Ibn Battuta: the Man Who Walked Across the World – 1/3 … — Transcript

Explore Ibn Battuta's epic 75,000-mile journey across the medieval Muslim world, retraced by a modern traveler in this captivating documentary.

Key Takeaways

  • Ibn Battuta’s travels were unparalleled in distance and cultural breadth during the 14th century.
  • His travelogue offers a unique window into the Islamic world at its historical zenith.
  • Retracing his route today reveals the rich, diverse heritage and ongoing cultural connections across the Muslim world.
  • Ibn Battuta’s life was complex, blending scholarship, adventure, and personal relationships.
  • The documentary bridges past and present, showing how historical travel continues to inspire modern exploration.

Summary

  • The video narrates the story of Ibn Battuta, a 14th-century Moroccan Muslim traveler who journeyed 75,000 miles across three continents.
  • Ibn Battuta's travels began in 1325 with a pilgrimage to Mecca and evolved into one of history's greatest exploration odysseys.
  • He encountered diverse cultures, magicians, holy men, and traders, serving as scholar, businessman, mystic, and warrior.
  • The narrator, an Englishman living in Yemen, discovers Ibn Battuta’s travelogue and sets out to retrace his footsteps.
  • The documentary explores the vibrant Islamic world of the 14th century, a golden age of travel and trade.
  • The journey covers regions from Tangier in Morocco, through the Mediterranean, Turkey, India, and the maritime Silk Route to China.
  • The video highlights Ibn Battuta’s personal life, including his multiple marriages and encounters with rulers and locals.
  • It also reflects on the cultural and historical significance of Ibn Battuta’s writings in understanding the Muslim world.
  • The narrator’s immersion into Yemeni culture, including local customs like chewing Gat, provides a contemporary connection to the past.
  • The video emphasizes the enduring legacy of Ibn Battuta as history’s greatest traveler and the multicultural nature of his birthplace, Tangier.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:07
Speaker A
Travel, set out and head for pastures new. Life tastes richer when you've road worn feet.
00:16
Speaker A
No water that stagnates is fit to drink, for only that which flows is truly sweet.
00:26
Speaker B
This is the story of one of the greatest journeys of all time.
00:32
Speaker B
In 1325, shortly after the end of the Crusades, a young Moroccan Muslim called Ibn Battuta set out on a pilgrimage to Mecca. It was to become an odyssey from one end of the known world to the other.
00:46
Speaker B
In all, he traveled 75,000 miles, more than three times the distance Marco Polo covered.
00:54
Speaker B
Along the way, he was to meet magicians, dervishes, holy men, fire eaters,
00:59
Speaker B
and other travelers from across three continents.
01:03
Speaker B
He was by turn scholar, businessman, mystic, warrior.
01:07
Speaker B
He was imprisoned by mad sultans, was married 10 times,
01:11
Speaker B
and had countless concubines.
01:15
Speaker B
And when he got home, after 29 years on the road,
01:19
Speaker B
he wrote it all down.
01:24
Speaker B
Nearly 700 years later, I discovered his travelogue,
01:28
Speaker B
and was blown away by it.
01:32
Speaker B
Here was a description of a kaleidoscopic Muslim world that I could still see around me,
01:37
Speaker B
but one that for most non-Muslims was hidden behind a veil of misunderstanding, ignorance,
01:44
Speaker B
and even fear.
01:46
Speaker B
From that moment, I was determined to take to the road, to follow in Ibn Battuta's footsteps,
01:52
Speaker B
and discover if the exotic and welcoming Muslim world he described remains to this day.
02:07
Speaker B
Sana'a, the capital of Yemen.
02:12
Speaker B
You might know this country as the realm of the Queen of Sheba.
02:16
Speaker B
You might even know it as the ancestral land of the Bin Laden family.
02:20
Speaker B
For me, it's home.
02:22
Speaker B
I came here to study Arabic 25 years ago and never left.
02:27
Speaker B
Now I'm more than half a Yemeni myself.
