400 headwords 4247726 Ibn Battuta fp indd 1

trouble
problems
enemy
(
plural
enemies
) 
someone who is 
not your friend
fight
(
past
fought
) to hit 
someone again 
and again
tusk
these are 
long and white; an 
elephant has two 
of them next to
its mouth
The Sultan could write beautifully, and he could speak 
four different languages. But he was often angry, too. 
Every day he asked his soldiers to kill people, sometimes for 
very little things. I needed to be 
very
careful.
For two years, my work went well. But then the Sultan 
began to have 
trouble
with his 
enemies
. One ruler near 
Delhi 
fought
with him. And what did the Sultan do with 
his enemy when he found the man?
Well, Sultan Muhammad had lots of elephants, and he 
took some of them and put big knives on their 
tusks
. He 
then put his enemy in front of the elephants. The animals 
played with the man. They moved their knives up and 
down and cut his body open. He died, of course, and it was 
a very bad thing for us all to watch.
I took a wife, a wonderful woman, to live with me in my 
house in Delhi. But then my wife’s father began to fight 
with the Sultan. This wasn’t good because people began 
to speak badly about 
me
. Perhaps I was an enemy of the 
Sultan too, they said.
Then something worse happened. A famous holy man 
– Shaikh Shihab Al-Din – lived on a hill near Delhi. I was 
very interested in him, and I sometimes visited his home.
But Sultan Muhammad was very angry with Shaikh 
Shihab Al-Din. He asked the holy man to do many different 
things, but Shaikh Shihab always said ‘No’ to him. So in 
the end, the Sultan’s men went and killed the holy man! 
And when the Sultan asked about the holy man’s friends, 
people gave my name to him! ‘Is Sultan Muhammad going 
to be angry with me?’ I thought. ‘What can I do? I can’t 
run away from him because then his soldiers are going to 
come and kill me too.’
4247726 Ibn Battuta FP.indd 16
7/7/10 15:21:01

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