From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Batuta  2/5
Keywords: Travels
Date: 23 Jul 92 04:19:17 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.




IBN BATTUTA  p. 123

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At Ladhiqiya we embarked on a large galley belonging to the Genoese, the
master of which was called Martalmin, and set out for the country of the
Turks known as Bilad ar-Rum [Anatatolia], because it was in ancient times 
their land. {1}  Later on it was conquered by the Muslims, but there are 
still large numbers of Christians there under the government of the 
Turkmen Muslims.  We were ten nights at sea, and the Christian treated us
kindly and took no passage money from us.  On the tenth we reached Alaya
where the province begins. This country is one of the best in the world; in
it God has united the good features dispersed thorughout other lands. Its
people are the most comely of men, the cleanest in their dress, the most
exquisite in their food, and the kindliest folk in creation.  Wherever we
stopped in this land, whether at a hospice or a private house, our
neighbors both men and women(these do not veil themselves) came to ask 
after us.  When we left them they bade us farewell as though they were
our relatives and our own folk, and you would see the women weeping.
They bake bread only once a week, and the men used to bring us gifts of warm 
bread on the day it was baked, along with delicious viands saying "The women
have sent this to you and beg your prayers." All the inhabitants are
orthodox Sunnis; there are no sectarians or heretics among them, but they eat
hashish [Indian hemp], and think no harm of it.

The city of Alaya is a large town on the seacoast.{2} It is inhabited by
the Turkmens, and is visited by the merchants of Cairo, Alexandria, and 
Syria.  The district is well-wooded, and wood is exported from there to
Alexandrietta and Damietta, whence it is carried to the other cities
of Egypt.  There is a magnificent and formidable citadel, built Sultan
Ala ad-Din, at the upper end of town. The qadi of the town rode out with
me to meet the king of Alaya, who is Yusuf Bek, son of Qaraman, bek 
meaning king in their language.  He lives at a distance of ten miles from
the city.  We found him sitting by  himself on the top of a hillock by the
shore, with the amirs and wazirs below him, and the troops on his right
and left. He has his hair dyed black. I saluted him and answered his 
questions regarding my visit to his town, and after my withdrawal he sent
me a present of money.

>From Alaya I went to Antaliya [Adalia], a most beautiful city {3}. It
covers an immense area, and though of vast bulk is one of the most 
attractive towns to be seen anywhere, besides being exceedingly
populous and well laid out.  Each section of the inhabitants lives in a 
separate quarter. The Christian merchants live in a quarter of the town
known as the Mina[the Port], and are surrounded by a wall, the gates of
which are shut upon them from without at night and during the Friday
service. {4}.  The Greeks, who were its former inhabitants, live by
themselves in another quarter, the Jews in another, and the king and his
court and mamluks in another, each of these quarters being walled off
likewise.  The rest of the Muslims live in the main city. Round the whole
town and all the quarters mentioned there is another great wall. The town
contains orchards and produces fine fruits, including an admirable kind
of apricot, called by them Qamar ad-Din, which has a sweet almond in its
kernel.  This fruit is dried and exported to Eqypt, where it is regarded
as a great luxury.

We stayed here at the college mosque of the town, the principal of which
was Shaykh Shihab ad-Din al-Hamawi. Now in all the lands inhabited by
the Turkmens in Anatolia, in every district, town and village, there are to
be found members of the organization known as the Akhiya or Young 
Brotherhood. Nowhere in the world will you find men so eager to welcome
strangers, so prompt to serve food and to satisfy the wants of others, and so 
ready to suppress injustice and to kill [tyrannical] agents of police and the
miscreants who join with them.  A Young Brother, or akhi in their language, is
one who is chosen by all members of his trade [guild], or the other young
unmarried men, or those who live in ascetic retreat, to be their leader. This
organization is known also as the Futuwa, or the Order of Youth.  The leader
builds a hospice and furnishes it with rugs, lamps, and other necessary
appliances.  The members of his community work during the day to gain their
livelihood, and bring him what they have earned in the late afternoon. With
this they buy fruit, food, and the other things which the hospice requires for
their use. If a traveler comes to town that day they lodge him in their
hospice; these provisions serve for his entertainment as their guest, and he
stays with them until he goes away.  If there are no travelers they themselves
assemble to partake of the food, and having eaten it they sang and dance. On
the morrow they return to their occupations and bring their earnings to their
leader in the late afternoon.  The members are called fityan (youths), and 
their leader, as we have said, is the akhi. {5}

