Ibn Battuta

Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Battuta (1304–1368/69) was a Berber Muslim scholar and the most widely travelled man of the pre-modern world. Born in Tangier to a family of qadis, he left in 1325 for the pilgrimage to Mecca, not returning for twenty-four years, wandering the Somali and Swahili coasts, Anatolia and the Golden Horde.

In 1333 he reached Delhi, where Muhammad bin Tughluq made him a judge, spending six years between favour and suspicion. In 1341 he led a mission, bandits nearly killing him. He became chief judge in the Maldives, reached China, and crossed the Sahara to Mali.

Back in Morocco in 1354, he dictated it to Ibn Juzayy for Sultan Abu Inan, completed in 1355 as the Rihla. By one estimate he covered 117,000 km, farther than Zheng He or Marco Polo; nearly all we know comes from it. He died in 1368 or 1369.