02:31
Speaker B
Part of me misses good English ale,
02:34
Speaker B
hard to get in a Muslim country.
02:38
Speaker B
But my Yemeni side makes up for it.
02:41
Speaker B
Like almost all the men here, I indulge in a drug,
02:45
Speaker B
perfectly legal by the way, called Gat.
02:49
Speaker B
Meet my dealer, Sabri.
02:50
Speaker C
By my beard, this stuff's good!
02:54
Speaker C
Actually, I'm going to keep it for myself.
02:55
Speaker D
Stop mucking about! I want to see it.
02:58
Speaker B
What I do when I buy it, I tend not to buy it by the look of it.
03:02
Speaker B
I I sort of go,
03:05
Speaker B
I'm I'm a sort of nose.
03:08
Speaker B
You know, like a wine nose, because I I open it up a bit like that,
03:13
Speaker B
and I stick my nose in it.
03:15
Speaker B
And I take a deep breath.
03:19
Speaker B
And everyone, you know, foreign visitors who come,
03:22
Speaker B
they always say, how can you chew that stuff that looks like a privet hedge?
03:27
Speaker B
It's a bit like when you first drink it,
03:30
Speaker B
it doesn't actually taste intrinsically very nice.
03:33
Speaker B
But you soon get really into it.
03:36
Speaker B
And then it's even more like beer.
03:39
Speaker B
If you like beer.
03:41
Speaker D
How much do I owe you?
03:42
Speaker C
900 rials.
03:44
Speaker D
What?
03:45
Speaker C
It's my best price.
03:47
Speaker B
You see, it's when he looks at me like that, that I can't refuse him.
03:51
Speaker D
When you give me that look, I can't resist.
03:56
Speaker B
All this may seem a long way from my very English roots as an Oxford classicist,
04:00
Speaker B
conductor of the college choir and captain of croquet.
04:03
Speaker B
But so what?
04:05
Speaker B
I like it here.
04:07
Speaker B
Where else can you live in an architectural masterpiece next to a donkey market,
04:13
Speaker B
have scrambled brains for breakfast,
04:16
Speaker B
and while away your evenings with virtuoso lutists?
04:23
Speaker B
I'd be perfectly happy to do nothing but sit in my house chewing Gat,
04:27
Speaker B
writing and reading.
04:31
Speaker B
But there's something that's given me itchy feet.
04:35
Speaker B
It's a book, The Travels of Ibn Battuta.
04:38
Speaker B
He was an Arab traveler who made one of the great journeys of exploration,
04:43
Speaker B
and opened the world for generations to come.
04:47
Speaker B
But you've probably never heard of him because the world he explored was the Islamic world.
04:53
Speaker B
I've devoted years of my life to writing about him and researching his epic journey.
05:00
Speaker B
And he deserves to be known as history's greatest traveler.
05:08
Speaker B
Ibn Battuta's journey took him crisscrossing 75,000 miles across the globe.
05:15
Speaker B
His route appears random and wildly eccentric.
05:21
Speaker B
When he was traveling, Christendom was still dragging itself out of the Dark Ages,
05:26
Speaker B
and towards the Renaissance.
05:29
Speaker B
But Islam was at its glittering height.
05:33
Speaker B
About half the known world was under Islamic rule,
05:38
Speaker B
and the trade routes lay wide open.
05:43
Speaker B
This was a golden age of Islamic travel,
05:46
Speaker B
and Ibn Battuta seized the unique opportunity to see the world.
05:52
Speaker B
For a Westerner today, retracing his route remains a journey into the unknown.
05:59
Speaker B
On this first stretch, I'll tread the ancient pilgrim roads and explore that central tenant of Islam,
06:06
Speaker B
travel in pursuit of knowledge.
06:12
Speaker B
Then on the road all the way from Turkey to India,
06:16
Speaker B
I'll encounter a world where the clear lines between the great religions have blurred into mysticism.
06:22
Speaker B
And on the last leg of the odyssey, I'll meet the living relics of a glorious but forgotten age of Islamic trade,
06:28
Speaker B
along the maritime Silk Route to China.