FOOTNOTES: 1-5
1. Bilad ar-Rum, literally "the land of the Greeks", though used of the
Byzantine territories generally, was applied more specially, to the frontier
province of Anatolia. After some temporary conquests in earlier centuries, it
had been finally overrun by the Saljuq Turks between 1071 and 1081. Down to the
end of the thirteenth century, the whole peninsula, except those sections 
which were held by the Christians (Byzantium, Trebizond, and Armenia) or the
ruler of Iraq, owed allegiance to the Saljuq sultan of Konia, but from a 
little before 1300 it was parceled out between a score of local chiefs,
whose territories were gradually absorbed into the Ottoman Empire.

2. The port Alaya was constructed by one of the greatest of the Saljuq sultans
of Rum, Ala ad-Din Kay-Qubad I (1219-37), and was renamed after him. To the 
Western merchants it was known as Candelor(from its Byzantine name kalon oros).
Egypt, being notoriously deficient in wood, has always needed to import large 
quantities of it for the building of fleets, etc.

3. Adaliya, known to the Western merchants as Satalia, was the most important
trading station on the south coast of Anatolia, the Egyptian and Cypriote
trade being most active. The lemon is still called Addaliya in Egypt.

4. The closing of the city gates and exclusion of Christians at night and
during the hours of Friday service was observed until quite recently in a 
number of places on the Mediterranean seaboard, such as Sfax, probably as a
measure of precaution against surprise attacks.

5. The history of the organizations called by the name of Futuwa is still
obscure. They appear first in the twelfth century in several divergent
forms, which can probably all be traced to the Sufis, or darwish orders.
The word futuwa, "manliness," had long been applied amongst the latter
 in a moral sense, defined as "to abstain from injury, to give without stint,
and to make no complaint," and the patched robe, mark of a Sufi, was called by 
them libas al-futuwa, "the garment of manliness."  It was applied in a more
aggressive sense among the guilds of "Warriors for the Faith," especially
as the latter degenerated into robber bands, and it is in reference to 
the ceremony of admission into one such band at Baghdad in the middle of
the twelfth century that trousers are first mentioned as the symbolic
libas al-futuwa (Ibn al-Athir XI, 41). A few years later Ibn Jubayr
found in Damascus an organization called the Nubuya, which was engaged in
combatting the fanatical Shi'ite sects in Syria.  The members of the
warrior guild, whose rule it was that no member should call for assistance
in any misfortune that might befall him, elected suitable persons and similarly
invested them with trousers on their admission.

In 1182 the Caliph an-Nasir, having been invested with the libas or trousers
by a Sufi shaykh, conceived the idea of organizing the Futuwa on the lines
of an order of Chivalry (probably on the Frankish model), constituted 
himself sovereign of the order, and bestowed the libas as its insignia on
the ruling princes and other personages of his time.  The ceremony of
installation  included the solemn putting-on of the trousers and drinking
from the 'cup of manhood'(ka's al-futuwa), which contained not wine but
salt and water. The order took over from  its Sufi progenitors a 
fictitious geneology back to the Caliph Ali, and continued to exist for
some time after the reign of nasir in a languishing state. The Brotherhood
which Ibn Batutta found in Konia, and which was distinguished from
the other guilds in Anatolia by its special insignia of the trousers
and its claim to spiritual descent from Ali was probablay a relic of the
order founded by the romantic Caliph. The remaining Anatolian organizations
seem to have been local trade-guilds with a very strong infusion of Sufism,
oddly combined with a political tendency towards local self-government
and the keeping in check of the tyranny of the Turkish sultans. (See generally
Thorning, Turkische Bibliothek, Band XVI (Berlin, 1913), and Wacif Boutros 
Ghali, La Tradition Chevaleresque des Arabes (Paris, 1919), pp.1-33).

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Everything above, unless mistyped is from the book. None of the notes, or
comments are mine.  Enjoy..
-- 

	mark	


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