Why Is Marco Polo More Popular than Ibn Battutah - Essay Example

Farzeela Faisal Academia Research Nov-28-2005 "Why is Marco Polo more popular than Ibn Battutah" Marco Polo and Ibn Battutah, both are considered as well known travelers and writers of their era, both possessed the sense of observation putting down in black and white, both contributed towards Geography, but the consequences that made Marco Polo more popular than Ibn Battutah can be judged in the light of certain facts like Marco Polo possessed a deep sense of surveillance of every thing related to nature, which is highlighted by his work while Ibn Battutah, a religious Arab, possessed his own unique style of observing and saying things accordingly. Marco Polo (1254-1324) was among the first few Europeans who dared to travel the Silk Road to China. His journey through Asia lasted 24 years and he reached to that extent where none of his predecessors had reached before him, beyond Mongolia to China while Muhammed Bin 'Abdullah bin Battutah was the one and only Muslim traveler whose travels lasted for thirty years after which he returned to Morocco at the court of Sultan Abu 'Inan and dictated accounts of his journeys to Ibn Juzzay which later took the form of famous travels of Ibn Battutah. Marco Polo's first journey was a trip to Cathay (China) at the age of seventeen with his father. While traveling towards China they passed through Armenia, Persia, and Afghanistan, over the Pamirs, and all along the Silk Road to China. During their journey they first made a wide swing to the North arriving to the southern Caucasus and the kingdom of Georgia. Then they journeyed along the regions parallel to the western shores of the Caspian Sea, reaching Tabriz and made their way south to Hormuz on the Persian Gulf. From Homurz to Kerman, passing Herat, Balkh, they arrived Badakhshan, where Marco Polo recovered from an illness and stayed there for a year. On the move again, they found themselves on "the highest place in the world, the Pamirs", with its name appeared in the history for the first time. Ibn Battutah on his first journey travelled through Algiers, Tunis, Egypt, Palestine and Syria to Makkah. After visiting Iraq, Shiraz and Mesopotamia he once more returned to perform the Hajj at Makkah and remained there for three years. Ibn Battutah visited China sixty years after Marco Polo and travelled 75,000 miles, much more than Marco Polo and less remembered than Marco Polo. Marco Polo in his travels had visited the sprawling cities and markets that even Christopher Columbus had not seen, which later revealed as the "parts of Asia". Ibn Battutah also informed about such undiscovered lands and added additional knowledge to the works of Marco Polo. Marco Polo arrived the Taklamakan desert (or Taim Basin), after passing through the views of Yarkand, Khotan, Cherchen, and Lop-Nor. It was Marco's ability as a traveler and writer that enabled him to observe and write even the most minute and unnoticeable details after just going through the glimpses. On the other hand one cannot ignore the travel efforts made by Ibn Battutah even at those circumstances at which his ships were wretched. Ibn Battutah after leading three years at Makkah once again packed up and after a visit to Jeddah he went to Yemen by sea, visited Aden and set sail for Mombasa, East Africa. After going up to Kulwa and touching Hormuz, Siraf, Bahrain and Yamama he came back to Oman. He revisited Cairo, Palestine and Syria, thereafter arriving at Aleya (Asia Minor) by sea and travelled across Anatolia and Sinope. He crossed the Black Sea and after long itinerant he reached Constantinople through Southern Ukraine. (A.S Chughtai, Ibn Battutah-The great traveller) He was appointed as chief judge in Delhi, and later, the Sultan as his Ambassador sent him to the Mongol Emperor of China. This trip took him to the Maldives, Bengal, Assam, Sumatra, and finally to the Chinese city of Zaytun and possibly Beijing. He returned to Morocco in 1349. Marco was such a dare hearted traveler that he did not lack behind in exploration of the Gobi Desert, after which he passed through Suchow (Dunhuang), in Tangut province, where Marco stayed for a year. Marco writes: "This desert is reported to be so long that it would take a year to go from end to end; and at the narrowest point it takes a month to cross it. It consists entirely of mountains and sands and valleys. There is nothing at all to eat." < http://www.silk-road.com/toc/copyright.html> Marco Polo is also considered to be the person who introduced different spices like garlic, white papper, black pepper in China. Marco Polo in the period of Quanzhou ship has written on Chinese river shipping and also on sea-going vessels of Guangdong and Fujian. He has done many translations. For example, there are interesting variations in the translation of The Travels of Marco Polo. Marco Polo presented the origin of the theory that Chinese ships had bulkhead compartments that were completely watertight. Later writers followed his suggestion. Ibn Battutah is considered to be a less detailed observer than Marco Polo for the notifications he had. One more blame to the observation of Ibn Battutah is evidenced by his lost work in one of his journey after which he had to reunite his traveling experiences right from the scratch. Ibn Battutah and Marco Polo both have seen and have a clear view of "Mongol culture" and the "Mongol peace" in which the successors of Genghis Khan, having destroyed eastern Islam, including the city of