Ibn Battuta (d.1369) the renowned Moroccan qadhi, or judge of Islamic law, is best known as an explorer who traveled extensively in the pre-modern world. Within thirty years, he traversed most of southern Eurasia, South Asia, China, and beyond. Towards the end of his life, after returning from arguably the greatest journey in human history,1 he dictated A Masterpiece to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling, better known as The Rihla – an intriguing travelogue describing his global encounters. Much is known about many of the places he wrote about in this period, including Egypt, Persia, and India, thanks to the work of other contemporary travel writers. The same cannot be said, however, for the East African coastline, and so Ibn Battuta is one of the very few who can offer the reader a unique outsider’s glimpse of life in the region in the 13th century.
Despite the dearth of literature on the region in pre-modern times, the East African coastline was never an insignificant backwater. For Arabs and Persians of the arid northern rim of the sea, East Africa represented salvation from drought, famine, overpopulation, and civil conflict. And yet, despite their cosmopolitan nature, these lands remained deeply and innately African. Their rulers, scholars, officials, and notable merchants, as well as their port workers, farmers, craftsmen, and slaves, were dark-skinned people speaking African languages in everyday life.2 Referring to Kilwa, Ibn Battuta reported that “most of the people are zunuj,”3 a medieval Arabic term describing visibly black Africans.
Through The Rihla, we will explore the historical legacies of three East African Muslim lands: the great Mogadishu, a bountiful Kilwa, and the unassuming Mombasa.
Land of Riches
He arrived in Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia, in the year 1331. Though some today would associate the region with famine and war, that image is far removed from the vibrant descriptions of its medieval form. Ibn Battuta described it as “a town of endless size. Its people have many camels, of which they slaughter hundreds every day, and they have many sheep. Its people are powerful merchants. In it are manufactured the clothes named after it which have no rival and are transported as far as Egypt and elsewhere.”4 He thus paints a portrait of a thriving industrial economy with a flourishing mercantile life.
He continues, “One of the customs of the people of this city is that when a ship arrives at the anchorage, the sunbuqs (small boats) come out. In them they bring a covered dish with food in it. He offers it to one of the merchants of the ship and says, “this is my guest.” When the merchant disembarks from the ship, he goes nowhere but to the house of his host from among these young people.’”5 Ibn Battuta’s remarkable description reveals that ingrained in the culture of these East African Muslims was a profound system of hospitality towards foreign traders. The formality of this custom suggests a longer history of frequent trade in the region, making it prosperous for its time.
Further evidence of Mogadishu’s prosperity can be found in Ibn Battuta’s detailed description of its food. He observed that “one of the people of Mogadishu habitually eats as much as a group of us would. We stayed three days and food was brought to us thrice a day, for that is their custom.”6 Whilst it is possible that only the upper class ate as much as he described, his accounts of the copious amounts of camels everywhere, along with the frequent gifts of fish, indicate a general abundance of food. The notion of this abundance is further supported by accounts of the Portuguese writer, Duarte Barbosa, written two hundred years after Ibn Battuta’s time.7
It is worth noting that Somalia’s riches were likely attributable to the large and powerful Ajuran sultanate, which ruled Mogadishu during Ibn Battuta’s visit. The region was so famed that it attracted Iberian Muslims fleeing the Spanish Inquisition.8 Evidence suggests that the empire played a major role in international trade across China, Persia, and India, as well as in the geopolitics of the Muslim world, such as holding the Christian west at bay during the age of discovery by defeating the Portuguese in battle. This civilization is often left out of most popular Islamic histories.
