Identification of some toponyms: Ibn Battuta in China

Ibn Battuta was one of the most important travelers during the Middle Ages. His traveling went on for almost 30 years, he mainly visited Muslim countries (inside the border of ‘Dar al Islam’), but also had ventured out into the Chinese Yuan empire. This paper deals with Ibn Battuta’s Chinese itinerary and the difficulty of scholars to identify some Arabic toponyms, used by Ibn Battuta in his work named Rihla, regarding Chinese territory. In details, this work is based on the translation of the Rihla by Chinese professor Li Guangbin. The author tries to explain the identification of Ab-i-¢ayat, probably the Yellow River or the Grand Canal; the etymology of £in al £in £in-kalan (modern Guangzhou) and finally the city of Qanjanfu. The carelessness of descriptions led some scholars to consider Chinese itinerary of the Rihla as the less reliable and trustworthy portion of Ibn Battuta’s traveling. The controversy between pro-reliability scholars and doubtful researchers is characterized by many doubts. Far from being able to dissolve those doubts, the aim is to propose a more accurate examination of the various theories and hypotheses that Western and Chinese scholars advanced over the years.