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Secondary sourceBook1929

The Travels of Ibn Battuta

Sir E. Denison Ross and Eileen Power (eds.) · 1929

A 1929 edition and summary of Ibn Battuta's journeys across North Africa, Asia, and Africa, translated by H. A. R. Gibb.

This 1929 edition summarizes and translates Ibn Battuta's travels for English-speaking students and scholars.

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The Travels of Ibn Battuta
Sir E. Denison Ross and Eileen Power (eds.), The Travels of Ibn Battuta, 1929. Internet Archive.

About this source

What it is

This is a 1929 edition of Ibn Battuta's travel account, part of the Broadway Travellers series edited by Sir E. Denison Ross and Eileen Power, translated and selected by H. A. R. Gibb. It summarizes his life, noting he was born in Tangier in 1304 and traveled widely between 1324 and 1354.

Why it matters

This edition helped establish Ibn Battuta as one of history's great travelers, noting he visited nearly every Muslim state of his time plus other regions. It reflects the work of twentieth-century scholars translating and interpreting a medieval Arabic source for new audiences.

Look closer

  • Why do you think scholars grouped this account with other travel narratives from different eras?
  • What choices did editors make about what to translate or summarize?
  • How might a summary differ from reading Ibn Battuta's own words?

This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Ibn Battuta on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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Scanned manuscript page in Arabic calligraphy on aged cream paper. The top has a line of black script with a decorative heading, and a red-ink title block in larger calligraphy reading the opening of the work. Below are about two dozen lines of brown-ink handwritten text in dense Arabic script, with a marginal note at the bottom left.Book

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