The odyssey of Ibn Battuta

Ibn Battuta was, without doubt, one of the world's truly great travelers. Born in fourteenth-century Morocco, and a contemporary of Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta has left us an account in his own words of his remarkable journeys throughout the Islamic world and beyond: journeys punctuated by adventure and peril and stretching from his home in Tangier to Zaitun in faraway China. Whether sojourning in Delhi and the Maldives, wandering through the mazy streets of Cairo and Damascus, or contesting with pirates and shipwreck, the indefatigable Ibn Battuta brings to vivid life a medieval world brimming with marvel and mystery. Carefully observing the great diversity of civilizations that he encountered, Ibn Battuta exhibits an omnivorous interest in such matters as food and drink, religion, and ideas about purity and impurity, disease, women, and sex.