http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/ibn-battuta/
The Learned Wanderer's homepage
This incessant global jaunting sure makes me
feel for guys who did it in the 14th century.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/classics/0,6121,863105,00.html
Shaikh Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battutah was born in Tangiers in 1304, the son of a judge of the Maliki school of Islamic law, and himself bred up as a jurist. He set off eastwards at the age of 21. He seems to have intended little more than to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca, which is a religious duty for able-bodied Muslims, and to practise the law.
As he travelled east, his horizons began to open. In Alexandria, he dreamed of flying on the wings of a huge bird to Yemen, and then east and south, "alighting in some dark and greenish country". After performing the pilgrimage no fewer than five times, exploring Iraq, Iran and the Persian Gulf, descending as far as what is now Kenya and residing in the Christian capital of Constantinople, he passed by way of the Crimea, Central Asia and Afghanistan to the rich Muslim sultanate of Delhi, arriving in the early-to-mid-1330s.
Dispatched in 1341 by Sultan Mohammed bin Tughluq with presents on a mission to the Emperor of China, ibn Battutah was wrecked on the Malabar coast and lost the presents. Rather than risk returning to Delhi, he set up as a judge in the recently Islamised Maldive Islands.
Quarrelling with the civil authority after little more than a year, he made his own way to China by way of Ceylon, the Coromandel coast of India, Bengal and Sumatra. No doubt he wished to fulfil a famous saying attributed to the Prophet: "Seek knowledge even to the borders of China."
