July 7, 2002

In 1325, Abu Abdallah Ibne Battuta left his home town, Tangier, Morocco, at the age of 21. He was on the road for the next 29 years. It is incredible to think that a person could have in those days of poor communication travelled 73,000 miles across an area which now covers 44 countries spreading from Morocco to most of the Islamic world, India and China. He walked, rode on camel back and horses and sailed in dhows. During this period he performed four Hajj and spent eight years in Delhi as a Qadi in Tughluq’s reign.

More than six centuries later, an American professor of history decided to follow the same route — on paper. Dr Ross E. Dunn from the San Diego State University (SDSU) became interested in Ibne Battuta when in a graduate school Arabic class, he spent a better part of a year translating portions of Rihla, the narrative of Ibne Battuta’s extraordinary journeys.

He took ‘sabbatical leave’ to tread the footsteps of Ibne Battuta, on paper, mostly “relying on a wide range of published material”, (he counts visiting about ten countries that IB did), and the result was an acclaimed book—The adventures of Ibne Battuta.

This book, according to Prof Dunn is his “interpretation of Ibne Battuta’s life and times”. While recounting Ibne Battuta’s travels, Dunn interprets them within the cultural and social milieu of Islamic society giving the reader an insight into Ibne Battuta’s personality and the human interaction in mediaeval times.

Prof Dunn has reconstructed the ‘Adventures’ for contemporary readers, interested in the fourteenth century Islamic world. He elucidates the significance of Battuta’s achievement by linking it with the political history and geography of the places Ibne Battuta visited.

Thus Dunn encapsulates in 318 pages the history of Islam, and its traditions. The architecture and the landscape has all been captured. The readers are taken on a visit to Medina and Makkah. Dunn’s discerning eye introduces the reader to the Masjid-al-Haram — he is informed that it has 19 doors, 471 marble columns and five minarets —K’aba, the maqam-i-Ibrahimi, zam-zam and the rites of Hajj. One can almost feel one is there.

What makes this book especially fascinating is the perspective it provides into Muslim society. “Here was a man who journeyed thousands of miles over many, many years but who only very rarely felt himself to be a stranger in a strange land. In some places Islam was in the majority and in some places it was the minority but Ibne Battuta was always able to find educated Moslems similar to himself who could provide a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear and money to spend. Very importantly also, they could provide spiritual support to a person very far from home.”

Dunn gives an account of Ibne Battuta’s sojourn in Delhi, where “his co-believers comprised of a small minority of the population. They were, however, the minority that ruled the greater part of the subcontinent of India.” And “by 1933 the congeries of ethnic groups, languages, and castes that comprised the civilization of the subcontinent were politically united, for the first time since the Gupta empire of the fifth century A.D...The majority remained true to the Hindu tradition, and the Muslim government for the most part left them alone to live and worship as they wished.”

I had the chance of meeting Prof Dunn and talking to him about his book at a function of the Centre for Islamic and Arabic Studies, San Diego State University. A soft spoken and courteous man — these qualities being the hallmark of a scholar — Prof Dunn responded verbally and by email to my queries with understanding and patience.

In his responses he is fortright and thought-provoking. What prompted him to write the Adventures of Ibne Battuta? “I knew about Ibne Battuta from graduate school in African and Islamic history, and one of my Arabic classes reading selections from his travels. In the mid 70s I started teaching world history at SDSU. I was trying to help students understand something about the trans-hemispheric dimensions of Islam in the fourteenth century. It struck me that Ibne Battuta beautifully illustrated that idea. Thus, I started the book. The motivation was not so much my specialized interest as my world history class for SDSU freshmen.”

Had he visited any of the countries Battuta visited? Yes he says he can count visiting about ten countries that IB did. Sadly, he could not make it to Pakistan or India.

From the historical perspective how would he analyze, in general, the happenings in the Muslim countries in the new millennium?

“The American academic and political world has been so used to talking about the ‘decline’ of Islam since about the twelfth century that it can’t understand that Islam continues to grow around the world as a satisfying and fulfilling spiritual and moral system and way of life. I think that Western thought continues to be informed by the culturally arrogant fantasy that Islam will (and should) eventually disappear because it never made the grade to ‘modernity’. The Muslims are rightly perplexed at such attitudes. The only answer I can come up with is education, education, education,” he emphasizes.

Does history repeat itself? it is going to repeat itself in the case of Muslim civilization?

Prof Dunn says categorically, “No, I don’t think history repeats itself, though it may appear that way because the scope of what is possible is fairly limited. All democracies in the world are flawed, but leadership in most Muslim countries is notably flawed. Those flaws have been consistently upheld and encouraged by the US government, but the people of the Muslim nations will have to take responsibility for instituting governments where the rule of law prevails and where democratic institutions operate at least reasonably well.”

If Ibne Battuta had to go today on the same itinerary (of course with a different mode of transportation), how would he feel about people and places — will he feel a total stranger, because of the development or degradation or would it be a sense of deja vu for him?

“That’s a tough question. In Ibne Battuta’s time the world-mindedness of the educated Muslims may have been as great as it could ever be. In the sixteenth century, the ulema became increasingly associated with the administrations of specific states, such as the Ottoman, the Safavid, the Mughal. The sort of cosmopolitanism that allowed Ibne Battuta to move from city to city, madressah to madressah, royal court to royal court, without much thought about crossing political frontiers or having to declare exclusive allegiance to any state had declined by the sixteenth century,” Dunn responds.

He adds, “In the twentieth century, of course, nationalist ideology, absent in his time, became the identifying feature and the divisive force in the Muslim populations. It seems to me that Islam continues to nurture a cosmopolitan ideal of shared beliefs, rituals, and customs, the greatest expression of it being the hajj. Sunni and Shi’i both make the pilgrimage and circle the Ka’ba together. Christians as a whole have no comparable expression of unity. The fragmentation of Christianity into churches and denominations makes Christian ecumenism a rather minor melody in the worldwide Christian chorus.”

Dunn continues, “Sadly, the rather loud melody of unity and ecumenism we hear in Islam is played by the Islamist right, sometimes a message of anti-intellectualism, dogmatism, and systematic repression of women. Ibne Battuta would have gone along with some of that but not the isolationism of it. In fact he would have an ‘identity problem’. What passport would he carry? Would he have a stamp in it showing he had visited Israel? Which countries would offer a tourist visa and which would not (not Saudi!)? Would secular and military state authorities in places like Turkey regard him as a dangerous Islamist?”

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)