Through the Eyes Of Travellers

Two visitors walk through the same market. One writes about unfamiliar fruit and skilled musicians. The other notices a wealthy merchant beside a hungry worker and announces that the whole country has only rich and poor people. Both saw something. Did both establish what they claimed?

In this chapter, a travel account becomes evidence to investigate rather than a window through which the past appears unfiltered. These notes follow NCERT Class 12 History, Themes in Indian History Part II, Theme 5, in the 2026–27 reprint. The core frame is perceptions of society from the tenth to seventeenth centuries. The original-source and observation workshops are enrichment in historical method.

Introduction

People travelled for trade, pilgrimage, employment, diplomacy and curiosity, or because displacement left them little choice. Their writing can reveal things local authors took for granted. A visitor might describe an ordinary plant in detail because readers at home had never encountered it.

Yet an account is selective. The writer's language, social position, interests, hosts and intended audience affect what is noticed and how it is explained. Survival matters too: a society's available records are not a representative sample of everyone who lived there. The absence of a surviving account by a woman does not show that women did not travel.

Three travellers, three kinds of enquiry

• Al-Biruni, eleventh century: a scholar from Khwarizm in Central Asia, studying Sanskrit learning and explaining it in Arabic in the Kitab-ul-Hind.
• Ibn Battuta, fourteenth century: a Moroccan traveller and legal scholar whose Rihla describes journeys, people, cities and striking experiences.
• François Bernier, seventeenth century: a French physician connected with the Mughal court, comparing society and government with Europe in writings aimed partly at influential French readers.

These accounts belong to different centuries. A difference between Ibn Battuta's Delhi and Bernier's description cannot automatically be explained by personality alone: the place, date, political setting and question may also differ.

Keep five questions beside every source: Who wrote it? When? For whom? How did they know? What claim can it support? Add a sixth when a conclusion sounds very large: Whose experience is missing?

Al-Biruni & the Kitab-ul-Hind

Born in 973, Al-Biruni grew up in the scholarly world of Khwarizm. Mahmud of Ghazni's conquest took him to Ghazni in 1017. He subsequently studied Sanskrit and spent time with Brahmana scholars. His exact itinerary within the subcontinent is not securely known, so a confident modern route map would suggest more precision than the evidence provides.

The Kitab-ul-Hind, written in Arabic, contains 80 chapters covering subjects such as religion, philosophy, festivals, astronomy, customs, measurement and social life. It is much more than a sightseeing diary. Al-Biruni often introduced a question, described a Sanskritic position and compared it with another intellectual tradition. This method helped explain unfamiliar concepts to readers outside those traditions.

Three barriers to understanding

Language was the first difficulty: knowing a word does not guarantee that an idea can be transferred neatly between Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian. Religious differences presented another. Al-Biruni also described what he saw as local insularity or reluctance to communicate with outsiders. That third judgement is his assessment, not a neutral description of every inhabitant.

Learning Sanskrit and consulting scholars were serious attempts to cross those barriers. They also created a limitation. A description drawn mainly from learned Brahmanical texts and informants can illuminate their ideas particularly well while leaving other groups' practices less visible.

Caste: a rulebook is not a photograph

Al-Biruni explained the four varnas through Sanskrit traditions and compared social divisions with categories in ancient Persia. The comparison challenged the assumption that social hierarchy existed only in India. He also criticised ideas of permanent social pollution, using arguments about the restorative processes he observed in nature.

Here the distinction between normative and descriptive evidence is essential. A normative text sets out how its authors believe society should be ordered. It cannot by itself tell us how every community actually lived. Groups placed outside the varna framework could be oppressed and excluded socially while remaining essential to agriculture and other economic networks.

Neither conclusion cancels the other. Economic participation did not mean equal treatment; oppression did not mean that a group had no connection with the wider economy.

A school handbook says all pupils arrive at 8.30. Does that establish everyone's arrival time?

No. It establishes a rule. Attendance records or direct observations would answer a different question about practice. This original analogy helps explain why historians compare prescriptive Sanskrit texts with other kinds of evidence; it does not equate modern school rules with caste oppression.

