Abstract
Abu ‘Abdallah ibn Battuta was a Muslim legal scholar who traveled nearly 73,000 miles in the mid-fourteenth century and wrote a popular rihla, or travel diary, of his experiences. The rihla was a public and impersonal genre that traditionally contained little, if any, biographical material about its author. However, Ibn Battuta’s rihla includes detailed narratives about its author’s marriages, concubines, and sexual exploits. Although discussion of these themes is virtually unseen in other contemporary rihlas, few historians have discussed why Ibn Battuta breaks tradition to include this material.
This paper argues that Ibn Battuta describes his marital and sexual behavior to create and further an image of himself as a traditional and pious Muslim. It also analyzes Ibn Battuta’s detailed presentation of his romantic life, which offers a fascinating and unique window into his and his medieval Moroccan audience’s cultural attitudes towards marriage, sexuality, and sexual slavery.
Love, Sex, and Marriage in Ibn Battuta's Travels
Abu ‘Abdallah ibn Battuta was a Muslim legal scholar who traveled nearly 73,000 miles in the mid-fourteenth century and wrote a popular rihla, or travel diary, of his experiences. The rihla was a public and impersonal genre that traditionally contained little, if any, biographical material about its author. However, Ibn Battuta’s rihla includes detailed narratives about its author’s marriages, concubines, and sexual exploits. Although discussion of these themes is virtually unseen in other contemporary rihlas, few historians have discussed why Ibn Battuta breaks tradition to include this material.
This paper argues that Ibn Battuta describes his marital and sexual behavior to create and further an image of himself as a traditional and pious Muslim. It also analyzes Ibn Battuta’s detailed presentation of his romantic life, which offers a fascinating and unique window into his and his medieval Moroccan audience’s cultural attitudes towards marriage, sexuality, and sexual slavery.
