Monday, August 27, 2007
The most famous of all travelers of the medieval world is Marco Polo. He was a remarkable man who ventured into unknown distant lands. He was a man who discovered extraordinary places on his vast journeys, and who told the magnificent tale of his encounters with foreign peoples and unfamiliar cultures. But how many of us know that another man, living and traveling in roughly the same period of history, had journeyed more than Marco Polo? This man was an Arab by the name of Ibn Battuta, the most traveled person of his time, traveling an estimated 75,000 miles. He was also the only medieval traveler to have seen the lands of every Muslim ruler of his time. On what was planned to be his Hajj trip to Mecca, Ibn Battuta journeyed throughout North Africa and Syria. Then he explored the Middle East, Persia, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor. He traveled to the Indian Subcontinent, spending there nearly a decade at the palace of the Sultan of Delhi. The Sultan appointed him as an ambassador to China. After about 30 years for exploring, around the year 1350, Ibn Battuta started making his way back to his homeland. He went back to Fez, Morocco. There, at the court of Sultan Abu 'Inan, he read out accounts of his travels to Ibn Juzay who made them into a book. This book exists today and is known as Rihla or The Travels. The Rihla told of the adventures Ibn Battuta experienced on his travels. Numerous times he was assaulted, once he nearly drowned in a shipwreck; another time he was close to being executed by a tyrant leader. He married a number of times and had more than one lover, which consequently made him a father to several children along his journeys.About Ibn Battuta