Ibn Battuta Quotes

“Traveling leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller”

“Nobody ever wanted to go to war, but if a war came your way, it might as well be the right war, about the most important things in the world, and you might as well, if you were going to fight it, be called "Rushdie," and stand where your father had placed you, in the tradition of the grand Aristotelian, Averroës, Abul Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd.”

“Ibn Mas'ud said, "When 'Umar died nine-tenth of all knowledge vanished with him." The people were shocked and said, "How can this be when among us now are still many of the great companions?" Ibn Mas'ud replied,"I am not speaking of the knowledge of fiqh and the science of judgements, I'm speaking about the knowledge of Allah." This struggle of isolation, hunger, sleeplessness, weeping, fear and endless service to men was for this end. The journey is only for knowledge of Allah and the whole of it lies in detachment from everything that passes away. First from what is displeasing to Allah, then from one's self-illusion and desires, and then from all men and all otherness until there is only isolation and extreme nearness to Allah.”

“The rejection of Western democracy derives from the same rejection of secularism but was further sharpened by the Saudi Arabian establishment’s aversion to democracy’s subversive streak and the threat it posed to the Saudi monarchy if unleashed. Saudi scholars such as Sheikh Bakr Ibn Abu Zaid consistently attacked democracy and the freedoms it flaunted as anti-Islamic. Mohammed Yusuf was heavily influenced by the writings of Saudi-based scholars such as Bakr Ibn Abu Zaid, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Ibn Abd-Allah Ibn Baaz (1910-99), and Sheikh Muhammad al-Amin ash Shanqiti (1907-73). As mentioned before, all of Yusuf’s opponents side-stepped the issue of democracy being un-Islamic, thereby making the issue appear incontestable or settled.”

“As Ibn Arabi says: ‘Absolute existence is the source of all existence’.”

“The sight of God in woman is the most perfect of all." Ibn Arabi.”

“Traveling leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.”

“Courtesy with them is tariqa and following them is haqiqa.”

“The heart is like a bird: love as its head and its two wings are hope and fear.”

“Don’t depend too much on anyone in this world because even your own shadow leaves you when you are in darkness.”