Ibn Battuta

Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battuta was born in Tangier, Morocco, into a family of Muslim legal scholars. In 1325, at twenty-one, he set out alone to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. He did not return home for nearly twenty-five years. He traveled through North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Arabia, Persia and Iraq, sailed down the east coast of Africa to Kilwa, crossed the Black Sea to the lands of the Golden Horde, and visited Constantinople. He spent about eight years in Delhi, India, as a judge for the sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq, who sent him as an envoy to China; after shipwreck and robbery he reached the Maldive Islands, where he served as a judge and married, then traveled on to Sri Lanka, Bengal, Sumatra and China. After returning to Morocco, he crossed to Granada in Spain and finally crossed the Sahara to the Mali Empire, visiting Timbuktu. In all he covered some 75,000 miles. At the sultan of Morocco's request he dictated his travels to the scholar Ibn Juzayy, a book known as the Rihla. He died around 1369.

Ibn Battuta is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Sunni Muslim traveler and judge, trained in the Maliki school of Islamic law. Source: Wikipedia