Travel and Trade from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century. The Mongol Empire is shown in green; The travels of Marco Polo (1254 – 1324) are blue lines and the travels of Ibn Battuta in red.
Our family is excited for our youngest child, Lamont. He began his two-year missionary service for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints yesterday, Tuesday, May 6, 2025. He traveled to the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Accra, Ghana where he will prepare to be a missionary speaking Swahili in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. About 700 years ago, a young Muslim scholar began his travels, first to Mecca and then to place as far away as India, Java, China and East Africa, meeting many different people. In his own account of his travels he gave his full name as Shams al-Din Abu’Abdallah Muhammad ibn’Abdallah ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Yusuf Lawati al-Tanji ibn Battuta. His name introduces his genealogy and birth place. “Ibn” is Arabic for “son of.” The al-Tanji meant he was from Tangier, Morocco. Ibn Battuta, in his first voyage of seven years made his pilgrimage following the life of the prophet Muhammad and then eventually as far south as the Swahili coast, reaching Kilwa, on the southern coast of today’s Tanzania.
My first home was in Tangier, Morocco. Ibn Battuta and I share a home town. Tangier has not forgotten Ibn Battuta. The airport is named after him, appropriate for all the traveling he did. After visiting the Swahili coast, he traveled to Anatolia, stopped in Constantinople where he said that he met the Byzantine Emperor and then went on the overland route to India. When he arrived in Delhi, the sultan, Muhammad ibn Tughluq, appointed him a judge because of his study in Mecca. He agreed to lead an embassy to China but faced thieves and political rivals in Bengal, Sri Lanka and Maldives. He appreciated the help from fellow Muslims, but also criticized their practices as he perceived their customs as pagan. He did make it to China in 1345, ruled at the time by the Mongol Yuan Dynasty. In many of the Chinese cities, Muslim communities welcomed him. He began his return home traveling by ship and stopping in Indian Ocean ports and the Mediterranean, arriving back in Tangier in 1349. The Black Death caused many deaths in that same year, finding both his parents had died during the twenty years he had been gone.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. (For more on James Rumford see January 29, 2025 post.)
Ibn Battuta still wanted to travel and joined a military force that crossed over to Spain. The Castilian king died of the plague and Ibn Battuta did not have to fight, so he toured the city of Granada. He then joined a camel trek with salt to trade south across the Sahara Desert. He visited Mali and Timbuktu, returning home to Morocco in 1354. In his book of travel (Rihla, الرحلة) he includes descriptions from other travelers and some of his descriptions are confused enough, suggesting that he embellished his story, but overall Ibn Battuta demonstrates how a Muslim scholar could travel to fourteenth-century Muslim communities in Europe, Asia and Africa, finding welcome and work.
James Rumford, Traveling Man: The Journey of Ibn Battuta 1325 – 1354, endpapers.
Mausoleum of Ibn Battuta, Tangier, Morocco – Wikimedia Commons
Lamont won’t travel as much as Ibn Battuta. The Tanzania portions of the Swahili Coast will be enough for the next two years. We trust that his time as a missionary will be a joyful experience of service and selflessness among our global brothers and sisters of Tanzania.