Ibn Battuta also saw affluence in the now ruined city-state of Kilwa. Located in the Linda region of the modern nation state of Tanzania, the entire island has been designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. His visit was likely during its heyday, or close to it. Ross E. Dunn describes the city as recently awakened to the promise of upland ivory and gold, fast surpassing Mogadishu at the start of the century as the richest town on the coast.9
For this rise in wealth, Ibn Battuta rightly notes Kilwa’s dominance over the wealthy seaport of Sofala in modern day Mozambique: “Kilwa seized Sofala and other, smaller ports south of the Zambezi River through which the gold was funnelled to the market from the mines of Zimbabwe.”10 In fact, so much gold was extracted from Sofala that the Portuguese began to see it as an African El Dorado.11
The trade and commercial reach of Kilwa was so great, that coins minted in the city-state were discovered on the Australian Wessel Islands in 1944. The coins dated back to the 1100s, around 130 years before Ibn Battuta was even born. It is possible that East African Muslims arrived in Australia centuries before James Cook did in 1770.12
One of Ibn Battuta’s most striking tales of Kilwa describes an incident he had witnessed between the Sultan, Abu al Mawahib or “the father of gifts,” and a poor man. One day, the poor man approached the Sultan after Friday prayers, requesting that he turn over his royal garments to him. To Ibn Battuta’s surprise, the Sultan entered a house adjacent to the mosque, escorted by his royal entourage, where he changed into a new set of clothes in order to donate his regal attire to the poor man.
Soon after the encounter, the Sultan’s son retrieved the royal clothing from the poor man and compensated him for it with ten slaves.The ethics of slavery aside, a reimbursement of ten slaves for clothing was remarkably generous for its time and place. The generosity did not stop there; when news reached the Sultan of the people’s gratitude towards him for this deed, he ordered that the man be given ten additional slaves of high caliber, along with two loads of ivory.13
Realm of Beauty
Ibn Battuta considered Kilwa “amongst the most beautiful of cities and most elegantly built.”14
This is quite a statement considering all the cities he had visited, including Constantinople and Baghdad. Kilwa’s Husuni Kubwa, or the Great Palace, was built in the 1320-30’s, and was then the largest stone building in Africa south of the Sahara Desert. The enormous palace grounds included a swimming pool and around a hundred rooms. It is one of the finest examples of medieval architecture on the Swahili coast. Sadly, although the Great Palace still stands, the general touristic appeal of modern-day Tanzania is mostly constrained to its wildlife and the Kilimanjaro.
People of Islam
Regarding Mogadishu, Ibn Battuta noted that “it is customary when a faqih or a sharif or a man of piety comes, that he does not lodge till he has seen the sultan.’”15 This signifies two important things about the Islamic practice of these East African Muslims. The first is their religious devotion, for only those committed to Islam would honour those considered of having a high spiritual standing, legal knowledge of the religion, or descent from the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. The second is their sense of community and kinship with other Muslims, as the fact that this tradition even existed in Ibn Battuta’s time suggests that the city was often frequented by learned Muslim travellers.
He is further struck by the strong Islamic presence in Mombasa, a city in present-day Kenya, observing that “they are Shafi’i by rite, they are a religious people, trustworthy and righteous. Their mosques are made of wood, expertly built. We spent the night at this island and then traveled by sea to the city of Kilwa.”16 His particular praise of their character, and of the Islamic architecture of the city should not be taken lightly considering the number of people Ibn Batutta would have encountered on his travels, and the sites he would already have seen.
Ibn Battuta wrote that the Sultan of Kilwa “would give spoils of war to the shariffs out of a treasury kept for them. Shariffs would come from Iraq and Hijaz and other such places.” He further noted “the sultan was a humble man, would sit with the poor people and eat with them.’”17 Sultan Abu al Mawahib was remembered as a great Muslim ruler and it is unfortunate that little is known about him in the wider world.
Reflections on The Rihla
Though Ibn Battuta bestows us with a rich insight into the lesser-known Muslim histories of East Africa, his accounts are by no means complete or exhaustive.
For instance, he makes no mention of the famed mosque, Fakr ad-Din, in the Hamar Weyne district, the oldest part of Mogadishu. Believed by some to be the seventh oldest mosque in Africa,18 its existence is evidence the deep entrenchment of Islam in Mogadishu.
Ibn Battuta also fails to mention fellow traveler and Islamic scholar, Sa’id min Mogadishu. According to Peter Jackson, details of the Chinese Yuan Dynasty found in The Rihla could only have been acquired from Sa’id, who is notably omitted in Ibn Battuta writings.19
The reader should also be wary of factual errors in his writing. For instance, when describing the people of Kilwa, he says “they are people devoted to the holy war because they are on one continuous mainland with unbelieving zunuj.”20 This is an objectionable claim, as the ease and flow of trade in the region casts doubt over whether they were truly committed to warfare against unbelievers. Furthermore, Kilwa is not located on a continuous mainland but on an island.
