Travellers and their accounts as sources

Detail

Why people moved in medieval times

• Travel was normal, not rare. Men and women moved for many reasons:
• work — craftsmen, labourers and traders looking for a living;
• escape from natural disasters — floods, drought, famine pushed whole families out;
• trade — merchants following sea and land routes;
• soldiering — armies drew men from far-off lands;
• priesthood and pilgrimage — religious men moving to shrines and courts;

• adventure — plain curiosity about the world.

• Most travellers simply adjusted. They reached a new land, found the food, dress and rules different, and got used to it. They left no record.

• A few exceptional ones wrote. They put down what struck them as unusual or remarkable. So travel accounts are not full descriptions of Indian life — they are lists of surprises.

The "outsider's eye" — why these accounts matter

• Indian writers of the time skipped the ordinary. A local scholar did not describe how people ate, bathed, married or buried the dead, because everyone already knew. It felt not worth writing.
• The traveller came from a different social and cultural world. Ordinary Indian practice looked strange to them, so they wrote it down.
• Result: travel accounts preserve everyday life — food, clothes, markets, crafts, caste rules, slavery, women's lives, postal system — that is missing from court chronicles and religious texts.
• This is also the limit. The traveller notices what is strange to him, so the picture is selective, not complete.

Caveats a student must always state

• Almost no surviving travel account by a woman. Women did travel — as pilgrims, as members of households, as slaves — but no woman's travel account from this period has come down to us. So the record of medieval India through travellers is a record written by men.
• Each account has its own subject. No traveller covered everything:
• some wrote mainly about court affairs and politics;
• some about religion and customs;

• some about architecture and city planning.

• Each was written for a particular audience, and that shapes the content. A report meant for a ruler, a patron or readers back home is written differently from a private diary. Before using any account, ask: who was this written for?

Abdur Razzaq Samarqandi — the diplomat's account of Vijayanagara

• A diplomat from Herat who left an important fifteenth-century description of Vijayanagara, the southern capital.
• Full name Abd al-Razzaq Kamal al-Din ibn Ishaq al-Samarqandi, dates 1413–1482; a Persian historian, poet and government servant [2].
• His embassy work took him across Eurasia, including to Calicut on the south-west Indian coast in 1442 [2].
• He wrote Matla us-Sadain wa Majma ul-Bahrain ("The rising of the two lucky stars and the meeting of the two oceans"), a semi-official political history of the late Mongol khanates and the Timurid states of the Caucasus, Iran, Khorasan and Mawarannahr [2].
• His famous line on the city: "the pupil of the eye has never seen such a place like it, and the ear of intelligence has never been informed that there existed anything to equal it in the world" [2].
• Use him as proof that an official on duty, not a wanderer, can still be a key source.

Travellers from inside the country

• Not every useful traveller came from abroad. Mughal administrators toured the empire as part of their job.
• Moving from place to place, they recorded popular customs and folklore of the regions they passed through.
• So "travel account" is a wider box than only foreign visitors: internal official travel also produced source material.

The three men the chapter builds on

Traveller	Home	Century	Key work
Al-Biruni	Uzbekistan (Khwarizm)	11th	Kitab-ul-Hind
Ibn Battuta	Morocco	14th	Rihla
François Bernier	France	17th	Travels in the Mogul Empire

Al-Biruni (11th century, from Uzbekistan)

• Born 973 in Khwarizm, in present-day Uzbekistan; knew Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew and Sanskrit [4].
• In 1017 Sultan Mahmud invaded Khwarizm and carried scholars and poets back to his capital Ghazni. Al-Biruni came as a hostage, then stayed there for the rest of his life, dying at about 70 [4].
• His India book's full Arabic title is Tahqiq ma li-l-Hind… — "a critical study of what India says, whether accepted by reason or refuted"; also called the Indica. He finished his account of India around 1030 [4].
• He wrote more than 120 works and is often called the founder of Indology (the scholarly study of India) for his detailed picture of eleventh-century India [4].

