Ibn Battuta in Constantinople

Among the most remarkable episodes of the travels of the Moroccan wayfarer Ibn Battuta, who in the course of his life journeyed across nearly the whole of the known world, was his visit, about the year 1332, to Constantinople, the ancient and still mighty capital of the Christian Byzantine empire of the Greeks. He came there, by his account, in the entourage of a Byzantine princess, a daughter of the emperor who had been married to Uzbeg, the Muslim khan of the Golden Horde, and who was now travelling home to visit her father; Ibn Battuta accompanied her cavalcade from the steppe to the imperial city. He has left a vivid description of Constantinople as seen through Muslim eyes: the vast city of churches and monasteries within its great walls, ringing with bells, the multitude of monks and priests, the markets and the people, and the colossal domed church, the greatest in Christendom, which he was shown but would not enter, since entry required an act of reverence he could not as a Muslim perform. He was received with honour at the imperial palace and, he says, questioned kindly by the old emperor, who had himself visited or revered the holy places, about Jerusalem and its sanctuaries. His account is a precious record of a meeting of two civilisations, a learned Muslim traveller from the far western edge of Islam observing with curiosity and a measure of respect the great rival capital of Christendom. (Some details of Ibn Battuta's Constantinople narrative are debated by scholars, but it remains one of the famous cross-cultural encounters of the age.) This scene depicts Constantinople at the time of his visit. In keeping with the project's ethics any figure is anonymous and at a distance, and the church interiors are not depicted.