IBN BATTUTAH

in full Abu 'abd Allah Muhammad Ibn 'abd Allah Al-lawati At-tanji Ibn Battutah born Feb. 24, 1304, Tangier, Morocco died 1368/69, Mor. the greatest medieval Arab traveller and the author of one of the most famous travel books, the Rihlah (Travels), which describes his extensive travels covering some 75,000 miles (more than 120,000 km) in trips to almost all the Muslim countries and to regions as far as China and Sumatra. Additional reading C. Defremery and B.R. Sanguinetti (eds.), Voyages d'Ibn Batoutah, 4 vol. (185358), remains still the standard Arabic edition and French translation; the reprint of 1969 is useful for a new introduction and commentary by Vincent Monteil. Sir Hamilton Gibb, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, vol. 1 (1958), vol. 2 (1962), vol. 3 (1971), no. 110, 117, and 144, 2nd ser. of the Hakluyt Society, is an unabridged translation of high literary merit with excellent footnotes. An abridged version by the same author, Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa (1929, reprinted 1969), is more popular. Herman F. Janssens, Ibn Batoutah: Le Voyageur de l'Islam (1948), is the best account of the traveller and his travels, short and precise but without scholarly claims. Ivan Hrbek, The Chronology of Ibn Battuta's Travels, Archiv Orientaln, 30:409486 (1962), attempts to solve the chronological problems and to reconstruct the true itinerary.