Ibn-Battuta

Ibn Battuta came from Tangier in Morocco and trained in Islamic law. Travel offered him pilgrimage, learning, employment and encounters with unfamiliar societies. He reached Sind in 1333 and obtained appointment as a qazi, or judge, under Muhammad bin Tughlaq in Delhi.

His connection with the ruler brought opportunities and danger. After difficulties at court, he was assigned an embassy to China in 1342. His account describes subsequent travel through the subcontinent and Indian Ocean, including the Malabar coast, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bengal and Sumatra. Treat a traveller's reported itinerary as a claim to examine, not a modern location log independently verified at every stop.

The Rihla took written form after his return to Morocco, when Ibn Juzayy recorded and shaped the account he dictated at the ruler's direction. Memory, selection and a literary collaborator therefore stand between a journey and the text a reader encounters. “He wrote down everything exactly as it happened” is too simple.

Networks made travel possible

Pilgrimage routes, ports, scholarly connections and courts connected regions from North Africa to Asia. Religious and legal learning could help Ibn Battuta find hosts or employment far from home. The subcontinent was part of these networks, not an isolated world suddenly discovered by a European visitor.

Connection did not remove hardship. Ibn Battuta describes illness, homesickness, robberies and dangerous roads. Caravans could provide company and some protection, but travel remained vulnerable. A route's existence does not mean it was equally safe or accessible to everyone.

The excitement of the unfamiliar

Ibn Battuta wanted distant places to become imaginable to his audience. His descriptions of the coconut and paan show the technique: relate an unfamiliar object to forms, plants or actions readers already know. A coconut's visible features become a memorable comparison with a head; familiar palms help explain the tree.

An analogy can make an account vivid without being a complete scientific description. It also tells us about the intended audience. A fruit ordinary to one reader may be the most surprising object on the page for another. When reading historical descriptions of plant use, analyse the representation; do not treat them as instructions or health advice.

Cities, trade and work

Ibn Battuta describes Delhi and Daulatabad as large, busy centres with crowded markets. Bazaars were places of exchange and social life, including worship, music and performance. His interest in these activities gives historians evidence that a city cannot be understood only through its palace.

He also records productive agriculture and valuable textiles such as cotton cloth, fine muslin and silk. Historians connect urban wealth to the movement of agricultural surplus and to trading networks linking the subcontinent with West and Southeast Asia. That explanatory connection should be distinguished from a traveller merely listing attractive goods.

A prosperous market does not establish prosperity for every worker. Ask who produced the goods, who controlled trade, how surplus reached towns and who could afford what was sold. An expensive textile is evidence of specialised production and wealthy customers; it is not a wage record.

If something impressed a traveller, must it have been rare where it was found?

No. It may have been common locally and unfamiliar to the traveller or audience. Distinguish novelty for the observer from rarity within the society. That difference explains why travel accounts can preserve useful descriptions of everyday life.

A Unique System of Communication

Ibn Battuta describes two kinds of post: uluq, a horse-post using mounts stationed along a route, and dawa, a foot-post organised through closely spaced relay stations. In his account, runners carried a message to the next waiting runner and signalled their approach with bells.

The important mechanism is the handover. The message continues while individual carriers stop. A comparison between a courier network and one traveller is therefore not simply a race between a fast person and a slow person.

1. One traveller: the person and their luggage must complete the whole route, including necessary pauses.
2. Relay: a ready carrier takes over at each station; the message can continue with a fresh runner or mount.
3. Support: stations, staff, supplies, signals and functioning handovers make the network possible.
4. Failure point: a missing carrier or unsafe stretch can delay the message even when other sections work well.

NCERT reports Ibn Battuta's striking comparison: a journey from Sind to Delhi could take fifty days, while news could arrive through the post in five. Treat those as reported durations for the comparison, not a guaranteed schedule for every route. They suggest why efficient communication mattered to rulers and merchants; they do not prove uniform coverage across the entire subcontinent.

Design a relay without making anybody run faster.

In this fictional model, six route sections each take one hour. One carrier rests for two hours after the third section: total eight hours. Two carriers, with the second ready halfway and no handover delay, deliver in six hours. The gain comes from organisation. Real handovers take time and require resources; the model explains a principle, not a measured medieval delivery rate.

