During the Late Middle Ages, before the start of the European Age of Exploration, Marco Polo traveled across all of Asia, while Zheng He led several expeditions in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. However, another explorer traveled more than both of them combined: Ibn Battuta. During the 14th century he crossed all of North Africa, East Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, India, Southeast Asia, and even reached China. After traveling for almost 30 years, he described his travels in a book commonly known as The Rihla.
Illustration of Ibn Battuta and his guide in Egypt made by Léon Benett in 1878.
Ibn Battuta was born in 1304 in Tangier, modern-day Morocco, in a Berber family of Islamic scholars. After completing his studies, he left his hometown for a pilgrimage to Mecca in June 1325, traveling through North Africa. This journey would usually take about a year and a half, but Ibn Battuta became eager to learn more about faraway lands, and didn’t return to Morocco for 24 years. On his way to Mecca, he followed the coast of North Africa visiting all the major cities in the area, such as Tlemcen, Tunis, and Sfax, and arrived in Alexandria in early 1326.
After spending a month in Cairo, Ibn Battuta decided to take the least traveled path towards Mecca, following the Nile river and then heading for the port of ʿAydhab on the Red Sea. However, he couldn’t reach the town because of a rebellion, and returned to Cairo. From Cairo, he took a side trip to Damascus, in Syria, and passed through Jerusalem and Bethlehem. He spent Ramadan in Damascus and then joined a caravan that traveled 1,300 km to the south to Medina. After visiting the holy sites in Medina and Mecca he decided that he wouldn’t return home, and instead he would travel even further.
In November 1326, he joined a caravan of pilgrims returning from Mecca to Iraq. He arrived in Najaf and followed the Tigris river to the south until Basra, before heading east to Iran. He reached Isfahan and Shiraz, and later returned to Iraq, finally arriving in Baghdad. While in Baghdad, he took a trip to Tabriz, in northwestern Iran, and then he visited what is now southeastern Turkey, following the Tigris river to Mosul and then back to Baghdad.
Ibn Battuta then took off for his second pilgrimage to Mecca, and remained in the city for some time. It’s not clear how long he stayed in Mecca, he left either in 1328 or 1330. From Mecca he reached the port of Jeddah, and took off on a boat following the coast of the Red Sea to the south. After visiting Yemen, he embarked on a ship that took him from the port of Aden to Zeila on the coast of Somalia. He then followed the coast of Somalia, arriving in Mogadishu, then one of the richest merchant cities in the world. He continued his trip by boat to the south along the Swahili coast, visiting Mombasa, now in Kenya, and Kilwa Kisiwani, in modern-day Tanzania. He then sailed back to the Arabian Peninsula, and passed through Oman and the Strait of Hormuz. After crossing the Arabian desert, he reached Mecca once again.
Voyages of Ibn Battuta between 1325 and 1332 (FredD, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0).
After completing his third pilgrimage to Mecca, Ibn Battuta embarked on a new adventure, deciding to reach India overland from Anatolia. He first sailed on the Red Sea and reached the Nile river, and then crossed Egypt and Palestine on his way to the Syrian port of Latakia. He then sailed on a Genoese ship from Latakia to Alanya in modern-day Turkey. He visited Antalya on the southern coast of Turkey and then headed inland, visiting several towns in central Anatolia and reaching Bursa, then the capital of the rising Ottoman Empire. While visiting the many small states that occupied Anatolia at the time, he met various local rulers and was gifted two slaves, and also purchased two girls. During all of his travels, he also often took wives in the places where he stayed for longer, and even had some children, but abandoned them as soon as he left for his next journey.
Ibn Battuta visited Ephesus and İzmir in western Turkey, and then headed north to Sinope, a port on the Black Sea. From Sinope he sailed to Crimea, then ruled by the Mongol Golden Horde, and visited some of the most important cities of their realm, such as Azov and Majar, now in southern Russia. He reached the traveling court of Özbeg Khan, ruler of the Golden Horde, which was near Mount Beshtau in the northern Caucasus. He then headed north to Bolghar on the Volga river, the northernmost point of all his travels. He noted the unusually short summer nights and wanted to travel further north into what he described as a snow-covered land of darkness, but he had to abandon this plan, and returned south to Astrakhan.
In Astrakhan, he learned that Özbeg Khan had just given permission to one of his pregnant wives, the daughter of Byzantine emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos, to return to her home town of Constantinople to give birth. Ibn Battuta convinced Özbeg Khan to let him joined the expedition, and so he ventured outside the Muslim world for the first time. In either 1332 or 1334 he stayed in Constantinople for a month and met the Byzantine emperor, before returning to Astrakhan. After leaving the city he headed east past the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea, visiting Bukhara and Samarkand, then flourishing trading centers. He reached the court of Tarmashirin, the Mongol khan of the Chagatai Khanate, and then moved south to Afghanistan. After crossing the Hindu Kush mountains, he reached the Indus river and made his way to Delhi, stopping in various cities along the way.
