Ibn Battuta’s early life.
Ibn Battuta known for his travels, the only medieval traveler known to have visited the lands of every Muslim ruler of his time. Ibn Battuta traveled for about 27 years. Ibn Battuta was born in February 25, 1304 In Tangier, Morocco. His religion was Islam, he was a Muslim. As a young man, he studied at a Sunni Malkili Madhihab, it was the dominant form of education in North Africa at that time. At a very young age, age of 21, Ibn Battuta set alone on a hajj, in other words pilgrimage to Mecca. This expedition would take sixteen months. This hajj or expedition was his first traveling experience. He must had loved it, because instead of Ibn Battuta returning home, he went or continued with his travels. He traveled to Mecca overland, following the North African coast, he then got married in the town of Sfax, which was his first series of marriages that would feature in his travels. In 1326, Ibn Battuta arrived at the Port of Alexandria. Ibn Battuta spended a couple of weeks at the Port of Alexandria and then headed inland to Cairo, an important city at the time. Later on a local rebellion; an open, armed, and organized resistance to a government forced him to turn back, so he returned back to Cairo, taking a second side trip.
Ibn Battuta visited many important places during his travels. He traveled near the East, Asia & Africa. (1325-1354) journey of 25 years. He visited the Mausoleum of Ali, the fourth Caliph in Najaf. Ibn Battuta started a six month detour that took him into Persia. Ibn Battuta made a short visit to the Persian- Mongol city of Tabriz in the year of 1327. In Baghdad he found Abu Said, the last Mongol ruler of the united Iilkhanate, Ibn Battuta then joined the royal caravan fo...
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...gers he , Ibn Battuta overcame them. Ibn Battuta traveled primarily in Muslim-ruled lands, in comparison to Marco Polo. Both men dictated accounts of their travels after they had returned home Polo, while in prison in the year of 1928 and Ibn Battuta, to a Moroccan scribe, since neither were trained, both Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta judged those they ran into by their own values. Both travels financial records exposed the great variety in Eurasian cultures during the year 1354- 1355. “When a man is riding through this [Gobi] desert by night and for some reason ... he gets separated from his companions ... he hears spirit voices talking to him ...Often these voices lure him away from the path and he never finds it again." This was one of the quotes he had written. This quote describes some part of his travels. He had moved away from people he loved for a few years.
The Adventures of Ibn Battuta by Ross E. Dunn is a simplified and revised version of Ibn Battuta’s Rihala. This book tells the story of the Ibn Battuta’s hajj to Mecca and how he continues on to traveling across the continent and further. Visiting places he didn’t even know about until he was there. He went to Egypt, Syria, Persia, Iraq, East Africa, Yemen, Anatolia, the steppes of southern Russia, Constantinople, India, the Maldives, Sumatra, and even China. The trip took him 30 years as he took a 73,000 mile adventure of the Eastern Hemisphere.
Different sources cite the year of Leon’s birth as either 1460 or 1474. It is decided he was born in San Tervas de Campos, Spain. He received his education by serving as a page for Pedro Nunez de Guzman. The education of a page began at the age of seven. This is when a young boy would be taught how to hunt, fight, read, and write and about religion. Once seven years passed and the young boy mastered these things then he moved up to the rank of squire. As a squire Leon served Guzman who in return taught him the responsibilities of being a knight. The lessons of a squire lasted for another seven years. All of this training led up to Leon participating in the battle that forced the Moors out of Granada. This battle was Leon’s first test of his soldier skills, it helped prove his loyalty to the Crown and was the start of his quest to gain some recognition.
the Accuracy of the Chronicle of Al-Jabarti." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. No. 2 (1970): 283-294. http://www.jstor.org/stable/613005 (accessed November 30, 2013).
He went on voyages to Southeast Asia, Sumatra, Java, Ceylon, India, Persia, Persian Gulf, Arabia, the red sea Egypt, and the Mozambique Channel.
the West Indies, England, Ireland, Wales, France, Portugal, Italy, Central America, Georgia, Virginia, Philadelphia and New England. It seemed that he traveled everywhere except to where he really wanted to go, which was Africa. It was during these years that he learned the English language and values from a seaman by the name of Richard Baker.
Moroccan traveler, Ibn Battuta, is well-known for being one of the greatest travelers of his time. Battuta’s descriptive account of his travels to East and West Africa in the fourteenth century provides important insight into African Islamic life at that point in time. Although Battuta and the peoples in black Africa shared the same religion, he comes to realize that sharing a religion is not enough to completely relate to a different group of people. The story of Ibn Battuta in Black Africa illustrates the difficulties he faced in relating to these peoples due to the non-traditional role of women, different religious customs, and frequent misinterpretation of situations.
Einhard, in his account of Charlemagne, and Ibn Battuta, in his account of Mansa Sulaiman, give witness to the way these two kings ruled their lands and provide an insight on how culture has an effect on people’s views of their leaders. Although each one lived in different cultures, each ruler embodied similar characteristics, such as the influence of religion on their realms. However, there are several distinct differences as well, and each narrative contains cultural bias that cannot be ignored. Overall, each account thoroughly analyzes each ruler and infuses their observations with the culture of the time, which is integral in order to gain an accurate depiction of who these men were.
