him severely. Moreover he would have been heart-broken. So the endowment really relieves sorrowful bosoms.” Batûta gives more than one little indication that children (and even his own wives occasionally) could touch his heart. The Moslem can be very pitiful; he usually treats his slaves kindly; and one does not wonder that our pilgrim speaks warmly about the piety and high civilization of Damascus in his time. He was licensed to teach in that beautiful city; but found time to visit the cavern which is one of the places where Abraham is said to have been born, and the grotto where Abel’s blood was still to be seen; “for his brother dragged him thither.”
Batûta started with the Pilgrim’s Caravan to the Holy Cities on September 1st, 1326. Many hundreds of perilous miles lay before him. The mere solitude of the desert always inspires insupportable dread, and to secure a sufficient supply of water is a problem not always to be solved. Batûta was told how, during one pilgrimage, water gave out, and “a skin of it rose to a thousand dinars; yet both seller and buyer perished.” Ancient travellers always speak with awe of the weird noises which suddenly break the silence of the desert and inspire a new dread. Shifting sands cause these sounds. Batûta tells us of one huge sandhill called The Mount of Drums, because the Bedouins “say that a sound as of drums is heard there every Thursday night.” But this particular pilgrimage, although made along a difficult and dangerous route, was comparatively uneventful, as were all the journeys Batûta made to Mecca. He gives small space to it, and we shall find the record of a much livelier and more interesting pilgrimage from Damascus in the pages of Varthema. The journey was often one of perils, grave and manifold.