While in India, Ibn Battuta arrives to Calicut.
Item
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Title
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While in India, Ibn Battuta arrives to Calicut.
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Description
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“Thence we travelled to the city of Qaliqut [Calicut], which is one of the chief ports in Mulaybar and one of the largest harbours in the world. It is visited by men from China, Sumatra, Ceylon, the Maldives, Yemen, and Fars, and in it gather merchants from all quarters.
The sultan of Calicut is an infidel, known as ‘the Samari.’ He is an aged man and shaves his beard, as some of the Greeks do. In this town too lives the famous shipowner Mithqal, who possesses vast wealth and many ships for his trade with India, China, Yemen, and Fars. When we reached the city, the principal inhabitants and merchants and the sultan’s representative came out to welcome us, with drums, trumpets, bugles and standards on their ships. We entered the harbour in great pomp, the like of which I have never seen in those lands, but it was a joy to be followed by distress. We stopped in the port of Calicut, in which there were at the time thirteen Chinese vessels, and disembarked. Every one of us was lodged in a house and we stayed there three months as the guests of the infidel, awaiting the season of the voyage to China. On the Sea of China travelling is done in Chinese ships only…
In all the lands of Mulaybar, except in this one land alone, it is the custom that whenever a ship is wrecked all that is taken from it belongs to the treasury. At Calicut however it is retained by its owners and for that reason Calicut has become a flourishing city and attracts large numbers of merchants.”
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Subject
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Travel
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Source
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Gibb 234-235; 237.
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Date
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1341
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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.
