The junk which held the precious gifts for China was seen to go down outside the port; and Batûta heard that the little boat which held all his slave-concubines and worldly goods had contrived to gain the open sea, and might conceivably put in at Quilon. He set off at once, and arrived there after a ten days’ journey. He found the Chinese Embassy there. They had suffered shipwreck, but their junk had not broken up and was being refitted.
It did not require the advice proferred him by his co-religionists to deter him from returning to the capricious, passionate lord of Delhi. He bethought him of Jamâl Oddîn, ruler of Honowar, a man of sense and understanding, whom he had visited on his way to Calicut. It casts a pleasant ray on the Mohammedan occupation of India, that there were no fewer than 44 schools set up in the busy little capital of a small State, and that of these no fewer than 11 were for girls. Now Jamâl Oddîn knew the uncertain temper of the Lord of India quite as well as Batûta, and did not give him too hearty a welcome. So to appease offended Heaven, or to rehabilitate himself by an evidence of piety, he repaired to a mosque and read the Koran from end to end once, and ultimately twice, a day. Now, there were 52 ships being fitted out to attack the island of Sindâbûr; and Jamâl evidently thought that Batûta might prove useful, for he commanded him to accompany him on this expedition. Batûta tried to read the future by a time-honoured method of divination. He opened the Koran at random, and his eye fell on a promise of Allah to aid his servant. This was satisfactory to Jamâl Oddîn as well as to himself.
After strenuous resistance Sindâbûr was carried by assault, and Batûta, who was something of a warrior, received a slave-girl, clothing and other presents from his patron. He remained on the island with Jamâl Oddîn for some months, and then got permission to go to Calicut. For the Chinese fleet would be returning to India by this time, and he might get news of his little junk. At Calicut, he learned that his kakam had reached China, that his property had been divided up, and that his pretty concubine had died on the voyage. “I felt very much grief for her.” He went back to the island to find the city besieged by Hindus.
Now he had heard marvellous things concerning the Maldives, an archipelago of small islands lying S.S.E. of India, near the equator. The inhabitants, under British rule to-day, had accepted Islam. He found that before he or anyone was allowed to land he must show himself on deck; “for although the islands are multitudinous, each lies close to its neighbour, and folk knew one another by sight.” He speaks of the inhabitants as “pious, peaceable, and chaste. They never wage war. Prayers are their only weapons. Indian pirates do not alarm them; nor do they punish robbers; for they have learned that sudden and grievous ill will come to evil-doers. When any of the pirate-ships of infidel Hindus pass by these islands, whatsoever is found is taken, nor will anyone stand out.” But, in spite of the moral reflection indulged in by the islanders, Batûta traces their policy of non-resistance to physical feebleness. And “there is one exception to it. Should a single lemon be taken woe befals the offender. He is punished and forced to listen to a homily. The natives delight in perfumes and in bathing twice a day, which the heat forces them to do; yet trees give delicious shade. Their trade is in ropes, which they make of hemp, and which are used for sewing together the timbers of ships of India and Yemen; for if a ship strike against a rock, the hemp allows of its yielding, and so saves it from going to pieces, which is not the case when iron nails are used. Shells are used for coin, and palm-leaves are used for all writing, except for copying out the Koran; and the instrument used has a sharp point.”
Batûta sailed among these islands during ten days, and took up his abode on one, the sovereign of which was a woman. For the lady’s husband had died, leaving no male issue; so she married her vizier who, in reality, ruled. Batûta took the full license accorded in Islam. He married the four legal wives permitted, and took to himself some concubines also, “all pleasant in conversation and of great beauty.” He must have divorced his previous wives before being able to do this. Marriage in the Maldive Islands was facile and cheap. Only a small dowry was demanded for a handsome woman; but it was required that the stranger should divorce the wife on leaving the land, and by no means take her with him. But, should he not desire to marry, there was no difficulty in getting a woman to cook for him at a very small wage. Wives were less companionable here than in most parts of the world, since women and men took their meals apart; nor could Batûta get his women-folk to break the custom of their country—a custom which Varthema speaks of, nearly two centuries later, as obtaining in South West India. Batûta had been appointed judge, and another thing that troubled him was the irregular attendance of the lax Moslems of his island at the mosque. He was very eager that such flagrant non-observance of religious duty should be duly punished; and he urged that the best way would be literally to whip the recalcitrants to attend on public worship.
