Ibn Battuta
25 February 1304 – 1369
Ibn Battuta (1304–1369) was a Moroccan scholar and the greatest traveller of the medieval world. Over nearly thirty years he journeyed some 120,000 kilometres across North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, India, Southeast Asia and China, and his dictated account, the Rihla, remains a key source on the 14th-century Islamic world.
Lived at the same time
Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with Ibn Battuta.
- Guillaume de Machaut (1300–1377) Overlapped 65 years →
- Petrarch (1304–1374) Overlapped 65 years →
- Gajah Mada (1290–1364) Overlapped 60 years →
- Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) Overlapped 56 years →
- Nicole Oresme (1320–1382) Overlapped 49 years →
- Hafez (1325–1390) Overlapped 44 years →
Life events
Born into a family of Islamic legal scholars of Berber descent in Tangier.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLeft Tangier alone at the age of 21 to perform the hajj — the start of a journey that would last almost three decades.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAfter his first hajj, explored Mesopotamia and Persia, visiting Najaf, Basra, Isfahan and Baghdad.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgSailed along the Swahili coast, visiting Mogadishu, Mombasa and the wealthy trading city of Kilwa.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgServed for several years as an Islamic judge at the court of the Delhi Sultanate, one of the era's richest courts.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgSpent about nine months in the Maldive Islands as chief judge and married into the ruling family.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgTravelled via Sumatra to the great port of Quanzhou in Yuan-dynasty China, the farthest point of his journeys.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHis final great journey took him by camel caravan to Timbuktu and the court of the Mali Empire.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAt the request of the Marinid sultan, dictated the account of his travels to the scholar Ibn Juzayy in Fez.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgDied around 1369 while serving as a judge in Morocco; the exact date and place are not recorded.
Source: en.wikipedia.org