The Silk Road's Greatest Travelers

Ibn Battuta

The Medieval World’s Greatest Traveler Throughout Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe

Ibn Battuta, a fourteenth-century Moroccan adventurer and religious scholar, was one of the most ambitious travelers of the Silk Road. Scholars estimate his lifelong journeys covered no fewer than 75,000 miles. Because of his knowledge of Muslim history and laws, he was greatly respected by the Muslim rulers he visited. His geographical records helped fill in the pieces of a mysterious world, a world in which people of different regions knew little or nothing about what lay over the horizon. It was Ibn Battuta, more than any other explorer of his era, who was able to make intra-cultural introductions.