Baghdad, had settled into generally peaceable principalities linked by open trade routes. Ibn Battutah's expertise in Islamic law was as saleable in territories newly brought within the Islamic fold as the Italian wares the Polos carried to the east. As a traveller, Ibn Battutah is wholly convinced of the superiority of his own culture but curious about other non-Islamic civilizations. China, with its vast cities, astonishing technology and unbelief, unsettles him; he finds Mali plain and uncivilized. Pharisaical and even obsessive at the outset, Ibn Battutah is softened by his adventures followed by his faith and his humanity. (Tim Mackintosh Smith 325, Picador) Marco had excel over four languages and gradually listed in the good books of Kublai Khan and has written books on Kublai's Capital which later became part of Beijing, then called Cambaluc or Khanbalig, meant 'city of the Khan.' Marco has made many descriptions on this city and discovered many new things. Marco was deeply impressed with the efficient communication system in the Mongol world as there were three main communicator classes. Marco Polo when travelled in China discovered that Iron manufacture was around 125,000 tons a year (a level not reached in Europe before the 18th century) and salt production was on a unusual scale: 30,000 tons a year in one province alone. Later Marco reported the figures. A canal-based transportation system linked China's huge cities and markets in a vast internal communication network in which paper money and credit facilities were highly developed. The citizens could purchase paperback books with paper money, eat rice from fine porcelain bowls and wear silk garments, lived in prosperous city that no European town could match. Kublai Khan appointed Marco Polo as an official of the Privy Council in 1277 and for 3 years he was a tax inspector in Yanzhou, a city on the Grand Canal, northeast of Nanking. He also visited Karakorum and part of Siberia. His father and uncle took part in the assault on the town of Siang Yang Fou, and designed and constructed siege engines. He frequently visited Hangzhou, another city very near to Yangzhou. My research has escort to the conclusion highlighting several reasons for the popularity of Marco Polo more than Ibn Battutah: 1. Marco Polo had travelled for trade purpose, explored for commercial reasons of the unknown regions of his fellow-citizens, he was not concerned with religion and thus did not traveled to perform any particular religious pilgrimage, whereas Ibn Battutah had a keen interest in visiting Muslim countries, as he was pious and performed many holy pilgrimages like Hajj. 2. As Marco Polo was the first European to reach China, Ibn Battutah left his native Tangier to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, continued east, was away 30 years and travelled three times as far as Marco Polo, some 75,000 miles. (Anthony Sattin, March 20,2005) 3. He appears to have suffered the misfortune at one point in his travels of losing his notes, so that parts of the dictation of his account to Ibn Juzayy had to be reconstructed from memory. Whether completely accurate or not, Ibn Battutah's narrative remains a remarkable and enjoyable record of a tradition that combined the adventure of travel with a quest for knowledge. (Roger Allen, 157) I think one of the most vital reasons of his less popularity is his return and dictations to Juzzay who interpreted and presented Battutah's work in his own manner. When Ibn Battutah returned to Fez, he dictated the accounts of his travels 'Rihala' to Ibn Juzay al-Kalbi at the court of Sultan Abu Inan 'Rihala' is what we would today call an oral history, and Ibn Battuta is not so much its author as its source. He dictated it over the course of two years to the sultan's court poet, who claims, in an introduction, to have approached his assignment with due humility. However, most scholars agree that Ibn Juzayy would have guided and edited Ibn Battuta's recollections, and that, in addition to his own insertions, he took interpretive liberties with some of Ibn Battuta's accounts, in all likelihood to bring them up to stylistic standards of the time and to make them more meaningful to his audience. Now, what one can perceive of being 'meaningful'. (Douglas Bullis, The Longest Hajj The Journeys of Ibn Battuta) 4. Ibn Battutah 's contribution in the field of Geography is never mentioned in the Geography books used in Muslim countries. The omission of reference to Ibn Battuta's contribution in geography books is not an isolated example. Many other Muslims whether historians, doctors, astronomers, scientists or chemists has gone through the same dilemma. It is for sure that the West has ignored all these great Muslim scholars but the ignorance of these men by the Muslim Government is also incomprehensible. (A.S Chughtai, Ibn Battutah-The great traveller) Work Cited Anthony Sattin, Times Online. Tim Mackintosh Smith, March 20, 2005 A.S Chughtai, Ibn Battutah-the great traveller Douglas Bullis, "The Longest Hajj: The Journeys of Ibn Battuta" Marco Polo and his travels, < http://www.silk-road.com/toc/copyright.html> Roger Allen, An Introduction to Arabic Literature, Cambridge, England, 2000. 157. Questia Library The Travels of Ibn Battutah, Tim Mackintosh Smith, 325, Picador Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Great Adventures and Explorations from the Earliest Times to the Present, as Told by the Explorers Themselves, New York, Olive Rathbun Wilcox, 1952. Questia Library. Read More