Ibn Battuta and His Journey

Journey: Escape, Journey--so appropriate.

In class, we unpacked the reasons why Ibn Battuta might have traveled.  He was a scholar, he was on the most epic journey of his religious life, et cetera, et cetera.  Naturally, all of these are correct and are probably even more correct than what I’m about to propose.  Given my natural tendency to psychoanalyze people, I, of course was more drawn to thinking about the emotional reasons why a loved and lucky man would embark upon a lonely 30 year journey—leaving behind his family and friends in his home town, just to make more family and friends and leave them along the way too.  He went from woman to woman, learned what he could from the scholars that he could then left them, went to Mecca twice, but was still, after all of his travels, never satisfied.  To be quite honest, I think that Ibn Battuta’s deepest motivation was just simple loneliness.  While we don’t really get too much of a glimpse of his life in his hometown, one can only imagine how a young scholar during his time felt that the coastal city of Tangier just didn’t cut it.  In fact, I find his story resonates with my own story.  Growing up in a tiny town, thinking I was destined for more, the taste of travel and toying with the idea of never coming home, or more importantly, how empowered the freedom of travel made me feel—I saw all of these feelings in Ibn Battuta.  I imagine Ibn Battuta approached travel not only as a way to gain knowledge, but also as a way to gain ownership of himself and of his loneliness.  Perhaps he derived strength from the vulnerability he felt at not recognizing, not seeing and not being any place he knew.  Or maybe it was as simple as him trying to leave his loneliness behind.  I guess I don't really know.  All I do know is, I could identify on a completely visceral and gut level.  Most people can probably relate.

Speaking of which, as corny as it may sound, reading Ibn Battuta brought to mind an epically popular song by legendary 80’s/90’s arena band Journey (oh, how ironically appropriate).  In “Don't Stop Believin',” we encounter “a small town girl,” and “a city boy raised in South Detroit,” who “took a midnight train going anywhere.” Steve Perry, or whomever currently serves as the lead voice, tell us of two “strangers…their shadows searching in the night,” and how their story goes “on and on and on and on.”  It’s a bit of a stretch but one could say that maybe (just maybe) Ibn Battuta was just like one of them.  Instead of a train, he got on a camel.  And instead of searching for someone else, he was just searching for himself.  It turns out that a centuries old young scholar on his Rihla might not be that different from "us" afterall.  (I am not really too serious about this metaphor, I just found it slightly amusing.)