Ibn Battuta
Based on Wikipedia: Ibn Battuta
In the year 1325, a twenty-one-year-old law student left his home in Morocco to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. He would not return for twenty-four years. By the time he finally came back, Ibn Battuta had traveled roughly 117,000 kilometers—nearly three times the circumference of Earth—making him the most widely traveled person in the pre-modern world, surpassing Marco Polo by a factor of five.
This wasn't a planned expedition. There was no royal sponsor, no fleet of ships, no grand mission. Ibn Battuta simply left home and kept going.
The Man Who Couldn't Stop Moving
Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battuta was born on February 24, 1304, in Tangier, a port city on the northern tip of Morocco where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic. His name, literally meaning "son of a duckling," came from a Berber family of Islamic legal scholars known as qadis—judges who interpret religious law. His full ceremonial name was magnificently long: Shams al-Din Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad ibn 'Abdallah ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Yusuf Lawati al-Tanji ibn Battuta. In medieval Islamic culture, such elaborate names mapped your entire genealogy and tribal affiliation.
Young Ibn Battuta received a traditional Maliki education—Maliki being one of the four major schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence, dominant in North Africa and West Africa to this day. Think of it as his legal specialization, the framework through which he understood religious law. This training would prove remarkably useful: throughout his journeys, distant Muslim communities would seek him out to serve as their judge, since Maliki scholars were rare outside the western Islamic world.
At twenty-one, he set out for the hajj—the pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim who is physically and financially able must complete at least once in their lifetime. The journey from Morocco to Arabia typically took about sixteen months. Ibn Battuta would stretch it into three decades.
I set out alone, having neither fellow-traveler in whose companionship I might find cheer, nor caravan whose part I might join, but swayed by an overmastering impulse within me and a desire long-cherished in my bosom to visit these illustrious sanctuaries. So I braced my resolution to quit my dear ones, female and male, and forsook my home as birds forsake their nests.
His parents were still alive when he left. Both they and their son were, as he later recalled, "afflicted with sorrow at this separation." He would never see them again.
Across North Africa and Into the Heart of Islam
Travel in the fourteenth century was dangerous business. Bandits prowled the roads, disease lurked in every unfamiliar water source, and a lone traveler was easy prey. Ibn Battuta's solution was simple: join caravans. These traveling merchant communities offered safety in numbers, pooled resources, and collective knowledge of the routes ahead.
He followed the North African coast eastward, passing through the sultanates of Abd al-Wadid and Hafsid—political entities that no longer exist, their territories now divided among modern Algeria and Tunisia. In Tlemcen, Béjaïa, and Tunis, he found lodging with local scholars and religious communities, the medieval Islamic equivalent of couch-surfing through a network of fellow believers.
In the town of Sfax, he took a bride. Then promptly left her after a dispute with his new father-in-law.
This would become a pattern. Ibn Battuta married repeatedly throughout his travels, sometimes maintaining multiple wives simultaneously (as Islamic law permits), sometimes divorcing and moving on. Marriage provided companionship, social connections, and often valuable political alliances. It was as much a practical strategy as a personal choice.
After more than 3,500 kilometers of overland travel, he reached Alexandria in early 1326. This Egyptian port city, founded by Alexander the Great sixteen centuries earlier, was then part of the Mamluk Sultanate—one of the most powerful states in the medieval world, ruled by a military caste of former slave soldiers who had seized power and built an empire stretching from Egypt through Syria.
In Alexandria, Ibn Battuta met two holy men who changed his life. Sheikh Burhanuddin delivered a prophecy that reads like a travel itinerary: "It seems to me that you are fond of foreign travel. You must visit my brother Fariduddin in India, Rukonuddin in Sind, and Burhanuddin in China. Convey my greetings to them." Another mystic, Sheikh Murshidi, interpreted a dream Ibn Battuta had experienced, declaring that he was destined to become a world traveler.
Whether you believe in prophecy or not, these encounters clearly gave Ibn Battuta permission to expand his horizons beyond a simple pilgrimage. The hajj had become something larger: a calling.
Three Routes to Mecca, and the Road Not Taken
There were three standard routes from Egypt to Mecca. Ibn Battuta chose the least traveled: up the Nile valley, then east to the Red Sea port of Aydhab, where ships could carry pilgrims across to the Arabian coast. But when he approached the town, a local rebellion blocked his path. He had to turn back.
This was the fourteenth century. There was no checking your phone for travel advisories. You simply arrived somewhere and discovered whether it was safe or not.
Forced to change plans, Ibn Battuta returned to Cairo—the Mamluk capital and one of the largest cities in the world—then headed north to Damascus. This detour had a silver lining: the route passed through some of the holiest sites in the Abrahamic traditions. Hebron, with the traditional burial place of Abraham. Jerusalem, sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Bethlehem, birthplace of Jesus. The Mamluk authorities kept this pilgrimage corridor heavily guarded, making it one of the safer roads in the entire region.
