Ibn Battuta's Travels: Anatolia 

Ibn Battuta had spent about one year in Mecca studying and making his third pilgrimage. He had been thinking more and more about going to get work under the Sultan of Delhi, now part of Muslim controlled India. The sultan was welcoming scholars and judges from abroad and gave them high paying jobs. But first Ibn Battuta had to find a guide, someone who could speak Persian and knew India well. So in 1330 he went to the town of Jidd on the Red Sea. After looking unsuccessfully for a guide to India for several months, he decided to continue his travels. This time he would go northward to Anatolia (modern Turkey). From there he could connect with Turkish caravans going to India. He traveled back into Egypt where he met a friend, and they went by caravan to Damascus, Syria, and from there set out for Anatolia.

Ibn Battuta's small group left Syria on a large galley (a trading ship) belonging to the Genoese (from Italy) and arrived at Alanya (or Alaya) in Anatolia.

While he praised the Turks' hospitality and their commitment to the Sunni Muslim faith, he was surprised that "they eat hashish [Indian hemp, a type of drug like marijuana], and think no harm of it.”

In every town that Ibn Battuta visited, he was welcomed into a fraternity of Muslim brothers. They provided him with food and shelter, and even competed with other fraternities for the honor of entertaining their guests.

"We stayed here at the college mosque of the town... Now in all the lands inhabited by the Turkmens in Anatolia, in every district, town and village, there are to be found members of the organization known as the ... Young Brotherhood. Nowhere in the world will you find men so eager to welcome strangers, so prompt to serve food and to satisfy the wants of others... The members of this community work during the day to gain their livelihood, and bring ... what they have earned in the late afternoon. With this they buy fruit, food, and the other things which the hospice requires for their use. If a traveler comes to town that day they lodge him.... and he stays with them until he goes away. If there are no travelers they themselves assemble to partake of the food, and having eaten it they sing and dance. On the morrow they return to their occupations and bring their earnings to their leader in the late afternoon."

He also stayed at the homes of important leaders, some of them related to the Il-Khan of Persia himself! And at each place, as was the custom, he was given "hospitality gifts": sometimes money, fine robes, a horse, or even a slave, and often a letter of introduction to some host in the next city on the trip. He praised most of hosts, especially for their generosity towards him, and criticizes one as "a worthless person."

Ibn Battuta shared his impressions of Turkish women:

"...A remarkable thing which I saw in this country was the respect shown to women by the Turks, for they hold a more dignified position than the men. ... I saw also the wives of the merchants and common [men]. [Their faces are] visible for the Turkish women do not veil themselves. Sometimes a woman will be accompanied by her husband and anyone seeing him would take him for one of her servants."

However, in one town he is critical of the treatment of slave women.

"The inhabitants of this city make no effort to stamp out immorality - indeed, the same applies to the whole population of these regions. They buy beautiful Greek slave-girls and put them out to prostitution, and each girl has to pay a regular due to her master. I heard it said there that the girls go into the bath-houses along with the men, and anyone who wishes to indulge in depravity does so in the bath-house and nobody tries to stop him. I was told that the [governor] in this city owns slave-girls employed in this way."

In November of 1331, Ibn Battuta and three friends, two slave boys and a slave girl and with several horses and gifts from governors and hosts, started out toward the Black Sea. He had benefited greatly from the generosity of the Turks. But this next part of the trip was difficult. He was caught in a raging river; mislead by a guide who got the party lost and demanded money; and then almost froze to death in the wilderness. But they arrived at the port of Sinop on the Black Sea and were ready to leave to the steppe lands - the home of the "Golden Horde".

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