information:highlighting
Return

After returning to Quanzhou in 1346, Ibn Battuta began his journey back to Morocco. In Kozhikode, he once again considered throwing himself at the mercy of Muhammad bin Tughluq in Delhi, but thought better of it and decided to carry on to Mecca. On his way to Basra he passed through the Strait of Hormuz, where he learned that Abu Sa'id, last ruler of the Ilkhanate Dynasty, had died in Iran. Abu Sa'id's territories had subsequently collapsed due to a fierce civil war between the Iranians and Mongols.

In 1348, Ibn Battuta arrived in Damascus with the intention of retracing the route of his first hajj. He then learned that his father had died 15 years earlier, and death became the dominant theme for the next year or so. The Black Death had struck, and he stopped in Homs as the plague spread through Syria, Palestine, and Arabia. He heard of terrible death tolls in Gaza but returned to Damascus that July, where the death toll had reached 2,400 victims each day. When he stopped in Gaza, he found it was depopulated, and in Egypt he stayed at Abu Sir. Reportedly deaths in Cairo had reached levels of 1,100 each day. He made hajj to Mecca, then he decided to return to Morocco, nearly a quarter of a century after leaving home. On the way he made one last detour to Sardinia, then, in 1349, returned to Tangier by way of Fez, only to discover that his mother had also died a few months before.