CHAPTER IX
MOORS OF SPAIN AND NEGROES OF TIMBUKTU
But Batûta’s travels were by no means at an end. He made a filial visit to the place where earth that “makes all sweet” had closed on his father’s history. Once at Tangier, the temptation was strong to cross the Straits and visit the shrinking Moslem dominion in Spain. He landed where his compatriots had landed to conquer the Peninsula—at Gibraltar (Jabal Tarik, the Hill of Victory). He saw a cousin by his mother’s side, who had settled here; ran all over Moorish Andalusia, visiting renowned cities that still remained in Mohammedan hands; and came to lordly Grenada, where the Alhambra must have been nearing its completion. He returned to Fez by way of Ceuta.
His energy was unabated; his thirst for travel unquenched; he could not settle down. In February, 1352, he is off again; this time for Central Africa. At Tafilelt, on the borders of Sahara, he meets another brother of the Sheik at Alexandria; and so another prophecy is fulfilled. In mid-Sahara, he finds an oasis with a “village on it where there is nothing good. The mosque and the houses are built of blocks of salt and are covered with camel hide. There is no tree, for the soil is pure sand; but there are mines of salt.” He had dropped on those dwellings of rock-salt of which Herodotus wrote seventeen hundred years before him. But only the underlings of traders abode there; and dates and camel’s flesh were their fare. Here was the salt-supply for the wild tribes of Sahara. They cut the blocks of it into a certain shape and used this as money. The caravan with which Batûta travelled suffered severely here from the vileness of the water.
When Tashala was reached, the caravan rested three days to make ready for a vast and solitary tract of desert “where there is no water, nor is bird or tree to be seen, only sand and hills of sand, blown about by the wind in such wise that not the smallest vestige of a track remains. Wherefore, no one can travel without guides from among the traders; but of these there are many. The sunlight there is blinding.... Evil spirits have their will of that man who shall travel by himself. They enchant him, so that he wanders wide of his path, and there he comes to his end.”
A long journey across this great waste of sand brought the caravan to another oasis, where pits had been dug to fill with water, and where negroes took care of a store of goods out in the open. These negroes did not show the deep respect due to the superior white race; but Batûta had a fancy to learn all about them, so he stayed on, and put up with their want of manners for two whole months. Traces, at least, of polyandry were to be found here; for a sister’s son succeeded to property, and everybody took the name of a maternal uncle. The women were good looking, but, alas! they were far from shy; they did not even wear a veil, notwithstanding their accompanying the men to the mosque. Traders might take them for their wives; but must leave them behind on their departure. Our zealous Moslem, experienced in matrimony as he was and so excellent a judge of concubines—all of them sacred property and his very own—was greatly shocked at yet another instance of the freedom in manners of women and absence of jealousy in the husbands among certain Mohammedan peoples. A man might have a woman visit him, even with her husband there, and in the presence of his own wife; and a man might go home to find one of his male friends sitting alone with the wife of his bosom. But what would perturb an ordinary man causes no flutter in this degenerate breast. “He quietly takes a seat apart from them until the visitor goes away.” Batûta’s sense of delicacy was much offended when, calling on a former host of his, who was a judge moreover, he found that a handsome young woman had also made a call and was still there. He upbraided his friend roundly, and the only reply he got was that it was the custom of the country. This was too much: he broke with the judge.
A long, difficult, but quite safe journey brought him and three companions to Malli. Here he was seriously ill, and the sickness lasted many weeks; “but Allah brought me back to health.” A few white people dwelt at Malli, of whom the judge was his host. “‘Arise,’” said the judge to him one day when the Sultan had given a feast, “‘the Sultan hath sent thee a gift.’ I fully looked for a rich dress, some horses and other valuable gifts; and lo! there were but three crusts of bread, a piece of dried fish, and a dish of sour milk. I smiled at people so simple and the value they gave to such rubbish.” Experience of spendthrift Oriental Courts and the lavish munificence of princes in other parts of the Mohammedan world had spoiled him for the simplicity of Central Africa. He often saw the Sultan after this incident; but sorely as his self-love was wounded by such a contrast to the honour always paid to him hitherto, he held himself in until his fury reached fever-heat and it became impossible to keep a bridle on his tongue any longer. Then he rose to his feet: “I have travelled the world over,” said he; “I have visited the rulers thereof; I have stayed four months in thy dominions; but no gift, no suitable food has come to me from thee. What shall I say about thee when men shall question me concerning thee?” A horse and good provisions, and a supply of gold now came from this “greedy and worthless man”; before whom the negroes presented themselves in the worst of their beggarly garments, probably as a sign of their humility; for they “crawled to his presence, beating the ground with their elbows and throwing dust on their heads.” However the “greedy and worthless” Sultan is allowed at least one small virtue: he kept the land in order; the traveller there had no fear of robbers, and if any one chanced to die, his property was handed over to his lawful successors. And the people had a great virtue also; they were constant in their attendance at the mosque; and if a son did not learn the whole of the Koran by heart, his father kept him shut up until he had done so. Yet, in spite of such praiseworthy piety, they let their little daughters and slaves whether male or female, go about quite naked. Batûta remarks that here cowries were used as coin. Travellers in the Niger District during the third decade of the last century found that many of the habits and customs described by Batûta still obtained there.
From Malli, our traveller journeyed on to the banks of the Niger, and saw, with surprise, its great herds of hippopotami. He visited Timbuktu, and believed he was journeying along the banks of the Nile; a pardonable mistake; for the Niger takes a general direction towards the North-East in this part of its course. He now returned to Fez by a different and more easterly route (A.D. 1355).
He had traversed the entire Mohammedan world, and beyond it to wherever a Mohammedan was to be found. He had visited several far-separated places several times, and had obeyed the obligation to visit Mecca oftener than the most zealous Moslem was wont to do. The Sultan commanded that an account of his travels should be recorded. The Sultan’s Secretary edited the work, and thought to embellish a plain tale by overloading it with literary pinchbeck and by dragging in irrevelant quotations from the poets. The last words of the work are: “Here ends what I have put into form of the words of Sheik Ibn Abdulla Mohammed, whom may Allah honour! There is no reader of intelligence but must grant that this Sheik is the greatest traveller of our days; and should any one dub him the greatest traveller of all Islam, it were no lie.”[14]