Read Online Stories from Islamic History by Nayab Naseer - Free Book Online

workmen's houses were humble
rectangles of sun-dried brick. Better homes had a courtyard, a
water basin or pit well, a shade tree and ornamental plants.
Curiously, streets were wide enough for two loaded donkeys to
pass—the same width in Baghdad as in Seville. The code of social
behavior that governed life in these homes was also strikingly
similar in Baghdad as it was in Tangier, or anywhere else in dar-us-Islam .
    Ibn Battuta was obviously successful in
impressing Sultan Abu Said, for he invited him to accompany him for
a second hajj . For ten days he traveled with the sultan’s
camp, but then left it and proceeded to visit the cities of Shiraz,
Isfahan and Tabriz, the last having become a major center of
Islamic Mongol influence and power. In Tabriz, Ibn Battuta
regretted being able to remain only one night, without having met
any of the scholars, although his haste was due to a summons
ordering him to rejoin Sultan Abu Sa'id's retinue.
    After his second hajj , when Ibn
Battuta set out again, it was southward. He visited Yemen, which he
called al-Mashrabiyah (The Latticed Windows.) His description of
the byways of old Sana'a and Ta'iz still hold today. The ornate
latticework of carved wood admitted light and cooling breezes into
Yemeni homes, but they blocked the inward view of passersby,
preserving the residents' privacy.
    From Yemen, Ibn Battuta crossed the Red Sea
to Somalia, disembarking north of Djibouti, which at that time was
called Zeila. He describes the place as "a large city with a great
bazaar,” but also “the dirtiest, most disagreeable and most
stinking town in the world," because of its inhabitants' habits of
selling fish in the sun and butchering camels in the street.
    Ibn Battuta proceeded down the East African
coast as far as Mombasa and Kilwa before he returned to Arabia by
way of Dofar in southwestern Oman. Here he mentions the ways the
sultan lured merchants to his ports: “When a vessel arrives from
India or elsewhere, the sultan's slaves go down to the shore, and
come out to the ship in a sambuq carrying with them a complete set
of robes for the owner of the vessel [and his officers].... Three
horses are brought for them, on which they mount with drums and
trumpets playing before them from the seashore to the sultan's
residence.... Hospitality is supplied to all who are in the vessel
for three nights.... These people do this in order to gain the
goodwill of the ship owners, and they are men of humility, good
dispositions, virtue, and affection for strangers.”
    Traveling further up the coast, Ibn Battuta
describes the efficient way Omani fishermen used the sharks they
caught. “They cut and dry the meat in the sun,” as dwellers on the
coast still do, “then dry the cartilaginous backbones further and
use them as the framework of their houses, covering the frame with
camel skins.”
    From Oman, Ibn Battuta returned to Makkah for
his third hajj . This is the time he heard of the sultan of
Delhi, Muhammad ibn Tughlaq. He probably heard of his
extraordinarily generosity towards Muslim scholars, and his open
invitation to such people from dar-us-Islam . Having failed
to find a suitable placement in any of his wanderings, Delhi became
Ibn Battuta's lodestone for the next decade.
    A goal oriented traveler would go back to
Oman, to embark on a dhow and ride the monsoon winds about forty
days to the west coast of India. But Ibn Battuta would have to wait
several months for the onset of eastbound winds, and this was
clearly not his style.
    Ibn Battuta made his way back to Cairo, and
from there took to the Mediterranean coast, through Gaza and Hebron
thence to a ship bound for Anatolia. Guided by little more than
serendipity and impulse, he crisscrossed Anatolia, and became so
familiar with its petty sultanates and local customs that his
Rihala is the primary factual source for the history of Turkey
between the time of the Seljuqs and the arrival of the
Ottomans.
    One of the customs Ibn Battuta came