After traveling southward from Damascus and across northern Arabia, Ibn Battutah finally reached Mecca. He then sailed to the Persian Gulf and ascended the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers to Baghdad. From there, he returned to Mecca, where he remained for three years, studying Islamic law. From the Gulf of Aden, he voyaged southward along the coast of East Africa to the ports of Kilwa and Mombasa, then once again returned to Mecca.
Ibn Battutah soon undertook a journey across Persia (present-day Iran) to Esfahan and Shiraz. He again visited Baghdad, from where he traveled to Constantinople (pre-sent-day Istanbul, Turkey), then went northward to the Black Sea, stopping at the port of Kaffa, a Genoese trad-ing settlement in the Crimea and one of the few Christian places he visited. Heattempted to travel northward into Russia from Bulgaria, but was turned back by cold weather.
Heading eastward, Ibn Battutah crossed the central Asian steppes, into the lands of the Mongolian Tartars, to Samarkand and the countryof the Uzbeks. He reached Afghanistan by way of the Hindu Kush range, stopping at Kabul and Herat before making his way by the upper Indus River into India. At Delhi, he entered the service of Sultan Mohammed Tuglaq, for whom he worked as judge and legal scholar for seven years. He then was commis-sioned as the sultan’s ambassador to the court of the Mon-gol emperor of China. He left Delhi with gifts for the emperor, but before he could embark from the Malabar Coast port of Goa, he was robbed. Afraid to return to Delhi without the gifts, he sailed for the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean, where he obtained another official post and several wives.
After less than two years in the Maldives, Ibn Battutah visited Ceylon(present-day Sri Lanka), then returned to the mainland of southeastern India at Madras. From there, he sailed to the Far East, stopping in Malaya and Sumatra, before finally reaching China.
Ibn Battutah began his homeward voyage in about 1346. Returning by ship from Canton (Guangzhou) to the Malabar Coast of southwestern India, he crossed the Ara-bian Sea and traveled up the Persian Gulf to Damascus, where he arrived in 1348 in the midst of an outbreak of bubonic plague, known as the Black Death. He arrived back in Tangier in 1350, where he was welcomed by the local ruler, or wazir, who provided him with a secre-tary, Ibn Juzayy, to whom he dictated an account of his epic journey.
In 1352, Ibn Battutah was commissioned by the sultan of Morocco to undertake a diplomatic mission south-ward across the SAHARA DESERT to TIMBUKTU in the kingdom of Mali. He crossed the Atlas Mountains and eventually reached the NIGER RIVER, on which he sailed to Timbuktu, later reporting on the river’s east-flowing course. His return to Tangier took him across the Ahaggar Mountains.
In a subsequent journey, Ibn Battutah crossed the Strait of Gibraltar from Tangier and visited the Muslim cities of Spain. He also travelled throughout the lands of the western Mediterranean Sea, including a visit to the island of Sardinia.
Ibn Battutah’s travels took him across 75,000 miles in Africa, Asia, and Europe, in the course of which he visited nearly every country in the Islamic world. In the east he reached as far as China, and to the south as far as Mali and the coast of East Africa. In the north, he traveled as far as the edge of the steppes of SIBERIA, and in the west he visited Spain. He was one of the first known explorers of the Sa-hara. His travel account, Rihla(Journey), completed in 1357, became known outside of the Arabic world after the French occupation of North Africa in the 19th century. The record of his travels provides a vivid description of the Mid-dle East, East and West Africa, India, and China in the cen-turybeforethe onset of the age of European exploration. In it, he makes the first written reference to the mountains known as Hindu Kush.
Sources:
Wikipedia.org
Encyclopedia of Exploration
