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1325 CEPrimary source · 3 sourcesWell documented

Ibn Battuta Sets Out on Thirty Years of Travel Across the Islamic World and Beyond

A pilgrimage to Mecca turns into a 75,000-mile journey through Persia, India, Southeast Asia, and China

On the timeline · around 1325 CE · The Pax Mongolica and the Road's DeclineThe Pax Mongolica and the Road's DeclineIbn Battuta Sets Out on Thirty Years of Travel Across the Islamic World and Beyond110011501200125013001350140014501500

Quick facts

Traveler
Ibn Battuta, Moroccan scholar
Journey span
1325-1354 CE, nearly 3 decades
Distance covered
Estimated 120,000 km (75,000 miles)
Resulting work
The Rihla, dictated to Ibn Juzayy

What happened

In 1325, at age twenty-one, the Moroccan scholar Ibn Battuta left Tangier to perform the hajj to Mecca and ended up traveling for nearly three decades, covering an estimated 120,000 kilometers across North and West Africa, Egypt, Syria, East Africa, Persia, Central Asia, India, Southeast Asia, and China. His route through southwest Asia, documented in a primary-source excerpt hosted by World History Commons, took him through Damascus, Basra, and down the East African coast to Mogadishu, Mombasa, and Kilwa, part of the same maritime and overland network that carried the Silk Road's goods. After years in Delhi serving the Sultan, he was dispatched as a diplomatic envoy toward China, and though shipwrecked along the way, still reached the Yuan court in Beijing, having passed through Bengal, southern China, and Southeast Asian ports. He eventually returned to Morocco and dictated his experiences to a scribe, Ibn Juzayy, producing the travel account known as the Rihla.

Why it matters

Ibn Battuta's Rihla is the single most geographically expansive eyewitness account to survive from the Pax Mongolica era, documenting trade, religious practice, and urban life across nearly the entire span of the network described in this timeline, from Islamic North Africa to Mongol-ruled China, in one traveler's own words.

How we know

World History Commons, a project of George Mason University's Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, hosts a primary-source excerpt from Ibn Battuta's own Travels covering his journey through Damascus, Basra, and the East African coast, with scholarly annotation noting that while the Rihla mixed personal memory with borrowed material from earlier travelers, most historians accept that Ibn Battuta genuinely visited most of the places he described.

Sources

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Part of a timelineThe Silk Road29 events · How camel caravans, Sogdian merchants, and pilgrim monks stitched China to Rome, Byzantium, and the Islamic world across a thousand miles of desert and steppeView all →