Ross E. Dunn
The Adventures of Ibn Battuta
A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century
Revised Edition, with a New Preface
$21.95, £14.95 paperback
9780520243859
Available Now
379 pages, 5-1/2 x 8-1/4 inches, 15 b/w photographs, 12 maps
December 2004, Available worldwide
Also in: Islam
December 2004, Available worldwide
Also in: Islam
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.
"I put the book down thinking of the world differently, reoriented geography and history."—Susan Spano, Los Angeles Times
"This is an excellent, and unusual, introduction to Islam, and to the world of the 14th century."—H.J. Kirchhoff, The Globe And Mail
"Written in an engaging style that should easily appeal to the non-historian, this book is very probably unprecedented in concept and execution—placing it in a class apart and above the majority of books from Western scholars that deal with Islamic subjects."—Julia Simpson, Saudi Gazette
"Dunn is to be congratulated on producing a highly readable book which will most certainly widen the circle of those obsessed by this most fascinating of travelers."—Peter Jackson, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
"Dunn has written a deeply satisfying book which he rounds off with a very thorough and well-organized bibliography. It is a work which will help in the much needed task of breaking down the artificial barriers of 'Islamic Studies' and one which will be used with enthusiasm by many teachers of world history."—Ian Richard Netton, Journal of Arabic Literature
Praise for the first edition:
"In 1325, at the age of twenty-one, Ibn Battuta set off from his native Tangier on the hajj to Mecca. He did not return to Morocco until 1349, by which time he had visited not only Mecca, but also Egypt, Syria, Iraq, East Africa, the Yemen, Anatolia, the steppelands of southern Russia, Constantinople, India, the Maldives, Sumatra, and China.… Dunn has used Ibn Battuta as a tracking eye, as a pretext for explaining how the Muslim world worked in the early fourteenth century.… An excellent synoptic introduction to the Muslim world of the Middle Ages."—Robert Irwin, Times Literary Supplement
"A successful, scholarly, readable attempt to retell [Ibn Battuta's] story to a wider audience."—Eric Newby, New York Times Book Review
"Dunn has created, from the raw material of Ibn Battuta's travels, a snapshot of this strangely (at least to us) unified world. It is a remarkable achievement: the book is more than he set out to write; it is not simply a retelling of the Ibn Battuta story for a general audience, as he rather modestly puts it, but an introduction to the Islamic world in particular, and the late medieval world in general."—Richard Pennell, British Society for Middle Eastern Studies Bulletin
"This is an excellent, and unusual, introduction to Islam, and to the world of the 14th century."—H.J. Kirchhoff, The Globe And Mail
"Written in an engaging style that should easily appeal to the non-historian, this book is very probably unprecedented in concept and execution—placing it in a class apart and above the majority of books from Western scholars that deal with Islamic subjects."—Julia Simpson, Saudi Gazette
"Dunn is to be congratulated on producing a highly readable book which will most certainly widen the circle of those obsessed by this most fascinating of travelers."—Peter Jackson, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
"Dunn has written a deeply satisfying book which he rounds off with a very thorough and well-organized bibliography. It is a work which will help in the much needed task of breaking down the artificial barriers of 'Islamic Studies' and one which will be used with enthusiasm by many teachers of world history."—Ian Richard Netton, Journal of Arabic Literature
Praise for the first edition:
"In 1325, at the age of twenty-one, Ibn Battuta set off from his native Tangier on the hajj to Mecca. He did not return to Morocco until 1349, by which time he had visited not only Mecca, but also Egypt, Syria, Iraq, East Africa, the Yemen, Anatolia, the steppelands of southern Russia, Constantinople, India, the Maldives, Sumatra, and China.… Dunn has used Ibn Battuta as a tracking eye, as a pretext for explaining how the Muslim world worked in the early fourteenth century.… An excellent synoptic introduction to the Muslim world of the Middle Ages."—Robert Irwin, Times Literary Supplement
"A successful, scholarly, readable attempt to retell [Ibn Battuta's] story to a wider audience."—Eric Newby, New York Times Book Review
"Dunn has created, from the raw material of Ibn Battuta's travels, a snapshot of this strangely (at least to us) unified world. It is a remarkable achievement: the book is more than he set out to write; it is not simply a retelling of the Ibn Battuta story for a general audience, as he rather modestly puts it, but an introduction to the Islamic world in particular, and the late medieval world in general."—Richard Pennell, British Society for Middle Eastern Studies Bulletin
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