The Imagology of Women in Ibn Batutah’s Travelogue

Literary and historical texts can be considered as the most important tool in recognizing the images of women of different ethnic groups in the past. Imagology is the knowledge to classify and analyze the images of women in these texts on a systematic and scientific basis. The travelogues are among the literary texts, which represents a fairly realistic image of women. One of the most comprehensive travelogues in the eighth century is Ibn Battutah's travelogue. In this article, we are going to identify and classify a variety of women's images in this travelogue. Accordingly, in primary images of the women from Turkic, Mongolian, Iranian, Chinese and Indian countries, the classification are conducted from three perspectives of appearance and covering, marriage, and attendance in social activities, and then the valuation attitude of Ibn Battutah has been reviewed for each image. The results of this study introduce new images of the women of these nations in Ibn Battutah's travelogue. Thus, the results confirm the hypothesis that Ibn Battutah's religious presuppositions have influenced his evaluation attitude toward women of different ethnic groups, representing itself in Turkic tribes and Mogul, Iran, India and China.