A Study at UoB Regards the Journey of Ibn Battuta as a Cultural Reference for the Middle Ages

University of Bahrain – Sakhir (Ali Al-Sabbagh)

March 19, 2022

A study at the University of Bahrain confirmed that the cultural representations in the Journey of Ibn Battuta are a reflection of reality to a large extent, and that they were not based on previous impressions alone. The study noted that Ibn Battuta’s personality and his job as a judge played a major role in his impartiality in writing about peoples’ cultures and customs.

The study, prepared by the master’s student in the Arabic language, Faculty of Arts, UoB, Dalal Rashid Al-Thawadi, revealed that Ibn Battuta relied on watching and examining in writing about the peoples and places he visited and passed through.

The study, submitted by the researcher in fulfillment of the requirements of the master’s degree in Arabic language, was entitled “Representations of the ego and the other in (The Masterpiece of Attention in the Oddity of Regions and Wonders of Travel) by Ibn Battuta, a cultural narrative approach.”

Al-Thawadi stated, “The journey of Ibn Battuta is a cultural reference for the Middle Ages, as cultural similarities were manifested in their best forms. This is due to the accuracy of Ibn Battuta’s phrases, the beauty of his words, and the accuracy of the description he employed to convey this culture. His memoirs were the main factor in transmitting these cultural representations at the time.”

The study, supervised by the Head of the Department of Arabic Language and Islamic Studies at UoB, Dr. Diaa Abdullah Al-Kaabi, sought to examine the journey of Ibn Battuta in its cultural context, transcending structure and description to interpretation of narrative representations in the light of cultural criticism theory, and then studying the narrative discourse, as an adventure to explore knowledge.

An examination committee has recently discussed the student in her thesis. The committee consisted of Associate Professor of Narrative and Modern Literary Criticism, Department of Arabic Language and Islamic Studies, Dr. Diaa Abdullah Al-Kaabi, as a supervisor, Professor of Literature and Modern Critical Studies, Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Bahrain, Dr. Abdel Fatah Ahmed Yusuf, as an external examiner and the faculty member, College of Arts and Human Sciences of Ben M’Sick, Casablanca, Morocco, Prof. Shoaib Halifi as an external examiner.

The researcher pointed out that Ibn Battuta attached great importance to man in the various contexts of narration and description that he recorded during his journey. Ibn Battuta focused on man’s interaction with nature as well as the relationship between the man and the place, so he depicted social life and what it was like.

According to the findings of the study, Ibn Battuta’s narration of the events of the Journey relied on the principle of recalling and regression of events stored in his memory, and the attempt to retrieve events related to the mind, to link the events to each other. In some situations, Ibn Battuta depended on improvisation, which was evident in the succession of narration between the temporal and spatial elements, which constitutes the external framework of the journey.

Findings of the study also indicated that the traveler may have used all the narrative techniques, including the dialogue, description, place, and characters to represent the culture of ego and the culture of the other, which greatly affects the recipient.

The researcher concluded that that the text of the Journey of Ibn Battuta was a first-class narrative text of events that depicted the characters with a diversity of styles, including interesting storytelling, and the accurate description of the reality that provokes feelings and emotions. In addition, it included the technique of the dialogue.

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