Ibn Battuta in Mali (1352): A Traveller at Mansa Sulayman's Court

Ibn Battuta’s journey to Mali was the last great voyage of the Moroccan traveller, who crossed the Sahara in 1352 and spent about eight months at the court of Mansa Sulayman. His account, dictated a few years later, is the only detailed eyewitness description of the medieval Mali Empire written by an outsider. It reveals court ceremonial, justice, religious life and daily customs in one of Africa’s greatest states.

Background: the traveller and the empire

By 1352 Ibn Battuta, born in Tangier in 1304, had already spent more than 25 years travelling through the Islamic world, from Arabia and East Africa to India and China (see Ibn Battuta’s Travels). He had returned to Morocco in 1349 and entered the service of the Marinid sultan Abu Inan Faris in Fez.

South of the Sahara lay the Mali Empire, famous since Mansa Musa’s Hajj in 1324 had dazzled Cairo with its gold. Mali was now ruled by Musa’s brother, Mansa Sulayman, who reigned from about 1341 to 1360. The empire controlled the goldfields of the upper Niger and Senegal and much of the trade across the western Sahara.

Why Ibn Battuta made the journey is not entirely clear. He may have been sent by Abu Inan, or he may simply have wanted to complete his knowledge of the Muslim world by visiting its southernmost great kingdom.

Across the Sahara

Ibn Battuta left Fez in late 1351 and travelled to Sijilmasa, the great caravan town on the northern edge of the desert (see Sijilmasa). On 18 February 1352 he left with a caravan of merchants.

After 25 days the caravan reached Taghaza, the salt-mining settlement in the middle of the desert. Ibn Battuta describes a village without any vegetation, where houses and the mosque were built of blocks of salt and roofed with camel skins. The miners, many of them enslaved workers of the Massufa, depended on dates and millet brought from outside, but salt from Taghaza was so valuable in the south that it was traded for gold.

The caravan then crossed a stretch of desert where water was scarce, guided by members of the Massufa, a Berber people who controlled the route. Ibn Battuta notes the danger of getting lost and the practice of sending a scout ahead to ask the people of Walata to bring water to meet the caravan.

Walata: first impressions

The caravan reached Walata (Iwalatan, today Oualata in Mauritania), the northernmost town of the Mali Empire, in April 1352, about two months after leaving Sijilmasa. Ibn Battuta stayed there for some 50 days.

His first impressions were poor. He was offended when the Mali governor, the farba, received the merchants sitting on a platform and speaking to them through an intermediary, which he took as a sign of contempt for white visitors. He also disapproved of local customs among the Massufa, especially the freedom of women to have male friends and the practice of inheritance passing through a man’s sister’s sons rather than his own children.

At the same time he noted that the people of Walata were devout Muslims who prayed regularly and studied Islamic law. Walata was a busy commercial town where North African merchants met traders from the south, and its people, he observed, wore fine imported Egyptian cloth. His stay there gave him time to recover from the desert crossing and to learn how travel and trade worked inside the empire.

At the court of Mansa Sulayman

From Walata Ibn Battuta travelled south for about 24 days to the capital, which he calls simply the city of Mali. He arrived on 28 June 1352. Its location is still unknown: Niani in present-day Guinea is one proposed site, but archaeology has not confirmed it, and other places near the Niger have been suggested.

His welcome gift from the king was, in his words, so small that he laughed: three loaves of bread, a piece of beef fried in shea butter and a gourd of sour milk. Later, after he made a public complaint to the mansa, Sulayman gave him a house and an allowance. Ibn Battuta comments that Sulayman was a miserly king compared with his generous brother Musa, whose gifts were still remembered.

He describes royal audiences in detail. The mansa sat on a raised platform under a tree, or in a domed hall, surrounded by armed guards, musicians and officials. Subjects approached on their knees, sprinkled dust on their heads and spoke to the king through an interpreter, the official spokesman Dugha. At festivals Dugha and his wives performed music, and poets in bird-like costumes recited the deeds of earlier kings, a tradition linked to the griots, the hereditary praise singers and historians of the Mande world.

