WHEN 'the adventurous traveler of Tangier, Abu Abd Allah Ibn Battuta, arrived at Attalia in the beginning of his Anatolian tour early in 1333 and took up his residence in the Moslem seminary of the town, he was visited by a young Turk of unpretentious appearance who invited him and his company to dinner.1 The Moroccan traveler's attitude was one of condescending reluctance, for, as he tells us, he was loath to burden the finances of a man who seemed to be anything but wealthy. He was reassured, however, by the sheikh in charge of the school, who hastened to inform him that the hospitable Turk was the leader of the local Akhiyat al-Fityan, or the Brotherhood of Youth,, which, as the traveler learned afterward, existed in every important city of Asia Minor. In Attalia it had a membership of about two hundred. They were commonly mentioned as Akhi, or Brethren.2 The dinner party in question was Ibn Battuta's first contact with the Akhis, and Ibn Battuta, in turn, became our first source of information concerning the Brotherhood. As he pursued his journey from town to town in the Anatolian Turkish emirates, he had occasion to become acquainted with more than a dozen chapters of the Akhiyat al-Fityan and to learn the organization's aims and practices. When, back in Morocco, many years later, he dictated the recollections of his journeys in the three continents, he did not fail to describe the Akhis of Anatolia. Thus, Ibn Battuta's Travels came to shed new light upon one of the darkest corners of early Turkish history at a time when scholarship, headed by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856), seemed to have fully exploited all the known sources, yet without penetrating b yond the legends and traditions which enveloped the heroic personalities of Osman, Orhan, and their contemporaries.3