Free Stories from Islamic History by Nayab Naseer Page A

wives safely
aboard a raft, but there was no room on it for him, and he was not
a good swimmer. He clung to the slowly sinking stern of the ship
through the night. In the morning, just as it appeared to be going
down for good, a boat load of local fishermen arrived. They set him
on his way to the local sultan, and as fate would have it, the
sultan was Ghiyath al Din, a brother of one of his former wife in
Delhi — one of those coincidences that highlight the "small world"
of 8th hijri century (14th century CE) nobility in dar-us-Islam .
    Ibn Battuta and Ghiyath al Din plotted a
joint expedition to the Maldives, accompanied by a military force
that would carry out the unrealized coup. But it was not long
before, in the coastal city of Patan, a plague suddenly claimed
Ghiyath al-Din life and with it Ibn Battuta’s ambitions on
Maldives.
    Ibn Battuta set sail once more for Honavar,
and once more lost everything, this time to a sea-cordon of pirate
vessels. Their tactic was to disperse far out at sea but just
within sight of each other. When a victim neared, they communicated
with light signals and swarmed on their target en masse.
    Ibn Battuta says “They took everything I had
preserved for emergencies; they took the pearls and rubies that the
king of Ceylon had given me, they took my clothes and the supplies
given me by pious people.... They left me no covering except my
trousers.” It speaks well of Ibn Battuta's resourcefulness and the
brotherhood of the ummah that after coming ashore stripped of all
his clothes and possessions, he was again well dressed by the end
of the day and within weeks, had money to spend.
    Ibn Battuta once again embarked on a boat
headed for the Maldives, this time alone. It was a brief visit to
see his son, he told the decidedly mistrustful vizier and queen.
Five days later he was on his way back.
    China has always been a tremendous attraction
for travelers. From the 4th to 7th hijri centuries (10th to
the 13th century CE), mutually reinforcing prosperity in the
Islamic lands under the Abbasids, and in China under the Sung
dynasty boosted Sino-Arab trade to heady heights. The Mongol Yuan
Dynasty took China in 677 AH (1279 CE), and despite the Mongol
devastations within dar-us-Islam , maritime trade continued
unabated. Omani and other traders continued their arduous, eighteen
month voyages as before.
    Even though the Yuan never embraced Islam as
other Mongol dynasties that controlled Persia and Central Asia did,
they tended to trust Muslims more than they trusted their Chinese
subjects. The Muslims the Yuans met were men of their word,
merchants who did not err out of intoxication, and people whose
behavior in the spirit of the Quran was laudable by the principles
of Confucius. The Yuan's open-door policies filled their
bureaucracy with Muslims of all origins.
    Ibn Battuta was lured toward China for the
same reasons he had been lured to Delhi: the prospect of
employment. He also had persisting memories of Burhan al Din - a
sage he met in in Alexandria, who two decades earlier had predicted
Ibn Battuta would one day visit India and China.
    Ibn Battuta made his way to China all right,
but his reports do not flatter the land. He derides the severity of
Chinese maritime customs inspections: “ They order
the ship's master to dictate to them a manifest of all the
merchandise in it, whether small or great. Then everyone disembarks
and the customs officials sit to inspect what they have with them.
If they come upon any article that has been concealed from them the
dhow and whatever is in it is forfeit to the treasury. This is a
kind of extortion I have seen in no country, whether infidel or
Muslim, except in China .”
    After a sojourn of less than a year in China
“a rebellion broke out and disorders flared up," giving Ibn Battuta
a welcome excuse to quit the country. He left aboard a friend's
India-bound dhow. But in India, he met only ghosts of his past. "I
wanted to return to Delhi, but became