Ibn Battuta spent the month of Ramadan in Damascus—a period of fasting from dawn to sunset that slowed travel to a crawl anyway—then joined a massive caravan heading 1,300 kilometers south to Medina, the city where the Prophet Muhammad had established the first Muslim community and where he was buried.
From Medina, he continued to Mecca. In November 1326, nearly eighteen months after leaving home, Ibn Battuta completed his hajj. He circumambulated the Kaaba, the black cubic structure at the center of Islam's holiest mosque. He earned the honorific "El-Hajji"—one who has made the pilgrimage.
And then, instead of going home, he decided to see what lay beyond Arabia.
Into the Mongol World
The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were the age of the Mongol conquests. Beginning with Genghis Khan's explosive expansion out of the Central Asian steppes in the early 1200s, Mongol armies had carved out the largest contiguous land empire in human history, stretching from Korea to Poland. By Ibn Battuta's time, this empire had fragmented into several successor states, each ruled by descendants of Genghis Khan's family.
One of these was the Ilkhanate, centered on Persia and Iraq. The Mongols had conquered Baghdad in 1258 in one of history's most devastating sieges, killing perhaps hundreds of thousands of people and destroying the great library that had made Baghdad the intellectual center of the Islamic world. Seven decades later, when Ibn Battuta visited, parts of the city were still in ruins.
He joined a caravan of pilgrims returning to Iraq, crossed the Arabian Peninsula to Najaf—where he visited the tomb of Ali, the fourth caliph and a figure of immense importance to Shia Muslims—then took a six-month detour through Persia. He saw Basra on the Persian Gulf, crossed the Zagros Mountains to Isfahan, headed south to Shiraz (which had wisely surrendered to the Mongols rather than resist, and thus survived intact), then returned to Baghdad.
In Baghdad, he encountered the Ilkhan Abu Sa'id—the last ruler of a unified Ilkhanate—departing the city with a massive royal procession. Ibn Battuta tagged along for a while, then continued north on the Silk Road to Tabriz. This city had been one of the first to open its gates to the Mongols, a pragmatic decision that left it prosperous while its neighbors were reduced to rubble.
The contrast must have been stark. Cities that resisted Mongol conquest were systematically destroyed, their populations massacred, their buildings leveled. Cities that submitted early were often spared and even flourished under Mongol rule, benefiting from the famous Pax Mongolica—the "Mongol Peace" that made trade and travel safer across vast distances. Ibn Battuta's entire journey was possible in part because the Mongols had, through spectacular violence, created an interconnected world.
Mecca Again, Then East Africa
Ibn Battuta returned to Mecca—his second hajj—and stayed for what he claims was about three years. Modern historians are skeptical of his chronology here; the dates don't quite add up. But eventually, after either 1328 or 1330, he headed for the Red Sea port of Jeddah and caught a series of boats heading south.
These weren't the grand sailing ships of European imagination. The vessels on the Red Sea were jalbah—small wooden craft with planks sewn together rather than nailed, designed for coastal hopping rather than open-ocean voyaging. Progress was slow against the prevailing winds.
In Yemen, Ibn Battuta visited Zabīd and the highland city of Ta'izz, where he met the local king. From there he continued to Aden, one of the ancient world's most important trading ports, strategically positioned at the entrance to the Red Sea.
And then he kept going south.
He crossed to the Horn of Africa—which medieval Arabic writers called the "Land of the Berbers" (confusingly, since Berbers are from North Africa; this was a different people entirely). He spent time in Zeila and on Cape Guardafui, the easternmost point of the African continent, before arriving in Mogadishu.
When Ibn Battuta visited in 1332, Mogadishu was at its peak—"an exceedingly large city" full of wealthy merchants trading high-quality textiles to Egypt and beyond. The sultan, Abu Bakr ibn Shaikh 'Umar, was a Somali who spoke his native language as well as Arabic. He maintained a full court of ministers, legal experts, commanders, and royal officials. This was no backwater; it was a sophisticated urban center connected to trading networks spanning the Indian Ocean.
From Mogadishu, Ibn Battuta sailed further south along the Swahili coast—the "Land of the Zanj" in Arabic—stopping at Mombasa (then small, later to become one of East Africa's most important ports) and continuing to Kilwa, in present-day Tanzania. Kilwa had grown wealthy as a trading hub for gold flowing north from the African interior. Ibn Battuta was impressed: "one of the finest and most beautifully built towns; all the buildings are of wood, and the houses are roofed with reed."