06:33
Speaker B
The story begins 3,000 miles from my adopted homeland, on the far edge of Africa.
06:42
Speaker A
The memory of my homeland, Morocco, moved me, together with affection for my people and friends,
06:49
Speaker A
and love for my country, which for me is better than all others.
06:56
Speaker A
A land where charms were hung upon me,
07:00
Speaker A
whose earth my skin first touched.
07:06
Speaker B
We've just crossed the Straits of Gibraltar,
07:09
Speaker B
arriving here in Tangier, Ibn Battuta's birthplace.
07:13
Speaker B
This is the end of Africa, it's the end of the Mediterranean world.
07:19
Speaker B
And in Ibn Battuta's time, it was the end of the known world.
07:26
Speaker B
In the 14th century, Tangier was a frontier city, perched on the border between continents and civilizations.
07:32
Speaker B
I'd always thought of it in its 20th century incarnation as a hotbed of sex, drugs and rock and roll,
07:38
Speaker B
a hangout for William Burroughs and the Rolling Stones.
07:43
Speaker B
But nowadays, the Tangerines, the people of Tangier,
07:46
Speaker B
seem almost genteel.
07:50
Speaker B
Fashions come and go,
07:52
Speaker B
but one name remains in vogue.
07:55
Speaker B
Ibn Battuta is the ultimate local boy made good.
08:00
Speaker B
I've come here because I can imagine it's just the sort of place,
08:03
Speaker B
where Ibn Battuta would have come and sat as a small boy,
08:08
Speaker B
looking across the Straits of Gibraltar and looking at Spain,
08:12
Speaker B
thinking about far travel and distant lands.
08:16
Speaker B
He visited something like over 40 countries on the modern map.
08:21
Speaker B
But the important thing with Ibn Battuta is that he came home,
08:26
Speaker B
and he wrote it all down.
08:28
Speaker B
You read about him getting the runs,
08:31
Speaker B
getting ripped off by guides.
08:34
Speaker B
He's very much a ladies' man.
08:36
Speaker B
He gets married 10 times.
08:39
Speaker B
He talks about all his concubines that he had on top of his wives.
08:44
Speaker B
And you can feel this character jumping off the page.
08:49
Speaker B
But very little is known of the early life of the city's favorite son.
08:54
Speaker B
And looking for clues in modern Tangier was not going to be straightforward.
09:00
Speaker E
Salam alaikum.
09:01
Speaker B
Hello.
09:02
Speaker E
How are you?
09:03
Speaker B
I'm very well.
09:05
Speaker B
You speak English?
09:06
Speaker E
Yes.
09:07
Speaker E
Not enough.
09:08
Speaker B
Thank you.
09:09
Speaker E
Welcome in.
09:10
Speaker E
You need any help?
09:11
Speaker B
Yeah, I'd like a room, please, but I want a really nice room.
09:16
Speaker B
If you've got any any relics of Ibn Battuta?
09:19
Speaker E
Yeah, yeah, we have the best one, room, a family suite.
09:22
Speaker B
A family suite.
09:23
Speaker B
Okay.
09:26
Speaker B
And can you just tell me, who's this?
09:29
Speaker E
This is the picture of Ibn Battuta.
09:31
Speaker B
Ah.
09:33
Speaker B
I mean, I've always wondered what he looked like,
09:36
Speaker B
and I never thought that he would look like that.
09:39
Speaker E
I don't think that's real, but it's just give an image of the picture.
09:44
Speaker B
And there was more.
09:46
Speaker B
This is Ibn Battuta.
09:47
Speaker E
True, yeah.
09:48
Speaker B
But it's a photograph.
09:50
Speaker E
Photograph, yeah.
09:52
Speaker B
And he's and he's smoking a water pipe.
09:54
Speaker E
A shisha.
09:55
Speaker B
A shisha, yeah.
09:56
Speaker B
I I thought Ibn Battuta lived before tobacco came from America.
10:00
Speaker E
Yeah, yeah, sure, yes.
10:02
Speaker E
Before before.
