Ibn Battuta reaches Delhi.
Item
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Title
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Ibn Battuta reaches Delhi.
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Description
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“On the next day we arrived at the city of Dihli [Delhi], the metropolis of India, a vast and magnificent city, uniting beauty with strength. It is surrounded by a wall that has no equal in the world, and is the largest city in India, nay rather the largest city in the entire Muslim Orient.
The city of Delhi is made up now of four neighbouring and contiguous towns. One of them is Delhi proper, the old city built by the infidels and captured in the year 1188. The second is called Siri, known also as the Abode of the Caliphate; this was the town given by the sultan to Ghiyath ad-Din, the grandson of the ‘Abbasid Caliph Mustansir, when he came to his court. The third is called Tughlaq Abad, after its founder, the Sultan Tughlaq, the father of the sultan of India to whose court we came...The fourth is called Jahan Panah, and is set apart for the residence of the reigning sultan, Muhammad Shah. He was the founder of it and it was his intention to unite these four towns within a single wall, but after building part of it he gave up the rest because of the expense required for its construction.
The cathedral mosque occupies a large area; its walls, roof, and paving are all constructed of white stones, admirably squared and firmly cemented with lead. There is no wood in it at all...In the northern court is the minaret, which has no parallel in the lands of Islam.”
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Subject
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Travel
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Source
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Gibb 194-195.
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Date
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1334
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Bibliographic Citation
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Ibn Batuta, Gibb, H. A. R. S., Sanguinetti, B. R., & Defremery, C. (1958). Travels of Ibn Battuta, A.D. 1325-1354. Cambridge: Published for the Hakluyt Society at the University Press.
