Speaker A
Travel, set out and head for pastures new. Life tastes richer when you've road worn feet.
Explore Ibn Battuta's epic 75,000-mile journey across the medieval Muslim world, retraced by a modern traveler in this captivating documentary.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Ibn Battuta’s travels were unparalleled in distance and cultural breadth during the 14th century.
- His travelogue offers a unique window into the Islamic world at its historical zenith.
- Retracing his route today reveals the rich, diverse heritage and ongoing cultural connections across the Muslim world.
- Ibn Battuta’s life was complex, blending scholarship, adventure, and personal relationships.
- The documentary bridges past and present, showing how historical travel continues to inspire modern exploration.
What the video covers
- The video narrates the story of Ibn Battuta, a 14th-century Moroccan Muslim traveler who journeyed 75,000 miles across three continents.
- Ibn Battuta's travels began in 1325 with a pilgrimage to Mecca and evolved into one of history's greatest exploration odysseys.
- He encountered diverse cultures, magicians, holy men, and traders, serving as scholar, businessman, mystic, and warrior.
- The narrator, an Englishman living in Yemen, discovers Ibn Battuta’s travelogue and sets out to retrace his footsteps.
- The documentary explores the vibrant Islamic world of the 14th century, a golden age of travel and trade.
- The journey covers regions from Tangier in Morocco, through the Mediterranean, Turkey, India, and the maritime Silk Route to China.
- The video highlights Ibn Battuta’s personal life, including his multiple marriages and encounters with rulers and locals.
- It also reflects on the cultural and historical significance of Ibn Battuta’s writings in understanding the Muslim world.
- The narrator’s immersion into Yemeni culture, including local customs like chewing Gat, provides a contemporary connection to the past.
- The video emphasizes the enduring legacy of Ibn Battuta as history’s greatest traveler and the multicultural nature of his birthplace, Tangier.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
No water that stagnates is fit to drink, for only that which flows is truly sweet.
Speaker B
This is the story of one of the greatest journeys of all time.
Speaker B
In 1325, shortly after the end of the Crusades, a young Moroccan Muslim called Ibn Battuta set out on a pilgrimage to Mecca. It was to become an odyssey from one end of the known world to the other.
Speaker B
In all, he traveled 75,000 miles, more than three times the distance Marco Polo covered.
Speaker B
Along the way, he was to meet magicians, dervishes, holy men, fire eaters,
Speaker B
and other travelers from across three continents.
Speaker B
He was by turn scholar, businessman, mystic, warrior.
Speaker B
He was imprisoned by mad sultans, was married 10 times,
Speaker B
and had countless concubines.
Speaker B
And when he got home, after 29 years on the road,
Speaker B
he wrote it all down.
Speaker B
Nearly 700 years later, I discovered his travelogue,
Speaker B
and was blown away by it.
Speaker B
Here was a description of a kaleidoscopic Muslim world that I could still see around me,
Speaker B
but one that for most non-Muslims was hidden behind a veil of misunderstanding, ignorance,
Speaker B
and even fear.
Speaker B
From that moment, I was determined to take to the road, to follow in Ibn Battuta's footsteps,
Speaker B
and discover if the exotic and welcoming Muslim world he described remains to this day.
Speaker B
Sana'a, the capital of Yemen.
Speaker B
You might know this country as the realm of the Queen of Sheba.
Speaker B
You might even know it as the ancestral land of the Bin Laden family.
Speaker B
For me, it's home.
Speaker B
I came here to study Arabic 25 years ago and never left.
Speaker B
Now I'm more than half a Yemeni myself.
Speaker B
Part of me misses good English ale,
Speaker B
hard to get in a Muslim country.
Speaker B
But my Yemeni side makes up for it.
Speaker B
Like almost all the men here, I indulge in a drug,
Speaker B
perfectly legal by the way, called Gat.
Speaker B
Meet my dealer, Sabri.
Speaker C
By my beard, this stuff's good!
Speaker C
Actually, I'm going to keep it for myself.
Speaker D
Stop mucking about! I want to see it.
Speaker B
What I do when I buy it, I tend not to buy it by the look of it.
Speaker B
I I sort of go,
Speaker B
I'm I'm a sort of nose.
Speaker B
You know, like a wine nose, because I I open it up a bit like that,
Speaker B
and I stick my nose in it.
Speaker B
And I take a deep breath.
Speaker B
And everyone, you know, foreign visitors who come,
Speaker B
they always say, how can you chew that stuff that looks like a privet hedge?