He decided to improve the status of his land on his arrival from a pilgrimage from Mecca in 1324. Furthermore, he transformed his trading city of Timbuktu to a center of learning and religion and built a mass, which set a new style of architecture in West Africa. “Caravans of Gold” underlines the importance of Timbuktu because it concentrated on African scholarship, politics, teaching theology, and Islamic law. Timbuktu was a significant place in Africa during this time because it became a market right after and made a profit for the region. Likewise, it was a religious, cultural, and profitable center whose people traveled north across the Sahara through Morocco and Algeria to other parts of Africa, Europe, and Asia. According to The History of Africa, “Because of his devotion to Islam, Mansa Musa strengthened Islam and promoted education, trade, and commerce in Mali” (Asante, 2014, pg. 135). It was a successful center for the trans-Saharan gold and salt trade and grew as the center of Islam. This statement launches the truth that Timbuktu supported Islamic values and knowledge because it was a city most well-known for the education of important scholars whose backgrounds were of Islam. Asante supports the fact that Mansa Musa was effective in reforming the city of Timbuktu and the trade in that area. Asante also states that “Musa did not forget the control of the gold and salt; it was fundamental for the
Imagine being the richest man in North Africa. Mansa Musa was not only this but a ruler and a very religious muslim. Mansa Musa was a very rich African emperor who walked all the way from his Kingdom of Mali to Cairo then eventually to Mecca with the goal to follow his religious guidelines of giving away 2.5 percent of his whole wealth and completing his holy pilgrimage.
The Mongols had the privilege and advantage above all other tribes that led to them to excel in their militancy; they had horses. Their ability to ride horses with efficiency and skill, made conquering less fortunate tribes and expanding the realms of their empire a task beyond simple. In the seventh grade text, a quote about the Mongolian expansion, by Ibn al Athir, is cited: " These Tatars [Mongols] conquered most of the habitable globe and the best, the most flourishing and most populous thereofŠin about a year." (Across the Centuries, p. 162) This quote is supported in the text by a statement regarding their excellence in horsemanship. "On horseback, the Mongols could advance up to 200 miles a day." (Across the Centuries, p.146) These examples clearly show how their being excellent horsemen was to their militant advantage when it came to conquering and expanding. Soldiers were able to travel with a sufficient amount of food and water, distributed among three of f...
The culture of a community invariably determines the social structures and the formation of a society. Developed over time, culture is the collection of beliefs and values that a group of people maintain together. Culture is never constant, and thought to be continually renewed over years as new ideas and concepts become mainstream. It ranges from how people live, day to day topics for conversations, religion, and even entertainment. It is analogous to guidelines, or the rulebook of the said group of people. Society, on the other hand, emanates from the social structure of the community. It is the very institutions to which create a regulated and acceptable form of interaction between peoples. Indeed, culture and society are so perversely intertwined in a
Many nomadic tribes were uneducated and illiterate, much like the Mongols, because the Mongols were so uneducated this made it harder for them to navigate along the oversea trade routes of Europe. The Mongols were a nomadic group known for their skills of horse riding and their ability and skill to shoot a crossbow over amazing distances. Since the Mongols were so great by horse back, the trade in Europe went from to the majority of people trading by land.
Before the slave trade began, Europeans had ideas about Africa, before discovery, which varied with “time and pace” (Davidson, 23). Africa was extremely foreign to Europe, as the only information they has was from a memoir written by a traveler titled “Inner Africa” in 1447. The information in the memoir is known as “caravan gossip” which was picked up by a traveler named Antonio Malfante, was wildly untrue. Malfante told Europeans that in the south of Tuat and the deserts surrunding Tuate: “there are black people who have innumerable great cities and territories” (Davidson, 24). He explained further that Africans were “carnal, and “act like beasts” he even told some that they were cannibals. It is because of these sorts of misconceptions lead on by “travelers” like Malfante, that Europeans built false understandings of places less traveled, like Africa.
The Road to Mecca is one of the book that make me realize too many things that I have overlooked before about the essence meaning of my life, my beautiful religion and change my perception a lot. For me, this book sits easily among the world's best travel and adventure writing that I have read, providing unforgettable descriptions of black, starry nights in the desert, oases, bustling bazaars, Mecca and Medina, the idiosyncrasies of pampered kings and the customs of the Bedouin. It is not only about that, but it’s about his thought that make me cannot stop from thinking everything relates to me. From that, I can relates the things happen around me for a reason and I need to think deeply, being critical and creative to imposed the good for my
Recent decades turned to textual records, and historian F.E. Peters claimed that a “quest of historical Muhammad is unlikely to yield many certainties since so little can be known for certain about Arabian Peninsula of the era”. It is evident that the prophet was an orphan of noble lineage challenging his tribe and the powers of the oneness of God in an idolatrous wilderness, but what can we really know about Muhammad? How we can known it, and if Muhammad really existed is still of question? Setting Muslim sources aside, early Greek and Syrian sources also give sufficient evidence to remove “any doubts to whether Muhammad was a real person” There is still a debate on if one can use sources for reliable accounts of Muhammad’s life, but one can argue that doubt can fill even a few pages with indisputable information. With early texts often exaggerating the face of Muhammad’s character, it seems readers cannot accept Muhammad as a man that can slaughter, rob caravans and sell women and children into slavery. In that era, it was typical for facts to be presented in an emotional and exaggerated manner to appeal to listeners. Though some claim that there is lacking Muslim literature, Muslims have a voluminous biographical literatures of earlier surviving collection called the Tabaqat (generations) of Ibn Said, which additionally contains biographies of prophet’s wives, relatives, and companions. Some sources even went to explain what the prophet liked to eat, the way he washed, and even manners of eating. With that aside, it seems Ibn Hisham’s work was successful due to the incorporation of emphasizing authentic Christian, Jew and Arabian contexts. Muslims talk of Muhammad as a “perfected human being” whose conduct people should try to