Ibn Battuta Sparknotes

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The Adventures of Ibn Battuta by Ross E. Dunn is a simplified and revised version of Ibn Battuta’s Rihala. This book tells the story of the Ibn Battuta’s hajj to Mecca and how he continues on to traveling across the continent and further. Visiting places he didn’t even know about until he was there. He went to Egypt, Syria, Persia, Iraq, East Africa, Yemen, Anatolia, the steppes of southern Russia, Constantinople, India, the Maldives, Sumatra, and even China. The trip took him 30 years as he took a 73,000 mile adventure of the Eastern Hemisphere. Ibn Battuta is a 21 year old muslim man in the beginning of the book, he sets out from his home in Tangier on June 14, 1325 (2 Rajab 725 A.H.) to make the 3,000 mile journey to Mecca, as the Islam …show more content…

At the beginning of his journey, he decides to not travel with a caravan, this proves to be a good thing for him, as along his journey, he is continually meeting rich and pious people who give him camels, horses, donkeys, money, food, drink, and places to lodge. This is a custom of the muslim faith to give gifts to travelers. His journey first began in the Middle East, then venturing out to sea to Makkah, where his ship was attacked by pirates and he had to continue the journey to Makkah on foot. Then Ibn Battuta crossed the vast Arabian Desert to reach modern day Iraq and Iran, he stayed briefly then took another ship to Tanzania in East Africa. He eventually ended up going to India where he was warmly greeted by Sultan of Dehli, who was also known as the Shadow of God. He stayed in India for eight years as a …show more content…

Dunn does a wonderful job at narrating and creating the world that Ibn Battuta lived in. He takes the entire first chapter to set the stage for the muslim culture as well as what was going on during that time. He does this quite often due to the confusion it would cause if he did not. Dunn also tells us what was going on politically at the time. Since Ibn Battuta is a widely written about historical character and requires multiple sources to get his story correct, Dunn often dedicates two or three pages at the end of each chapter to cite his sources. He has anywhere from 12- 44 different sources for each chapter. Dunn uses a variety of sources, including a book from Cambridge, Massachusett called Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages. He also uses a french book from the Bulletin de la Société Royal de Géographie d’Egypte. Historians also claim that Ibn Battuta used writings from another more famous traveler of that time named Ibn Jayabar, so his Rihala is frequently cited. To us, this is considered plagiarism, however in Islamic culture it was not uncommon for writers to add other travellers experience in their own writings without citing it. To be sure he gets all of the islamic customs explained properly, Dunn uses the first and second editions of the Encyclopedia of Islam. The author writes as chronologically as possible, this is because in texts about the hajj journeys, they would often group together incidents that happened in a city, even if they did not

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