Question

Travelogues are important source of information about medieval India. Justify.

Answer 1

Instructions:

This answer for this question can be broken down into two parts.

1. Talk about important travellers of medieval India.
2. Talk about what they wrote about medieval India and places they visited.

Solution:

Marco Polo, Al-Beruni and Ibn Battuta were some travellers who visited medieval India.

• Marco Polo was a Venetian traveller, who visited the Pandya kingdom in the 13th century. He visited Kayal twice. According to him, thousands of horses were imported into southern India by sea from Arabia and Persia.
• Al-Beruni was another traveller who visited medieval India. He accompanied Mahmud of Ghazni in one of his campaigns, and stayed in India for 10 years. He provided us with an accurate account of Mahmud’s Somnath expedition. Through his book Tahquiq-i-Hind, Alberuni discussed the Indian conditions, systems of knowledge, social norms and religion.
• Ibn Battuta was another important traveller who visited medieval India during the 14th century. He is an Arab-born Morocco scholar, who travelled from Morocco to Egypt and then to Central Asia and India. His travelogue named Rihla contains rich details about the people and the countries he visited.
• In the South, Vijayanagar had many foreign visitors who left behind their detailed accounts of the state.
• These travellers were:
• An Italian named Nicolo Conti came in 1420.
• Abdur-Razzaq came from Heart (the court of the Great Khan in Central Asia) in 1443. Domingo Paes, a Portuguese traveller, visited the city in 1522.