Now Batûta’s wives had powerful relatives. The sister of one of his wives at Delhi was wife to the Emir of Mobar; to whom, therefore, Batûta was doubly related. He had become a power in his island, and the vizier grew jealous and suspicious. Might not the stranger conspire to bring an army over from the coast of Coromandel? When Batûta saw what was going on, he acted at once. “I divorced all my wives,” he says, “save one, who had a young child, and I went on to other islands of that great multitude of them.” From one of these, he shipped for Mobar; but the wind changed, and he was driven to the coast of Ceylon and in no small danger of drowning. The governor of the port came sailing by, and refused a landing; for he was no friend to Moslem skippers. Batûta won him over by telling him that he was on his way to visit the Sovereign of Mobar, that he was related to him by marriage, and that the whole cargo of the ship was intended as a present for that potentate. The Ceylonese Râja of the district was on good terms with his Moslem brother of Mobar, so Batûta was allowed to land. He found, like Marco Polo, that Ceylon was divided among four kinglets. He of the district soon sent for him, and gave him hospitality. He admired the famous herds of elephants, the troups of chattering monkeys, the pool of precious stones, and the luxuriant vegetation and glorious scenery of Ceylon. He scaled that iron chain, which still exists, to reach the top of Adam’s peak, and gives us the measure of the print of Adam’s foot, on hard rock; for in Ceylon, as elsewhere, supernatural vestiges are to be found. He visited Colombo and several other places in the island, and then set sail for the coast of Coromandel.
But, while crossing the strait, “the wind blew strong, and the ship was nearly swamped. Our skipper was a lubber. We were driven near perilous rocks, and barely escaped going to pieces; and then we got into shallow water. Our ship grated against the bottom, and we were face to face with death. Those on board threw all that they had into the sea, and bade farewell to one another. We cut down the mast and cast it onto the sea, and the sailors made a raft. The beach was eight miles off. I wanted to get down to the raft. I had two concubines and two friends with me. These latter exclaimed: ‘would you get down and leave us?’ I had more regard to their safety than to my own; so I answered: ‘Get down, both of you, and the young girl whom I love with you.’ My other young girl said: ‘I can swim. I will fix ropes to the raft and swim alongside these people.’ My two comrades got down, one of the young girls being with them; and the other swam. The sailors tied ropes to the raft, and so helped her to swim. I gave them whatever of value I had in the way of jewels, amber, and other goods. They got to shore safe and sound, for the wind was in their favour. But I stayed aboard the ship. The skipper got to shore on a plank. The sailors took the building of four rafts in hand; but night came on before they had finished, and the ship was filling. I got up on the poop, and remained there until morning. Then several idolaters came to us in their barque. And we got safe to land.”
His connexion, the Emir, received him warmly. This potentate was about to attack a Hindu Power; and, while he was away on this expedition, Batûta travelled about. He tells us that he came across a fakir with long hair, who sat and ate in the society of seven foxes, and who kept a “happy family”—a gazelle and a lion together. The Emir was a ruthless tyrant, butchering women and children. Yet Batûta had no scruple in proposing a scheme to him for the conquest of the Maldives, where he had received so much kindness, and where he had left wives and paramours. But pestilence came and swept away most of the inhabitants of the district, including the Emir. The new ruler wanted to carry out the scheme for occupying the Maldives; but Batûta got fever badly, and very nearly died. When sufficiently recovered, he received permission to recuperate his energies by taking the long voyage round Cape Comorin to Honawar, where he wished to meet his old friend, Jamâl Oddîn, again. But, from time immemorial, the sea had been a no-mans province, infested by pirates; and the calling, continuous or accidental, of sea-thief was then as honourable as it was ancient. His ship was attacked by twelve Hindu craft, and taken after a severe battle. Batûta was stripped of his jewels and all his belongings, and set on shore with a pair of breeches on. He lost the notes of his travels with his other belongings. Out of the way of direct business, the robbers could be merciful, and there was no reason why they should take his life. He made his painful way to Calicut, and put up at a mosque—always the asylum of the indigent. Some of the lawyers and traders here had known him at Delhi. They clothed, fed, and housed him. What was he to do? He dared not return to Delhi. A son had been borne to him by a Maldive wife. He had a desire to see the child. The vizier was dead; but the queen had married again, and he wondered what sort of reception he should get. Paternal tenderness prevailed: “I went there on account of my little son; but when I had seen him, I left him with his mother, out of kindness to her.” He was hospitably entertained, but stayed a very few days. The new vizier furnished him with those provisions which every traveller by sea must purchase for himself and carry with him in the fourteenth century; and he set sail for Bengal, where he arrived after 43 days at sea (A.D. 1341).