IBN BATUTA

A Proposal for a Nonfiction Book

COMMENTS: In early 1960, Louis tried to promote a series of nonfiction books based on the lives of the great scholar travelers of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Included were to be Hsuan-tsang, who lived from around 602 to 664; Ludovico di Varthema, 1470 to 1517; Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, 1604 to 1689; Nicolao Manucci, 1638 to 1717—and Abu Abd al-Lah Muhammad ibn Abd al-Lah l-Lawati t-Tangi ibn Batutah…or, for those of an informal bent: Ibn Batuta, 1304 to 1368.

Batuta claimed one of the most extensive travel itineraries in history, a series of journeys and adventures that boggles the mind. His travels are considerably better chronicled today than in 1960, although some historians doubt Batuta actually traveled to all the places he described. Regardless, the Moorish adventurer’s tale definitely struck a chord with Louis, who found in Ibn Batuta both a kindred spirit and an inspiration.

THE WORLD OF IBN BATUTA

A Proposal for a Nonfiction Book

A proposed nonfiction book based on the journeys of the great Moorish traveler of the 14th century. His world is the world of the Arabian Nights, of mystery, adventure, romance, caravans, the diamonds of Golconda; the Vale of Kashmir, of betel and hashish, of myrrh and frankincense, of harems and beautiful slave girls, of strange empires, singing sands, of the Golden Horde, the Mongol khans, of Samarkand, Tashkent, Delhi, Bukhara, Baghdad and Damascus; of scimitar and Greek fire, of pirate galleys and the sciences of the East.

Born of Berber parentage at Tangier on February 25, 1304, into a family with a tradition of judicial service as qadis, he received the usual education of his class before setting out, at the age of twenty-one, on his pilgrimage to Mecca. It was his intention not only to fulfill the duty of his faith by making this pilgrimage, but to prepare himself for future judicial offices by broadening his education through contact and study with the great scholars of the East. It is likely, from his care in listing the scholars and saints he encountered on this first trip and the diplomas conferred on him at Damascus, that this may have been his primary object in making the journey.

Gifted with a mind eager for learning, a quick eye for detail, and a consuming interest in everything he saw, by the time Batuta reached Egypt he was already obsessed with travel. He reached Mecca by the way of Syria on this first pilgrimage, and then explored the classic lands of Islamic culture. He proceeded by a complicated route through Iraq and southwest Persia to Baghdad, thence to Tabriz, and northern Mesopotamia before returning via Baghdad to Mecca.

Although young, he was already a person of consequence, and living in an age and area where scholars were greatly honored and respected, he attracted great attention wherever he went. He was interested in the personalities and histories of the countries and sultans along the way, yet at the same time contrived to benefit from their generosity.

Nearly everywhere he stopped he was given purses filled with gold, Arab horses, slaves or silk robes. And everywhere he was lavishly entertained by the amir, bey, sultan, shah or whoever happened to be ruler. All wanted to talk with him, many wished to acquire his services. An astute young man of inquiring mind, Batuta studied as he traveled and talked with the best minds everywhere. He was a good judge of personality, and had amusing and sometimes caustic remarks to make about the various people whom he encountered.

He then devoted several years (more than two, and probably almost three) at Mecca preparing his great plan of travel. During this period he went down both shores of the Red Sea, visited Yemen, experienced monsoon rain for the first time, and sailed from Aden to the trading ports of Africa, then back along the southern shores of Arabia to Oman and the Persian Gulf. During these travels he heard many tales of far places that aroused his desire for further adventure.

It must be remembered in this connection that while many European authorities claimed the monsoon winds that carried ships from the coast of Africa (region of Zanzibar) to India were discovered by Hippalus in approximately 45 A.D., ships sailed by Arabs had been making this voyage for a very long period of time. In the period from say 30 B.C. on through to about 90 A.D. up to 120 ships a season were sailing from Myus Hormus on the Red Sea coast of Egypt to India.

Actually, one of the rarely mentioned but contributing causes of the decline of the Roman Empire was an adverse trade balance with India.

Another pilgrimage to Mecca was made in 1332 or about there, and he planned a trip to India and to the court of Muhammad bin Tughluq, who was noted for his generosity to scholars, but destiny intervened and he traveled through Egypt again, and through Syria to the land of the Turks. He became the basic authority for the history of the region during this period at the beginning of the Ottoman venture.

He then crossed from Sinope to the Crimea and visited the territory of the Khan of the Golden Horde, then the ancient capital of Bulgaria, and Constantinople in the retinue of the Khan’s third wife, a Greek princess who was returning to visit her family.

There is more than a possibility, which I intend to develop, that the relations between this Greek princess and the young Islamic scholar were something more than platonic.

After travel in Russia, Batuta returned in the winter to Sarai, the capital of the Golden Horde, and then started for India overland through Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand and Balkh, then by a difficult route through Afghanistan and Khurasan, to reach the Indus on September 12, 1333 with an imposing array of attendants.

Batuta, it might be said, was very adept at securing gifts from the various kings he encountered. Most of these were freely given, but where this was not so, Batuta had his own methods, many of them devious, for getting what he needed to continue his travels. Like Varthema, who came later, he seemed interested only in traveling and learning, and there was little interest in wealth for its own sake.

Batuta spent some time in India which made a deep impression, but there was a court intrigue in which he barely escaped with his life, although he was later restored to favor and entrusted by Sultan Mohammed with a mission to China. Before this he held the job of Malikite grand qadi in Delhi for some time. It was during this period that he became the victim of the intrigues mentioned above. Batuta, it seems, was a stern judge, and his ideas of morals were rather more severe than those in some of the areas where he served. He was envoy to China in 1342…a trip he was long in carrying out due to a series of adventures and delays.

