Iwalatan (Walata)

Iwalatan, known as Walata, is for Ibn Battuta the first province of the Sudan, which he reached at the start of Rabi' al-Awwal after two full months' travel from Sijilmasa. ¹

The sultan's deputy there was called "Farba Husayn", farba meaning deputy; he received the merchants sitting on a carpet under a portico with his men holding spears and bows, and spoke to them through an interpreter although they stood close by, and Ibn Battuta says he then regretted coming to their country because of their contempt for white men; the judgement is his. ¹ The town's overseer, "Manshaju", invited them to a reception, which turned out to be crushed millet mixed with a little honey and milk served in half a gourd. ¹

He stayed about fifty days and its people honoured him, among them its judge Muhammad ibn Abd Allah ibn Yanumar and his brother Yahya, a teacher of law. ¹ The town was very hot, with a few palm trees in whose shade they grew melons, water from shallow wells, plenty of mutton, and fine Egyptian clothing; most of its inhabitants were of the Masufa, and its women were of outstanding beauty, "and of greater standing than the men". ¹ Ibn Battuta then gives a section to the customs of the Masufa living there, which he finds astonishing. ^{1 2} On his way back he names it as the limit beyond which a man who married a Berber woman of those parts could not take her. ³