(1304-ca. 1377) a famous
Arabian traveler of the
Middle Ages and a
contemporary of Marco Polo. Ibn-Batuta spent the 24 years from 1325 to 1349 traveling 75,000 miles through
North Africa, southern Spain, the
Middle East, East Africa,
Central Asia,
India, Southeast
Asia and crossing the
Sahara Desert to
West Africa. After his
return to
Morocco in 1349, he dictated an
account of his travels. The resulting
work has long been considered a valuable
source of
past historical,
economic and social
data, particularly about
India and the
Middle East. But we discover that
Tamerlane had in his
court an
Arabian known as ibn-Batuta who had just
completed a
series of books about his journeyings and travels throughout Europe and Africa and
Asia.