History of the Qaraunah Turks in India c14.42

c14.42

But Ibn Batūṭah is not free from faults. Being a foreigner, he is sometimes credulous and places reliance upon hearsay and falls into exaggeration. He mixes up history with romance and fiction and sometimes interweaves real facts with gossip. In this respect he is inferior to Barani who has the equipment of a historian and is not prone to lend a willing ear to all kinds of reports. His superiority to Barani consists in his disinterestedness; he is not the champion of an injured class or order and, therefore, impartial. But he is neither methodical nor scientific. He is careless about the chronological sequence of events as for example when he says that the corpses of Ghiyās-al-Din Bahadur and Bahā-al-Din were paraded together. He lacks accurate geographical knowledge and writes loosely about his journeys. Sometimes he carelessly substitutes the name of a city for one that has slipped off from his memory. He starts from Tilpat, goes to Biyanah and then comes back to Kol and again proceeds towards Gwalior thus adopting a circuitous route on his way to the Deccan. Many other inaccuracies and careless remarks can be cited, but they do not detract from the general soundness of his observations. From occasional slips which are inevitable in a work written from memory we cannot impugn his veracity as Yule feels disposed to do. Rather we ought to give credit to the man who penned without the aid of notes or jottings so much useful and authentic information about Hindustan and its people.