Ibn Battutah dedicates two full chapters to the city of Delhi and the Sultan Muhammad Ibn Tughluq. As usual, he describes the pious men he meets there, as well as some of the unique architecture he sees, such as the wall surrounding the city, the Cathedral Mosque, and several great reservoirs of water that crops can be planted around. But the majority of his writing revolves around the Sultan and his two main hobbies: giving gifts and ordering executions. Ibn Battutah spends several sections displaying the wealth and power this king possesses, from the elaborate arrangement of his court during an audience to the elephants adorned with precious stones that he rides upon. He is very generous, and Ibn Battutah dedicates multiple sections to detailing the many fine gifts he has made to other men of note. He also once distributed stored food during a famine to provide for his people, and allowed a young boy to beat him as justice for a wrong he had committed against the boy, so he overall just seems like a pretty great and charitable guy. 

 

And then we hard pivot into his “murders and reprehensible actions” (176).

 

The sultan is, at least, an equal opportunity aggressor, and will punish people regardless of their status or the severity of their crime. It’s at this point that Ibn Battuah seems to balk a little at the sultan’s violence, seeing the bloody bodies left outside the gates and praying “may God deliver us from misfortune!” (176). He is very strict about religion being properly observed, and will kill people to punish them if they do not pray. Ibn Battutah, who went on this journey to uphold religious law in the first place, does not express an opinion either positive or negative on this choice. He does, however, seem reasonably fearful in the sections recounting the executions of multiple jurists, probably worried that he will end up next on that list. And indeed, towards the end of his stay there comes a point in which that seems to be a distinct possibility. The Sultan commands Ibn Battutah to stay in the capital, and sends slaves to follow him everywhere. Fearing for his life, Ibn Battutah spends nine days fasting and reciting the quran, at the end of which the Sultan decides to spare him. He is then given permission to travel as the Sultan’s ambassador, at which point Ibn Battutah decides not to test his luck and leaves as quickly as possible in case he changes his mind. 

 

Throughout these chapters, Ibn Battutah is, once again, concerned with slaves. Not in the sense that he is concerned with the institution of slavery and how slaves are treated, but in that he is very concerned about making sure his readers know just how easy it is to get slaves on account of how cheap they are here, even the educated ones. When he gives an account of an incident he had with one of his slaves, wherein a slave boy ran away from him and was found in the possession of another man whom he would eventually kill, Ibn Battutah calls this incident “a miracle,” after which he “withdraw[s] from the world and giv[es] all that I possessed to the poor and needy” (165). He shows no concern for the man who was killed, or gives any acknowledgement that a life in slavery might have led the boy to such violence in an attempt to gain his freedom. His only concern is that he was not the one owning the slave when he decided to kill his master, and so fortunately kept his life. He also gives the account of the death of his infant daughter, the child of one of his slave girls, and the funeral ceremonies the Sultan has performed for her. The sultan gives the mother of the child many fine gifts, but rather than allowing this grieving mother to retain the things that were given to her, Ibn Battutah casually redistributes it all to his companions, because she is his slave girl and he is free to do whatever he likes with her.