Ibn Battuta's Trip: West Africa

On his return journey, Battuta crossed many of the same places he had visited when he first departed. In some cases, much had changed. The caravan routes he traveled carried the Black Death across a large portion of Eurasia. The Hajj had brought it to Mecca. He went on to Palestine and the plague was there too. Battuta then reached Cairo Egypt where, as he reported, the plague killed 24,000 people in a single day. With death all around him, perhaps he felt the need to go home. He was 45 years old and had been gone for 24 years. In 1350, after traveling 75,000 miles, he was home. 

But he was restless. 

When Ibn Battuta first visited Cairo in 1326, he undoubtedly heard about the visit of Mansa Musa (King of Mali from 1307 to 1332). Mansa Musa had passed through the city two years earlier making his pilgrimage to Mecca with thousands of slaves and soldiers, wives and officials. One hundred camels each carried one hundred pounds of gold.  So much gold spent in the markets of Cairo actually upset the gold market well into the next century. Mali also supplied other trade items - ivory, ostrich feathers, kola nuts, hides, and slaves. No wonder there was talk about the Kingdom of Mali and its riches! Battuta had to go there. 

He reached Taghaza (see picture below) after 25 days spent crossing the Sahara. Battuta wrote "It is a village with no good in it. Among its curiosities is the fact that the construction of its houses and its mosques is of rock salt with camel skin roofing and there are no trees in it, the soil is just sand. In it [the village] is a salt mine. It is dug out of the ground and is found there in huge slabs, one on top of another as if it had been carved and put under ground. A camel can carry two slabs of salt. Nobody lives in it except the slaves 

of the Massufa who dig for the salt and live on dates brought to them from Dar'a and Sijilmasa, and on the meat of camels.

"The blacks of Mali exchange the salt as money as one would exchange gold and silver. They cut it up and trade it in pieces. In spite of the insignificance of the village of Taghaza, the trading in it comes to the equivalent of many qintars of gold dust.

While in Mali, Battuta praised the Africans due to the "small amount of injustice amongst them," and "the prevalence of peace in their country, the traveller is not afraid in it nor is he who lives there in fear of the thief or of the robber by violence. They "meticulously observe the times of the prayers and attendance at them," "beating their children to instill [respect for religious duty]," the fact that prayers are so crowded on Friday that men send their sons ahead with a prayer mat to reserve a place at the mosque. They learn the Qur'an by heart. "They make fetters for their children when they appear on their part to be falling short in their learning of it by heart, and they are not taken off from them till they do learn by heart. I went in to visit the qadi one day and his children were tied up. I said to him, `Why do you not release them?' He said, `I shall not do so until they learn the Qur'an by heart.''

One thing Battuta did not like in Mali was that their servant women, slave women and little daughters appear naked before people, "exposing their private parts." Women went naked into the presence of the sultan, and his own daughters went about naked. Battuta also disliked the custom of showing respect by placing dust on one's head.

Earlier, while Battuta was still at the capital, a group of African cannibals and their leader came to see sultan Mansa Suleiman. They wore large metal rings in their ears and wore silver mantles. They came from a region that possessed a gold mine, so the sultan was gracious to them, and gave them a slave woman as a hospitality gift. The cannibals killed and ate her, then smeared her blood on themselves and went to thank the sultan. As an aside, Battuta reported that he heard the tastiest meat came from the palms and the breasts.

Battuta reported that in Timbuktu (see picture on the right), he boarded a small sailing vessel made from a single piece of wood. They sailed along the Niger, stopping in a village each evening to purchase food with their glass ornaments. Battuta tried to buy some millet from this village on the festival of Mohammed's birthday. (The practice of celebrating Mohammed's birthday was introduced in Egypt and East Africa in imitation of the Christian celebration of Christmas.)

Battua was not only upset about the immodest dress of African women. He also complained about the small gift of bread, meat and yogurt given to him by the king. "When I saw it I laughed, and was long astonished at their feeble intellect and their respect for mean things." 

After receiving a message from the Sultan of Morocco commanding him to return home immediately, Battuta departed for home in the company of a large caravan carrying 600 black female slaves to Morocco. The slaves would be sold as domestics (house maids), concubines, or servants of the royal court. He reached home, for good, in 1354.

The End