Ibn Battuta

Muhammad ibn Abd Allah ibn Batuta al-Lawati al-Tanji (703–770 AH / 1304–1368 CE) was the greatest traveler of the pre-modern world, a Moroccan Maliki scholar who journeyed an estimated 120,000 kilometers over approximately 29 years, visiting virtually every Muslim land and many beyond — from Morocco to Mali, from Turkey to China, from the Crimea to the Maldives. His account, the Rihla (Journey), is the single most important travel document in Islamic history.

He set out initially for the Hajj from his native Tangier at the age of 21, intending to perform pilgrimage and then return. Instead, each destination opened new horizons, and he continued traveling. He visited Egypt, the Levant, Persia, Iraq, the Arabian Peninsula, the East African coast, Anatolia, the Golden Horde, Central Asia, India (where he served as a qadi under the Delhi Sultanate for several years), the Maldives, China, al-Andalus, and West Africa.

His account of the Mali Empire under Mansa Suleyman is one of the most important sources on 14th-century West African Islamic civilization. His description of China's Guangzhou Muslim community, Indian Ocean trade networks, and the political structure of the Mongol successor states provides irreplaceable information on the medieval connected world.

He dictated his Rihla to the Marinid court scholar Ibn Juzayy after returning to Morocco, and the resulting text combines his personal observations with standard tropes of the travel genre. He died in Morocco around 770 AH. His Rihla was rediscovered by European scholars in the 19th century and has since been recognized as one of the most extraordinary documents of medieval world history.