From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Batuta 1/5
Keywords: Travels
Date: 23 Jul 92 04:18:04 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


Postings from a book by an Arab equivalent of Marco Polo.

The book: Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354.
Translated and selected by H.A.R. Gibb. Edited by Sir E. Denison Ross and
Eileen Power. Robert M. McBride & Company, New York 1929.

A few lines from the Editors;

"In his book he not only lays before us a faithful portrait of himself, with
all his virtues and his failings, but evokes a whole age as it were from the 
dead....It is impossible not to feel a liking for the character it reveals, 
generous to excess, bold (did ever medieval traveller fear the sea less?),
fond of pleasure and uxorious to a degree, but controlled withal by a deep
vein of piety and devotion, a man with all the makings of a sinner, and 
something of a saint."

Another few lines from the translators.. Page 30

"...There was consequently less stigma attached to slavery, and in
no other society has there been anything resembling the system by which,
as has been shown in the preceding section, the white slaves came to 
furnish the privilidged cadre whence the high officers of state, commanders,
governors, and at length even Sultans, were exclusively drawn.
	
The following story, told by a theologian of the third century, represents
without serious distortion the relation, as numerous parallels in Arabic
literature indicate, often existed between master, wife and slave.

I saw a slave-boy being auctioned for thirty dinars, and as he was worth
three hundred I bought him.  I was building a house at the time, and I gave
him twenty dinars to lay out on the workmen.  He spent ten on them and 
bought a garment for himself with the other ten.  I said to him "What's 
this?" to which he replied "Don't be too hasty; no gentleman scolds his
slaves."  I said to myself "Here have I bought the Caliph's tutor 
without knowing it."  Later on I wanted to marry a woman unknown to my
cousin (i.e. my first wife), so I swore him to secrecy and gave him a 
dinar to buy somethings, including some of the fish called haziba.
But he bought something else, and when I was wroth with him he said "I
find that Hippocrates disapproves of haziba."  I said to him "You
worthless fool, I was not aware that I had bought a Galen," and gave him
ten blows with the whip. But he seized me and gave me seven back saying
"Sir, three blows is enough as a punishment, and the seven I gave you are
my rightful retaliation."  So I made at him and gave him a cut on the head,
whereupon he went off to my cousin, and said to her "Sincerity is a religious
duty, and whoever deceives us is not one of us.  My master has married and he
swore me to silence, and when I said to him that my lady must be told of it
he broke my head."  So my cousin would neither let me into her house nor
let me have anything out of it, until at last I had to divorce the
other woman. After that she used to call the boy "The honest lad," and I 
could not say a word to him, so I said to myself "I shall set him free,
and then I shall have peace."

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-- 

	mark	


   hubey@pilot.njin.net                   hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
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