10:03
Speaker B
So do you think it really is Ibn Battuta?
10:06
Speaker E
Really, really.
10:07
Speaker B
Really, really?
10:09
Speaker E
I don't know, I'm not sure.
10:11
Speaker B
My search for Ibn Battuta begins in the Kasbah,
10:14
Speaker B
the oldest part of Tangier, where the traveler lived as a small boy.
10:19
Speaker B
Even then it was a restless place to grow up,
10:23
Speaker B
a meeting place of cultural currents from around the world.
10:28
Speaker B
Several of these currents cross in Gnawa music,
10:31
Speaker B
a mystical blend of Islamic religious songs and African and Berber rhythms, which dates back over half a millennium.
10:40
Speaker B
I wanted to know if the travel bug had infected all Tangerines across the centuries.
10:45
Speaker E
Tangier people, they like, they like to to travel.
10:48
Speaker E
The real Tangerine is multicultural.
10:50
Speaker B
You must have heard of Ibn Battuta.
10:51
Speaker E
Sure, yeah, this is very famous, yeah.
10:54
Speaker E
That's was the behind me is the door where he used to live, Ibn Battuta.
10:59
Speaker E
And he started traveling from.
11:01
Speaker B
Well, he really he lived here.
11:02
Speaker E
He lived here.
11:03
Speaker B
Seriously?
11:04
Speaker E
Seriously, I'm talking seriously.
11:05
Speaker B
You're not kidding me.
11:06
Speaker E
It was here.
11:07
Speaker E
He started his trip, he was prepared his horse,
11:10
Speaker E
and his animal donkey here with his father.
11:13
Speaker B
Well, Abdul Majid has just told me that we're actually sitting,
11:16
Speaker B
right next to Ibn Battuta's house.
11:20
Speaker B
And I'm absolutely, I mean, you could knock me down with a feather, as they say.
11:25
Speaker B
We know Ibn Battuta lived in the Kasbah.
11:30
Speaker B
But did he live in this very square?
11:33
Speaker B
There's not a whisper of evidence for or against.
11:38
Speaker B
All these imponderables were making me hungry for facts,
11:42
Speaker B
and for a solid 14th century lunch.
11:47
Speaker B
Any lentil munchers and chicken nugget nibblers might care to avert their gaze.
11:53
Speaker B
We've got some sheep's heads.
11:55
Speaker B
They're looking quite perky.
11:57
Speaker B
Freshly killed.
11:59
Speaker B
And so artistically arranged.
12:02
Speaker B
And we've got some little sheep's brains.
12:05
Speaker B
Delicious ones.
12:06
Speaker B
I'm sure.
12:08
Speaker B
Some hearts.
12:10
Speaker B
He's just showing me the milk teeth,
12:12
Speaker B
to prove that the lambs are are quite young.
12:16
Speaker B
Very Ibn Battuta thing to eat, I'm sure.
12:19
Speaker B
The Quran says that you should eat from the all the good things that God has given you.
12:25
Speaker B
And so it's regarded as a sort of a bit off to refuse these blessings in whatever form they come.
12:32
Speaker B
Excellent.
12:35
Speaker B
This is absolutely magnificent.
12:37
Speaker B
We've each got a head here, a sheep's head.
12:40
Speaker B
And and they're cut Damian Hirst style.
12:44
Speaker B
Beautifully served on on a lettuce leaf.
12:48
Speaker B
Tongue.
12:50
Speaker B
It's hot.
12:51
Speaker B
It is very hot.
12:53
Speaker B
Ah.
12:55
Speaker B
But it's hot when you get into the middle.
12:59
Speaker B
Very tasty indeed.
13:02
Speaker B
I was joined for lunch by my guide Said,
13:06
Speaker B
a modern Tangerine who sounded as if he'd learned his English in Brooklyn.
13:11
Speaker B
Tourists who see this thing being sold outside in the open and they go, ah.
13:17
Speaker B
He told me that the Islamic tradition of slaughtering a sheep once a year,
13:21
Speaker B
reaches back across millennia, all the way to Abraham.
