SOURCE: Dunn, Ross E. “Persia and Iraq.” In The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the 14^th Century, pp. 81-105. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

In the following entry, Dunn describes Ibn Battuta's travels in the Iraq-Persia region.

He also said: “After us the descendants of our clan will wear gold embroidered garments, eat rich and sweet food, ride fine horses, and embrace beautiful women but they will not say that they owe all this to their fathers and elder brothers, and they will forget us and those great times.”¹

The Yasa of Genghis Kahn

When Ibn Battuta made his first excursion to Iraq and western Persia, more than a century had passed since the birth of the Mongol world empire. For a Moroccan lad born in 1304 the story of Genghis Khan and the holocaust he brought down on civilized Eurasia was something to be read...