Ibn Battuta Explores the Non-Western World

Ibn Battuta Explores the Non-Western World

Overview

Over the space of a quarter-century, the Moroccan journeyer Ibn Battuta (1304-1368) traveled to every civilized portion of the known non-Western world. From Morocco to China, from Russia to Mali, from Spain to Sumatra, he covered a staggering amount of ground: some 75,000 miles or 120,000 kilometers, not counting many detours. In so doing he gathered material for a highly informative travelogue, the Rihla. Yet in spite of the fact that he saw far more of the planet than did Marco Polo (1254-1324), he is much less wellknown—even in Middle Eastern nations.

Background

Comparisons with Polo are virtually inevitable: not only were both men travelers of the medieval world, but they were contemporaries for 20 years. By 1304, when Ibn Battuta was born in the Moroccan city of Tangier, Polo had written his memoirs, a book that earned him a reputation as a teller of tall tales if not an outright liar. Ibn Battuta, who set out on his own journeys in 1325, a year after Polo's death, would one day publish his own book—and he, too, would be branded a fabricator of falsehoods.

The most significant difference between the two men, of course, is the fact that Polo came from Christian Europe and Ibn Battuta from Muslim North Africa, and this distinction bore heavily on the experiences each would encounter.

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