An engrossing account of a 1326 pilgrimage to Mecca provides vivid details of Morocco, Russia, India, China, and elsewhere. "The ultimate in real life adventure stories." — History in Review.
This volume completes the translation of Ibn Battuta's narrative. Volume III ended with Ibn Battuta's appointment by the Sultan of Delhi to accompany an embassy to China. In Volume IV he describes his journey to the coast where he embarked near Cambay and sailed to Calicut. Here the ships which were to take them to China were wrecked. Ibn Battuta joined the Sultan of Honavar in a temporarily successful attack on Goa, and then went to the Maldives, which had not long been converted to Islam by another North African. Here he functioned as a judge, married into the ruling elite, and became involved in a plot to bring the islands under the authority of a bloodthirsty Sultan in south India. On the way to join him, Ibn Battuta found himself in Ceylon and took the opportunity to climb Adam's Peak. He abandoned the planned invasion of the Maldives, to which he returned briefly, and the sailed to Bengal to visit an ascetic in Sylhet. He claims to have visited several countries in south-east Asia, including Sumatra and Java and some which cannot be satisfactorily identified, and arrived in China. After going to Canton he travelled by a non-existent river to Hang-chou and Beijing. His return to Morocco, during which he witnessed the ravages of the Black Death in Syria and Egypt, and called at Cagliari in a Catalan ship, is described summarily. He made two more journeys, the first to part of Spain still under Muslim rule, which included Gibraltar, Ronda, Malaga and Granada, and the other across the Sahara to the kingdom of Mali on the upper Niger, from which he returned to Fez via Timbuktu, Hoggar country and Tuat. Translated with revisions and new annotation from the Arabic text edited by C. Defrémery and B.R. Sanguinetti. Continued from Second Series 141, with continuous pagination. The first two parts are Second Series 110 and 117. The index to all four parts is provided in Second Series 190. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volume first published in 1994.
The original Travels of Ibn Battuta ranks high amongst the masterpieces of Arabic geographical literature and is of great significance in the understanding of the history of the peoples inhabiting the Central Asian states. In 1325, Ibn Battuta, a traveler and adventurer from Tangiers, embarked on an extraordinary journey via Mecca to Egypt, East Africa, India, and China and returned some thirty years later to write about his experiences. Ibrahimov Nematulla Ibrahimovich details the life and travels of Ibn Battuta to give the reader an idea of the extent of the adventures and also to provide insights into the remarkable traveler himself. He then chronicles both lay and learned opinion over the centuries with regard to the amazing yet controversial journey, revealing the doubt that existed towards the authenticity of the tales: were they simply a fantastic invention or were they real experiences? To illustrate his argument, Ibrahimovich then selects a passage from The Travels concerning Central Asia and provides extensive historical and philological commentary and notes on the passage in an effort to persuade the reader of the authenticity of the tales and their value in helping us understand the peoples of Central Asia in the fourteenth century.
Continued from Second Series 117, with continuous pagination. The first part is Second Series 110, and the fourth Second Series 178. The index to all four parts is provided in Second Series 190. This volume covers Turkestan, Khurasan, Sind, north-western India and Delhi, including an account of the reign of Sultan Muhammad ibn Tughluq. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volume first published in 1971.
Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (1304 - 1369) was the best-known Arab traveler in world history. Over a period of thirty years, he visited most of the Islamic world and many non-Muslim lands. Following his travels, he dictated a report he called "A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling," known simply in Arabic as the Riḥla. This dramatic document provides a firsthand account of the nascent globalization brought by the spread of Islam and the relationship between the Western world and India and China in the 14th century. As an Islamic legal scholar, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa served at high levels of government within the vibrant Muslim network of India and China. In the Riḥla, he shares insights into the complex power dynamics of the time and provides commentary on the religious miracles he encountered. The result is an entertaining narrative with a wealth of anecdotes, often humorous or shocking, and in many cases touchingly human.
Ibn Battuta, the greatest of all the medieval travellers, was in Tangier in 1304. At the age of nineteen he set out on his travels that were eventually to take him over 75,000 miles through all of the Muslim world. His book, in which he describes the cultural life and beauty of those times, remains one of the most famous of all travel narratives. The value of the work to historians and students is beyond question, but perhaps its true worth lies in the freshness of its narrative style. Throughout, we are aware of the author's own human and compassionate insights and, even after six centuries, it remains a delight and pleasure to read. This fine facsimile edition, originally published in 1929, is enhanced by the inclusion of several exquisite prints, with maps of the journeys undertaken during Ibn Battuta's remarkable life.
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