Ibn Battuta

Muhammad ibn Abdullah ibn Battuta (703-770 AH / 1304-1369 CE) was a Moroccan Muslim traveler and Maliki jurist who undertook the most extensive pre-modern journey ever documented, covering approximately 120,000 kilometers across Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China over nearly thirty years. Born in Tangier, he set out on his first journey at the age of twenty-one with the intention of performing the Hajj.

What began as a pilgrimage became a lifelong odyssey. Ibn Battuta visited virtually every corner of the Muslim world: North Africa, Egypt, the Levant, Arabia, Persia, Iraq, East Africa, Anatolia, the Golden Horde (southern Russia), Central Asia, India (where he served as a judge in Delhi for several years under Sultan Muhammad ibn Tughluq), the Maldives, Ceylon, Southeast Asia, and China. He also crossed the Sahara to visit the Mali Empire in West Africa. His travels far exceeded those of his famous European contemporary, Marco Polo.

Upon his return to Morocco, the Sultan commissioned the scholar Ibn Juzayy to record Ibn Battuta's accounts. The resulting work, formally titled Tuhfat an-Nuzzar fi Ghara'ib al-Amsar wa-Aja'ib al-Asfar (A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travel), commonly known as the Rihla, provides an invaluable eyewitness account of the 14th-century Islamic world, its customs, rulers, scholars, and institutions. He died in Morocco in approximately 770 AH (1369 CE). His Rihla remains one of the most important primary sources for the history of the medieval Muslim world.