Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battuta was one of the greatest travelers of the premodern era. Toward the end of his life he recounted his journeys in a book entitled Tuhfat al-Nuzzar fi Ghara’ib al-Amsar wa- ‘Aja’ib al-Asfar, or A Gift to the Observers Concerning the Curiosities of Cities and the Marvels Encountered in Traveling. The work is one of the principal sources available to modern researchers for the social, economic, and political conditions of the fourteenth-century Islamic world. Although not as well known as Marco Polo’s, Ibn Battuta’s travels were, in fact, more extensive than those of his younger European contemporary. Over a period of twenty-eight years, he crossed the breadth of Africa and Asia and visited the equivalent of approximately forty-four modern countries.
Ibn Battuta was born in February 1304 in Tangier Morocco into a well respected family of judges who adhered to the Maliki School ...