I hated this book. It is a long and boring story with no action. I do not recommend this book unless you are a history buff or are forced to read it.

I started reading the Rihla but got lost very quickly in the lingo, strange names, customs and happenings. This book is immensely helpful and a fantastic read as well, you can hardly put it down. Feels like a magic guided tour in the Medieval Orient. It was an eye opener, shedding light on how biased we are towards a distorted western perspective on history. If you are even slightly interested in Medieval times, exotic travelogues, Sufism or Islam in general, this is the book for you.

Ross Dunn, historian, has done a remarkable job of telling us about the travels and adventures of a man who traveled the world a half-century after Genoese adventurer Marco Polo taught Europe about the Orient. The difference between Polo and Ibn Battuta is that the latter simply left home as a young man to perform the Muslim religious duty of the hajj - the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina - and got caught up in other projects on the road for the next couple of decades.

Ross' narrative is informed - he's a scholar who knows Arabic and is familiar with the history of Islam - and also very funny. His dry humor permeates the narrative and adds much readability to what might be otherwise unremarkable material. Examples include his observations about Ibn Battuta's Sunday shouting down with Quranic verses of the Christian bells in an Anatolian town and the story of Ibn Battuta being stripped and left with a flourish by sea pirates.

Ibn Battuta traveled in high Muslim circles throughout northern Africa, the Arabian neighborhood, ancient Turkey, Persia and India. Ross does a good job of qualifying the possible Chinese visit Ibn Battuta claims to have made. Later, near the end of his career, Ibn Battuta would penetrate the African heartland, ironically exploring his own continent last.

Highly recommended for students of Islam, world history of the Middle Ages, and travel adventures in general. Ross, in my opinion, exalts the material to five stars.

Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan Qadi (Sunni legal scholar and judge) of the early to middle 14th century, was the consummate `globetrotter,' traveling something in the order of 75,000 miles across North Africa, south-central Asia, southern Russia, Turkey, Arabia, east Africa, southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, China, Mediterranean Spain, and west Africa. Eventually his accounts were recorded by an acquaintance, Ibn Juzayy, appointed to the task by the Moroccan king, with the text probably completed late in 1355 AD.

Dunn's important and fascinating book cites and records fragments of the Ibn Battuta/Ibn Juzayy text, but this volume is a studied commentary and historic amplification of IB's nearly larger than life journeys--by foot, by camel, by horseback, by ship--and his encounters with kings, scholars, merchants, rebels, bandits, and the black death. Any student of the Middle East, and any student of Islam and/or the cultural histories of Africa, Arabia, or India, will of necessity read this volume at some point. A reader with less serious interest in these topics will enjoy Dunn's unique and concise insights as well.

The Adventures of Ibn Battuta is a great novel for anyone who really wants to know a very detailed account of the Muslim world during the 15th century. The author not only describes everything that Ibn Battuta does and sees, but he also gives a very long description of the different cites' history that Ibn Battuta visits. However this description is very detailed and it normally doesn't pertain to what is happening whatsoever. These descriptions usually occur once Ibn Battuta enters a new city or town and they normally last a good couple of paragraphs, and contain more information than needed. For example, I personally didn't care what happened to Tangier in the 12th century and the author seemed to have put a good 5 pages describing every detail about it.
Although the excessive amount of information put into everything did bother me, the author did a very good job describing all things Ibn Battuta. The author describes everything about Ibn Battuta along with how he traveled, who he stayed with, what he did, who he did it with, his different adventures, etc. For instance, the author often mentioned and described the different Sufi people that Ibn Battuta stayed with and spent his time with. Probably the best thing about this novel was how the author kept the reader very entertained by sharing the many dangerous adventures and troubles that Ibn Battuta gets in, including many run ins with bandits and robbers. Overall this is an excellent book if you want to learn all about the different Muslim territories and the adventures of Ibn Battuta. Another good thing about this novel is that even if you know nothing about the time period before hand, the author explains everything so well that you'll be alright.

For the reader interested in understanding the context of ibn Battuta's travels, this is an invaluable reference. Ross juxtaposes the thread of Battuta's journey with the cultural and political history of the regions Battuta explores. The maps are also tremendously helpful and the occassional b&w photo add flavor. The writing style is accessible and enjoyable.

BUT if you want to hear ibn Battuta's story in his own voice, look elsewhere! Ironically, you will not find much of ibn Battuta's voice here. While Ross does use extensive quotes from the tales of many medieval travelers, ibn Battuta's own narrative does not dominate the tone. It seems Ross believes his reader will hold two books in hand, his own and The Travels of ibn Battutah, edited by Tim McKintosh-Smith. And this is exactly what I would recommend to anyone intrigued by this oh-so-intriguing tale.

Whether or not his stories are true, they make for ripping yarns.

Look under 'other versions' on this page. I can't recommend this highly enough! See my review of the new version on that page.

