Meet Ibn Battuta: Twenty-Nine Years on the Road

Leaving home

In June 1325 Ibn Battuta left Tangier alone for Mecca. He did not come back for nearly thirty years.

A judge, an envoy, a guest

He served as a judge in Delhi under Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq for about eight years, was sent as an envoy to China on a mission wrecked at Calicut, served as a judge in the Maldives, and crossed the Sahara to the Mali Empire.

The book

Back in Morocco, the sultan ordered his travels written down. Ibn Battuta dictated them to the scholar Ibn Juzayy, and the result — the Rihla — is one of the great travel books. Historians now think some passages were borrowed from earlier writers, and doubt he saw every place he describes. It is still the best account we have of the fourteenth-century world from inside it.

Why they belong at your table

Seat Ibn Battuta when you are weighing whether to leave somewhere familiar — and want a companion who has done it and kept going.