Reddit reviews The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century

A great source for these questions is The Adventures of Ibn Battuta by Ross E. Dunn. Most (if not all) your questions can be answered there. For your convenience, I'll offer up some answers for you! :D

Currency. With no exchange rate or global economy, how did the travellers handle currency?
Did people usually travel alone or in groups? If groups, how large generally were they?
This kinda ties into (1), but how did they maintain an income? Ibn Batuta travelled constantly for many years; how did he have the money to carry on?

The following passage refers to pilgrims traveling to Mecca, but also applies to most travelers as well. This also applies to travelers who do not have much money:

>Whether by land or sea, getting to Mecca was a risky affair. If seafarers had to brave storms, pirates, and hostile navies, overland travelers confronted bandits, nomad marauders, or the possibility of stumbling into a war between one North African state and another. Consequently, most piligrims going overland kept, for the sake of security, to the company of others, often the small caravans that shuttled routinely between the towns and rural markets. Travelers who had little money to start with frequently traded a stock of wares of their own along the way - leather goods or precious stones for example - or offered their labor here and there, sometimes taking several months or even years to finally work or chaffer their way as far as Egypt.

>Quite apart from these little bands of plgrims in the company of merchants and wayfarers was the great hajj caravan, which ideally went every year from Morocco to Cairo, and from their to the Hijaz with the pilgrims from Egypt.




Provisions (Food, Supplies, Accommodation etc) - How well planned were these travels?

Depends. A Hajj caravan, specifically one planned by the Ilkhanate or Ayyubid Egypt would be a state-sponsored affair. For a single traveller, it was very ad hoc, taking months years to travel here to there.

As in, they couldn't have taken food for more than 6 months (shooting in the dark). What if the place they were going to had a war, and supplies were low? Did they actually plan for this or were they running blind here?

There was really no need to take that much food, as the travelers mostly went through well-established trade routes, connecting towns to towns, cities to cities. In the case of war, you were essentially stuck and hope hostilities cease. If it took months or years, then tough luck. But as the Islamic world was more or less interconnected, people had a rough sketch of what was going on a couple of states away. This was still inadequate to predict any circumstances, so delays were often and frequent.

This kind of carries on from the last one, but Accommodation - Where exactly did they sleep? Some were well known scholars and relied on the patronage of monarchs, I understand that,but surely that was not true of all of them? What about when traversing the countryside? Did they carry tents with them?

You are right, it was not simply monarchal patronage. However, it's important to know that in medieval Islamic culture (yes, it's a broad term...) there was a prestige for local notables, wealthy individuals, and governors to give accommodations to travelers, specifically those taking part of the Hajj as well as scholars. Ibn Battuta, being both, was able to get the patronage of individuals from across the Islamic world and was able to find a place to sleep when in a town.

In addition, as a scholar, Ibn Battuta tended to head to the nearest mosque or college, where accodomations were given to visiting scholars. As Ibn Battuta also stayed in Mecca after the Hajj to study, he had a prestige that any provincial school wanted. Why not have a visiting scholar who studied in Mecca and practiced a legalistic school (Maliki) that could provide insight when compared to the Shafi'i or Hanafi school prevalent outside North Africa?

What were there provisions for dealing against hostiles? Not robbers or bandits, which I'm sure were frequent and dealt with accordingly, but if the ruler of the place they're visiting turns out to be hostile towards them?

A Muslim ruler would be foolish to turn hostile to pilgrims, Hajjis, scholars, or travelers. It's taboo to attack them, and it's a sign of prestige to host them. Not that this didn't happen - it did - but it was rare for a Muslim ruler to do this.

Or say, they find that urban civilisation hasn't really made progress in some parts and they come across warrior tribes?

They had a rough idea where they were going and tended to travel on the beaten path. As Ibn Battuta was focused on visiting other schools, he really didn't have a need to wander that far. But urban civilization was a hallmark of the Islamic world, so it's not something he needed to worry about that often.

This was assigned to me in a 200-level Islamic Studies course a few years back. Found it to be a pretty good read.