Philippine E-Journals

Rizal on Tawalisi

Jose P. Apostol

Discipline: History

 

Abstract:

Ibn Battuta’s travel in the Orient during the period 1325 to 1354, the narration of which the literary secretary of the Sultan of Fez took down in 1355, has aroused interest among Western scholars, but more among those in the Orient. In 1953, Dr. Mahdi Husain of the Oriental Institute, in Baroda, India, published his translation and commentary of part of this travel-narrative; in 1916 the late Professor Austin Craig put out a pamphlet in which he claimed that the land of Tawalisi mentioned in the Ibn narrative was somewhere in the Philippines; in 1952, Professor Nicolas Zafra refuted Professor Craig who, Zafra said was swayed by the opinion of Jose Rizal.

The purpose of this article is to make the entire letter of Rizal available, so that it can be studied in conjunction with the article of Zafra, and with the portion of the book of Yule that he (Zafra) quoted to bolster his conclusion that “the land of Tawalisi was located where the ancient kingdom of Champa arose”