The Travels of Ibn Battuta, A.D. 1325-1354

1958

Journals G161 H2 Ser.2 no.110

Cambridge: Published for the Hakluyt Society at the University Press

While on a pilgrimage to Mecca, Abu Abdullah Mohammed ibn Battuta (1304-c.1369) made a decision to travel throughout the Islamic world. In 1325 he started out from Tangier, and then travelled along the African coast to Alexandria, Cairo, and Syene, and then through to places such as Aleppo, Damascus, Medina, Negef, and Basra. He managed to get to Mecca in 1325, staying there for three years. He later travelled to Sumatra, Cambodia, and parts of China. His was a lifetime of travel, covering some 75,000 miles in forty years; his abiding rule: ‘never, so far as possible, to cover a second time any road.’