Ibn Battuta, legend/inspiration/traveler

Many times in life you are asked a question you don’t have answers for; its alright one can’t know everything so I don’t fret about it. If I don’t know something I go ahead and admit that I don’t know without any vacillation. It is when people ask you something about yourself and you don’t have an answer is when it lurks in one’s mind for really long. One such question was “who is your ideal person” or “who do you want to be like” which is essentially someone I model myself after. As a child I would scrape by saying “my mother” or “my father” then later I had the snobbish audacity to say I don’t want to be anyone’s replica, I am an original so no role models for me. This question is fundamentally about the person you admire and whose life will be an inspiration to me and deep down I knew I was uninspired. In the last decade I have figured out a bit about what I want my life to look like and countless role models come to mind. The one person that stuck and never fails to inspire me in the worst of times is Ibn Battuta.

Ibn Battuta was an Islamic scholar and explorer. He was born in 1304 and lived his 65 years of life doing what made him legend, traveling. He is the writer of the book ‘Rihla’ or ‘The journey’ which became a strong source of 14^th century world as we know it.

*the map above shows the places he visited and his mode of transportation, couldn't find one in English online.

He got many culture shocks on his travels. From his orthodox Muslim background the rest of the world seemed very different to him. On seeing a Turkish couple Ibn Battuta though that the man was the woman’s servant given her freedom of speech in front of him, he was later shocked to find out he was her husband. He visited Timbaktu before it was as important to history as it got. From Constantine, Egypt, Jeddah, Mecca, Medina Cairo, Alexandria, Jerusalem to Sind, Delhi, Kozhikode, Beijing He traveled close to 73 thousand miles, in 44 of today’s countries.  

He faced many hardships; travels today can be so taxing even with our modern equipments, ships and planes, so at his time it was an enormous task. He is said to have traveled to Goa in a canoe carved from a single tree. He was never discourage he never complained he was always on the go to be amazed by the world. That is who I want to be someone who lets himself free to see the wonders of the world and get amazed; a traveler who finds his destination in his journey and someone who learns and lives. I would be lucky to have an inch of his understanding of the world. He is truly an inspiration.