He made an adventurous trip through central India and down the Malabar coast. He spent 18 months in the Maldive Islands (off the coast of India) as qadi, but left for Ceylon. He went along the coasts of Coromandel and Malabar, again to the Maldives, and then resumed his trip to China.

While waiting for the sailing season he took trips to Bengal and Assam, then went by ship to Sumatra, traveling from there to China by junk, and on to Peking. He returned to Malabar by way of Sumatra in 1347, through the Persian Gulf to Baghdad, then Syria (while the Black Death was ravaging that area) and again to Mecca via Egypt.

He sailed from Alexandria to Tunis, and in a Catalan ship via Sardinia to Tenes in Algeria, overland to Fez. Later he crossed the strait to visit Andalusia where the kingdom of Granada still flourished. Returning to Morocco he crossed the Sahara to the empire of the Mandingos, and is one of the few authorities on the great African empires which existed in the region of the Niger during the Middle Ages.

Returning to Fez, at the behest of the Sultan, he dictated his memoirs. He probably ended his days as a qadi. His travels covered the period from 1325 to 1354.

As exciting as is the material in Batuta’s original work, the one translation that is in any respect adequate has been written by a scholar for scholars and is replete with footnotes, many unimportant and unnecessary village names, which are fine for the historian but of no importance to the casual reader. Much in the way of context has been left out that could be included.

What I propose is to write an entertaining, exciting, and substantial book based on the travels of Ibn Batuta. It will be a thorough study, yet written for the layman who wishes to be entertained while he is learning. In his own account Batuta is inclined to pass over a shipwreck in a couple of paragraphs and a court intrigue in scarcely more, and he devotes little time to his affairs with women. The outlines are there, so without digressing or throwing the book out of proportion, I expect to enlarge upon these stories to add to the color and entertainment value. As a man of that world Batuta saw little reason to discuss what conditions elsewhere were like or how his times fit into the greater historical picture; that too will be placed in context.

My knowledge of the area and the period are quite complete. I have traveled in person over some of the same routes, have studied the histories, religious beliefs and sciences of the countries he visited, and know something of the personalities with whom he came in contact.

The travels of Ibn Batuta are, I believe, one of the greatest experiences a reader can have, for it opens a world largely closed to Western readers. From frequent lectures I have discovered there exists an enormous market for such a book, and a vast curiosity about the subject matter. Above all, it opens a relatively new field of interest to the general reader. Alexander, Charlemagne and Tamerlane have been done. The story of Marco Polo, a mere commuter by comparison to Batuta, is known. Above all, this is an intelligent viewpoint from behind the scenes…this is a Muslim commenting on the Muslim world, a participant telling the story of what he has done and seen. Too many of our scholars are purely European scholars, unaware that there is any scholarship other than their own, or any viewpoint different from the one they hold.

What I hope to write is an exciting, colorful and highly informative book for laymen, one in which a scholar will find few faults.

GOALS:

To cover the travels of Ibn Batuta as described in his books.
To provide added background on those places he visited, conditions at the time, circumstances of travel beyond what he himself tells, and further background on people he mentions.
To locate towns and places according to their modern names. All this without footnotes.
To provide further background on customs, education, medical practices, some of the things he missed.
To place all these things in relation to what was happening in Europe at the time so the reader is fully aware of the period of which he is reading.

COMMENTS: This proposal has been pieced together from several different documents. The original was sent off to Henry Holt and Company, one of the oldest hardcover publishers in the United States. Initially, Louis pitched them the idea of doing one nonfiction and one fiction title a year…a proposal that they balked at immediately, claiming, “That increment may be too frequent for us, or any other publisher, to handle profitably.”

They were, however, willing to look at his Ibn Batuta book proposal. Unfortunately, their response, while probably appropriate considering Louis had, so far, only written fiction, was somewhat less than what he was looking for…

We have read the outline for IBN BATUTA with great care and interest…The material you sent is indeed an informative description of Ibn Batuta’s life and does serve to support your points about the exotic adventures and historical importance of the subject…[I]t does not really show how you will handle that material in the book…Nevertheless, we are nervous about how we could sell this book without a sample of the book treatment itself.

I suspect Dad was looking for the credibility a substantial work of nonfiction would give him, but the real issue was whether he could afford to take the time to write such a work. Serious research would be required, not the sort he put into a Western but work that was specifically sourced and carefully documented in the text. That would have created additional expense and a clerical challenge the likes of which he had never undertaken. Perhaps it was all for the best that he did not find support for this project…all for the best because my father also had another idea brewing: a work of fiction, the story of another young man, another wanderer in the medieval and Islamic world…

By December of 1960 Louis had finished The Walking Drum. Whether the life of Ibn Batuta inspired the adventures of my father’s fictional hero, Mathurin Kerbouchard, or was simply a research source is unclear. However, there are many resemblances, including planned but unwritten sequels that followed a path similar to Batuta’s to both India and China.

Over the next six years Dad sent The Walking Drum to Bantam, Doubleday, St. Martin’s Press and, no doubt, Holt and a few others. He rewrote it based on notes he had received. He retitled it May There Be a Road, hoping that would help. Nothing worked. No one was the least bit ready to allow a writer of paperback Westerns to try his hand at a swashbuckling historical adventure novel, any more than they were ready to let him publish the history of a fourteenth-century Moroccan traveler.

By 1984, however, the world was a different place.