SOURCE: Norris, H. T. “Ibn Battūta's Andalusian Journey.” Geographical Journal 125, no. 2 (June 1959): 186-96.

In the following essay, Norris traces Ibn Battuta's travels to Andalusia, describing the places he visited and presenting the journey as it might have appeared to the traveler.

It is strange that Shaykh Abū ‘Abdallah Muḥammad Ibn Baṭṭūṭah, one of the greatest of Muslim travellers, should have delayed his major visit to Spain until the latter part of his career. He was born in Tangier, within sight of the Spanish coast, on 24 February 1304 and he died in 1368/69, in Morocco, “the best of countries, for in it fruits are plentiful and running water and nourishing food are never exhausted.”

He was a Berber, combining literary pursuits with an insatiable thirst for travel. It is on his personal record of the political and social conditions of Islām in the fourteenth century rather than...