"The Adventures of Ibn Battuta" by Ross E. Dunn - Review

The "Mongol Peace" of 13th-14th centuries had enabled commerce on a global scale, for the first time since the fall of west Roman empire. Close to 100 years (around AD 1250-1350), travelers and merchants of whole Eurasia (both from west and east) could criss-cross the known world in relative peace. 

[Now this sounds exciting but if you ask me it would have been much better for a humankind if mongols would have never appeared on world stage in 13th century, to begin with. If there is a single event that negatively altered the whole history of humankind in the past 2000 years, it would be mongols].

In this book, Ross Dunn had analysed  travel accounts of the most famous [moroccan] explorer, Ibn Battuta. Born in early 14th century in modern day Morocco (then part of Marinid empire), Ibn Battuta left his native country when he was in his early twenties and spent traveling and residing in foreign countries for next 30 years. He was a modest scholar of Qu'ran. His travel itinerary covers whole of north Africa (Maghreb and Egypt), Saudi Arabia, modern day Turkey and Istanbul, Iran, Ukraine and south of Russia (Golden Horde), central Asia and Afghanistan, India and Sri Lanka, Maldives, south China and Mali Empire (African empire that were quite advanced with the regard to gender equality, even by 20th century standards). 

It appears that Ibn Battuta got married 6 times (5 of these marriages happened in Maldives). He was appointed as a chief judge in Delhi by shade of god Sultan Muhammad Tughluq.  

It is a twist of fate that almost every great empire Ibn Battuta visited during his travels collapsed within his life time or next 20 years (Mongol empire in Iran, Delhi Sultanate, Mongol empire in China, Mongol empire in Central Asia). 

It is remarkable that a single person could travel such length. In year 1347, on his way home to his native country, Ibn Battuta even survived black plague pandemia (1347), a global disease that put an end to global travel and precipitated collapse of mongol world empire.      

There is lots of books about Ibn Battuta, including his own account of his travels. However, for the beginners, it is advisable to choose the book that provides an analysis of his travels rather than to read Ibn Battuta's own accounts (which contains lots of inaccuracies). 

posted by David Usharauli

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Travels in Georgia, Persia (Iran), Armenia, ancient Babylonia (Iraq), ...during the years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820

I am very interested in history, especially if the source comes from the first hand knowledge. In this regard travelers memoirs are very valuable. The Internet Archive is a digitized collection of many historical documents, including private memoirs. Wonderful thing is that it is free to download and read.  

By random search I found this memoir written by British officer, Sir Robert Ker Porter who traveled from Russian Empire to Persian Kingdom soon after Napoleonic wars concluded in Europe (1815). 

My interest was to learn, from his observations, about conditions of early 19th Georgia. By the time of his travel, a small kingdom of Georgia located south to Caucasian mountains, was absorbed into Russian Empire as an another province. 

As Robert Porter writes, he traveled to Persia via Georgia. His travel memoir was originally printed in 1821. I was surprised to learned that West Europeans already by early 19th century referred to Kingdom of Georgia as Georgia. Honestly, I do not know when word Georgia was first coined in reference to kingdom of Georgia since Russians till these days (and then too) refer to Georgia as Gruzia, while Persians and Turks call it Gurjistan (land of Gurjs). In Georgian language the name for the country is entirely different, Saqartvelo, i.e. land of Qartveli, original ethnic population occupying land in central Georgia.  

Sir Robert Porter devotes few lines to Georgia, however. He mentions that roads and living accommodations were very poor in Georgia proper. That is not surprising considering that Georgia was by end of 18th century at the brink of total economical and social collapse. 

I was disappointed that I did not learn much about early 19th century Georgia from Sir Robert Porter's writings. He frequently compares his notes to those found in memoirs of Chardin, another European fellow traveler who appeared to visit the same locations some 100 years earlier. It looks like that Chardin was kind of authority for later travelers. His memoirs would be next logical step.

posted by David Usharauli

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