Ibn Battuta (14th century, from Morocco)

• Born in Tangier, Morocco, 1304 – c. 1377; a Berber Muslim scholar [3].
• Left home at 21, meaning to perform the hajj to Mecca; the journey stretched to nearly 30 years and roughly 75,000 miles (120,000 km) [3].
• Reached Sind in 1333 by an overland route through Central Asia, then went to Delhi through Multan and Uch, drawn by Muhammad bin Tughlaq's name as a generous patron [3].
• The Sultan received him with honours and gifts and made him grand qadi (chief judge) of Delhi [3].
• Back in Morocco by the end of 1353, he dictated his memories, at the Sultan's order, to a writer named Ibn Juzayy, who dressed the plain prose in an ornate style with bits of poetry [3].
• Point for the exam: the Rihla is a dictated and edited text, not a diary written on the road. That affects how far we trust the detail.

François Bernier (17th century, from France)

• Born at Joué in the Loire, France; trained in medicine at the University of Montpellier [5].
• Travelled to Syria and Palestine in 1654, returned to the Middle East in 1656, then sailed for Surat on India's west coast [5].
• Served first as personal physician to Dara Shikoh, eldest son of Shah Jahan and the chosen heir, and later worked for Danishmand Khan, a noble at Aurangzeb's court [5].
• Stayed in India about 12 years, 1658–1669, and saw the war of succession of 1656–59 in which Aurangzeb took the throne [5].
• In 1664 he travelled with Aurangzeb to Kashmir, "commonly called the paradise of India", most likely the first European to visit the province [5].
• He sent long letters to France describing economy, religion and social customs of north India — one of them to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, finance minister of King Louis XIV [5].
• His book appeared in Paris as Histoire de la dernière révolution des états du Grand Mogol, 1670–71; the English Travels in the Mogul Empire is its first authoritative translation [5].
• Point for the exam: Bernier wrote for a French audience and a French minister. He constantly compares India with Europe, usually to show Europe as better. That bias is the classic "written for a specific audience" case.

Prelims Hooks

• Al-Biruni was born in 973 at Khwarizm (present-day Uzbekistan) and knew Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Syriac and Hebrew [4].
• Al-Biruni came to Ghazni as a hostage after Sultan Mahmud invaded Khwarizm in 1017 [4].
• Ibn Battuta was born in Tangier, Morocco (1304), reached Sind in 1333, and was made grand qadi of Delhi by Muhammad bin Tughlaq [3].
• Ibn Battuta's Rihla was dictated to Ibn Juzayy after his return to Morocco in 1353 [3].
• Abdur Razzaq Samarqandi (1413–1482) was a diplomat from Herat; he visited Calicut in 1442 and wrote Matla us-Sadain wa Majma ul-Bahrain [2].
• Abdur Razzaq left the key fifteenth-century description of Vijayanagara.
• François Bernier was a French physician trained at Montpellier, in India 1658–1669 [5].
• Bernier served Dara Shikoh first, then Danishmand Khan, a noble of Aurangzeb's court [5].
• Bernier went to Kashmir with Aurangzeb in 1664, probably the first European in that province [5].
• Bernier's book was published in Paris, 1670–71, and he wrote to Colbert, finance minister of Louis XIV [5].
• No travel account written by a woman survives from this period, though women did travel.

Mains Points

• Travellers' accounts fill the silence of Indian sources. Court chronicles record kings, wars and grants. Travellers record markets, food, coins, castes, slaves and the postal system, because these looked odd to them and normal to locals. Use this when an answer asks why foreign accounts are valuable for social history.
• Every account must be read against its author and audience. Al-Biruni wrote as a Sanskrit-reading scholar checking Indian texts by reason [4]; Ibn Battuta wrote as a qadi and adventurer, and his text was shaped by an editor, Ibn Juzayy [3]; Bernier wrote as a Frenchman reporting to French readers and to Colbert [5]. Different aims produce different "Indias". This is the standard source-criticism argument.
• The record is gendered. All surviving accounts are by men, so women's experience of travel and of Indian society reaches us only second-hand, through male eyes. A good GS-I answer names this gap instead of treating the accounts as neutral.
• "Traveller" includes officials and insiders. Diplomats like Abdur Razzaq and touring Mughal administrators produced source material as a by-product of duty. So the category of travel writing links to state record-keeping and to the study of capitals such as Vijayanagara.