SOURCE: Hamdun, Said and Noël King. Introduction to Ibn Battuta in Black Africa, pp. 1-9, 12. Princeton, N. J.: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1994.

In the following excerpt from an essay first published in 1975, Hamdun and King offer an evaluation of Ibn Battuta's travel narrative.

Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, who was born at Tangier in North Africa in 1304 and died not far from there some sixty-five years later, was the greatest of the pre-modern travellers and will go down in history as being notable among the travellers of all time. Benjamin of Tudela, a Jew from Spain who in the second half of the twelfth century travelled to Baghdad and back, hardly touched central or south Asia and did not penetrate Africa. Marco Polo (1254-1324), a Christian, reached China and returned to Venice by way of south-east Asia and India, but he did not get into Africa. Chinese travellers reached Europe...