Medieval Geographers

1
Medieval Geographers

• Marco Polo and
• Ibn Battuta

2
Marco Polo

• Born
• 1254 in Venice, Italy
• Traveled
• 1271-1295
• Died
• 1324

3
Marco Polo

• Probably the most famous Westerner who traveled
  the Silk Road.
• Excelled in his determination, writing and
  influence.
• His journey through Asia, which he began at the
  age of 16, lasted 24 years and reached further
  than any of his predecessors - beyond Mongolia to
  China.
• He became a confidant of Kublai Khan (1214-1294),
  traveled much of China and returned to tell the
  tale, The Description of the World, which
  became a great and influential travelogue.

4
Marco Polos travels
5
Marco Polo

• The Description of the World was very popular and
  had a tremendous impact on Europe in his day.
• Known as IL MILIONE (The Million Lies) and
  Marco earned the nickname Marco Milione because
  few believed that his stories were true. Most
  Europeans dismissed the book as exotic fable
  (which some of it clearly was).
• More than a hundred years passed before the
  stories were verified and many accepted as
  non-fiction.
• Background on Europe China during this period

6
Marco Polo

• His father and uncle, both merchants, traveled to
  China when Marco was a child.
• He set out on a return journey with them in 1271
  to travel to the Mongol Empire. They arrived in
  Shangdu at the court of Kublai Khan, Mongol ruler
  of China, in 1275.
• Marco Polo found favor with the Khan, was
  appointed to high posts in his administration,
  and traveled a great deal in China as a result.
  He was amazed with China's enormous power, great
  wealth, and complex social structure.

7
This medieval manuscript illustration shows Marco
Polo (along with his father, Niccolò, and his
uncle, Maffeo) beginning their famous trip from
Italy to China in 1271. For many years Polos
book, The Description of the World, was the only
account of such places as China, Thailand (then
Siam), Japan, Java, Vietnam, Sri Lanka (then
Ceylon), Tibet, India, and Myanmar (then known as
Burma). The book also served as a stimulus to
Christopher Columbus journey to the New World in
1492. The colored illuminated manuscript here
dates from 1375. THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE/Corbis
(http//encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefMedia.a
spx?refid461532061artrefid761556866sec-1pn1
)
8
Kublai Khan and a tablet of safe passage given
to Marco and his family on their travels
9
Marco Polo

• The account of his travels exercised deep
  influence on European readers. His book is a mix
  of accurate descriptions of things he saw and the
  passing along of fables about far away lands.
• His systematic observations of nature,
  anthropology, and geography were ahead of his
  time.
• For hundreds of years, his story was one of the
  only sources of European information about China
  (Columbus relied heavily on Marco Polos
  geography when planning his own voyage to reach
  Asian markets by sailing west from Europe).

10
Mongol Empire
11
Marco Polo

• He received little recognition from the
  geographers of his time, but some of the
  information in his book was incorporated in
  important maps of the later Middle Ages.
• His system of measuring distances by days'
  journey has turned out for later generations of
  explorers to be remarkably accurate.
• Today topographers have called his work the
  precursor of scientific geography.

12
Ibn Battuta

• Born
• 1304 in Tangier, Morocco
• Travels
• 1325 approx. 1355
• Died
• 1369 in Fez, Morocco

13
Ibn Battuta

• Arab equivalent of Marco Polo. He traveled much
  of the known world of his day and recorded
  volumes about the people and places he visited.
• His travels began in 1325, when he was twenty-one
  years of age, on a Hajj, or Muslim pilgrimage to
  Mecca. They lasted for about thirty years,
  covering about 75,000 miles, visiting the
  equivalent of 44 modern countries.
• He dictated accounts of his journeys, known as
  the famous Rihala (My Travels) of Ibn Battuta.
• They are a valuable and interesting record of
  places which add to our understanding of the
  Middle Ages.

