Travellers and map-makers · 1304–1369
Ibn Battuta, famous Muslim of the 14th century
The traveller from Tangier who spent about thirty years on the road, from West Africa to China.
The life of Ibn Battuta
Ibn Battuta left Tangier in 1325, aged 21, to perform Hajj, and kept travelling for nearly thirty years. He crossed North Africa, Arabia, Persia, Anatolia, Central Asia, India, the Maldives, South-East Asia and China, and later crossed the Sahara to Mali.
Back in Morocco he dictated an account of his journeys, known as the Rihla (The Travels), one of the richest pictures of the fourteenth-century world. He died around 1368 or 1369.
More famous Muslim travellers and map-makers
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