17/10/2023
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💠Ibn Battuta in Constantinople, 1332
🐪 Ibn Battuta (1304-1369) is one of the world's most famous explorers originally from Morocco who had traveled a total of 120,000 kilometers through Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Part of Ibn Battuta's travels included a visit once to the Byzantine Empire's capital Constantinople in the 14th century. Here in 1332 after traveling through the Khanate of the Golden Horde in Southern Russia, Ibn Battuta agreed to es**rt one of its khan's wives who was a daughter of the previous Byzantine emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos (r. 1282-1328) back to Constantinople to give birth. Ibn Battuta with this Byzantine princess thus travelled for 75 days to Constantinople with thousands of people joining them including soldiers and servants as well as horses, wagons, and camels.
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🏰 Ibn Battuta then made it to Constantinople in late 1332 wherein he stayed there for about 5 weeks. When in Constantinople, he had the chance to meet the Byzantine emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos (r. 1328-1341)- grandson of the late Andronikos II- who gave him a robe of honor and a horse. When in Constantinople, he also saw the great cathedral of the Hagia Sophia though did not enter. Other than that, he also came across a broken bridge over the Golden Horn harbor and bashed the Latins in the Galata Quarter for their filthy running of their part of the city. Ibn Battuta had also mentioned a rather fictitious encounter with a monk named George who was a former emperor- possibly Andronikos II- and here Ibn Battuta paid a visit to the monastery George was in.
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📖 Although Ibn Battuta extensively wrote about his visit to Constantinople including its people, the emperor, and its sites, there is however no Byzantine source that says anything about Ibn Battuta's visit to Constantinople in 1332. On the other hand, Byzantium in the 1330s which Ibn Battuta encountered in his long detour from Southern Russia was a shadow of its former self which the historian Ross E. Dunn says was a "minor Greek state of southeastern Europe and little more, its international trade had been abandoned to the Italians, its currency almost worthless, its landlords grinding the peasants mercilessly, its army made up of alien mercenaries, and its Asian territories had been all lost to the triumphant Turks". Byzantium true enough at this time was in its declining phase all while the new state of the Ottoman Turks in Asia Minor- which Ibn Battuta would visit later- was on the rise. Now does anyone know of Ibn Battuta's stay in Constantinople?
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🖼️ Images: map of Ibn Battuta's travels (top left), portrait of Ibn Battuta (top right), Byzantine emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos (r. 1328-1341, bottom-left), late medieval depiction of Constantinople (bottom-right).
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