14
Ibn Batutta traveled through much of the area
within the green line. Compare with Marco Polos
travels, indicated by the red line.
15
Ibn Battuta

• Only medieval traveler who is known to have
  visited the lands of every Muslim ruler of his
  time. He also traveled in Ceylon (present Sri
  Lanka), China and Byzantium and South Russia.
• His sea voyages and references to shipping
  indicate that Muslims completely dominated the
  maritime activity of the Red Sea, the Arabian
  Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Chinese waters.
• He visited China sixty years after Marco Polo and
  traveled far more extensively than his
  predecessor.
• Throughout his travels he recorded descriptions
  of people, places and customs in vivid detail.

16
Ibn Battuta

• Here is an example which describes Baghdad in the
  early 14th century
• "Then we traveled to Baghdad, the Abode of Peace
  and Capital of Islam. Here there are two bridges
  like that at Hilla, on which the people promenade
  night and day, both men and women. The baths at
  Baghdad are numerous and excellently constructed,
  most of them being painted with pitch, which has
  the appearance of black marble. This pitch is
  brought from a spring between Kufa and Basra,
  from which it flows continually. It gathers at
  the sides of the spring like clay and is shoveled
  up and brought to Baghdad. Each establishment has
  a number of private bathrooms, every one of which
  has also a washbasin in the corner, with two taps
  supplying hot and cold water. Every bather is
  given three towels, one to wear round his waist
  when he goes in, another to wear round his waist
  when he comes out, and the third to dry himself
  with."

17
The medieval Muslim empire
18
Ibn Battuta

• In the next example Ibn Battuta describes in
  great detail some of the crops and fruits
  encountered on his travels
• "From Kulwa we sailed to Dhafari Dhofar, at the
  extremity of Yemen. Thoroughbred horses are
  exported from here to India, the passage taking a
  month with favouring wind.... The inhabitants
  cultivate millet and irrigate it from very deep
  wells, the water from which is raised in a large
  bucket drawn by a number of ropes. In the
  neighborhood of the town there are orchards with
  many banana trees. The bananas are of immense
  size one which was weighed in my presence scaled
  twelve ounces and was pleasant to the taste and
  very sweet. They also grow betel-trees and
  coco-palms, which are found only in India and the
  town of Dhafari."

19

• Ancient travel map of Europe, northern Africa,
• and the Mediterranean region

20
Ibn Battuta

• Here is an excerpt from his travels through
  Turkey
• "From Alaya I went to Antaliya, a most beautiful
  city. 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. 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."

21
Painting of Muslim mosque and religious life
22
Ibn Battuta

• This final example displays Ibn Battutas level
  of geographic detail
• "Then the Nile (Niger) comes down from Zagha to
  Tunbuktu (Timbuktu), then to Kawkaw (Gao), the
  two places we shall mention below. Then the river
  flows to Yufi (Nupe?), which is one of the
  biggest cities of the blacks. A white man cannot
  go there because they would kill him before he
  arrived there. Then the river comes down from
  there to the land of the Nubians who follow the
  Nasraniyya (Christian) faith, and on to Dunqula
  (Dongola), which is the biggest town in their
  land. ...Then it descends to the cataracts. This
  is the last district of the blacks and the first
  of Uswan (Aswan) in Upper Egypt."

23
References

• Marco Polo
• http//www.silk-road.com/artl/marcopolo.shtml
• http//www.silk-road.com/maps/images/polomap.jpg
• http//www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/mpolo44-46.h
  tml
• http//geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa081798
  .htm
• http//www.kyrene.k12.az.us/schools/brisas/sunda/g
  reat/polo.jpg
• http//www.tk421.net/essays/polo.shtml
• http//encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/refarticle.
  aspx?refid761556866
• Ibn Battuta
• http//www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/Ibn_Battu
  ta/Ibn_Battuta_Rihla.html
• http//www.ummah.net/history/scholars/ibn_battuta/
  
• http//www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/batuta.html
  
• http//www.manntaylor.com/battuta.html
• http//score.rims.k12.ca.us/activity/a_journey_bat
  tuta/