Speaker B
It's a bit like when you first drink it,
Speaker B
it doesn't actually taste intrinsically very nice.
Speaker B
But you soon get really into it.
Speaker B
And then it's even more like beer.
Speaker B
If you like beer.
Speaker D
How much do I owe you?
Speaker C
900 rials.
Speaker D
What?
Speaker C
It's my best price.
Speaker B
You see, it's when he looks at me like that, that I can't refuse him.
Speaker D
When you give me that look, I can't resist.
Speaker B
All this may seem a long way from my very English roots as an Oxford classicist,
Speaker B
conductor of the college choir and captain of croquet.
Speaker B
But so what?
Speaker B
I like it here.
Speaker B
Where else can you live in an architectural masterpiece next to a donkey market,
Speaker B
have scrambled brains for breakfast,
Speaker B
and while away your evenings with virtuoso lutists?
Speaker B
I'd be perfectly happy to do nothing but sit in my house chewing Gat,
Speaker B
writing and reading.
Speaker B
But there's something that's given me itchy feet.
Speaker B
It's a book, The Travels of Ibn Battuta.
Speaker B
He was an Arab traveler who made one of the great journeys of exploration,
Speaker B
and opened the world for generations to come.
Speaker B
But you've probably never heard of him because the world he explored was the Islamic world.
Speaker B
I've devoted years of my life to writing about him and researching his epic journey.
Speaker B
And he deserves to be known as history's greatest traveler.
Speaker B
Ibn Battuta's journey took him crisscrossing 75,000 miles across the globe.
Speaker B
His route appears random and wildly eccentric.
Speaker B
When he was traveling, Christendom was still dragging itself out of the Dark Ages,
Speaker B
and towards the Renaissance.
Speaker B
But Islam was at its glittering height.
Speaker B
About half the known world was under Islamic rule,
Speaker B
and the trade routes lay wide open.
Speaker B
This was a golden age of Islamic travel,
Speaker B
and Ibn Battuta seized the unique opportunity to see the world.
Speaker B
For a Westerner today, retracing his route remains a journey into the unknown.
Speaker B
On this first stretch, I'll tread the ancient pilgrim roads and explore that central tenant of Islam,
Speaker B
travel in pursuit of knowledge.
Speaker B
Then on the road all the way from Turkey to India,
Speaker B
I'll encounter a world where the clear lines between the great religions have blurred into mysticism.
Speaker B
And on the last leg of the odyssey, I'll meet the living relics of a glorious but forgotten age of Islamic trade,
Speaker B
along the maritime Silk Route to China.
Speaker B
The story begins 3,000 miles from my adopted homeland, on the far edge of Africa.
Speaker A
The memory of my homeland, Morocco, moved me, together with affection for my people and friends,
Speaker A
and love for my country, which for me is better than all others.
Speaker A
A land where charms were hung upon me,
Speaker A
whose earth my skin first touched.
Speaker B
We've just crossed the Straits of Gibraltar,
Speaker B
arriving here in Tangier, Ibn Battuta's birthplace.
Speaker B
This is the end of Africa, it's the end of the Mediterranean world.
Speaker B
And in Ibn Battuta's time, it was the end of the known world.
Speaker B
In the 14th century, Tangier was a frontier city, perched on the border between continents and civilizations.
Speaker B
I'd always thought of it in its 20th century incarnation as a hotbed of sex, drugs and rock and roll,
Speaker B
a hangout for William Burroughs and the Rolling Stones.
Speaker B
But nowadays, the Tangerines, the people of Tangier,
Speaker B
seem almost genteel.
Speaker B
Fashions come and go,
Speaker B
but one name remains in vogue.
Speaker B
Ibn Battuta is the ultimate local boy made good.
Speaker B
I've come here because I can imagine it's just the sort of place,
Speaker B
where Ibn Battuta would have come and sat as a small boy,
Speaker B
looking across the Straits of Gibraltar and looking at Spain,
Speaker B
thinking about far travel and distant lands.
Speaker B
He visited something like over 40 countries on the modern map.
Speaker B
But the important thing with Ibn Battuta is that he came home,
Speaker B
and he wrote it all down.
Speaker B
You read about him getting the runs,
Speaker B
getting ripped off by guides.
Speaker B
He's very much a ladies' man.
Speaker B
He gets married 10 times.
Speaker B
He talks about all his concubines that he had on top of his wives.
Speaker B
And you can feel this character jumping off the page.
Speaker B
But very little is known of the early life of the city's favorite son.
