Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s Buddhists: Monuments, Memory, and the Materiality of Travel
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Tamara I. Sears
Abstract
In the 1340s, a group of Chinese emissaries arrived at the Tughluq court in Delhi to request permission to rebuild a Buddhist temple that purportedly had been destroyed by the sultan’s armies. Although their request was denied, the then ruler Muḥammad b. Tughluq sent them back with a caravan laden with gifts for the Mongol emperor. To ensure their safe return, he assigned the task of accompanying them to the Moroccan traveler Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, who had interrupted his journeys for nearly a decade to take up residence as judge in the Tughluq court. Taking this incident as a point of departure, I question how categories of religious difference were articulated in Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s famed Riḥla [Journey] through his treatment of sacred monuments, landscapes, and living practitioners. More specifically, I look at the ways in which encounters with non-Muslim monuments and religious practitioners functioned in Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s account of his travels through India: as narrative catalysts, as refractions of a geospatial imagination, and as transformative agents in the Islamicization of regions far beyond the dār al-islām.
Abstract
In the 1340s, a group of Chinese emissaries arrived at the Tughluq court in Delhi to request permission to rebuild a Buddhist temple that purportedly had been destroyed by the sultan’s armies. Although their request was denied, the then ruler Muḥammad b. Tughluq sent them back with a caravan laden with gifts for the Mongol emperor. To ensure their safe return, he assigned the task of accompanying them to the Moroccan traveler Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, who had interrupted his journeys for nearly a decade to take up residence as judge in the Tughluq court. Taking this incident as a point of departure, I question how categories of religious difference were articulated in Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s famed Riḥla [Journey] through his treatment of sacred monuments, landscapes, and living practitioners. More specifically, I look at the ways in which encounters with non-Muslim monuments and religious practitioners functioned in Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s account of his travels through India: as narrative catalysts, as refractions of a geospatial imagination, and as transformative agents in the Islamicization of regions far beyond the dār al-islām.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction: Situating the Encounter between Buddhist and Muslim Communities in South Asia 1
- The Power of the Islamic Sword in Narrating the Death of Indian Buddhism 14
- Reassessing the Muslim Attacks and the Decline of Buddhist Monasteries in the Thirteenth Century Magadha 48
- The Narratives on the Bāmiyān Buddhist Remains in the Islamic Period 75
- Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s Buddhists: Monuments, Memory, and the Materiality of Travel 97
- Buddhism and Islam in Kashmir as Represented by Rājataraṅgiṇī Authors 128
- The Avatāra in Medieval South Asian Contexts: Dynamic Translation Across Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic Traditions in the Ghaznavid Period 161
- Buddhists, Hellenists, Muslims, and the Origin of Science 177
- Medieval Endowment Cultures in Western India: Buddhist and Muslim Encounters – Some Preliminary Observations 203
- List of Contributors 219
- Index 220
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction: Situating the Encounter between Buddhist and Muslim Communities in South Asia 1
- The Power of the Islamic Sword in Narrating the Death of Indian Buddhism 14
- Reassessing the Muslim Attacks and the Decline of Buddhist Monasteries in the Thirteenth Century Magadha 48
- The Narratives on the Bāmiyān Buddhist Remains in the Islamic Period 75
- Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s Buddhists: Monuments, Memory, and the Materiality of Travel 97
- Buddhism and Islam in Kashmir as Represented by Rājataraṅgiṇī Authors 128
- The Avatāra in Medieval South Asian Contexts: Dynamic Translation Across Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic Traditions in the Ghaznavid Period 161
- Buddhists, Hellenists, Muslims, and the Origin of Science 177
- Medieval Endowment Cultures in Western India: Buddhist and Muslim Encounters – Some Preliminary Observations 203
- List of Contributors 219
- Index 220
