Ibn Battuta Time In Mali
By 1324, Mali had established itself as a fantastically affluent kingdom under the leadership of a benevolent and religious sultan, Mansa Musa, who ruled around a hundred years after Sundiata. To the north, he conquered the salt-rich regions of the Taghaza area; to the east, he reached the frontiers of the Hausa lands; to the west, he expanded into the lands of the Fulani and the Tukulor; and to the south, he included the trading centers of Gao and Timbuktu into his empire.
Mansa Musa didn’t just expand his empire by force; he also dispatched diplomats to neighboring countries like Morocco and Egypt. By creating several mosques around the empire and recruiting experts from Egypt, he worked to solidify Mali’s position as a center of Islamic study. While on his trip to Mecca to complete the hajj (pilgrimage) in the summer of 1324, Mansa Musa made headlines in Cairo. This may have been the defining moment that brought international attention to him and his kingdom.
The sultan of Mali arrived in Egypt with a massive entourage consisting of wives, slaves, soldiers, court officials, and one hundred camels carrying loads of gold to cover expenses. He spent so much money that he single-handedly drove down the price of gold in Cairo. According to tradition, it stayed low for years after he got there.
A second pilgrim, the Moroccan scholar Abu ‘Abdallah Ibn Battuta (1304–c.1369), set off for Mecca in 1325 with the same goal. Ibn Battuta set off on a long series of journeys after his pilgrimage to Mecca, writing meticulously about the governments, people, and lands he encountered along the way. His writings are now considered indispensable to the study of world history, and are often the only surviving records of certain eras or regions.
Ibn Battuta seemed to travel for the sake of travel itself, but his scholarly training as a student of Middle Eastern Sufi saints and his judicial experience made him more than just a welcome guest in the palaces and courts he visited; they also made him eligible for positions of authority in Islamic states. After making his way through North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, and Syria to Mecca, the young scholar continued his journey through Persia, East Africa, Oman, the Persian Gulf, central Arabia, Delhi, Asia Minor, west Central Asia, China, Ceylon, the Maldives, Burma, Sumatra, and Granada.
It wasn’t until 1353 that he finally made his way over the Sahara to the Mali Empire. Ibn Battuta’s motivations for visiting Mali are unknown. Others believe Ibn Battuta wanted to see the Muslim lands of West Africa simply because they were an important part of the Islamic world that he had not yet visited; still others argue that Ibn Battuta undertook the trip at the behest of the Marinid sultan Abu ‘Inan; and still others believe he may have been seeking an appointment with and the favor of yet another Muslim ruler, as he had done so many times before in his travels.
As a whole, Ibn Battuta did not think much of Mali upon his first visit there. When he arrived in the town of Walata, located in the far north, he was insulted by the governor, who avoided speaking to him personally and instead communicated with him through an intermediary. He was reportedly taken aback by the meagerness of the welcome meal—a bowl of millet served with yogurt and honey—stating, “After this supper, I knew for certain no good was to be anticipated from them, and I longed to go.” Yet Ibn Battuta lingered for over a year in Mali and did not leave.
There were still occasions when the traditions of the Mali people, especially those pertaining to the treatment of women, startled, dismayed, and disappointed him. He was shocked to see that his Mali colleagues in the judiciary were openly flirting with and inviting women who were not relatives into their homes, and even more shocked to learn that their spouses were engaging in conversations with guys they had never met before.
The Moroccan jurist also had problems with other parts of Malinke culture, like how the people show the sultan a lot of respect (they wear rags, hit the ground with their elbows, and throw dust on themselves when they enter the palace), how the poets dress in strange feathered outfits, how slave women, female servants, and even the sultan’s daughters often appear in public naked, and how the masticatory system is used by many people.
To add insult to injury, the sultan had not shown him the kind of hospitality befitting a man of his rank, which further irked him. He made jokes about “their frailty of mind and their exaggerating the little” in response to the sultan’s initial welcome gift of “three round pieces of bread, a piece of meat fried in gharti, and a calabash of sour milk.” When several months passed with no more acknowledgment from the sultan, Ibn Battuta criticized the sultan, telling him that his reputation among other Muslim monarchs would suffer if they learned of his treatment of foreign guests. The sultan then gave his guest a palace and a large annual sum of money.
This did not stop Ibn Battuta from calling Mansa Sulayman “a miserly ruler,” though. The order and safety of the kingdom under Mansa Sulayman were appreciated by Ibn Battuta, who otherwise had nothing but negative things to say about the country. Noting that “their sultan does not forgive anyone in any matter to do with injustice,” he went on to describe the sultan as a fair and just ruler, praising the fact that when a foreigner dies in Mali, the sultan does not seize the deceased’s property but instead keeps it safe until the “rightful claimant” can come forward. He praised the capital city’s palaces and mosques for their beauty and sophistication (their exact location is not known).
The piety of the sultan and the populace, the practice of wearing white on Fridays for prayers, and the emphasis placed on learning the Quran all left a positive impression on him. Ibn Battuta’s life improved once he left the main city. When he traveled through Gao, he was impressed with the country’s bounty and kind rulers.
After nearly a month in Gao, Ibn Battuta continued his journey back, eventually returning to Fez in the early months of 1354. As a result of his report to the sultan, the sultan ordered him to stay in Fez and keep a journal of his voyage. After nearly two years of collaboration with his secretary Ibn Juzayy, he completed the report titled “A Gift to the Observers Concerning the Curiosities of Cities and the Marvels Encounters in Travels.”
Of the traveler’s latter life, we know little. He apparently served as a judge (qadi) at a small village in the countryside, where he remained until his death in 1368 or 1369. It’s ironic that his chronicles, so important to modern historians, weren’t widely read until well over 500 years after his death. During Ibn Battuta’s time in Mali, the country was ruled by Mansa Sulayman, who took power when his brother Mansa Musa died in 1341.
While the empire was on its last legs, Mansa Sulayman was at the helm. Mansa Sulayman, like his brother, was revered as a religious leader, and he also proved to be a skilled administrator, ensuring that trans-Saharan trade between Mali and other countries continued to thrive under his reign. A decrease in power began once Mansa Suleyman’s rule ended.
By 1400, several provinces of the empire (including Gao) had rebelled against the central government, and still others were being invaded (such as Walata and Timbuktu, taken by the Tuareg). By the time it reached its peak in the early to middle 1600s, Mali was no longer a political, economic, or cultural center in West Africa.
Also Read: Timbuktu: The Complete History Of A Great African City
