The First And Greatest Islamic Travel Writer
Author: Justine Richards

Early in the fourteenth century there was something in the air.
In 1336 Petrarch, an Italian scholar wrote the first European
travel account. His journey was modest: he merely climbed a
mountain and looked down from the peak at his companions who had
refused to follow him. He wrote disparagingly of his cowardly
friends and so a rich tradition of European travel writing was
born. Little did Petrarch know, as he toiled up Mount Vetoux,
that the first and arguably the greatest ever Islamic traveler
and chronicler of times and places Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn
Battuta was engaged in a journey that would take him 29 years.
It would also make him a legendary travel writer, respected in
Islamic history for taking the message of Islam wherever he
went.

A great historian, traveler and storyteller of our own era, Tim
Mackintosh-Smith, has made Ibn Battuta's name famous in the West
over the past decade. In 2001 his book Travels with a Tangerine:
A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battuta was published by John
Murray, London. It is an account of his journey following the
first leg of Ibn Battuta's epic journey (just from Tangier to
Constantinople – Ibn Battuta eventually covered three times the
ground covered by Marco Polo) and is a marvelous transportation
both across a territory largely unknown to the Western reader,
namely north Africa and the near East, and between the 14th
century and the present day. The book spread Ibn Battuta's name
more widely than ever before.

Not much is known about Ibn Battuta; all that we know of him he
tells us himself. He was born in 1304 and died some time between
1368 and 1377. He was a Berber Sunni Islamic scholar and
jurisprudent from the Maliki Madhhab, a school of Fiqh (Sunni)
law and at times a Qadi or judge. But it is his work as an
explorer and travel writer that earned him lasting fame. His
various accounts document his travels and excursions over a
period of almost thirty years, covering some 73 000 miles (117
000 km). Ibn Battuta's journeys covered almost the entirety of
the known Islamic world at that time, and beyond. His travels
took him through north and west Africa, through southern and
eastern Europe, the middle east, the Indian subcontinent,
central and south-east Asia and China.

At the insistence of the Sultan of Morocco, Abu Inan Faris, Ibn
Battuta dictated accounts of his travels to a scholar named Ibn
Juzayy, whom he had met while in Granada, the seat of Islamic
Spain. The account, written by Ibn Juzayy and interspersed with
the latter's own comments, is the primary source of information
about his journeys. The title of the work may be translated as A
Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the
Marvels of Traveling, but is most often referred to simply as
the Rihla or Journey. While apparently fictional in part, the
Rihla still gives as complete an account as exists, of these
parts of the world in 14th century. For centuries his book was
practically unknown even in the Islamic world, but in 1800 it
was rediscovered and translated into several European languages.


Although hazardous in the extreme, Ibn Battuta survived all his
journeys unscathed. He died in Morocco at a ripe old age (for
those times) of over 60. He succumbed to the same disease that
claimed his mother's life -- the Black Plague.


About The Author: Justine has been a journalist for 20 years
and is a contributor to http://www.justtheplanet.com, the online
luxury travel magazine for independent travelers.