In September 1353, the Sultan of Morocco, Abu Inan Faris, sent word to one of his subjects, a legal scholar named Ibn Battuta, to return back home to Tangiers. It would be the first time Battuta would spend a significant amount of time in his homeland, since he had left to go on pilgrimage to Mecca nearly 30 years before, in 1325. During that three decade period, Battuta, a well-educated Islamic scholar from a wealthy family, had travelled across the entirety of the Muslim world. and even beyond to the eastern Roman capital of Constantinople and even China.
During his lifetime he journeyed across a total of 40 modern day countries, a distance of well over 70,000 miles, spending a significant amount of time in every place that he visited. He visited Egypt, Arabia, East Africa, Anatolia, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China, Southeast Asia, Spain and even traversed the Saharan desert to arrive in West Africa. before he finally returned home to recount his life story to the scholar Ibn Juzay, who had been instructed by the Sultan to record the incredible journey for posterity. Ibn Battuta had been born in 1304 to a Berber family of legal scholars in Tangiers, Morocco. At the time, the Islamic world stretched from Spain to Indonesia, encompassing a huge variety of cultures, states and languages under its sphere of influence.
Due to the recent Mongol conquests of the 13th century, and the foundation of four relatively peaceful success estates that encompassed the vast geographical area once conquered. Peaceful trade routes now thrived once more between the east and the west. A very devout man, at first Batuta's only aim from his journey was to go on the Hajj, or pilgrimage, to the Muslim holy sites in Mecca and Medina, halfway across the world on the Arabian Peninsula. He mostly journeyed with a caravan of other travellers for safety, on the way stopping off at various cities in Northern Africa.
which at the time was ruled by two Berber kingdoms, one roughly in Algeria, the other in Tunisia. Finally, after around 18 months of travelling, the caravan arrived in Mamluk Egypt, where Batuta opted to take the least travelled route down to Mecca, journeying alone down the Nile and attempting to cross the Red Sea. He was forced to turn back however due to a local rebellion taking place there, and ended up visiting the major cities of Syria and the Levant instead. before finally arriving in Medina and Mecca to complete the Hajj in the next year, achieving the honorific title El-Haji. At this point, rather than turn around and head back home, Batuta, possibly after receiving a vision, decided to carry on his journey, with the overall aim of reaching India.
He first headed north to the Ilkhanate of Persia, a Mongol success estate. As a learned scholar, he was accepted all over Persia and spent time with many of the local rulers. He visited Baghdad with its still visible scars from its sack a century earlier by the Mongols.
He also visited the wealthy trade cities near the Caspian Sea at the start of the Silk Road, before departing back to Mecca for his second Hajj. Again, he chose to continue his journey at this point, travelling south this time from the port of Jeddah to the ancient and mysterious land of Yemen, home to many cities and towns, before traversing the Horn of Africa down to modern day Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania. to the important trade cities of Mogadishu and Mombasa. Along the way he visited many grand mosques and palaces and met various local rulers.
He then sailed back north to Oman and Mecca once more for his third Hajj in 1332. Up until this point Batuta had already undertaken a huge trip which would by itself surely be remembered as one of the greatest in history, travelling all the way from Morocco to Oman via Syria, Iran and Iraq. But Batuta didn't stop there. After this point, up until 1347, he embarked on possibly the greatest single journey undertaken by anyone in history. At first he travelled north, going through Asia Minor, as usual, charming his way to being accepted by many of the local rulers, including the family who would go on to form the Ottoman Empire over the next centuries.
The area was the wild frontier of Islam at the time, and its inhabitants spoke Turkic rather than Arabic. This would be the first time that he stepped completely out of his comfort zone. He then travelled further north into the lands of the Golden Horde, another success estate to the Mongols, where he had to wear many layers of clothing to keep from freezing in the cold temperatures.
He then accompanied an ambassadorial mission to Constantinople, one of the greatest cities in the world at the time, where he spent a month amongst its Christian inhabitants. This would be the first time he set foot outside of Muslim lands, but certainly not the last. He then finally travelled to India via the great metropolises of the Silk Road. Samarkand and Bukhara, and the imposing Hindu Kush mountains, before finally arriving at the court of Mohammed bin Tughlaq.
the Sultan of Delhi and one of the richest men in the world. He spent many years in India, precariously at risk from the paranoid ruler, who favoured him greatly at times, whilst others remained convinced that he was plotting against him. Finally, he managed to make his escape by talking his way into an ambassadorial position to China. He travelled via the Maldives as well as Sri Lanka before finally arriving in the South China Sea, stopping off at the wealthy trade ports of Sumatra and Malaysia along the way. In China, he visited many cities, traversed the Grand Canal and made note of the Muslim Quarter of Beijing.
Batuta finally arrived back in Arabia in 1348 to be greeted by the Black Death, which would go on to wipe out as many as one-third of all Eurasians. He was also devastated to learn of the death of his father some 15 years earlier, and decided to return home back to Morocco. When he arrived back in Tangiers, he found out that his mother too had died.
just months previously. After only a few days in his hometown, he set out to travel again, arriving in Muslim Spain where he met the man who would eventually write down his travels. But not before he traversed the entirety of the Saharan desert to visit the wealthy cities of the Malian Empire, spending time in Timbuktu and Gao before finally returning to Tangiers to document his life story. Although travellers tales like this one are common from this period, the works of the likes of Marco Polo pale in comparison to Batuta's.
At the time it was difficult to differentiate between fake fantastical accounts, such as the tales of Sir John Mandeville, which described fantastical beings just over the horizon, and those of genuine travellers like Batuta. The travels of Ibn Batuta remain one of the greatest sources of information on both the medieval world and this great turning point in world history, when the various previously insular states of Eurasia began to open up to the world stage.