The Imagology of Women in Ibn Batutah’s Travelogue

Literary and historical texts can be considered as the most important tool in recognizing the image of women from different ethnic groups in the past, and the knowledge which can classify and analyze the image of women in these texts on a systematic and scientific basis is imagology . Within the literary texts, which represents a fairly realistic image of women , are travelogues; and 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 , at first images of the women from Turkic , Mongolian , Iranian , Chinese and Indian countries has been classified and analyzed from four perspectives of appearance, marriage, covering and attendance in social activities , and then the valuation attitude of Ibn Battutah has been reviewed for each image. The result of this study, while introducing new images of the women of these nations in Ibn Battutah's travelogue, confirms the hypothesis that Ibn Battutah's religious presuppositions have influenced his valuation attitude toward women of different ethnic groups, respectively representing itself in Turkic tribes and Mogul, Iran, India and China .