Speaker B
And looking for clues in modern Tangier was not going to be straightforward.
Speaker E
Salam alaikum.
Speaker B
Hello.
Speaker E
How are you?
Speaker B
I'm very well.
Speaker B
You speak English?
Speaker E
Yes.
Speaker E
Not enough.
Speaker B
Thank you.
Speaker E
Welcome in.
Speaker E
You need any help?
Speaker B
Yeah, I'd like a room, please, but I want a really nice room.
Speaker B
If you've got any any relics of Ibn Battuta?
Speaker E
Yeah, yeah, we have the best one, room, a family suite.
Speaker B
A family suite.
Speaker B
Okay.
Speaker B
And can you just tell me, who's this?
Speaker E
This is the picture of Ibn Battuta.
Speaker B
Ah.
Speaker B
I mean, I've always wondered what he looked like,
Speaker B
and I never thought that he would look like that.
Speaker E
I don't think that's real, but it's just give an image of the picture.
Speaker B
And there was more.
Speaker B
This is Ibn Battuta.
Speaker E
True, yeah.
Speaker B
But it's a photograph.
Speaker E
Photograph, yeah.
Speaker B
And he's and he's smoking a water pipe.
Speaker E
A shisha.
Speaker B
A shisha, yeah.
Speaker B
I I thought Ibn Battuta lived before tobacco came from America.
Speaker E
Yeah, yeah, sure, yes.
Speaker E
Before before.
Speaker B
So do you think it really is Ibn Battuta?
Speaker E
Really, really.
Speaker B
Really, really?
Speaker E
I don't know, I'm not sure.
Speaker B
My search for Ibn Battuta begins in the Kasbah,
Speaker B
the oldest part of Tangier, where the traveler lived as a small boy.
Speaker B
Even then it was a restless place to grow up,
Speaker B
a meeting place of cultural currents from around the world.
Speaker B
Several of these currents cross in Gnawa music,
Speaker B
a mystical blend of Islamic religious songs and African and Berber rhythms, which dates back over half a millennium.
Speaker B
I wanted to know if the travel bug had infected all Tangerines across the centuries.
Speaker E
Tangier people, they like, they like to to travel.
Speaker E
The real Tangerine is multicultural.
Speaker B
You must have heard of Ibn Battuta.
Speaker E
Sure, yeah, this is very famous, yeah.
Speaker E
That's was the behind me is the door where he used to live, Ibn Battuta.
Speaker E
And he started traveling from.
Speaker B
Well, he really he lived here.
Speaker E
He lived here.
Speaker B
Seriously?
Speaker E
Seriously, I'm talking seriously.
Speaker B
You're not kidding me.
Speaker E
It was here.
Speaker E
He started his trip, he was prepared his horse,
Speaker E
and his animal donkey here with his father.
Speaker B
Well, Abdul Majid has just told me that we're actually sitting,
Speaker B
right next to Ibn Battuta's house.
Speaker B
And I'm absolutely, I mean, you could knock me down with a feather, as they say.
Speaker B
We know Ibn Battuta lived in the Kasbah.
Speaker B
But did he live in this very square?
Speaker B
There's not a whisper of evidence for or against.
Speaker B
All these imponderables were making me hungry for facts,
Speaker B
and for a solid 14th century lunch.
Speaker B
Any lentil munchers and chicken nugget nibblers might care to avert their gaze.
Speaker B
We've got some sheep's heads.
Speaker B
They're looking quite perky.
Speaker B
Freshly killed.
Speaker B
And so artistically arranged.
Speaker B
And we've got some little sheep's brains.
Speaker B
Delicious ones.
Speaker B
I'm sure.
Speaker B
Some hearts.
Speaker B
He's just showing me the milk teeth,
Speaker B
to prove that the lambs are are quite young.
Speaker B
Very Ibn Battuta thing to eat, I'm sure.
Speaker B
The Quran says that you should eat from the all the good things that God has given you.
Speaker B
And so it's regarded as a sort of a bit off to refuse these blessings in whatever form they come.
Speaker B
Excellent.
Speaker B
This is absolutely magnificent.
Speaker B
We've each got a head here, a sheep's head.
Speaker B
And and they're cut Damian Hirst style.
Speaker B
Beautifully served on on a lettuce leaf.
Speaker B
Tongue.
Speaker B
It's hot.
Speaker B
It is very hot.
Speaker B
Ah.
Speaker B
But it's hot when you get into the middle.
Speaker B
Very tasty indeed.
