In 1325 a 21-year-old Moroccan named Ibn Battuta set off to make the religious pilgrimage to Mecca. He planned to be gone a year or two. He came home almost 30 years later. By that time he had visited about 40 modern-day countries, from Spain to China.
He crossed deserts on camelback, sailed the Indian Ocean in wooden ships, hiked through Russian snowstorms, and was once shipwrecked, robbed, and nearly killed. He worked as a judge in the Maldives, met sultans and emperors, and married many times along the way (he often left wives behind when he moved on).
When he finally returned to Morocco, the sultan asked him to dictate his stories to a scholar. The book - known as the Rihla, meaning “The Journey” - is one of the most detailed first-hand glimpses of the medieval world we have.
