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| Coconuts, southern Huvadu atol, Maldives |
Battuta became the chief judge in Male and took part in political intrigues. He married many times and found the Maldivian slave girls particularly charming.
Battuta's detailed account of Maldives and its people remained virtually unknown until the 19th century.
The English translation of The Rehla of Ibn Battuta, available here in four parts, is by Dr. Mahdi Husain and published in 1976 by the Oriental Institute, Baroda, India.
Ibn Battuta (and Ibn Juzay) also wrote one of the earliest surviving accounts of the coconut.
An excerpt from The Rehla:
The revenue of the treasury which is there called bandar, is derived from the purchase of a certain part of every kind of merchandise on board at a price fixed by the officials, whether the goods are worth this price or more. This is called the law of the bandar. And for the bandar there is on each island a wooden house called bajansar in which the governor, who is called karduvari, stores up the goods, sells them and buys them.
The inhabitants of these islands buy crockery, on being imported to them, in exchange for fowls so that a pot sells in their country for five or six fowls. The vessels take from these islands the fish which has been mentioned before, coconuts, waist-wrappers, wilyan and turbans made of cotton. And people take from there copper vessels which are abundant with the Maldivians as well as cowries and qanbar, that is the fibrous covering (coir) of the coconut. This is tanned in pits on the shore, beaten with mallets and then spun by the women.
Ropes are made from it which are used to bind the ships together and are exported to China, India and Yemen; these ropes are better than those made from hemp, and with these ropes the beams of the Indian and Yemenite ships are sewn together for the Indian ocean has many rocks. If a ship nailed together with iron nails collides with rocks, it would surely be wrecked; but a ship whose beams are sewn together with ropes is made wet and is not shattered.
