_Sufi Saints and Shrine Architecture in the Early Fourteenth Century

On 2 Rajib 725 (13June 1325), the intrepid traveler Ibn Battuta left his home in Tangier and began a remarkable journey that was to last a quarter of a century and take him throughout most of the known Islamic world. He traversed North Africa to complete the hajj, circumscribed the Iranian plateau, visited Constantinople and the Golden Horde, sailed throught the Red Sea to the Maldives, India, Sumatra, and Malabar, and may even have reached the shores of China. Returning home, he dictated the memoirs of his journeys that made him one of the world’s most renowned travelers.’As remarkable as the extent of his travels is the fact that he did not have to pay for a night’s lodging. Instead, he was the guest of various rulers or lodged at pious foundations that had been endowed throughout the Muslim world. This paper discusses three such” little cities of God,” shrine centers around the graves of Sufi shaykhs where Ibn Battuta might have stayed. 2 The three are all contem-porary, but spread throughout the Muslim world in Ilkhanid Iran, Mamluk Egypt, and the Merinid Magh-reb. Together, they illustrate different aspects of a common phenomenon-the popular veneration of saints in the medieval period.