13:25
Speaker B
We learned from our fathers and forefathers how to kill a sheep.
13:30
Speaker B
Killing a sheep is not a problem.
13:32
Speaker B
Anybody can kill a sheep.
13:34
Speaker B
You have to kill it properly, then you have to skin it.
13:38
Speaker B
I hire a person who would skin the sheep for me.
13:42
Speaker B
But I'll kill it in front of my kids, so they learn.
13:46
Speaker B
It's an act that has been descended from Abraham to kill a sheep.
13:52
Speaker B
Ibn Battuta must have done it that way.
13:56
Speaker B
So we've we've we've just in fact had something that Ibn Battuta might himself have eaten.
14:01
Speaker B
And other other generations long before him.
14:05
Speaker A
In the story of his adventures, Ibn Battuta tells us nothing of his early life,
14:10
Speaker A
and next to nothing of his life once he'd finished his 30 years of traveling.
14:17
Speaker A
We know that he was born in 1304,
14:21
Speaker A
and that he was educated in Islamic law.
14:25
Speaker A
We know that he had a beard,
14:28
Speaker A
and that he was from a respectable family.
14:32
Speaker A
But that's about it.
14:36
Speaker A
I needed to search for his spirit, for his reincarnation,
14:41
Speaker A
for glimpses of his face among the crowds of today's Tangerines.
14:47
Speaker A
But where to start?
14:49
Speaker A
At the beginning, of course, with those first lessons on the Quran,
14:53
Speaker A
the book that guides all Muslims through life.
14:57
Speaker A
As a young boy in the 14th century, Ibn Battuta would have been taught in just the same way as these children,
15:03
Speaker A
learning to recite the Quran by heart.
15:08
Speaker A
Madrasas like this one are often seen in the West as breeding grounds for future Islamic extremists.
15:15
Speaker A
But holy war was not on the curriculum here.
15:19
Speaker A
Today's lesson was about how travel is an integral part of Islam.
15:25
Speaker F
How many pillars of Islam are there?
15:28
Speaker G
Five.
15:29
Speaker F
Five.
15:31
Speaker G
The pillars of Islam are five.
15:33
Speaker F
Yes.
15:34
Speaker G
The two testimonies.
15:36
Speaker F
Yes.
15:37
Speaker G
Prayers, charity, fasting, and to go on the pilgrimage, if you can.
15:40
Speaker F
Very good.
15:42
Speaker A
The teacher has just asked them about the five pillars of Islam.
15:46
Speaker A
And the last of these pillars is pilgrimage.
15:51
Speaker A
Pilgrimage, of course, was the reason that Ibn Battuta left Tangier to go to Mecca.
15:58
Speaker A
For these children, as for Ibn Battuta, the Hajj pilgrimage will be more than just a trip to Mecca.
16:04
Speaker A
It's an opportunity to see the world.
16:07
Speaker A
In Ibn Battuta's case, it was a gap year that would turn into three decades of travel.
16:14
Speaker A
Ibn Battuta wrote,
16:16
Speaker A
I left Tangier, my birthplace, on Thursday the 23rd of June, 1325.
16:23
Speaker A
I wanted to do the Hajj.
16:26
Speaker A
When you get bigger, will you go to Mecca?
16:30
Speaker G
Yes.
16:31
Speaker A
Every Muslim,
16:33
Speaker A
hopes to reach one day the holy house of God in Mecca.
16:38
Speaker A
Who else wants to go to the holy sanctuaries?
16:41
Speaker G
I definitely will.
16:43
Speaker A
With God's will, you'll all go, just like Ibn Battuta.
16:48
Speaker A
Saying of the Prophet,
16:50
Speaker A
seek knowledge, even if the journey takes you all the way to China.
16:58
Speaker A
Islam itself began with a journey, Muhammad's migration from Mecca to Medina,
17:02
Speaker A
marks the year zero in the Islamic calendar.
17:07
Speaker A
Travel is in the very fabric of Islam.
17:11
Speaker A
And although the physical relics of Ibn Battuta had proved elusive in Tangier, his wanderlust remains as strong as ever.