Ibn Battuta became acquainted with Muhammad bin Tughluq, ruler of the Delhi Sultanate and one of the wealthiest men of his time. He was appointed as a judge by the sultan, but struggled to enforce Islamic law beyond Delhi. Also, the sultan didn’t completely trust him, and accused him of treason numerous times. Ibn Battuta tried to leave with the excuse of taking another pilgrimage to Mecca, but the sultan didn’t allow it. In 1341, he finally convinced the sultan to let him join a Chinese embassy that was traveling through India, with the goal of eventually reaching China. However, soon after leaving Delhi he was robbed and kidnapped by bandits, but he was then freed and was able to reach his group in Khambhat, on the Indian coast of Gujarat. From there, he sailed to Calicut on the southwestern coast of India, where more problems arose. A storm sank one of the ships of his expedition, while the other one sailed without him and was later seized by a Sumatran king.
Afraid to return to Delhi, he remained in southern India under the protection of the ruler of the Nawayath Sultanate. However, the state was soon overthrown, and he had to leave. He escaped to the Maldives, and worked as a judge for the local rulers, who had recently converted to Islam. Needing someone who knew Arabic and the Islamic law, the rulers of the Maldives gave Ibn Battuta a lot of gifts and seized his ship, making it impossible for him to leave. Forced to stay in the Maldives, Ibn Battuta began to enforce Islamic law in brutal ways. People who didn’t attend the Friday prayer were publicly whipped, robbers had their right hands cut off, and women were forbidden from being topless, which was the custom there. With these judgements, he began antagonizing the local rulers, and they let him resign and leave the Maldives.
Finally free to leave, he sailed to Sri Lanka but his ship sank and the vessel who came to help him was attacked by pirates. Nevertheless, he was able to reach Madurai in southern India and spent some time there. He then went back to the Maldives in order to board a Chinese ship and complete his goal of reaching China, and was able to sail to Chittagong in modern-day Bangladesh. From there, he took a trip to the mountains to the north and the region of Assam, now in eastern India, and then went back to Chittagong.
In 1345, he sailed toward Southeast Asia, reaching Aceh in northern Sumatra, now part of Indonesia, and at the time considered the eastern end of the Muslim world. He continued his travels by reaching the island of Java, ruled by the Hindu Majapahit Empire, and visited various cities in the area. Ibn Battuta then described a kingdom that he called Tawalisi and was a rival of the Mongol Yuan dynasty that ruled China at the time. However, it’s unclear which kingdom he’s talking about and various scholars proposed Java, the Philippines, Cambodia, or Vietnam as possible locations for this state.
In any case, in 1345 Ibn Battuta finally reached China, arriving at Quanzhou on the coast of Fujian, and was welcomed by the Muslim merchants of the city, who lived in their own portion of the city. He then sailed south to Guangzhou, then back north to Quanzhou, and continued along the coast to Fuzhou. There he met a wealthy Moroccan merchant, who accompanied him to Hangzhou, where he became a guest of an Egyptian family. He then sailed along the Grand Canal all the way to Beijing, and introduced himself as an ambassador of the Delhi Sultanate. So, he was able to meet Toghon Temür, also known as Emperor Huizong of Yuan, the ruler of China.
Voyages of Ibn Battuta between 1332 and 1348 (FredD, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0).
Ibn Battuta then left Beijing and embarked on his long trip back to Morocco. He went back to Hangzhou, Fuzhou, and Quanzhou, from where he sailed all the way back to Calicut in India. In 1348 he was back in Damascus, which was struck by the Black Death. Despite this, he was still able to reach Mecca and began making his way back to Morocco. He took one last detour sailing to Sardinia, and in 1349 he finally arrived back in Tangier, but by this point both of his parents had already died.
He didn’t spend much time in Tangier, and he soon left once again for a trip to the Muslim-ruled al-Andalus in southern Spain. He visited various cities there, including Granada, and then went back to Morocco stopping in Marrakech, which had been hit heavily by the plague, and then Fez. In 1351, Ibn Battuta began his new trip to the south, reaching Sijilmasa at the edge of the Sahara desert. After staying there for four months preparing for the trip, he began crossing the Sahara in February 1352. He reached the salt mines of Taghaza in modern-day Mali, and then continued the difficult journey to Oualata, a small oasis now in Mauritania and then part of the Mali Empire.
He then traveled along the Niger river through the Mali Empire, and then to Timbuktu, which was still a small center and would only become important in the next few centuries. He continued along the Niger river to Gao and then joined a caravan traveling overland to the oasis of Takedda, now in Niger. While he was crossing the desert, he received a message from the sultan of Morocco, which ordered him to return home, so he made his way back to his home country, arriving in 1354.
Voyages of Ibn Battuta between 1349 and 1354 (FredD, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0).
After returning to Morocco, and at the suggestion of the sultan, Ibn Battuta dictated his adventures to a scholar, who wrote A Masterpiece to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling, more commonly known as The Rihla, a book describing all of his travels. There is no indication that during his journey Ibn Battuta made notes or kept a journal, so all of his descriptions came from his memory of events that happened even decades earlier. Because of this, some scholars have disputed some of his descriptions, and various passages have been copied by descriptions made by other travelers, either because he didn’t remember, or because he didn’t actually travel to those places. While some of the descriptions provided by Ibn Battuta have been disputed, The Rihla is still an important account of the world of the 14th century outside Europe.
Not much is known about Ibn Battuta after he returned to Morocco, only that he was appointed as a judge and died in 1368 or 1369. His travels were unkown outside the Muslim world until the 19th century, when sections of his book began circulating in Europe. Despite the doubts on the historicity of some of his accounts, Ibn Battuta is now regarded as one of the greatest pre-modern explorers, and he likely traveled more than anyone before him.