Ibn Battuta (d.1377), Tuhfat an-Nuzzar fi ghara'ib al-amsar wa 'aja'ib asfar, a volume from The Travels, North Africa, 17th century

Shams al-Din Abu ‘Abdallah Muhammad ibn ‘Abdallah ibn Muhammad al-Lawati at-Tangi, better known as Ibn Battuta, was a Moroccan scholar and explorer who is considered one of the greatest medieval Arab travellers. He was born into a Berber family in Tangier on 24 February 1304 AD. The present manuscript is an account of Ibn Battuta's travels in North Africa including Tangier in Morocco, Constantine and Tlemcen in Algeria, Tunis, Tripoli and Alexandria. Ibn Battuta set off on his travels in June 1325 from Tangier, at the age of nineteen, and did not return to Morocco for twenty-nine years. What was initially intended to be a Hajj pilgrimage took him through most of the Islamic world and beyond. His travels gave new dimensions to the genre of travel books in the medieval Muslim world, as traditional travel centred on a visit to the Holy Sites of Mecca and Medina in Arabia.

On his return to Morocco, Ibn Battuta dictated an account of his travels to Ibn Juzayy, an Arab scholar from Al-Andalus. The writing of the text was commissioned by the Marinid ruler of the time, Abu ‘Inan Faris al-Mutawakkil (r.1348-58). The text was completed in December 1357 and the definitive text appeared a few months later as Tuhfat al-nuzzar fi ghara’ib al-amsar wa-ajai’b al-asfar (‘A gift for the curious, concerning the wonders of cities and marvels of the journeys thereto’), referred to simply as Rihla or The Travels. Some of Ibn Battuta’s descriptive accounts are thought to have been inspired by the writings of earlier travellers, such as the twelfth century Andalusian traveller Ibn Jubayr. However, his journeys provide an invaluable source for the social, cultural and political history of the Muslim world in the fourteenth century. Ibn Battuta was a keen observer of life and his descriptions are marked by a human approach which is unusual for historical writing of the time. His accounts are recognised in particular for his descriptions of East and West Africa, Turkish principalities in Asia Minor and India (Lewis 1986, pp.735-6).

A four-volume French translation of The Travels by C. Defrémery & B.R. Sanguinetti (Paris, 1853-59) is considered one of the best. For an English translation of the text, with important corrections, see Gibb 1958-62, 2 volumes. A seventeenth century abridgement of The Travels sold in these rooms, 31 March 2021, lot 13.