Ibn Battuta also recorded a political crisis. The senior queen, Qasa, was accused of plotting against Sulayman with one of his relatives and was disgraced. He attended a ceremony held in memory of the Marinid sultan Abu al-Hasan, father of Abu Inan, which showed the friendly relations between Mali and Morocco.

During his stay he fell seriously ill after eating a local dish and needed many weeks to recover.

What he admired and what he criticised

Ibn Battuta’s judgement of Mali was mixed, and he was frank about both sides.

He praised the safety of the roads, saying that travellers had nothing to fear from robbers, and the rarity of injustice, which the people hated more than any other people he knew. He noted that the property of foreigners who died in the country was kept safe for their rightful heirs. He admired the people’s attendance at Friday prayers, their white clothes on Fridays and their efforts to make children memorise the Qur’an, sometimes by putting them in fetters until they had learned it.

He criticised other customs. He was shocked that female servants and young girls appeared naked at court, that women did not cover themselves, that people sprinkled dust on their heads before the king and that some ate animals forbidden in Islamic law. He also disliked the praise poets’ performances. These complaints reflect the views of a strict scholar of Maliki law from North Africa as much as conditions in Mali.

The return journey

Ibn Battuta left the capital on 27 February 1353. He travelled to Timbuktu, then a modest town, where he saw the grave of the Andalusian poet and architect Abu Ishaq al-Sahili, who had come to Mali with Mansa Musa (see Timbuktu). From there he went down the Niger by boat to Gao, which he describes as one of the finest towns in the region.

From Gao he travelled east with a caravan to Takedda, a copper-producing town in present-day Niger. There a messenger brought an order from Sultan Abu Inan to return to Morocco. He left Takedda in September 1353 with a large caravan, crossed the central Sahara through the Hoggar region and Tuat, and reached Fez early in 1354.

The Rihla and its value as a source

Back in Fez, Abu Inan ordered Ibn Battuta to dictate his memories to the court scholar Ibn Juzayy. The resulting book, known as the Rihla (“journey”), was completed in December 1355.

The Mali section is short compared with other parts of the book, but it is of exceptional value. Earlier Arabic writers such as al-Umari described Mali from information gathered in Cairo, and the Timbuktu chronicles and Mande oral epics were written down centuries later. Ibn Battuta is the only outsider who described the empire at its height from personal experience.

Historians read it critically. The text was written from memory years after the journey, some dates and details are confused, and Ibn Juzayy edited and embellished parts of it. Ibn Battuta’s judgements reflect his own background and prejudices. Even so, much of what he describes, from the role of interpreters and griots to the importance of Islam at court, fits other evidence.

Key people

• Ibn Battuta: Moroccan scholar and traveller who visited Mali in 1352–1353.
• Mansa Sulayman: ruler of Mali c. 1341–1360, brother of Mansa Musa.
• Dugha: the royal interpreter and spokesman at Sulayman’s court.
• Abu Inan Faris: Marinid sultan of Morocco, who recalled Ibn Battuta and commissioned the Rihla.
• Ibn Juzayy: scholar who wrote down and edited Ibn Battuta’s account.

Timeline

• 1352, 18 February: Ibn Battuta leaves Sijilmasa with a trans-Saharan caravan.
• 1352, March: The caravan reaches the salt mines of Taghaza.
• 1352, April: Arrival at Walata, the northern gateway of Mali.
• 1352, 28 June: Arrival at the capital of Mansa Sulayman.
• 1353, 27 February: Departure from the capital towards Timbuktu and Gao.
• 1353, September: He leaves Takedda for Morocco on the sultan’s orders.
• 1354, early: Arrival in Fez.
• 1355, December: The Rihla is completed by Ibn Juzayy.

Why it matters

Ibn Battuta’s journey to Mali gives a rare first-hand view of a powerful medieval African empire, its court and its people. His observations, both admiring and critical, remain essential for historians of West Africa. They also show how closely the Sahara connected West Africa with North Africa and the wider Islamic world in the 14th century.