


Ibn Battuta returned to Cairo and took a second side trip, this time to Mamluk-controlled Damascus. 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. After spending about a month in Cairo, he embarked on the first of many detours within the relative safety of Mamluk territory. He spent several weeks visiting sites in the area, and then headed inland to Cairo, the capital of the Mamluk Sultanate and even at that time an important large city. 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, then part of the Bahri Mamluk empire.

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He took a bride in the town of Sfax, the first in a series of marriages that would feature in his travels. For safety, Ibn Battuta usually joined a caravan to reduce the risk of an attack by wandering Arab Bedouin. The route took him through Tlemcen, Béjaïa, and then Tunis, where he stayed for two months. He travelled to Mecca overland, following the North African coast across the sultanates of Abd al-Wadid and Hafsid. As my parents were still alive, it weighed grievously upon me to part from them, and both they and I were afflicted with sorrow. Swayed by an overmastering impulse within me, and a long-cherished desire to visit those glorious sanctuaries, I resolved to quit all my friends and tear myself away from my home. I set out alone, finding no companion to cheer the way with friendly intercourse, and no party of travellers with whom to associate myself. He would not see Morocco again for twenty-four years. In June 1325, at the age of twenty-one, Ibn Battuta set off from his hometown on a hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca, a journey that would take sixteen months. He claimed descent from the Berber tribe known as the Lawata.Īs a young man he would have studied at a Sunni Maliki madh’hab, (Islamic jurisprudence school), the dominant form of education in North Africa at that time. Ibn Battuta was born into a family of Islamic legal scholars in Tangier, Morocco, on 25 February 1304, during the reign of the Marinid dynasty. Occupation: Islamic scholar, Jurist, Judge, explorer, geographerĪ 13th-century book illustration produced in Baghdad by al-Wasiti showing a group of pilgrims on a Hajj.Īll that is known about Ibn Battuta’s life comes from the autobiographical information included in the account of his travels.Ibn Battuta is considered one of the greatest travellers of all time. His journeys included trips to North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Africa and Eastern Europe in the West, and to the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China in the East, a distance surpassing threefold his near-contemporary Marco Polo. Over a period of thirty years, Ibn Battuta visited most of the known Islamic world as well as many non-Muslim lands. He is known for his extensive travels, accounts of which were published in the Rihla (lit. Ibn Batutah (Arabic: ʾAbu ʿAbd al-Lah Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Lah l-Lawati ṭ-Ṭangi ibn Batutah), or simply Ibn Battuta ( ابن بطوطة) (Febru– 1368 or 1369), was a Moroccan and Berber explorer. The History Pages: Ibn Batutah | ابن بطوطة
