Born on the 24th of February, 1304, he set out, in his twenty-second year, on a pilgrimage to Mecca, traversing the Barbary States and Egypt on the way.  Once fairly launched in the world, twenty-four years elapsed before he again saw his native town.  He explored the various provinces of Arabia; visited Syria, Persia, and Armenia; resided for a while in Southern Russia (Kipchak), then belonging to princes of the line of Genghis Khan; traveled by land to Constantinople, where he was presented to the emperor; repeated his pilgrimage to Mecca, and reached Zanzibar.  Then, returning, he made his way to Bukhara, and through Afghanistan to the Indus; exercised, for two years, the functions of a Kadi, or judge, at Delhi; was appointed by the Sultan Mohammed, the son of Togluk Khan, on an embassy to the emperor of China, but, missing the Chinese vessel, was obliged to remain a year and a half among the Maldive Islands.  Nothing daunted by the delay, he started again, by way of Ceylon and the Indian Archipelago, and finally succeeded in reaching Pekin.  He appears to have returned to Tangier in the year 1349, and to have taken up his residence soon afterwards in Granada, under the protection of the caliph Yusef.  His thirst for exploration, however, was not yet quenched, and in two years he was ready to undertake a second journey of greater difficulty and danger.  Leaving Fez with a caravan, in the year 1351, he crossed the Sahara, and spent three years in Central Africa, visiting the great cities Melli and Timbuctoo.  He was thus the first to give the world an authentic account of those regions.  His descriptions correspond, in almost all respects, with those given by the travelers of modern times.

Ibn Batuta returned to Morocco in 1354, and there remained until his death, in 1378.  During the year after his arrival, he dictated the history of his travels to Ibn Djozay, a young Moorish poet, who, having been unjustly treated by Yusef, in Granada, fled to Fez, where he was appointed secretary to the Sultan, Abau Inau Faris.  The latter, it appears, commanded that the work should be written, and it was also, no doubt, by his order that Ibn Djozay became the amanuensis of our traveler.  ‘He was recommended,’ says the introduction, ’to bestow great care on the correctness and elegance of the style, to render it clear and intelligible, in order that the reader may better enjoy the rare adventures, and draw the greatest profit from the pearl, after it shall have been extracted from its shell!’ To Ibn Djozay, therefore, we are indebted for the abundant poetic quotations interspersed throughout the work—­the ornaments which hang, sometimes with curious effect, on the plain, straight-forward story which Ibn Batuta tells us.  Making the usual allowance for Oriental exaggeration, and the occasional confusion which must occur in a memory so overcharged, we do not hesitate to pronounce the work worthy of all credit.  Burkhardt, Seetzen, and Carl Ritter have expressed their entire confidence in the fidelity of the narrative.