Ibn
Battutah, ed. Tim Mackintosh-Smith.
The Travels of Ibn Battutah.
London: Picador, 2003.
325pp.
Paperback ISBN
0330418793.
Publisher's
recommended price £7.99
Previously
issued
in hardback in 2002.
Ibn
Battutah was
just twenty-one when he set out from his native Tangier on a pilgrimage
to Mecca. It was 1325, within a year of Marco Polo's death, and it
marked
the beginning of an odyssey which was to cover three times the distance
of Polo's well-known journey. Ibn Battutah was not to return to Morocco
for another twenty-nine years, travelling instead through more than
forty
countries on the modern map, covering 75,000 miles and getting as far
north
as the Volga, as far east as china and as far south as Tanzania.
On his
return,
Ibn Battutah set down the story of his travels. Packed with gossip,
anecdote,
observation and insight, it brings the medieval world and the
adventures
of the writer vividly to life. Tim Mackintosh-Smith has abridged the
original
four volume work into one, providing a delightful slice of the very
best
of Ibn Battutah's writings. With this edition The Travels of Ibn
Battutah
takees its place alongside other indestructible masterpieces of the
travel-writing
genre.
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