The sultan of Kilwa, al-Hasan ibn Sulaiman, earned particular praise for his humility and piety. His authority stretched from Malindi in the north to Inhambane in the south—a coastal domain of more than 2,000 kilometers. During this period, Kilwa saw the construction of the Palace of Husuni Kubwa and a major expansion of the Great Mosque, built from coral stone and the largest mosque of its kind on the coast.
When the monsoon winds shifted—seasonal wind patterns that governed all travel in the Indian Ocean—Ibn Battuta sailed back to Arabia for his third hajj.
Anatolia and the Young Ottoman State
After Mecca, Ibn Battuta decided to seek his fortune in India. The Sultanate of Delhi, under Muhammad bin Tughluq, was famous for its wealth and its generous patronage of foreign scholars. But rather than take a direct sea route, Ibn Battuta chose an overland path through Anatolia—modern Turkey.
This region was a patchwork of small Turkish principalities called beyliks, the fragmented remnants of the Seljuk Sultanate. Among them was a minor state on the northwestern frontier, ruled by a leader named Orhan. His father Osman had founded the dynasty; within two centuries, his descendants would conquer Constantinople and build the Ottoman Empire.
But in the 1330s, the Ottomans were just one beylik among many, notable mainly for their constant warfare against the Byzantine Christians to their west. Ibn Battuta visited İznik (ancient Nicaea), which Orhan had just conquered, and found the sultan away at war while his wife commanded the garrison. She "treated me honourably, gave me hospitality and sent gifts," Ibn Battuta recorded, clearly impressed.
His description of Orhan captures a ruler perpetually in motion:
The greatest of the kings of the Turkmens and the richest in wealth, lands and military forces. Of fortresses, he possesses nearly a hundred, and for most of his time, he is continually engaged in making a round of them, staying in each fortress for some days to put it in good order and examine its condition. It is said that he has never stayed for a whole month in any one town. He also fights with the infidels continually and keeps them under siege.
One restless traveler recognizing another.
Throughout Anatolia, Ibn Battuta was hosted by fityan associations—brotherhoods of young artisans who specialized in welcoming travelers. Their leader held the title of Akhil, and their hospices provided food and lodging in more than twenty-five towns along his route. For a solitary traveler in unfamiliar territory, these networks were lifelines.
It was also in Anatolia that Ibn Battuta began accumulating slaves. The ruler of the Aydin Beylik gave him a Greek slave as a gift—the first servant he had owned in all his travels. In Ephesus, he purchased a young Greek girl for forty dinars. In İzmir, the sultan presented him with another slave. In Balikesir, he bought a second girl. The evidence of his growing wealth and status was, quite literally, walking behind him.
The Golden Horde and the Edge of Siberia
From the Black Sea port of Sinope, Ibn Battuta sailed to the Crimean Peninsula, entering the territory of the Golden Horde—another Mongol successor state, this one ruling the vast steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas. He visited the port of Azov, met local officials, and traveled to the city of Majar before joining the mobile court of Uzbeg Khan.
Mongol rulers didn't sit in fixed capitals. They moved with their armies and their herds, setting up elaborate tent cities that could be packed up and transported. Finding the khan meant tracking his current location across hundreds of miles of grassland. Ibn Battuta caught up with Uzbeg Khan's orda—his traveling court—near Mount Beshtau in the Caucasus.
From there, he made a remarkable side trip: north to Bolghar, near the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers. This was the northernmost point of his entire journey, and the short summer nights astonished him. Coming from Morocco, where the difference between longest and shortest days is relatively modest, he had never experienced the nearly midnight sun of high latitudes.
He wanted to go even further north—into what he called "the land of darkness," the snow-covered expanse of northern Siberia. He had heard tantalizing stories of the people who lived there: they were reluctant to show themselves and traded with southern merchants through a peculiar system. Traders would leave goods on the snow at night, return to their tents, and find their merchandise replaced with valuable furs the next morning. No one ever saw who took the goods or left the payment.
This was probably a description of the Samoyedic peoples of the Arctic, and the "silent trade" they conducted with outsiders. But Ibn Battuta never made it that far. The journey required dog sleds, and only those adapted to the extreme cold could survive it. He turned back.
The Rihla: A Book of Wonders
Everything we know about Ibn Battuta comes from a single source: his own account, dictated near the end of his life to a scholar named Ibn Juzayy. The result was titled A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling, commonly known as the Rihla—Arabic for "journey."
The book has problems. The chronology is frequently confused. Events that should be years apart are described as sequential. Ibn Battuta claims to have visited places he probably never saw. Some passages appear to be borrowed from other travelers' accounts, particularly descriptions of China. And the "three years in Mecca" doesn't square with his stated arrival and departure dates.
But none of this diminishes the fundamental achievement. Even accounting for exaggerations and errors, Ibn Battuta visited more of the known world than any other traveler of his era—or any era before the age of steam. He crossed the Sahara. He sailed the Indian Ocean. He traversed Central Asia on the Silk Road. He reached the court of the Chinese emperor. He experienced more cultures, met more rulers, and covered more ground than seemed humanly possible.
