Ibn Battuta's Travels: Reading a Traveler's Book

Source excerpts from a 1300s travel book to see how trade routes carried goods, ideas and disease.

Answer Key

Three networks of trade

Read the passage. Then answer the questions.

Routes That Carried More Than Goods

1In the 1300s, three great networks of trade routes linked much of Africa, Asia and Europe. The Silk Road was not one road but many overland routes running from China across the deserts and mountains of Central Asia to Persia and the Mediterranean. The Indian Ocean routes were sea lanes joining East Africa, Arabia, India, Southeast Asia and China. Trans-Saharan routes crossed the great desert between North Africa and the kingdoms of West Africa. Few merchants traveled a whole route. Most goods passed from trader to trader and from city to city.

2Sailors on the Indian Ocean depended on the monsoon winds. In winter the winds blow mostly from the northeast, and in summer mostly from the southwest. Captains timed their voyages to the seasons and often waited months in a foreign port for the winds to turn. While they waited, merchants lived among local people, traded, married and built mosques and temples. Along the East African coast, trading towns such as Mogadishu and Kilwa developed Swahili culture, which blended African languages and customs with Arabic words and, for many people, Islam.

3The goods were valuable and often light enough to carry far: silk and porcelain from China, pepper and cotton cloth from India, gold and ivory from Africa, horses from Arabia and Persia. Ideas moved with them. Centuries earlier, Buddhism had reached China along Silk Road routes. By the 700s, the skill of making paper had spread west from China into the Muslim world. Islam spread to West Africa and Southeast Asia largely through merchants and teachers rather than armies.

4Disease moved too. In the 1340s the Black Death, a plague probably carried by fleas on rats and passed between people, seems to have traveled west from Central Asia along trade routes. Ships brought it to Mediterranean ports in 1347. It killed an estimated third to half of Europe's people and also struck Egypt, Syria and other lands of the Middle East.

5One traveler saw all three networks. Ibn Battuta was born in Tangier, Morocco, in 1304 and left home in 1325 to make the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. He kept traveling for almost thirty years, by camel caravan and by ship. Back in Morocco, around 1355, the sultan asked him to tell his story to a scholar named Ibn Juzayy, who wrote it down as a book called the Rihla, or "journey."

Based on paragraph 2, how did the monsoon winds help spread customs and beliefs along the Indian Ocean coasts?

A. Merchants waiting for the winds to turn lived among local people for months.
B. Rulers used the winds to send armies that forced coastal towns to change.
C. The winds let ships sail any time, so traders could visit many ports in a few weeks.
D. The winds kept foreign ships away from the coast for most of the year.

Draw a line from each trip to the trade network it most likely used.

A merchant carries Arabian horses by ship to a port in India.B
A camel caravan carries copper from Morocco south to Mali.C
Traders pass bolts of silk from China through a Central Asian city to Persia.A

A. The Silk Road
B. The Indian Ocean routes
C. The trans-Saharan routes

Use paragraphs 3 and 4. Sort each thing that moved along the trade routes.

PorcelainBuddhismThe Black DeathPepperPapermakingIvory

A good for sale	A belief or skill	A disease
Porcelain Pepper Ivory	Buddhism Papermaking	The Black Death

Source the traveler's book

Read the sourcing note and the four excerpts. Use them and the passage to answer.

Sourcing note: The Rihla was dictated by Ibn Battuta and written down by Ibn Juzayy in Morocco around 1355, years after most of the trips. Historians think much of it came from memory, and Ibn Juzayy seems to have copied a few descriptions from an earlier travel book. The excerpts below are adapted from English translations.

Excerpt A (Kilwa, East Africa, about 1331): "Kilwa is one of the most beautiful and well-built towns in the world. Most of its people are Muslims, and they are devoted to their faith."
Excerpt B (Calicut, India, 1340s): "Calicut is one of the great ports of this coast. Men come to it from China, Sumatra, Ceylon, Yemen and Persia, and merchants from every land gather here. We stayed three months, waiting for the season to sail to China. Thirteen Chinese ships lay in the harbor."
Excerpt C (China, 1340s): "Chinese porcelain is the finest of all pottery. It is shipped to India and other lands, even reaching our own country in the far West. The people of China do not use gold or silver coins in trade. They buy and sell with pieces of paper."
Excerpt D (Damascus, Syria, 1348): "During the great plague, the deaths in Damascus reached about 2,400 a day. The people fasted for three days. Then all of them went out together to pray: Muslims, Jews and Christians, men and women, young and old."

According to the sourcing note, which fact about how the Rihla was made gives historians the most reason to check its exact details against other sources?

A. It describes both Muslim lands and lands with other faiths.
B. It was told from memory years after most of the trips.
C. It covers trips taken by ship as well as by caravan.
D. It is read today in English translations.

Which excerpt best supports the point in paragraph 2 that Islam spread to towns on the East African coast?

A. Excerpt C
B. Excerpt D
C. Excerpt A
D. Excerpt B

Ibn Battuta waited three months in Calicut (Excerpt B). Using paragraph 2, what was he most likely waiting for?

A. The plague in China to come to an end
B. The Chinese ships to finish unloading their porcelain
C. The monsoon winds to blow toward China
D. A camel caravan to arrive from Persia

Underline the sentence from the excerpts that best shows a good traveling from China to the lands farthest west.

Men come to it from China, Sumatra, Ceylon, Yemen and Persia.Thirteen Chinese ships lay in the harbor.It is shipped to India and other lands, even reaching our own country in the far West.They buy and sell with pieces of paper.

Ibn Battuta describes how the Chinese bought and sold with paper (Excerpt C). What does this detail most likely suggest?

A. Chinese buyers paid mostly with gold and silver coins.
B. Paper money was unusual to him, since his readers used coins.
C. Paper was too scarce in China to use for anything else.
D. Chinese merchants would not trade with foreign visitors.

A historian wants to know how many people died of plague in Damascus. How should she treat the number in Excerpt D?

A. Use it as an estimate, and compare it with other records.
B. Reject the whole excerpt, since travelers made up their stories.
C. Accept it as exact, since he was in Damascus that year.
D. Ignore it, since the plague never reached Syria.

10.

Which point from paragraph 4 does Excerpt D corroborate?

A. Ships brought the plague to Mediterranean ports in 1347.
B. The plague was probably carried by fleas on rats.
C. The plague started in Central Asia in the 1340s.
D. The plague also struck lands of the Middle East.

11.

Use Excerpt D and paragraph 5.

Ibn Battuta saw the plague in Damascus in 1348. He told his story to Ibn Juzayy about 7 years later.

12.

Claim: The trade routes of the 1300s carried more than goods. Support this claim with evidence from two different excerpts and one paragraph of the passage, and explain your reasoning.

The routes carried beliefs and disease as well as goods. Excerpt A shows that most people in Kilwa, far from Arabia, were Muslims, which fits paragraph 3's point that Islam spread through merchants and teachers. Excerpt D shows the plague killing thousands a day in Damascus, and paragraph 4 explains that the Black Death traveled west along trade routes. So the same roads and sea lanes that moved porcelain and pepper also moved religion and sickness.