The expedition to Kilwa was the final East African stop on the itinerary of Ibn Battuta, a region to which he was never to return. In spite of shortcomings and errors in his work, the record he left enables us to learn about the vibrant and dynamic Islamic civilisation that was thriving in East Africa the 13th century, giving us an outsider’s glimpse of a region that is still sadly often underrepresented in the wider history of Muslims and Islam.
Edited by Asma
Footnotes
1 Said Hamdun and Noël King, Ibn Battuta in Black Africa, Markus Wiener Publishers Princeton fourth edition (2010),ix-xxii.
2 Ross E. Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, A Muslim Traveller of the 14 th Century, University of California, Press, 2012, 159.
3 Hamdun and King, 2010, 22.
4 Hamdun and King, 2010, 16.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid, 18.
7 R. Coupland East Africa and its Invaders: From the Earliest Times to the Death of Seyyid Said in 1856 Clarendon Press (1938), 38.
8 Ahmed Dueleh Jama The origins and developments of Mogadishu AD 1000 to 1850 Studies in African Archeology 12 (1996), 34.
9 Dunn, 2012, 161.
10 Hamdun and King, 2010, 22.
11 Glenn J. Ames, “An African Eldorado? The Portuguese Quest For Wealth and Power in Mozambique And The Riose De Cuama, c. 1661-1683”, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol 31, No.1 (1998); T.H. Elkiss, The Quest for an African Eldorado: Sofala, Southern Zambezia and the Portuguese, 1500-1865 (Waltham, 1981), 1-10.
12 “1000-year-old coins found in Northern Territory may rewrite Australian history”, May 14, 2019, (last accessed 31st January 2023).
13 Hamdun and King, 2010, 24-5.
14 Ibid, 22.
15 Ibid, 16.
16 Ibid, 21-22.
17 Dunn, 2012, 163.
18 Adam, Anita. Benadiri People of Somalia with Particular Reference to the Reer Hamar of Mogadishu. pp. 204–205.
19 “Travels of Ibn Battuta” – Review by Peter Jackson, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society No.2 1987, 264.
20 Hamdun and King, 2010, 22.
Bibliography
- Said Hamdun & Noël King, Ibn Battuta in Black Africa, fourth ed. (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2010).
- Ross E. Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, A Muslim Traveller of the 14th Century, (University of California Press, 2012).
- Glenn J. Ames, ‘An African Eldorado? The Portuguese Quest For Wealth and Power in Mozambique And The Riose De Cuama, c. 1661-1683,’ The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol 31, No.1 (1998).
- T.H. Elkiss, The Quest for an African Eldorado: Sofala, Southern Zambezia and the Portuguese, 1500-1865 (Waltham, 1981).
- Anita Adam, Benadiri People of Somalia with Particular Reference to the Reer Hamar of Mogadishu, School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), 2011.
- Ahmed Dueleh Jama, The Origins and Developments of Mogadishu AD 1000 to 1850, Studies in African Archeology, 12 (1996).
- Shanti Sadiq Ali, The African Dispersal in the Deccan: From Medieval to Modern Times (London: Sangam Books, 1996).
- R. Coupland, East Africa and its Invaders: From the Earliest Times to the Death of Seyyid Said in 1856 (Clarendon Press, 1938).
- Eng Ridwan Nor Abdi, The Ajuran Sultanate, academia.edu, 2019.
- M. Kooriadathodi, Cosmopolis of law: Islamic legal ideas and texts across the Indian ocean and Eastern Mediterranean Worlds (Leiden University, 2016).
- Shams al-Din Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Ahmed Ibn Abi Bakr, Kitab al-Bad’ wah-tarikh, vol. 4
- BBC World Service, ‘The Story of Africa, the Swahili: Garden Cities Good Living’, last accessed 31 January 2023.
- ‘Ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani and Ruins of Songo Mnara’,(last accessed 31st January 2023)
- ‘1000-year-old coins found in Northern Territory may rewrite Australian history’, May 14, 2019,(last accessed 31st January 2023).
- Mark Cartwright, ‘Swahili Coast,’ World History Encyclopedia, 01 April 2019,(last accessed 31st January 2023).
