Ibn Battuta

(1304–1368/69)
Ibn Battuta was a Moroccan traveler and scholar from Tangier, widely regarded as one of the greatest explorers of the medieval world. Trained as a qadi (Muslim judge), he set out at age 21 on what was meant to be a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1325, but the journey grew into nearly 30 years of travel covering roughly 75,000 miles across the Islamic world and beyond — from North and West Africa to the Middle East, Central Asia, India, the Maldives, and China. Upon his return to Morocco, he dictated his experiences to the scholar Ibn Juzayy, resulting in the celebrated travelogue known as the Rihla, offering a vivid account of the peoples, cultures, and courts he encountered. The work remains one of the richest firsthand records of the 14th-century world. He spent his final years in Morocco, where he died around 1368–69.