Speaker B
I was joined for lunch by my guide Said,
Speaker B
a modern Tangerine who sounded as if he'd learned his English in Brooklyn.
Speaker B
Tourists who see this thing being sold outside in the open and they go, ah.
Speaker B
He told me that the Islamic tradition of slaughtering a sheep once a year,
Speaker B
reaches back across millennia, all the way to Abraham.
Speaker B
We learned from our fathers and forefathers how to kill a sheep.
Speaker B
Killing a sheep is not a problem.
Speaker B
Anybody can kill a sheep.
Speaker B
You have to kill it properly, then you have to skin it.
Speaker B
I hire a person who would skin the sheep for me.
Speaker B
But I'll kill it in front of my kids, so they learn.
Speaker B
It's an act that has been descended from Abraham to kill a sheep.
Speaker B
Ibn Battuta must have done it that way.
Speaker B
So we've we've we've just in fact had something that Ibn Battuta might himself have eaten.
Speaker B
And other other generations long before him.
Speaker A
In the story of his adventures, Ibn Battuta tells us nothing of his early life,
Speaker A
and next to nothing of his life once he'd finished his 30 years of traveling.
Speaker A
We know that he was born in 1304,
Speaker A
and that he was educated in Islamic law.
Speaker A
We know that he had a beard,
Speaker A
and that he was from a respectable family.
Speaker A
But that's about it.
Speaker A
I needed to search for his spirit, for his reincarnation,
Speaker A
for glimpses of his face among the crowds of today's Tangerines.
Speaker A
But where to start?
Speaker A
At the beginning, of course, with those first lessons on the Quran,
Speaker A
the book that guides all Muslims through life.
Speaker A
As a young boy in the 14th century, Ibn Battuta would have been taught in just the same way as these children,
Speaker A
learning to recite the Quran by heart.
Speaker A
Madrasas like this one are often seen in the West as breeding grounds for future Islamic extremists.
Speaker A
But holy war was not on the curriculum here.
Speaker A
Today's lesson was about how travel is an integral part of Islam.
Speaker F
How many pillars of Islam are there?
Speaker G
Five.
Speaker F
Five.
Speaker G
The pillars of Islam are five.
Speaker F
Yes.
Speaker G
The two testimonies.
Speaker F
Yes.
Speaker G
Prayers, charity, fasting, and to go on the pilgrimage, if you can.
Speaker F
Very good.
Speaker A
The teacher has just asked them about the five pillars of Islam.
Speaker A
And the last of these pillars is pilgrimage.
Speaker A
Pilgrimage, of course, was the reason that Ibn Battuta left Tangier to go to Mecca.
Speaker A
For these children, as for Ibn Battuta, the Hajj pilgrimage will be more than just a trip to Mecca.
Speaker A
It's an opportunity to see the world.
Speaker A
In Ibn Battuta's case, it was a gap year that would turn into three decades of travel.
Speaker A
Ibn Battuta wrote,
Speaker A
I left Tangier, my birthplace, on Thursday the 23rd of June, 1325.
Speaker A
I wanted to do the Hajj.
Speaker A
When you get bigger, will you go to Mecca?
Speaker G
Yes.
Speaker A
Every Muslim,
Speaker A
hopes to reach one day the holy house of God in Mecca.
Speaker A
Who else wants to go to the holy sanctuaries?
Speaker G
I definitely will.
Speaker A
With God's will, you'll all go, just like Ibn Battuta.
Speaker A
Saying of the Prophet,
Speaker A
seek knowledge, even if the journey takes you all the way to China.
Speaker A
Islam itself began with a journey, Muhammad's migration from Mecca to Medina,
Speaker A
marks the year zero in the Islamic calendar.
Speaker A
Travel is in the very fabric of Islam.
Speaker A
And although the physical relics of Ibn Battuta had proved elusive in Tangier, his wanderlust remains as strong as ever.
Speaker A
It was now time for me to move on, chasing the traveler's shadow across North Africa.
Speaker A
I set out alone, having neither fellow traveler in whose companionship I might find cheer,
Speaker A
nor caravan whose party I might join, but swayed by an overmastering impulse within me,
Speaker A
and a desire long cherished in my bosom to visit these illustrious sanctuaries.
Speaker A
So I braced my resolution to quit all my dear ones, female and male,
Speaker A
and forsook my home as birds forsake their nests.
Speaker A
My age at that time was 22 lunar years.
Speaker A
Ibn Battuta left Tangier for Mecca in 1325,
Speaker A
and headed east through modern Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.
