Ibn Battuta

Born in Tangier to an educated Berber family of Maliki jurists, Shams al-Din Muhammad Ibn Battuta departed on pilgrimage to Mecca in 1325 at the age of twenty-one. What began as a Hajj pilgrimage expanded into a thirty-year odyssey encompassing nearly the entirety of the known Islamic world and beyond, from the Swahili Coast to the Maldives, China, and the Mali Empire.

Upon his return to Fez under the patronage of Marinid Sultan Abu Inan Faris, he dictated his astonishing adventures to scholar Ibn Juzayy, creating A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling (the Rihla), which remains an unsurpassed geographical and sociological treasure of human civilization.