Francois Bernier

François Bernier was a French physician and writer associated with the Mughal court in the mid-seventeenth century. His patrons included Dara Shukoh and Danishmand Khan. Court access gave him opportunities to observe elite life and travel, while his dependence on patrons also shaped his position.

He compared Mughal India with Europe, especially France, and addressed some of his writing to powerful French readers. That purpose matters: his account could be both a description of another society and an intervention in political debates at home.

Printing widened its influence. Bernier's works appeared in France in 1670–71 and were translated and reprinted in several European languages. Circulation helped particular descriptions of India become familiar to readers who had never visited it. Popularity tells us about a text's reach; it does not independently confirm its conclusions.

Bernier and the “degenerate” East

The word in quotation marks describes the judgement NCERT asks us to examine, not the judgement these notes endorse. Bernier often organised comparison through a binary opposition: India and Europe appeared as contrasting models, with Europe placed higher in the hierarchy. A contrast that sharp can conceal variation within both societies.

Landownership and the leap from claim to cause

Bernier believed that the Mughal emperor owned all land. He argued that people unable to pass property securely to their descendants would avoid long-term investment. From that premise, he explained agricultural decline, oppression and poverty, presenting private property as the remedy.

His reasoning has a structure worth tracing even when its premises are disputed:

1. Claim: all land belongs to the emperor.
2. Proposed mechanism: insecure holders lack an incentive to improve it.
3. Predicted outcome: production declines and society becomes poorer.
4. Policy lesson: European rulers should avoid this supposed model.

Historians must test each link. NCERT points out that Mughal sources do not support the simple claim of sole state ownership. Abu'l Fazl explained revenue through the ruler's sovereign claim and protection, rather than treating it simply as rent paid to a universal landlord. The right to collect revenue and ownership of all land are not automatically the same thing.

This does not mean Mughal property relations were identical to modern private ownership, or that high revenue demands caused no hardship. Rights, claims and economic power were layered. Large zamindars, substantial cultivators, small peasants and landless workers occupied different positions. Explaining those differences is more useful than replacing one sweeping idealisation with another.

Read Bernier against Bernier

Bernier also noticed fertile regions, valuable manufactures, long-distance trade and merchants with substantial wealth. Such observations complicate his picture of general decline and a society consisting only of powerful nobles and an undifferentiated poor population.

His label of “camp towns” suggested that cities depended on an imperial camp and declined when it departed. Court patronage certainly mattered in some places, but towns also served manufacturing, maritime and inland trade, pilgrimage and other functions. Merchant organisations such as mahajans, and professionals including physicians, teachers, musicians and artisans, reveal a more varied urban world.

Karkhanas, the workshops he described, provide detailed evidence of specialised labour. His judgement that workers lacked ambition is a separate claim about their motivations. Observing a goldsmith at work cannot establish everything that person hoped for.

When a travel account becomes a theory

NCERT traces the influence of such descriptions on later European theories, including Montesquieu's oriental despotism and Marx's discussion of the Asiatic mode of production. These models linked state extraction, property and the supposed character of Asian societies. They must be studied as historical interpretations, not memorised as uncontested descriptions of India.

The chain is revealing: a traveller selects observations; a published book circulates them; later thinkers build larger explanations. At each step, ask what evidence was retained, simplified or left out.

Sati & Women labourers

The chapter also examines enslavement and violence against women. Ibn Battuta described buying enslaved people and presenting them as gifts. His account mentions domestic labour, performance and the use of enslaved women to gather information for the ruler. It exposes both coercive institutions and the traveller's participation in practices he often treated as ordinary.

Different work roles did not remove the underlying loss of freedom. Nor should the account's language of prices and gifts make the people described disappear behind the transaction. Their own voices are largely absent from the surviving description.

Bernier gave particular attention to sati, the burning of a widow on her husband's funeral pyre, and described coercion in a case he witnessed. His testimony matters as evidence of violence. It cannot, by itself, establish how frequently the practice occurred across every region, caste or period.

Women's lives were much wider than the episodes that attracted male travellers. NCERT points to agricultural and craft labour and to women in merchant families who participated in business and legal disputes. A history centred only on spectacular rituals can make ordinary work and agency almost invisible.