Speaker A
His account of the journey is sparse until he arrives in the city he calls a unique pearl, Alexandria.
Speaker A
In the 14th century, Alexandria was buzzing with the trade of all the Mediterranean.
Speaker A
For Ibn Battuta, a young man from the Western fringe of the Muslim world,
Speaker A
it must have made Tangier look provincial.
Speaker A
May God protect Alexandria.
Speaker A
She's a well-guarded frontier citadel,
Speaker A
and a friendly and hospitable region, remarkable in appearance and solid in her structure,
Speaker A
glorious in her surpassing beauty, uniting in herself the excellences that are shared by other cities,
Speaker A
through her mediating situation between the East and the West.
Speaker A
Every fresh marvel,
Speaker A
has there its unveiling.
Speaker A
Every novelty,
Speaker A
finds its way thither.
Speaker A
Ibn Battuta absolutely raved about Alexandria in some of his most high-flown prose.
Speaker A
He said Alexandria has all you could wish for in the way of embellishment and embattlement.
Speaker A
He compared it to a secluded maiden arrayed in her bridal finery.
Speaker A
And he said Alexandria is like a pearl glowing in opalescence.
Speaker A
Of course, the city has changed a bit since 1326.
Speaker A
If Alexandria in the 14th century was a secluded maiden,
Speaker A
I'm not sure what you'd call her today.
Speaker A
Perhaps a woman of a certain age.
Speaker A
Ibn Battuta had a way with the ladies.
Speaker A
He'd already picked up his first wife on the road to Alexandria, divorced her after an argument with his father-in-law,
Speaker A
and then married another woman.
Speaker A
But I had no one to keep me company,
Speaker A
and Alexandria is a rather sad place to be alone in.
Speaker A
Instead of taking the most direct pilgrim route through the Sinai Desert, he turned south.
Speaker A
He was heading up the Nile to the most popular city in the Muslim world and the center of Islamic civilization and culture,
Speaker A
to Cairo.
Speaker A
Mother of cities,
Speaker A
and seat of Pharaoh the tyrant, mistress of broad provinces and fruitful lands,
Speaker A
boundless in multitude of buildings, peerless in beauty and splendor,
Speaker A
the meeting place of common and Goa, the stopping place of feeble and strong.
Speaker A
I arrived at length in the city of Cairo.
Speaker A
Mother of cities,
Speaker A
and seat of Pharaoh the tyrant, mistress of broad provinces and fruitful lands,
Speaker A
boundless in multitude of buildings, peerless in beauty and splendor,
Speaker A
the meeting place of common and Goa, the stopping place of feeble and strong.
Speaker A
The so-called city of the dead,
Speaker A
is supposed to be off limits to foreigners.
Speaker A
This was once simply a cemetery, but over the years the urban poor have moved into the tombs.
Speaker A
The government now regards it as an embarrassment.
Speaker A
Habiba was born here,
Speaker A
and managed to sneak us in.
Speaker A
This is what Ibn Battuta wrote about this very place, the place that you're from.
Speaker A
These people build in the Karafa beautiful domed chapels and surround them by walls.
Speaker A
And they construct chambers in them and hire the services of Quran readers who recite night and day in the most beautiful voices.
Speaker A
They go out every Thursday evening to spend the night there with their children and their womenfolk,
Speaker A
and they make a circuit of the famous sanctuaries.
Speaker A
Actually, we used to do that until very recently, but people stopped actually.
Speaker A
We used to go, yeah, in the feast or in any religious occasion, we'll go to the cemetery and spend the night there,
Speaker A
and have take the food and all this sort of stuff.
Speaker A
It's very, very important part of our life.
Speaker A
The the dead and the cemetery and stuff, it's very, very important.
Speaker A
Everybody want to be sure he has his tomb like the Pharaoh, you know.
Speaker A
And it's where it is and should be closer to his family.
Speaker A
And we mourn for a long time and you never stop, you never stop.
Speaker A
For me, if I pass you any time, I say a prayer for the dead.
Speaker A
And those who go before us and we who come after.
Speaker A
I'm always being mistaken for a Muslim.
Speaker A
It comes from speaking Arabic.
Speaker A
But the Imam and the pilgrim didn't want to convert me on the spot.
Speaker A
Instead, they gave me a history of the site, which for them was an illustration of Islam's superiority.
Speaker A
First there was the Pharaoh's temple.
Speaker A
Then a Jewish synagogue, then a church.
Speaker A
And finally, a Muslim mosque.
Speaker A
So this was actually.
