Returning to Bagdad, Ibn Batuta crossed the Arabian Desert a second time, and took up his residence in Mecca for the space of three years.  His account of the voyage along the eastern coast of Africa, as far south as Quiloa, is brief and uninteresting; but on his return he visited Oman, of which province he gives us the first authentic account.  From the Pearl Islands in the Persian Gulf, he bent his way once more across Arabia to Mecca, whence he crossed the Red Sea to the Nubian coast, and descended the Nile to Cairo.  I shall omit his subsequent journeys through Syria and Asia Minor, although they contain many amusing and picturesque incidents, and turn, instead, to his adventures in Kipchak (Southern Russia), which was then governed by a sultan descended in a direct line from Genghis Khan.  Embarking at Sinope, he crossed the Black Sea to Caffa, in the Crimea, which was at that time a Genoese city.  Here a singular circumstance occurred:—­

’We lodged in the mosque of the Mussulmans.  After we had been resting there about an hour, we suddenly heard the sound of bells resounding on all sides.  I had then never heard such a sound; I was extremely terrified, and ordered my companions to ascend the minaret, read the Koran, praise God, and recite the call to prayer,—­which they did.  We now perceived a man who had approached us:  he was armed, and wore a cuirass.  He saluted us, and we begged him to inform us who he was.  He gave us to understand that he was the Kadi of the Mussulmans of the place, and added:  “When I heard the reading of the Koran and the call to prayers, I trembled for your safety, and therefore came to seek you.”  Then he departed; but, nevertheless, we received nothing but good treatment.’

From Caffa, Ibn Eatuta traveled in a chariot to Azof, near which place he found the camp of the Sultan Mohammed Uzbek Khan, of whose court he gives a very circumstantial description.  He also devotes considerable space to an account of their manner of keeping the fast of Ramadan.  The favorite wife of the sultan was a daughter of the Greek emperor, who at the time of the traveler’s visit was preparing to set out for Constantinople, in order that her expected child might be born in the palace of her fathers.  ‘I prayed the sultan,’ says Ibn Batuta, ’to permit me to journey in company with the princess, in order that I might behold Constantinople the Great.  He at first refused, out of fear for my safety, but I solicited him, saying, “I will not enter Constantinople except under thy protection and thy patronage, and therefore I will fear no one.”  He then gave me permission to depart, making me a present of fifteen hundred ducats, a robe of honor, and a great number of horses.’