sea, with an admirable harbour, where he found ships sailing for Yemen, and took his passage in one of them as far as Kaulam.
Here he stayed for three months, and then went off for the fourth time to visit his friend the Sultan of Hunawur. On his way, however, off a small island between Fakanûr and Hunawur (probably the Pigeon Island of modern maps), the vessel was attacked by pirates of the wrong kind, and the unlucky adventurer was deposited on the beach stript of everything but his drawers ! On this occasion, as he mentions elsewhere incidentally, he lost a number of transcripts of epitaphs of celebrated persons which he had made at Bokhara, along with other matters, not improbably including the notes of his earlier travels.1 Returning to Calicut he was clothed by the charity of the Faithful. Here also he heard news of the Maldives ; the Preacher Jamaluddin was dead, and the Queen had married another of the Wazirs ; moreover one of the wives whom he had abandoned had borne him a son.2 He had some hesitation about returning to
been the port of the city of Madura, and therefore I should rather look for it in the vicinity of Ramnad, as at Devi-patam or Killikarai, which have both been ports of some consideration. A place also called Periapatan, near Ramanancor, is mentioned by the historians of the Jesuit missions as much frequented for commerce, and as the chief town of the Paravas of the Fishery coast, but I do not find it on any map (Jarric, 628). Pattan or Fattan was probably the Mabar city of John Montecorvino and Marco Polo (see p. 216), and may be that which Abulfeda (probably by some gross mistranscription) calls Biyardcczval, " residence of the Prince of Mabar, whither horses are imported from foreign countries." There is indeed a place called Ninarkovil, near Ramnad, celebrated for a great temple (J. R. A. S., iii, 165), which may be worth mentioning, because the difference between these two rather peculiar names (Biyardâwal and Ninargâwal) would be almost entirely a matter of diacritical points; Kail and Malifattan (or Molephatam) are both to be sought in the vicinity of Tuticorin (see Fr. Jordanus, p. 40). Malifattan is no doubt the Manifattan of Abulfeda, a city of Mabar on the sea shore" (see Gildemeister, p. 185).
1 See iii, 28.
2 He says this boy was now two years old. As the child was not born when Ibn Batuta left the Maldives in August 1344, his second visit must have been (according to this datum) at least as late as August 1346, and perhaps some months later. He goes to China (at the earliest) during the succeeding spring, and yet his book tells us that he is back from his. China expedition and in Arabia by May 1347. There is here involved an error one way or the other of at least one year, and of two years if we
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