17:21
Speaker A
It was now time for me to move on, chasing the traveler's shadow across North Africa.
17:27
Speaker A
I set out alone, having neither fellow traveler in whose companionship I might find cheer,
17:32
Speaker A
nor caravan whose party I might join, but swayed by an overmastering impulse within me,
17:38
Speaker A
and a desire long cherished in my bosom to visit these illustrious sanctuaries.
17:45
Speaker A
So I braced my resolution to quit all my dear ones, female and male,
17:50
Speaker A
and forsook my home as birds forsake their nests.
17:56
Speaker A
My age at that time was 22 lunar years.
18:03
Speaker A
Ibn Battuta left Tangier for Mecca in 1325,
18:08
Speaker A
and headed east through modern Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.
18:13
Speaker A
His account of the journey is sparse until he arrives in the city he calls a unique pearl, Alexandria.
18:23
Speaker A
In the 14th century, Alexandria was buzzing with the trade of all the Mediterranean.
18:28
Speaker A
For Ibn Battuta, a young man from the Western fringe of the Muslim world,
18:34
Speaker A
it must have made Tangier look provincial.
18:39
Speaker A
May God protect Alexandria.
18:42
Speaker A
She's a well-guarded frontier citadel,
18:47
Speaker A
and a friendly and hospitable region, remarkable in appearance and solid in her structure,
18:55
Speaker A
glorious in her surpassing beauty, uniting in herself the excellences that are shared by other cities,
19:03
Speaker A
through her mediating situation between the East and the West.
19:10
Speaker A
Every fresh marvel,
19:13
Speaker A
has there its unveiling.
19:17
Speaker A
Every novelty,
19:20
Speaker A
finds its way thither.
19:25
Speaker A
Ibn Battuta absolutely raved about Alexandria in some of his most high-flown prose.
19:31
Speaker A
He said Alexandria has all you could wish for in the way of embellishment and embattlement.
19:38
Speaker A
He compared it to a secluded maiden arrayed in her bridal finery.
19:44
Speaker A
And he said Alexandria is like a pearl glowing in opalescence.
19:50
Speaker A
Of course, the city has changed a bit since 1326.
19:56
Speaker A
If Alexandria in the 14th century was a secluded maiden,
20:00
Speaker A
I'm not sure what you'd call her today.
20:04
Speaker A
Perhaps a woman of a certain age.
20:08
Speaker A
Ibn Battuta had a way with the ladies.
20:13
Speaker A
He'd already picked up his first wife on the road to Alexandria, divorced her after an argument with his father-in-law,
20:19
Speaker A
and then married another woman.
20:23
Speaker A
But I had no one to keep me company,
20:27
Speaker A
and Alexandria is a rather sad place to be alone in.
20:33
Speaker A
Instead of taking the most direct pilgrim route through the Sinai Desert, he turned south.
20:40
Speaker A
He was heading up the Nile to the most popular city in the Muslim world and the center of Islamic civilization and culture,
20:46
Speaker A
to Cairo.
20:50
Speaker A
Mother of cities,
20:51
Speaker A
and seat of Pharaoh the tyrant, mistress of broad provinces and fruitful lands,
20:57
Speaker A
boundless in multitude of buildings, peerless in beauty and splendor,
21:02
Speaker A
the meeting place of common and Goa, the stopping place of feeble and strong.
21:09
Speaker A
I arrived at length in the city of Cairo.
21:11
Speaker A
Mother of cities,
21:12
Speaker A
and seat of Pharaoh the tyrant, mistress of broad provinces and fruitful lands,
21:18
Speaker A
boundless in multitude of buildings, peerless in beauty and splendor,
21:23
Speaker A
the meeting place of common and Goa, the stopping place of feeble and strong.
21:30
Speaker A
The so-called city of the dead,
21:32
Speaker A
is supposed to be off limits to foreigners.
21:35
Speaker A
This was once simply a cemetery, but over the years the urban poor have moved into the tombs.
21:41
Speaker A
The government now regards it as an embarrassment.
