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Author recounts his thoughts on Ibn Battuta
Visiting all the Muslim lands, he reached India in 1332 and China in 1340, and met 60 rulers along the way.
- By Alice Johnson, Staff Reporter
- Published: 00:00 July 31, 2010
Dubai: For 29 years, Ibn Battuta travelled 75,000 miles around the world. Setting off in 1325 from his home town of Tangiers, Morocco, his first journey, for the Haj, was 3,000 miles.
Visiting all the Muslim lands, he reached India in 1332 and China in 1340, and met 60 rulers along the way.
It was when British author Tim Mackintosh-Smith was sitting outside an old house in Sana'a, eating boiled potatoes, that he said he first started wondering about Arabian adventurer Ibn Battuta.
The great traveller had mentioned eating potato-filled samosas during his travels to India.
So perhaps Christopher Columbus, 200 years later, didn't discover them after all, Mackintosh-Smith wondered.
In answer to his curiosity, Mackintosh-Smith said he found a book about Ibn Battuta's travels and started reading it.
So began a journey of discovery for the British author, who since that day has written three books about the great traveller and edited another.
Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battuta (2001) was a best-seller, while The Hall of a Thousand Columns: Hindustan to Malabar with Ibn Battuta, (2005) revisits the scenes of Ibn Battuta's Indian adventures.
Mackintosh-Smith's next book, Landfalls: On the edge of Islam with Ibn Battuta, took the author on a journey from Tanzania, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, China, Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea, Spain and to Paris, and is due to be released on August 19.
Mackintosh-Smith tells of a series of uncanny present-day links he found with the life of Ibn Battuta.
"There was a knock at my door and my old friend Dr Hassan asked what I was reading," Mackintosh-Smith told Gulf News via telephone from Yemen.
His friend took the book and said: "Oh, that's the Sultan of Yemen — you know him don't you?". Mackintosh-Smith said Dr Hassan went on to explain that the sultan was his direct ancestor in the male line. "So Ibn Battuta, years ago, is talking about sitting with the Sultan, and here's Hassan giving me lunch," the author said.
Temporal vertigo
"There was a strange feeling of a third of a millennium collapsing; it's like temporal vertigo — you can reach the distant past in one leap," he said.
The British author said he moved to Yemen in 1982, having studied Arabic at university and wanting to immerse himself to fully grasp the language. Loving the country so much, he decided to make it his permanent home.
Mackintosh-Smith said he wasn't interested in simply retracing the steps of Ibn Battuta, but in trying to re-establish links between the adventurer's travel writing and the world today.
In Mali, Mackintosh-Smith said he was able to do this. Ibn Battuta wrote about being received by the Ruler of Mali — then a much larger kingdom than it is today — and being entertained by a balafon (a percussion instrument similar to a xylophone) player.
"In a book, I found out that the ancient royal balafon of Mali still exists and has been handed down. I went to the village to see the balafon and they still play it and they swear it's the original. A few ties have been renewed, but the keys are original," he said.
And Mackintosh-Smith was amazed to find an even more significant link between the present and the past. "The Balafon lord is also a descendent of the man Ibn Battuta heard playing in his time," he said. "The family still have the same name and they hadn't heard of or read Ibn Battuta's description". Mackintosh-Smith read out that the Master of the Balafon Ibn Battuta referred to as wearing a magnificent robe, and here was the present-day master in a robe.
Tim Mackintosh-Smith will host an evening of travel tales and conversation on September 28 at Magrudy's, Ibn Battuta Mall, as part of the 2011 Emirates Literature Festival.
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