Free The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century by Ross E. Dunn Page B

to Tunis to eject the rebels. 7
    Although Constantine was the largest city in the interior of theEastern Maghrib, Ibn Battuta did not tarry there long. Consequently he has little to recall about it in the
Rihla
— except the one notable fact that he was privileged to make the acquaintance of the governor, a son of Abu Bakr, who came out to the edge of town to welcome al-Zubaydi. The meeting was a memorable one for the young pilgrim because the governor presented him with a gift of alms, the first of many presents he would receive from kings and governors during the course of his travels. In this instance it was two gold dinars and a fine woolen mantle to replace his old one, which by this stage of the journey was in rags. Almsgiving was one of the five sacred pillars of Islam, the duty of princes and peasants alike to share one’s material wealth with others and thus remit it to God. The obligation included voluntary giving (
sadaqa
) to specific classes of people: the poor, orphans, prisoners, slaves (for ransoming), fighters in the holy war, and wayfarers. Falling eminently into this last category, Ibn Battuta would during the next several years see his welfare assured, to one degree or another, by an array of pious individuals who were moved to perform acts of kindness, the more readily so since the recipient was himself an educated gentleman well worthy of such tokens of God’s beneficence.
    Leaving Constantine better dressed and richer, he and his friends headed northeast across more mountainous country, reaching the Mediterranean again at the port of Buna (Bone, today Annaba). After resting here for several days in the security of the city walls, he bade farewell to the merchants who had accompanied him half way across the Central Maghrib and continued on toward Tunis with al-Zubaydi and Abu al-Tayyib. Now the little party “traveled light with the utmost speed, pushing on night and day without stopping” for fear of attack by Arab marauders. Ibn Battuta was once again struck by fever and had to tie himself to his saddle with a turban cloth to keep from falling off, since they dared not stop for long. Their route took them parallel to the coast through high cork and oak forests, then gradually downward into the open plain and the expansive wheat lands of central Ifriqiya. From there they had a level road along the fertile Medjerda River valley to the western environs of Tunis.
    Of all the North African cities where art and intellect flourished, Tunis was premier during most of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Almohads had made it their provincial capital in the Eastern Maghrib, and it was under their patronage that it tookon the physical and demographic dimensions of a major city, attaining a population of about 100,000 during peak periods of prosperity. 8 The Hafsids, who started out as Almohad governors over Ifriqiya and subsequently represented themselves as the legitimate dynastic heirs of the empire, continued to rule from Tunis and to cultivate the city’s corps of scholars and craftsmen, much as the Marinids, equally driven to identify themselves with the Almohad model of civilized taste, were doing in Fez.
    Like other Maghribi cities of that age, Tunis under the Hafsids built its splendid mosques and palaces, laid out its public gardens, and founded its colleges with wealth that came in large measure from long-distance trade. In the early fourteenth century Tunis was the busiest of the ports which lay along the economic frontier between the European seaborne trade of the Mediterranean and the Muslim caravan network of the African interior. The Ifriqiyan hinterland plain was narrow but rich enough to export a wide range of Maghribi products — wool, leather, hides, cloth, wax, olive oil, and grain. Tunis was also a consumer and transit market for goods from sub-Saharan Africa — gold, ivory, slaves, ostrich feathers. What gave the city its special prominence was its strategic position on the