Download Ibn Battuta - B2-Filippetto

Ibn Battuta - he chronicled the
medieval era’s great globalizing
force: Islam
In 1325 a 21 year old legal scholar named Muhammad Ibn
Battuta set off from his home in Tangier, Morocco, on a
pilgrimage to the sacred city of Mecca. That journey would
last nearly 30 years , cover more that 100,000 km and become
a celebrated account, the Rihla. By the time Ibn Battuta
returned to Tangier, he had traversed – by foot, by donkey, by
camel and by boat –nearly the entire length of the Muslim
world and beyond on a quest for knowledge and experience.
And while that quest would ultimately take him as far as
China, he mostly kept within the confines of what was known
as Dar al-Islam, - that region of the world where Muslims
ruled and Islamic law prevailed (North Africa, the Middle East
and the Arabian peninsula ), with Mecca pulsing at its heart.
However for him and his contemporaries, Dar al-Islam was
more than a geographical destination, it was an ideal, an
aspiration, a shared sense of consciousness held by a global
collection of like-minded individuals who composed a single,
unified and divine community: the ummah.
However it was the enormous diversity of the
ummah scattered across these lands that so struck
Ibn Battuta. They shared allegiance to the One God
but had very different culture, customs, and
worldview. This is still true of the Muslim world
today. The ummah have over the centuries become
a veritable cornucopia of contrasting beliefs,
practices, and traditions among the world’s 1.6
billion Muslims. At the same time, mass migration
and the steady flow of people across national
borders have dramatically extended the reach of
the ummah far beyond anything that could be
defined as Dar al-Islam today.
Nowadays we call this phenomenon globalization,
but the world that Ibn Battuta experienced in his
travels nearly 700 years ago was as glolbalized as
the world we live in today. This was in large part
due to the Pax Islamica that existed under the rule
of the Mongols, who had conquered nearly the
whole of Central Asia, Russia and China. They
encouraged the flow of goods and people across
their vast territory and allowed free movement
along the Silk Road, and with this also cultural and
religious interaction. As well as the expansion of
trade routes medieval Islam enjoyed supremacy in
the fields of science, trade, mathematics and
architecture.
Later this golden age of Islam fell into decline.
Colonialism, Western imperialism, corruption, civil wars,
extremism and terrorism have led to its fragmentation. In
the last century Muslims began to regard themselves less
as members of a worldwide community than as citizens
of individual nation-states. But now, as greater education
and widespread access to new ideas and sources of
information allow individuals the freedom and
confidence to interpret Islam for themselves, there is a
mass of disparate voices struggling with one another to
define the future of what will soon be the largest religion
in the world. As with any shouting match, the loudest
voices.- the extremists and radicals – get heard. This
results in the image in the Western media of Islam as a
religion of violence and terrorism.
Yet something remarkable has been taking place in what is left
of Dar al-Islam in the 21st century. A new kind of global
identity is forming across North Africa and the Middle East as
young people are beginning to rise up and demand a voice in
their political and economic destinies. Though it has been
more successful in transforming certain societies, (Tunisia and
Egypt) than others (Libya and Syria), what is taking place
across the lands that Ibn Battuta travelled centuries ago is not
merely a nationalist phenomenon. This generation, which is
intimately interconnected by new communication
technologies like satellite television, social media and
Internet, has formed a new kind of trans-national identity,
one that cannot be contained by any ethnic, national or
sectarian borders. It is an identity founded on young people’s
shared ambition to free themselves from their corrupt and
inefficient political, relgious and economic institutions and
thus to return their culture and society to the days of glory it
achieved in Ibn Battuta’s time.
Dar al-Islam once again signifies more than a
geographic area. It has again become an ideal.
The ummah, which has always been a virtual
idea, is now quite literally virtual, with Muslim
communities forming on the Internet,
unconstrained by the boundaries of space and
time.
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What is the Rihla?
What is the difference between the ummah and Dar al-Islam?
Could the people of Dar al-Islam be described as a homogeneous
population?
4. Does the Dar al-Islam cover the same regions today as in Ibn
Battuta’s time?
5. What aspect(s) of Dar al-Islam most impressed Ibn Battuta?
6. How did the Pax Islamica contribute to the globalization of Ibn
Battuta’s world?
7. What effect did nationalism have on contemporary Islam? Why?
8. Why do Western media portray Islam as a violent religion?
9. How do the revolts in some Islamic countries today make
reference to the world view of Ibn Battuta?
10. How have new ways of communicating contributed to today's
changes in the Islamic world?