The Travels of Ibn Battuta, A.D. 1325-1354: Volume I (Hakluyt Society, Second Series)

Ibn Battuta was born in Tangier in 1304. Between 1324 and 1354 he journeyed through North Africa and Asia Minor and as far as China. On a separate voyage he crossed the Sahara to the Muslim lands of West Africa. His journeys are estimated to have covered over 75,000 miles and he is the only medieval traveller known to have visited every Muslim state of the time, besides the 'infidel' countries of Istanbul, Ceylon and China. This first volume records the earliest journeys through Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Arabia, on pilgrimage to the Holy Places of Islam. Among the detailed descriptions of towns on the road and of their inhabitants, he gives a particularly circumstancial account of Medina and Mecca. Sir Hamilton Gibb's edition is in four volumes with introduction and full notes. This first complete and scholarly edition in English has proved essential to orientalists and illuminating to medievalists. The travels are a major source for the political and economic life of large regions of Asia and Africa. The observations of this intelligent representative of Islamic culture on almost all the known inhabited world beyond Europe provide fruitful comparisons with the life and geographical knowledge of the West. Translated with revisions and new annotation from the Arabic text edited by C. Defrémery and B.R. Sanguinetti. Covers travels in North-West Africa, Egypt, Syria, and to Mecca. Continued in Second Series 117, 141, and 178, and with the index in 190. The main pagination of all the volumes is continuous. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volume first published in 1958.