21:44
Speaker A
Habiba was born here,
21:47
Speaker A
and managed to sneak us in.
21:50
Speaker A
This is what Ibn Battuta wrote about this very place, the place that you're from.
21:56
Speaker A
These people build in the Karafa beautiful domed chapels and surround them by walls.
22:03
Speaker A
And they construct chambers in them and hire the services of Quran readers who recite night and day in the most beautiful voices.
22:11
Speaker A
They go out every Thursday evening to spend the night there with their children and their womenfolk,
22:18
Speaker A
and they make a circuit of the famous sanctuaries.
22:23
Speaker A
Actually, we used to do that until very recently, but people stopped actually.
22:27
Speaker A
We used to go, yeah, in the feast or in any religious occasion, we'll go to the cemetery and spend the night there,
22:33
Speaker A
and have take the food and all this sort of stuff.
22:36
Speaker A
It's very, very important part of our life.
22:40
Speaker A
The the dead and the cemetery and stuff, it's very, very important.
22:47
Speaker A
Everybody want to be sure he has his tomb like the Pharaoh, you know.
22:53
Speaker A
And it's where it is and should be closer to his family.
22:58
Speaker A
And we mourn for a long time and you never stop, you never stop.
23:03
Speaker A
For me, if I pass you any time, I say a prayer for the dead.
23:09
Speaker A
And those who go before us and we who come after.
23:13
Speaker A
I'm always being mistaken for a Muslim.
23:17
Speaker A
It comes from speaking Arabic.
23:20
Speaker A
But the Imam and the pilgrim didn't want to convert me on the spot.
23:27
Speaker A
Instead, they gave me a history of the site, which for them was an illustration of Islam's superiority.
23:33
Speaker A
First there was the Pharaoh's temple.
23:37
Speaker A
Then a Jewish synagogue, then a church.
23:41
Speaker A
And finally, a Muslim mosque.
23:44
Speaker A
So this was actually.
23:46
Speaker A
And under this, there was a church.
23:49
Speaker A
Under that, a Jewish synagogue.
23:52
Speaker A
And under that, the temple of Pharaoh.
23:55
Speaker A
I think I understood what he was saying.
23:58
Speaker A
This gentleman says that this is a lovely metaphor for the way that religions have followed one another.
24:05
Speaker A
And the last one and and the seal of of religions is Islam.
24:10
Speaker A
For many Muslims, tomb visiting is something to be done regularly, like changing the oil in a car.
24:16
Speaker A
It ensures the smooth running of history.
24:19
Speaker A
This old pilgrim was a veteran traveler,
24:23
Speaker A
and a collector of Muslim saints.
24:30
Speaker A
The Quran says we must travel.
24:33
Speaker A
It is an order from God.
24:36
Speaker A
The prophet Muhammad says, 'Seek knowledge, even if you end up in China.'
24:43
Speaker A
This means, see the world,
24:46
Speaker A
don't hide like a snail in a shell.
24:50
Speaker A
I have an idea that perhaps because God is impossible to understand,
24:59
Speaker A
and we can only begin to understand him by traveling.
25:06
Speaker A
When he asked me what I proposed to do,
25:09
Speaker A
I told him that I intended to make the pilgrimage to Mecca by way of Jeddah.
25:16
Speaker A
He replied,
25:18
Speaker A
You will not succeed in doing that on this occasion.
25:23
Speaker A
Go back,
25:25
Speaker A
for you will make your first pilgrimage by the Syrian road,
25:29
Speaker A
and no other.
25:32
Speaker A
I wanted to prophecy of my own from Mustafa.
25:37
Speaker A
Would I succeed in following Ibn Battuta all the way across the world to China?
25:42
Speaker A
Yes, it's possible.
25:44
Speaker A
You're an optimist then?
25:46
Speaker A
It's easy.
25:47
Speaker A
If you have the desire to go, you will go.
25:51
Speaker A
If you really want to do what Ibn Battuta did, you will.
25:55
Speaker A
If I want to?
25:56
Speaker A
If you really want to.
