Introduction Summary and Analysis

Dunn introduces the book with a brief synopsis of the14th-century travels of Abu 'Abdallah ibn Battuta, a young Muslim scholar from Tangier in Morocco in Northern Africa. Born into a family of legal scholars, Ibn Battuta is a privileged and educated man by the standards of his day. He leaves Tangier in 1325 to make the annual religious pilgrimage to Mecca, called the hajj. After completing his pilgrimage, he continues traveling, visiting the Middle East, the east coast of Africa, India, Asia, Afghanistan and Turkey, sometimes serving in important official positions. After returning home, the ruler of Morrocco hires a writer to work with Ibn Battuta to prepare an account of his travels. This genre of literature is called a "rihla."

Ibn Battuta's rihla was mostly lost to Western scholars for centuries until it was rediscovered and translated in the 19th...