described as even then. one of the finest cities of the island. It was the abode of the " Wazir and Admiral Jalasti," who kept about him a body of 500 Abyssinians. This personage is not impossibly the same with the Khwaja Jahan, who so politely robbed John Marignolli (ante, p. 357). It is not said whose Wazir and Admiral he was.
At Patlam he took ship again for Maabar, but as he approached his destination he again came to grief, the ship grounding some six or eight miles from the shore. The crew abandoned the wreck, but our hero stuck by it, and was saved by some pagan natives.
On reaching the land, he reported his arrival to the de facto ruler of the country. This was the Sultan Ghai6ssuddin of Damghfin, recently invested with the government of Maabar, a principality originally set up by his father-in-law, the Sherif Jalaluddin. The latter had been appointed by Mahomed Tughlak to the military command of the province, but about 1338-39 had declared himself independent, striking coin in his own name, and proclaiming himself under the title of Ahhsan Shah Sultan. Ibn Batuta, during his stay at Dehli, had married one of the Sherif's daughters, named Hhurnasab. " She was a pious woman," says her husband, " who used to spend the night in watching and prayer. She could read, but had not learned to write. She bore me a daughter, but what is become of either the one or the other is more than I can tell !" Thus Ibn Batuta was brother-in-law to the reigning Sultan, who, on receiving the traveller's message, sent for him to his camp, two days' journey distant. This brother-in-law was a ruffian, whose cruel massacres of women and children excited the traveller's disgust and tacit remonstrance. However, he busied himself in engaging the Sultan in a scheme for the invasion of the Maldives, but before it carte to anything the chief died of a pestilence. His nephew and successor, Sultan Nasiruddin, was ready to take up the project, but Ibn Batuta got a fever at the capital, MUTTRA (Madura), and hurried off to FATTAN,1 a large and fine city on the
I This Fattan of Maabar is also mentioned by Rashid, in conjunction with Malifattan and Kal, in a passage quoted at p. 219 supra (see also p. 221). I am not able to identify it. It may have been Negapatam, but from the way in which our traveller speaks of it, it would seem to have
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