The Travels of Ibn Battuta (Arabic: تحفة النظار في غرائب الأمصار وعجائب الأسفار, romanized: Tuḥfat an-nuẓẓār fī gharāʾib al-amṣār wa-ʿajāʾib al-asfār, lit. 'A gift for the curious, concerning the wonders of cities and marvels of the journeys thereto'), also known simply as The Rihla (الرحلة ar-riḥla), is the travelogue written by Ibn Battuta, documenting his lifetime of travel and exploration, which according to his description covered about 73,000 miles (117,000 km). Rihla is the Arabic word for a voyage or journey, and it is a genre of travel writing in Arabic literature.
History
Upon Ibn Battuta's final return to Morocco in 1353, he dictated his retrospective account of his travels to the Andalusi scholar Abū ʿAbdallāh Ibn Juzayy under the patronage of the Marinid Sultan Abū ʿInān Fāris, who commissioned Ibn Juzayy to receive and edit the account. Ibn Juzayy, son of the Granadan jurist Ibn Juzayy al-Kalbī al-Gharnāṭī, also added his own poetic contributions. The work was completed in 1356, 31 years after Ibn Battuta began his journey.
Battuta's travels Ibn Battuta may have travelled significantly farther than any other person in history up to his time; certainly his account describes more travel than any other pre-jet age explorer on record. Ibn Battuta's first voyage began in 1325 CE, in Morocco, when the 21 year old set out on his Hajj, the religious pilgrimage to Mecca expected of all followers of Islam. During this time period, it would normally take pilgrims a year to a year and a half to complete the Hajj. However, Ibn Battuta found he loved travel during the experience, and reportedly encountered a Sufi mystic who told him that he would eventually visit the entire Islamic world. Ibn Battuta spent the next two decades exploring much of the known world. Twenty-four years after departing Morocco, he finally returned home to write about his travels.
The Hajj He travelled to Mecca overland, following the North African coast across the sultanates of Abd al-Wadid and Hafsid. He took a bride in the town of Sfax, the first in a series of marriages that would feature in his travels. In the early spring of 1326, after a journey of over 3,500 km (2,200 mi), Ibn Battuta arrived at the port of Alexandria, at the time part of the Bahri Mamluk Sultanate. He met two ascetic pious men in Alexandria. One was Sheikh Burhanuddin who is supposed to have foretold the destiny of Ibn Battuta as a world traveller saying "It seems to me that you are fond of foreign travel. You will visit my brother Fariduddin in India, Rukonuddin in Sind and Burhanuddin in China. Convey my greetings to them". Another pious man Sheikh Murshidi interpreted the meaning of a dream of Ibn Battuta that he was meant to be a world traveller. At this point, he began a lifelong habit of making side-trips instead of getting where he was going. He spent several weeks visiting sites in the area and then headed inland to Cairo, the capital of the Mamluk Sultanate and an important city. Of the three usual routes to Mecca, Ibn Battuta chose the least-travelled, which involved a journey up the Nile valley, then east to the Red Sea port of Aydhab. Upon approaching the town, however, a local rebellion forced him to turn back. He returned to Cairo and took a second side trip, this time to Mamluk-controlled Damascus. He described travelling on a complicated zig-zag route across Palestine in which he visited more than twenty cities. After spending the Muslim month of Ramadan in Damascus, he joined a caravan travelling the 1,300 km (810 mi) south to Medina, site of the Mosque of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. After four days in the town, he journeyed on to Mecca, where upon completing his pilgrimage he took the honorific status of El-Hajji. Rather than returning home, Ibn Battuta decided to continue traveling, choosing as his next destination the Ilkhanate, a Mongol Khanate, to the northeast. Ibn Battuta then started back toward Iraq, but got diverted on a six-month detour that took him into Persia. Finally, he returned across to Baghdad, arriving there in 1327. In Baghdad, he found Abu Sa'id, the last Mongol ruler of the unified Ilkhanate, leaving the city and heading north with a large retinue. Ibn Battuta joined the royal caravan for a while, then turned north on the Silk Road to Tabriz.
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