25:58
Speaker A
So it's all about my intention?
26:00
Speaker A
Yes, it's all about intention.
26:04
Speaker A
It's been said that you can never step in the same river twice.
26:09
Speaker A
But I felt that Ibn Battuta's Nile and mine were one and the same.
26:14
Speaker A
That we were born by the same current, propelled by the same wind.
26:20
Speaker A
And that he was only a swish of a robe ahead of me.
26:25
Speaker A
But how would I get to his next destination, an insalubrious port on the Red Sea,
26:30
Speaker A
called Aidhab?
26:33
Speaker A
Good morning.
26:35
Speaker A
Have you heard of Aidhab?
26:37
Speaker A
Yes.
26:38
Speaker A
How far away is it?
26:40
Speaker A
Aidhab?
26:41
Speaker A
It's at the end of the world.
26:43
Speaker A
At the end of the world, he says.
26:45
Speaker A
That's what I'm trying to get to, the end of the world.
26:49
Speaker A
Actually, I am trying to get to the end of the world in many ways.
26:53
Speaker A
It's about 350 kilometers.
26:56
Speaker A
All right, okay.
26:57
Speaker A
Now we're getting some facts.
27:00
Speaker A
What is the desert like?
27:03
Speaker A
The desert is very sunny and sandy.
27:07
Speaker A
And there's nothing for the Bahaim, the the beasts to eat.
27:13
Speaker A
Then water.
27:15
Speaker A
It's all sun and tiredness.
27:18
Speaker A
I have never ever ridden a camel.
27:21
Speaker A
Don't worry, I'll look after you.
27:23
Speaker A
Right.
27:25
Speaker A
Bismillah.
27:27
Speaker A
In Ibn Battuta's day, camel trains could be the height of luxury travel.
27:31
Speaker A
I think he went across the desert in a camel litter.
27:35
Speaker A
So I'm going to be rather more adventurous.
27:37
Speaker A
You know, he went in a litter, sort of reading books,
27:40
Speaker A
and playing chess or something with his mate.
27:43
Speaker A
He was sitting on the other side.
27:45
Speaker A
It's actually quite comfortable.
27:48
Speaker A
So far.
27:50
Speaker A
Off on the ship of the desert.
27:53
Speaker A
We hired camels and set out through a desert totally devoid of settlements.
27:58
Speaker A
This desert is luminous and radiant.
28:01
Speaker A
There is no road, no track.
28:04
Speaker A
Only sand blown apart by the wind.
28:08
Speaker A
You see mountains of sand in one place,
28:11
Speaker A
then you see they have moved to another.
28:16
Speaker A
I've spent so much of my time hunting for Ibn Battuta,
28:20
Speaker A
that I sometimes don't notice when he creeps up on me.
28:25
Speaker A
As we rode east towards Mecca, the 670 years between us seemed to fall away.
28:31
Speaker A
Ibn Battuta was not destined to get to Arabia this way.
28:37
Speaker A
Just as the holy man on the Nile predicted, he had to turn back at the Red Sea,
28:42
Speaker A
and eventually made the Hajj pilgrimage overland through Syria.
Topics:Ibn Battutamedieval travelIslamic world14th centuryMoroccoTangierpilgrimageSilk Roadtraveloguehistorical exploration

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Ibn Battuta and why is he significant?

Ibn Battuta was a 14th-century Moroccan Muslim traveler who journeyed over 75,000 miles across three continents. He is significant for his detailed travelogue that provides insight into the Islamic world during its golden age.

What motivated the narrator to retrace Ibn Battuta’s journey?

The narrator was inspired after discovering Ibn Battuta’s travelogue, which revealed a vibrant Muslim world often misunderstood by non-Muslims. This motivated him to follow Ibn Battuta’s footsteps and explore the cultures described.

What regions did Ibn Battuta’s travels cover?

Ibn Battuta’s travels spanned from his birthplace in Tangier, Morocco, across the Mediterranean, through Turkey and India, and along the maritime Silk Route to China, covering over 40 modern countries.

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