2 



JOURNAL R. A. S., CEYLON. 



[EXTRA NO, 



Ibn Batuta was born at Tangiers in 1304, and died at Fez 

 1377-8. The following summary of his travels of twenty-four 

 years (1325 to 1349) is given by Dr. Birdwood of the India 

 Office. From Tangiers he travelled across Africa to Alex- 

 andria, and in Palestine, Syria, and Arabia : down the east coast 

 of Africa to Qui! on : across the Indian Ocean to Muscat, Ormuz, 

 Kish, Bahrein and El Catif : through Central Arabia to Mecca 

 and Jeddah: and again in Egypt and Asia Minor, and across the 

 Black Sea to Caffa or Theodosia, and by Azov or Tana i on 

 past the hills of the Russians' to Bolgar on the Volga — but 

 not daring to penetrate further northwards into c the land of 

 Darkness.' Returning south to Haj-Tarkhan (Astrakhan) he 

 proceeded in the suite of the wife of the Khan of Kipchah, the 

 daughter of the Greek Emperor Andronicus, westward to Soldaia 

 and Constantiniah (Constantinople), whence returning to Bolgar 

 he travelled on eastward to Bokhara, and through Khorassan to 

 Cabul, Multan, and Delhi where he remained eight years (1334- 

 42). Being sent on an embassy to China he embarked at Kin- 

 baiat (Cambay), and after many adventures at Calicut (where he 

 was honorably received by the e Samari' or Zamorin) and Huna- 

 war (Onore), and in the Maldive Islands (beginning of 1343 — 

 August, 1344) and Ceylon and Bengal, he at last took his pas- 

 sage toward China in a junk bound for Java, as he calls it, but 

 in fact Sumatra. Returning from China, he sailed direct from 

 the coast of Malabar to Muscat and Ormuz : and travelling by 

 Shiraz, Bagdad, Jerusalem, Damascus and for the fourth time to 

 Mecca, Egypt, Tunis, at last reached Fez again, after an absence 

 of half his life-time. .Subsequently he spent six years in Spain and 

 Central Africa, where he was the guest of the brother of a country- 

 man of his own from Centra, whose guest he had been in China. 

 " What an enormous distance lay between these two !" he exclaims. 



The first detailed account of his book was published in Europe 

 only in 1808. Moura in 1845 commenced a translation in Portu- 

 guese of a copy obtained at Fez at the end of last century. The 

 abridgment translated by Lee was brought from the east by Burck- 

 hart. It was not till the French conquest of Algeria that the 

 best and completest texts were obtained. Five are in the Im- 

 perial Library at Paris, only two of which are perfect. From 

 these M. M. Defremery and Sanguinetti made their translation 

 for the Societe Asiatique : and it is from their version that the 

 present account of the Maldives and Ceylon visithas been extract- 

 ed. His description of the Maldives is the most interesting and 

 complete in existence, excepting only that of Pyrard de Laval. 



