Summary

“They call me Ibn Battuta”, the story starts, “because my name is very long. It is Shams al din abu abdallah mohammad ibn abdallah ibn mohmmad ibn ibrahim ibn mohammad ibn ibrahim ibn yussef allawati al tanji ibn battuta”.

With this new work, Fatima Sharafeddine documents the story of Ibn Battuta’s famous journeys. Renown world explorer born in 1304, Ibn Battuta spent 29 years traveling. Having left his hometown of Tangiers aged 21, he will eventually go all the way to Russia and India. The book gets into the details of this very long journey. In those days, travel was not easy and Ibn Battuta could spend months on the road, on his donkey or his camel’s back, in a caravan, or at sea.

Written using the first person, the book is the expression of Ibn Battuta’s impressions. The reader sees the cities he visits through his amazed eyes: amazing is Alexandria with its great port; impressive is Cairo with its mosques and hospitals; beautiful is the Qubat al sakhra mosque in Jerusalem, with its golden cupola – and Incredibly cold is Russia, where Ibn Battuta wears three fur coats, two pairs of pants and thick boots made of bear’s leather!

In 1354, Ibn Battuta finally comes back to Fez, in Morocco, where the Sultan is so delighted with his stories that he asks him to stay and put them in writing.

Ibn Battuta dies in 1369, aged 65.

Ibn Battuta, the book, reads smoothly like a diary, and takes us back to a beautiful time where travel was an adventure. Both instructive and refreshing, the story does not linger on a particular destination or city, but each time, one feature, salient to our traveler, is reported. The open mindedness of this pleasantly unusual character is a true lesson of tolerance.

Intilaq Mohammad Ali’s illustrations enhance Ibn Battuta’s gentle and poised personality. The pastels and visible fine granulation of the paper contribute to give a smooth texture to his voice.