Speaker A
And under this, there was a church.
Speaker A
Under that, a Jewish synagogue.
Speaker A
And under that, the temple of Pharaoh.
Speaker A
I think I understood what he was saying.
Speaker A
This gentleman says that this is a lovely metaphor for the way that religions have followed one another.
Speaker A
And the last one and and the seal of of religions is Islam.
Speaker A
For many Muslims, tomb visiting is something to be done regularly, like changing the oil in a car.
Speaker A
It ensures the smooth running of history.
Speaker A
This old pilgrim was a veteran traveler,
Speaker A
and a collector of Muslim saints.
Speaker A
The Quran says we must travel.
Speaker A
It is an order from God.
Speaker A
The prophet Muhammad says, 'Seek knowledge, even if you end up in China.'
Speaker A
This means, see the world,
Speaker A
don't hide like a snail in a shell.
Speaker A
I have an idea that perhaps because God is impossible to understand,
Speaker A
and we can only begin to understand him by traveling.
Speaker A
When he asked me what I proposed to do,
Speaker A
I told him that I intended to make the pilgrimage to Mecca by way of Jeddah.
Speaker A
He replied,
Speaker A
You will not succeed in doing that on this occasion.
Speaker A
Go back,
Speaker A
for you will make your first pilgrimage by the Syrian road,
Speaker A
and no other.
Speaker A
I wanted to prophecy of my own from Mustafa.
Speaker A
Would I succeed in following Ibn Battuta all the way across the world to China?
Speaker A
Yes, it's possible.
Speaker A
You're an optimist then?
Speaker A
It's easy.
Speaker A
If you have the desire to go, you will go.
Speaker A
If you really want to do what Ibn Battuta did, you will.
Speaker A
If I want to?
Speaker A
If you really want to.
Speaker A
So it's all about my intention?
Speaker A
Yes, it's all about intention.
Speaker A
It's been said that you can never step in the same river twice.
Speaker A
But I felt that Ibn Battuta's Nile and mine were one and the same.
Speaker A
That we were born by the same current, propelled by the same wind.
Speaker A
And that he was only a swish of a robe ahead of me.
Speaker A
But how would I get to his next destination, an insalubrious port on the Red Sea,
Speaker A
called Aidhab?
Speaker A
Good morning.
Speaker A
Have you heard of Aidhab?
Speaker A
Yes.
Speaker A
How far away is it?
Speaker A
Aidhab?
Speaker A
It's at the end of the world.
Speaker A
At the end of the world, he says.
Speaker A
That's what I'm trying to get to, the end of the world.
Speaker A
Actually, I am trying to get to the end of the world in many ways.
Speaker A
It's about 350 kilometers.
Speaker A
All right, okay.
Speaker A
Now we're getting some facts.
Speaker A
What is the desert like?
Speaker A
The desert is very sunny and sandy.
Speaker A
And there's nothing for the Bahaim, the the beasts to eat.
Speaker A
Then water.
Speaker A
It's all sun and tiredness.
Speaker A
I have never ever ridden a camel.
Speaker A
Don't worry, I'll look after you.
Speaker A
Right.
Speaker A
Bismillah.
Speaker A
In Ibn Battuta's day, camel trains could be the height of luxury travel.
Speaker A
I think he went across the desert in a camel litter.
Speaker A
So I'm going to be rather more adventurous.
Speaker A
You know, he went in a litter, sort of reading books,
Speaker A
and playing chess or something with his mate.
Speaker A
He was sitting on the other side.
Speaker A
It's actually quite comfortable.
Speaker A
So far.
Speaker A
Off on the ship of the desert.
Speaker A
We hired camels and set out through a desert totally devoid of settlements.
Speaker A
This desert is luminous and radiant.
Speaker A
There is no road, no track.
Speaker A
Only sand blown apart by the wind.
Speaker A
You see mountains of sand in one place,
Speaker A
then you see they have moved to another.
Speaker A
I've spent so much of my time hunting for Ibn Battuta,
Speaker A
that I sometimes don't notice when he creeps up on me.
Speaker A
As we rode east towards Mecca, the 670 years between us seemed to fall away.
Speaker A
Ibn Battuta was not destined to get to Arabia this way.
Speaker A
Just as the holy man on the Nile predicted, he had to turn back at the Red Sea,
Speaker A
and eventually made the Hajj pilgrimage overland through Syria.
Topics:Ibn Battutamedieval travelIslamic world14th centuryMoroccoTangierpilgrimageSilk Roadtraveloguehistorical exploration
