Ibn Battuta Timeline

Following a month spent in Mecca, Ibn Battuta joined a large caravan of pilgrims returning to Iraq across the Arabian Peninsula.

Ibn Battuta crossed the mountains to Baghdad. Parts of the city were still ruined from the damage inflicted by Hulagu Khan's invading army in 1258.

Image source: Baghdad

He spent Ramadan (June 1331 or May 1333) in the city, where caravanserais were a feature of most Anatolian towns in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Image source: Ramadan

Ibn Battuta travelled through the lands of the Chagatai Khanate, noting the ruined state of city walls, a result of the Mongol invasion in 1220 and subsequent infighting.

Image source: Chagatai Khanate

Arriving in Constantinople towards the end of 1332 (or 1334), Ibn Battuta met the Byzantine emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos.

Image source: Constantinople

Ibn Battuta and his party reached the Indus River on 12 September 1333, marking his entry into India.

Image source: Indus River

The opportunity for Ibn Battuta to leave Delhi finally arose when an embassy arrived from the Yuan dynasty of China asking for permission to rebuild a Himalayan Buddhist temple popular with Chinese pilgrims.

Image source: Delhi

From there they sailed to Calicut (now known as Kozhikode), where Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama would land two centuries later.

Image source: Kozhikode

At their meeting, Ibn Battuta noted that Shah Jalal was tall and lean, fair in complexion, and lived by the mosque in a cave, where his only item of value was a goat he kept for milk, butter, and yogurt.

Image source: Shah Jalal

In 1345, Ibn Battuta travelled to the Samudra Pasai Sultanate (called 'al-Jawa') in present-day Aceh, Northern Sumatra, after a 40-day voyage from Sunur Kawan.

Image source: Samudera Pasai Sultanate

In 1345, Ibn Battuta arrived at Quanzhou in China's Fujian province, then under the rule of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty.

Image source: Quanzhou

After returning to Quanzhou in 1346, Ibn Battuta began his long journey back to Morocco.

In 1348, Ibn Battuta arrived in Damascus with the intention of retracing the route of his first hajj.

Image source: Damascus

He made hajj to Mecca, then decided to return to Morocco, nearly a quarter of a century after leaving home.

Image source: Hajj

On the way home he made one last detour to Sardinia, then in 1349 returned to Tangier by way of Fez, only to discover that his mother had also died a few months before.

Image source: Tangier

King Alfonso XI of Castile and León had threatened to attack Gibraltar, so in 1350 Ibn Battuta joined a group of Muslims leaving Tangier with the intention of defending the port.

Image source: Gibraltar

In Mali, Ibn Battuta met Mansa Suleyman, king since 1341. Timbuktu, though it would become the most important city in the region in later centuries, was at that time small and relatively unimportant.

Image source: Sulayman of Mali

He set out with a caravan in February 1352 and, after 25 days, arrived at the dry salt lake bed of Taghaza with its salt mines.

Image source: Taghaza

He set off for Sijilmasa in September 1353, accompanying a large caravan transporting 600 female slaves, and arrived back in Morocco early in 1354.

Image source: Morocco

At the suggestion of the Marinid ruler Abu Inan Faris, Ibn Battuta dictated an account in Arabic of his journeys to the scholar Ibn Juzayy. Though parts were borrowed from earlier accounts, the Rihla provides an important account of much of the 14th-century world.

Image source: Adidas Al Rihla

Little is known about Ibn Battuta's life after completing his Rihla in 1355, except that he was appointed a judge in Morocco and died in 1368 or 1369.

Ibn Battuta's work was unknown outside the Muslim world until the early 19th century, when Ulrich Jasper Seetzen acquired manuscripts including an abridged version of Ibn Juzayy's text. Three extracts were published by Johann Kosegarten in 1818, and Samuel Lee's English translation appeared in London in 1829.

Image source: Ulrich Jasper Seetzen

The BNF manuscripts were used in 1843 by Baron de Slane to produce a French translation of Ibn Battuta's visit to the Sudan, and beginning in 1853 a series of four volumes containing a critical edition of the Arabic text together with a French translation was published.

Image source: William McGuckin de Slane

Hamilton Gibb proposed an annotated full English translation of the Rihla in 1922 and published selected portions in 1929. The first volume came out in 1958, and Gibb completed three volumes before his death in 1971; the fourth volume was prepared by Charles Beckingham and published in 1994.

Image source: H. A. R. Gibb

In 2010, Tim Mackintosh-Smith completed a multi-volume field study in dozens of locales mentioned in the Rihla, reporting on previously unknown manuscripts of Islamic law copied by Ibn Battuta in Damascus in 1326, corroborating the date of his sojourn in Syria.

A giant semblance of Ibn Battuta, alongside Al-Bakri and Ibn Majid, is displayed at the Mobility pavilion at Expo 2020 in Dubai in a section of the exhibition designed by Wētā Workshop.

Image source: Expo 2020