This should almost be required reading in colleges, especially with the current geopolitical situation. It isn't just a translation of Ibn Battuta's book, it's at least 50% background material on the places he visited & the people he met with considerable historical info from before, during, and after Ibn's travels. The writing is excellent and easy to get through. It easily ranks next to Plutarch (in a good translation) and Gibbon for it's grand overview of a largely unknown area of history & the world (at least in the West).

This was such a good book, I bought and started the Dover Pub. version of the actual text. Big mistake. That is such a dated translation & offered so little extra compared to Ross' version (not to mention being being very hard to follow, even though I'm much more knowledgeable about the muslim world than your average American), that I gave it away to a Palestinian acquantance after reading the 1st 50 pages. Maybe the 2nd or 3rd time I haven't finished a book, ever, no matter how little I was enjoying it.

Stick with this version unless you really feel the need to read Ibn's actual words & try a non-Dover version if you do. That's a little tough anyway because most of the others only cover parts of the book. Even if you do try another version, I really recommend you read this one first to make the real work more meaningful and understandable unless you're an expert on the Islamic world.

My only complaint is that it might have had a little more of Ibn's actual words instead of paraphrases and summaries, but I feel this is actually a plus after trying to read the real text. Ibn was a contemporary of Marco Polo who actually travelled further and did most of his travels as an insider in muslim societies (at least at the government level), so he got to know the society better and was accepted as a co-religionist. Like Polo, Ibn however, suffers from the same flaws in the actual text. There's a lot of "I went to x, the people follow religion y, the climate is z, I saw building a, the local produce is b...". Ross' version cuts out all the dry midaeval travelogue filler and makes all the information crystal clear.

Do yourself a favor and try this book. Ross is an Islamic Studies professor who obviously knows his stuff & has practiced a few thousand times in a classroom setting on presenting it in a way that makes for interesting and easy reading.

Ibn Battuta's "Travels" (Rihla) is one of the great travel accounts of history easily comparable with Marco Polo, it is regularly listed on "Great Books" lists (although don't let that turn you away). This book by Dunn is a scholarly gloss of his account designed for the non-specialist - there are many complications to his itinerary and a lot of historical background which are illuminated and explained. Each chapter covers a particular region he traveled, with the first part of the chapter providing the historical background of the region, with the second half recounting Battuta's travels and experiences therein. Thus, not only does one get an overview of Battuta's travels, but a fairly good 14th century "world history". It is one of the more intimate and personal medieval stories providing interesting details about daily living that bring the era and people to life, while also providing a macro historical view of the time. The only thing better would be to read the actual book - but I think this contextual account and the primary source are both just as vital to understanding.

While the book accomplishes what it seeks to do (a non-scholarly work simply meant to provide insight to the average American into the life of this great traveler), I feel much is lost when one writes ABOUT Ibn Battuta's travels instead of simply reading his work by itself.As an American graduate student studying in the Middle East, junxtaposing the actual words of Ibn Battuta in Arabic and then this book (which I read in a class during my undergraduate education), I feel much is lost in "translation" so to speak. The introspective nature of Ibn Battuta's original writing provide the scholar with not only the experiences which Battuta describes, but how he feels about these experiences as well. Since this is a historical work, I feel that is of the utmost importance, as the subjectivity of the work is just as important as it's objective characteristics.
In regards to Mr. Scales supposed "analogy", I find it worthy of castigation. How one can so easily sidestep so many cultural and historical differences and attempt to compare an ancient independent Muslim traveler to some 19th century colonial Brit of affluence is beyond me. Typical cultural relativism at its worst.

The story that this is based on is truly amazing. Traveling from Morocco to Mecca at age 21, Ibn Battuta finds he enjoys traveling so much that he gets as far as China and doesn't return home until 24 years later. He gets there through a combination of personal charm and taking advantage of the fact that one of the five pillars of Islam at the time was "almsgiving," or the sharing of material wealth with the poor, orphans, and wayfarers.

Using the travels of such a character as a narrative thread is a great way to tell the history of the region. Throughout Battuta's travels, Dunn fills in well-researched historical background information that helps paint a picture of what the Middle East was like so long ago. Unfortunately, though Dunn claims that Battuta was introspective, we don't see that much of his introspection in this book, and you'd have to be a real history geek to get the most out of this. We learn more about sacred sites, tribal conquests, and factual details about Battuta's journey than we do about people.

If you're a history buff, you'll love this. There's no question that Ibn Battuta deserves at least equal footing with Marco Polo as the greatest traveler writer of medieval times. If you're not a history buff, the narrative thread will help make it somewhat accessible. To a non-historian, 90% of this book consists of factual details that I'll forget by tomorrow. Personally, I wish I had read Dover Book's Travels of Ibn Battuta instead, which is a direct translation of Ibn Battuta's story.