Ibn Battuta's Travels: To China and Returning Back Home

From India Ibn Battuta and some traveling companions sailed to Chittagong, now the chief port of Bangladesh, a Muslim country next to India. He tells us that Chittagong was a city filled with food, but smelled bad - "a hell crammed with good things." Everything there was cheap, including slaves. He bought "an extremely beautiful" slave girl and a friend bought a young boy slave for a couple of gold dinar. From Chittagong he caught a Chinese junk and went to Samudra on the island of Sumatra. This really was the end of Dar al-Islam for no territory east of this was ruled by a Muslim ruler. Here he stayed for about two weeks in the wooden walled town as a guest of the sultan. The sultan then provided him with supplies and sent Ibn Battuta on one of his own junks to China.

For about 40 days Ibn Battuta sailed and at last he arrived in the busy sea port of Ch'uan-zhou (Quanzhou) on the coast of Fukien (Fujian) Province. He admired much that he saw. He observed that "silk is used for clothing even by poor monks and beggars" and that the porcelain was "the finest of all makes of pottery." Even the poultry amazed him: "The hens ... in China are ... bigger than geese in our country."

But he seems to have been in culture shock - discomfort at being in a culture he didn't understand or appreciate.

"China was beautiful, but it did not please me. On the contrary, I was greatly troubled thinking about the way paganism dominated this country. Whenever I went out of my lodging, I saw many blameworthy things. That disturbed me so much that I stayed indoors most of the time and only went out when necessary. During my stay in China, whenever I saw any Muslims I always felt as though I were meeting my own family and close kinsmen." 

China was not a Muslim country and that offended him. "The Chinese themselves are infidels who worship idols and burn their dead like the Hindus . . . eat the flesh of swine and dogs, and sell it in their markets.”

Ibn Battuta had arrived in the last peaceful years before the collapse of the Mongol (Yuan dynasty) rule. "China is the safest and most agreeable country in the world for the traveler. You can travel all alone across the land for nine months without fear, even if you are carrying much wealth."

Ibn Battuta describes a trip on the Grand Canal to Beijing, capital of Mongol China. When Ibn Battuta got back to Quanzhou he found a junk belonging to the Sultan of Samudra ready to go back. So he got on board and began his return home. In three years he would be walking the streets of his hometown Tangier, Morocco and telling of his adventures throughout the Dar al-Islam.

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