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Ibn Bafufah in Southern India. 
(By Mrs. L. FLETCHER.) 
The French Asiatic Society published, in 1858, a very inter- 
esting translation of a fonrteenth-century MS. in Arabic, left 
by Abu Abdullah Muhammad, better known as Ibn Batutah, 
which gives a detailed account of the journeys, by sea and 
land, of this great traveller, who, with an insatiable craving 
to see new places and people, disregarded hardships and 
dangers and journeyed over distances which appear almost 
marvellous when the difficulty of locomotion in those days is 
considered. The customary pilgrimage to Mecca, to perform 
which he left his home in Tangiers at the age of twenty- 
two, aroused Ibn Batutah's love of travel, and from that 
time he continued to lead a wandering life for twenty-seven 
years. 
He visited A-rabia, Syria, Persia, Mesopotamia and Zan- 
zibar, Asia Minor, Bokhara and Afghanistan, and, having 
entered the Punjab by the valley of the Indus, reached Delhi, 
where he was employed in the honom-able capacity of kazi 
by the emperor. Of his travels through Sindh a brief account 
has already been published by General Haigh, but it is with 
his experiences in Southern India this paper proposes to deal. 
Before, however, proceeding to epitomize from his narrative, 
it is necessary to say a few words about the chronicler him- 
self, and how far his statements about men and things are to 
be relied upon. An Arab by birth and a devout Muham- 
madan— a Sunni — he entertained a great respect for the 
mullahs and saints of his faith, and throughout the whole 
account of his travels wonderful tales and legends of miracles 
