Mapping Project: Fadlan and Battutah In Franco Moretti’s, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History, in a chapter titled, “Maps,” Moretti notes that “there is a very simple question about literary maps: what exactly do they do? What do they do that cannot be done with words?” and “Do maps add anything, to our knowledge of literature?” (Moretti, Maps, 35). In this essay, I hope to explain the significance of maps in both Ibn Battutah’s, The Travels of Ibn Battutah and Ibn Fadlan’s, Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travelers in the Far North and explain how the two narratives view space in ways that are similar and different in terms of the words they choose to use throughout their texts and how they describe what divides
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As you can see below, the three most common words that Battutah uses are great, khatun, and sultan; with great at ten mentions, khatun at ten mentions, and sultan at eight mentions. Throughout the text, Battutah typically introduces sultans and describes the city in which the Sultan rules. In a section titled “Account of the exalted Sultan Muhammad Uzbek Khan,” Battutah writes:
His name Muhammad Uzbek, and khan in their language means ‘sultan’. This sultan is mighty in sovereignty, exceedingly powerful, great in dignity, lofty in situation. Victor over the enemies of God, the people of Constantinople the Great, and diligent in his jihad against them. His territories are vast and his cities great; they include al-Kafa, al-Qiram, al-Machar, Azaq, Surdaq, and Khwarizm, and his capital is al-Sara. He is one of the seven kings who are the great and mighty kings of the world (Battutah, …show more content…
Battutah appears to value the rule of a great sultan, with his great cities as the owner of physical space that can be viewed on a paper map. Battutah’s narrative reads and presents a map like that of the United States. The United States is ‘ruled’ by the president who has control over his vast territory. Within that territory, great cites are governed by other sultans who are beneath the great sultan in terms of power. Battutah’s representation of space reads like that of a map of the United States with its focus from a national to regional level, but these levels are all based on the power of the great sultan, or in the U.S.’s case, the president. Battutah writes political, provincial maps. So why does this matter? Well, as Moretti says in his chapter titled, “Network Theory, Plot Analysis,” that “the plot as a system of regions” and “the hierarchy of centrality that exists among characters” allows experiments to made on the networks within written text via plot analysis to provide further insight of the textual relationships that have been mapped out. If Battutah’s text was mapped based on plot analysis based on the data that I have presented, the plot analysis would, I believe, relate the capital al-Sara to the rest of Muhammad Uzbek khan’s territories and Muhammad Uzbek khan to his relatives and the governors of his territory’s primary cities such
As you can see below, the three most common words that Battutah uses are great, khatun, and sultan; with great at ten mentions, khatun at ten mentions, and sultan at eight mentions. Throughout the text, Battutah typically introduces sultans and describes the city in which the Sultan rules. In a section titled “Account of the exalted Sultan Muhammad Uzbek Khan,” Battutah writes:
His name Muhammad Uzbek, and khan in their language means ‘sultan’. This sultan is mighty in sovereignty, exceedingly powerful, great in dignity, lofty in situation. Victor over the enemies of God, the people of Constantinople the Great, and diligent in his jihad against them. His territories are vast and his cities great; they include al-Kafa, al-Qiram, al-Machar, Azaq, Surdaq, and Khwarizm, and his capital is al-Sara. He is one of the seven kings who are the great and mighty kings of the world (Battutah, …show more content…
Battutah appears to value the rule of a great sultan, with his great cities as the owner of physical space that can be viewed on a paper map. Battutah’s narrative reads and presents a map like that of the United States. The United States is ‘ruled’ by the president who has control over his vast territory. Within that territory, great cites are governed by other sultans who are beneath the great sultan in terms of power. Battutah’s representation of space reads like that of a map of the United States with its focus from a national to regional level, but these levels are all based on the power of the great sultan, or in the U.S.’s case, the president. Battutah writes political, provincial maps. So why does this matter? Well, as Moretti says in his chapter titled, “Network Theory, Plot Analysis,” that “the plot as a system of regions” and “the hierarchy of centrality that exists among characters” allows experiments to made on the networks within written text via plot analysis to provide further insight of the textual relationships that have been mapped out. If Battutah’s text was mapped based on plot analysis based on the data that I have presented, the plot analysis would, I believe, relate the capital al-Sara to the rest of Muhammad Uzbek khan’s territories and Muhammad Uzbek khan to his relatives and the governors of his territory’s primary cities such