The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century | 
 enlarge | Author: Ross E. Dunn
Publisher: University of California Press
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 18243
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 379
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.5 x 1
ISBN: 0520243854
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.91767
EAN: 9780520243859
ASIN: 0520243854
Publication Date: December 9, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Known as the greatest traveler of premodern times, Abu Abdallah ibn Battuta was born in Morocco in 1304 and educated in Islamic law. At the age of twenty-one, he left home to make the holy pilgrimage to Mecca. This was only the first of a series of extraordinary journeys that spanned nearly three decades and took him not only eastward to India and China but also north to the Volga River valley and south to Tanzania. The narrative of these travels has been known to specialists in Islamic and medieval history for years. Ross E. Dunn's 1986 retelling of these tales, however, was the first work of scholarship to make the legendary traveler's story accessible to a general audience. Now updated with revisions, a new preface, and an updated bibliography, Dunn's classic interprets Ibn Battuta's adventures and places them within the rich, trans-hemispheric cultural setting of medieval Islam.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 Horrible May 17, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I hated this book. It is a long and boring story with no action. I do not recommend this book unless you are a history buff or are forced to read it.
 A great read April 7, 2008
I started reading the Rihla but got lost very quickly in the lingo, strange names, customs and happenings. This book is immensely helpful and a fantastic read as well, you can hardly put it down. Feels like a magic guided tour in the Medieval Orient. It was an eye opener, shedding light on how biased we are towards a distorted western perspective on history. If you are even slightly interested in Medieval times, exotic travelogues, Sufism or Islam in general, this is the book for you.
14th Century Muslim Travelogue for Modern People March 25, 2008
Ross Dunn, historian, has done a remarkable job of telling us about the travels and adventures of a man who traveled the world a half-century after Genoese adventurer Marco Polo taught Europe about the Orient. The difference between Polo and Ibn Battuta is that the latter simply left home as a young man to perform the Muslim religious duty of the hajj - the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina - and got caught up in other projects on the road for the next couple of decades.
Ross' narrative is informed - he's a scholar who knows Arabic and is familiar with the history of Islam - and also very funny. His dry humor permeates the narrative and adds much readability to what might be otherwise unremarkable material. Examples include his observations about Ibn Battuta's Sunday shouting down with Quranic verses of the Christian bells in an Anatolian town and the story of Ibn Battuta being stripped and left with a flourish by sea pirates.
Ibn Battuta traveled in high Muslim circles throughout northern Africa, the Arabian neighborhood, ancient Turkey, Persia and India. Ross does a good job of qualifying the possible Chinese visit Ibn Battuta claims to have made. Later, near the end of his career, Ibn Battuta would penetrate the African heartland, ironically exploring his own continent last.
Highly recommended for students of Islam, world history of the Middle Ages, and travel adventures in general. Ross, in my opinion, exalts the material to five stars.
The Adventures of Ibn Battuta. Ross Dunn. Fascinating. March 1, 2008
Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan Qadi (Sunni legal scholar and judge) of the early to middle 14th century, was the consummate `globetrotter,' traveling something in the order of 75,000 miles across North Africa, south-central Asia, southern Russia, Turkey, Arabia, east Africa, southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, China, Mediterranean Spain, and west Africa. Eventually his accounts were recorded by an acquaintance, Ibn Juzayy, appointed to the task by the Moroccan king, with the text probably completed late in 1355 AD.
Dunn's important and fascinating book cites and records fragments of the Ibn Battuta/Ibn Juzayy text, but this volume is a studied commentary and historic amplification of IB's nearly larger than life journeys--by foot, by camel, by horseback, by ship--and his encounters with kings, scholars, merchants, rebels, bandits, and the black death. Any student of the Middle East, and any student of Islam and/or the cultural histories of Africa, Arabia, or India, will of necessity read this volume at some point. A reader with less serious interest in these topics will enjoy Dunn's unique and concise insights as well.
 A.P. World History Review December 5, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Adventures of Ibn Battuta is a great novel for anyone who really wants to know a very detailed account of the Muslim world during the 15th century. The author not only describes everything that Ibn Battuta does and sees, but he also gives a very long description of the different cites' history that Ibn Battuta visits. However this description is very detailed and it normally doesn't pertain to what is happening whatsoever. These descriptions usually occur once Ibn Battuta enters a new city or town and they normally last a good couple of paragraphs, and contain more information than needed. For example, I personally didn't care what happened to Tangier in the 12th century and the author seemed to have put a good 5 pages describing every detail about it.
Although the excessive amount of information put into everything did bother me, the author did a very good job describing all things Ibn Battuta. The author describes everything about Ibn Battuta along with how he traveled, who he stayed with, what he did, who he did it with, his different adventures, etc. For instance, the author often mentioned and described the different Sufi people that Ibn Battuta stayed with and spent his time with. Probably the best thing about this novel was how the author kept the reader very entertained by sharing the many dangerous adventures and troubles that Ibn Battuta gets in, including many run ins with bandits and robbers. Overall this is an excellent book if you want to learn all about the different Muslim territories and the adventures of Ibn Battuta. Another good thing about this novel is that even if you know nothing about the time period before hand, the author explains everything so well that you'll be alright.
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