A source says little about women traders. Is “women never traded” a sound conclusion?

No. Silence may reflect the writer's access, interests or selection. Seek commercial documents, disputes, household evidence and other accounts. New evidence may reveal participation, but it should not be stretched into a claim that all women enjoyed equal economic power.

Open the letter: who was Bernier trying to persuade?

Visit Columbia University Libraries' digitised opening of Bernier's letter to Colbert, printed page 200, then read page 201. This is an 1891 English edition of earlier writing, not Bernier's original manuscript. The page viewer includes a scan as well as machine-recognised text.

Find the recipient's name, one place where the writer addresses him, and one passage praising France or its government. Then ask: what changes if this is read as a letter seeking a powerful reader's attention, rather than a neutral survey? Do not copy the page; explain the relationship in your own words.

Reveal the surprise: can flattery be useful evidence?

Yes. It reveals the writer's relationship with his audience and helps us investigate his purpose. It does not prove every factual statement false. Keep the observations that can be corroborated, examine generalisations and ask what a different audience might have been told.

Separate three dates on a small timeline: the journey, the first publication and the later edition you are reading. Translation, editing and digitisation are additional stages of transmission. If machine text looks odd, compare it with the page image before quoting it.

The traveller's notebook workshop

Choose a familiar object or shared space that you can observe safely without recording personal details. A bus-stop sign, a water bottle or a school noticeboard will do. Write three brief notes:

1. Observation: describe something you can directly check.
2. Interpretation: suggest what it might mean, marking the inference clearly.
3. Missing evidence: name what you would need before extending the claim to a whole community.

Now rewrite the description for someone unfamiliar with the object. Use one analogy. Ask a partner to draw what they imagine from your words, then compare it with the original. Where did your helpful comparison become misleading? Revise it. This is an original way to explore Ibn Battuta's problem of making unfamiliar things imaginable.

Test yourself

These are original practice questions, not past-paper reproductions. Aim to explain a mechanism or evidence limit, rather than only name a traveller.

1. Why is Al-Biruni's use of Sanskrit texts both a strength and a limitation?

It gives access to learned ideas in their own conceptual and linguistic settings. Yet texts and elite informants do not represent every group's daily practices. Compare normative claims with other sources and identify whose standpoint each expresses.

2. How could a message arrive much sooner than a traveller on the same route?

A relay transfers the message between ready carriers, reducing the delays imposed by one person's need for rest. It depends on staff, stations and reliable handovers. The mechanism explains a possible advantage; it does not verify every reported journey time.

3. Repair this claim: “The ruler collected revenue, therefore nobody else possessed rights in land.”

A revenue claim is not sufficient evidence of exclusive ownership. Investigate rights to cultivate, transfer, inherit or collect dues, and the social groups holding them. NCERT uses the mismatch between Bernier's interpretation and Mughal evidence to expose this leap.

4. Can two passages by Bernier disagree without making the entire book worthless?

Yes. His broad theory of decline can be tested against his descriptions of productive regions, crafts and trade. The tension helps historians distinguish observation from explanation and ask where his generalisation breaks down.

5. Compare Ibn Battuta and Bernier through purpose, not a simple “positive versus negative” label.

Ibn Battuta's narrated journeys offered unfamiliar experiences, people and places to his audience, while Bernier often compared political and economic arrangements for influential European readers. Both selected material, had particular access and could report valuable details. Different centuries and settings also matter.

Key takeaways

• Travel accounts can illuminate ordinary life because visitors notice what local writers may take for granted.
• Al-Biruni's scholarship crossed linguistic barriers but relied heavily on elite Sanskritic sources.
• Ibn Battuta reveals networks, cities and communication through a narrated account shaped by memory and audience.
• Bernier's observations and his explanations must be examined separately, especially on property, towns and social groups.
• Compare sources, attend to missing voices and state what the evidence supports before making a large claim.

Sources

Core content and curriculum identity checked on 7 September 2026 using NCERT Theme 5, Through the Eyes of Travellers, reprint 2026–27 and the CBSE History curriculum for 2026–27. The linked Columbia University Libraries pages supply the original-letter investigation through an explicitly identified later English edition. All fictional models, notebook activities and practice questions are original editorial work.