His 117,000 kilometers dwarf Marco Polo's 24,000. They surpass the naval expeditions of Zheng He, the Chinese admiral whose massive treasure fleets explored the Indian Ocean a century later. Ibn Battuta did it without royal sponsorship, without a fleet, without soldiers. He traveled as a scholar, a judge, a pilgrim—relying on the hospitality of strangers and the interconnected networks of the medieval Islamic world.
What Made It Possible
Ibn Battuta's journey was enabled by something that doesn't exist today: a unified cultural sphere spanning three continents.
The Dar al-Islam—the "House of Islam"—stretched from Morocco to Indonesia, from the Volga to Zanzibar. Within this enormous world, a Muslim traveler could expect to find mosques, legal scholars, shared religious holidays, and a common language of learning (Arabic). He could expect hospitality from fellow believers. He could serve as a judge or a religious advisor in cities thousands of miles from home, because Islamic law was Islamic law whether you were in Fez or Delhi.
This wasn't a political unity—the Islamic world was divided among dozens of competing sultanates, khanates, and empires. But it was a cultural unity, a shared framework that made a Moroccan comprehensible in India, a North African welcome in Southeast Asia.
Ibn Battuta exploited this brilliantly. He accumulated wives who connected him to local elites. He accepted positions as a judge, which came with salaries and prestige. He joined embassies and diplomatic missions that provided transportation and protection. He attached himself to royal courts and powerful patrons. He was a virtuoso networker in an age when networks were the only infrastructure that mattered.
The Mongol conquests, for all their destruction, had also made his journey possible. The Pax Mongolica created a single political space from China to Persia, with standardized systems of travel permits, relay stations, and protected trade routes. The Silk Road hadn't been this accessible in centuries—and wouldn't be again after the Mongol states collapsed.
Ibn Battuta was born at exactly the right moment: late enough that the worst Mongol violence was over, early enough that their infrastructure still functioned. A generation earlier, he might have been killed in a conquest. A generation later, the routes might have closed.
The Return
In 1354, after thirty years of wandering, Ibn Battuta finally returned to Morocco for good. He was fifty years old. His parents had died during his absence. The world he had left as a young law student had changed, and he had changed beyond recognition.
The sultan of Morocco, Abu Inan Faris, commissioned him to dictate his memoirs. Ibn Juzayy, a court scholar, spent about two years transforming Ibn Battuta's recollections into the Rihla. It was completed in 1355.
Ibn Battuta then disappears from history. He probably served as a judge somewhere in Morocco. He died sometime between 1368 and 1369, in his mid-sixties. No one recorded the details.
For centuries, the Rihla remained relatively obscure—known to Arabic scholars but unknown in Europe, where Marco Polo's account dominated perceptions of medieval travel. It wasn't until the nineteenth century that European scholars began studying Ibn Battuta seriously, recognizing that he had traveled further and seen more than any medieval European.
Today, he's celebrated as one of history's greatest travelers, a man who witnessed the medieval world at its most connected—the final flowering of Silk Road cosmopolitanism before the age of European maritime expansion redrew the map of global connections entirely. He saw the young Ottoman state before it became an empire. He saw Mongol successor states before they fragmented and fell. He saw African trading cities before the Portuguese arrived to disrupt their commerce.
He saw a world that would never exist again.
The Irresistible Impulse
What drove him? Ibn Battuta himself credited an "overmastering impulse" and a "desire long-cherished." But there's something unsatisfying about that explanation. Lots of people have desires long-cherished. Most of them stay home.
Perhaps the initial pilgrimage created a kind of momentum. Having left home once, staying away became easier than returning. Each new destination suggested another beyond it. Each host mentioned a distant colleague worth visiting. The networks that sustained him also drew him forward.
Or perhaps he simply discovered that he was good at traveling—that the skills required to survive and thrive on the road were skills he possessed in abundance. He could charm rulers and earn appointments. He could adapt to local customs without losing his identity. He could endure discomfort, recover from illness, survive disasters. Travel revealed his capabilities.
There's also the simple fact that home, after long enough away, becomes foreign. The Tangier Ibn Battuta left in 1325 was not the Tangier he would have returned to in 1330 or 1340. His friends had aged, married, built lives without him. His family had mourned him and moved on. The longer he stayed away, the less he had to return to.
Whatever the explanation, Ibn Battuta's journey stands as testimony to what a single person could accomplish in the medieval world—not through conquest or commerce, but through sheer persistent motion. He kept going. For thirty years, across 117,000 kilometers, through deserts and over mountains and across seas, he kept going.
And then he sat down, dictated his memories, and gave us a world.