Document Project 9: Ibn Battuta: Long-Distance Travel in the Fourteenth Century

Ibn Battuta was not an explorer; he was a traveler. The distinction is an important one. Explorers, by definition, enter the unknown. They may have destinations in mind, but they must discover their own routes. Travelers, in contrast, follow paths that have been laid out by others. The journey may be new to them, but they are not the first to make it. Thus, Ibn Battuta was not extraordinary because he visited places no one from his society had ever been, but because he visited so many places. His was not a quest to discover an unknown world, but to travel to every corner of the known world. And for Ibn Battuta, that world was a very large and diverse place indeed, bound together by a dense network of well-travelled roads and sea routes linking communities from West Africa to the Far East.

The excerpts from Ibn Battuta’s account of his travels included in this activity focus on the infrastructure of travel, the physical and institutional systems that made Ibn Battuta’s journeys possible. The large numbers of pilgrims, merchants, and government officials who travelled across Eurasia required access to transportation, places along their routes to replenish supplies, protection from bandits, and some degree of certainty about the kind of reception they would receive when they reached their destinations. Governments had a strong economic interest in facilitating travel, but they also needed to be able to control the flow of foreigners across their borders and to regulate their behavior once they were in their lands. As you read the following excerpts, think about the problems posed by long-distance travel in the fourteenth century. How did the peoples of that era overcome these challenges? Why were they so motivated to do so?