Rating: 
Summary: A brilliant light over Islam culture of XIV century
Review: A fascinating travel around the Islam world of the XIV century. Ross Dunn made a tremendous job elaborating the original text from the traditional "rihla" format of travel reports, which a contemporary writer prepared on the basis of Ibn Battuta comments and the exisiting notes from different travelers. The original text would have been boring and not so easy for a normal reader to understand the historic and social context in which Ibn Battuta was moving. A vast piece of world united under the Islam culture, ranging from the Atlantic shore of Morocco to the South China Sea and south to the Guinea Gulf coast. The book is easy to read and full of foot-notes for further reading.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant light over Islam culture of XIV century
Review: A fascinating travel around the Islam world of the XIV century. Ross Dunn made a tremendous job elaborating the original text from the traditional "rihla" format of travel reports, which a contemporary writer prepared on the basis of Ibn Battuta comments and the exisiting notes from different travelers. The original text would have been boring and not so easy for a normal reader to understand the historic and social context in which Ibn Battuta was moving. A vast piece of world united under the Islam culture, ranging from the Atlantic shore of Morocco to the South China Sea and south to the Guinea Gulf coast. The book is easy to read and full of foot-notes for further reading.
Rating:
Summary: From Tangier to the ends of the earth and back......
Review: Centuries-old travelogues tend to have this archaic, dusty sort of air about them. We can't identify with the people who wrote them because the language in no way resembles ours. This is of course the fault of those who translate those documents. Then too, travellers of medieval times or earlier tended to write about things not so much of interest today. In THE ADVENTURES OF IBN BATTUTA, Ross E. Dunn has successfully avoided these problems by writing ABOUT the 14th century North African traveller, Ibn Battuta, not just translating his book. Ibn Battuta (1304-1368) travelled around the civilized world of his day. Surprisingly enough for Eurocentric folks, the term "civilized" only included Spain at that time. It did, however, include most of the Islamic regions on earth, plus India and China. Dunn includes chapters on Tangier, North Africa, Egypt-Syria-Palestine, Mecca, Persia and Iraq, Yemen, Oman, and East Africa, Constantinople, Anatolia, Central Asia, India and the Maldives, China, Spain, and Mali---across the Sahara in West Africa. In each, he gives a picture of the times in that particular place, what Ibn Battuta said he saw and what he must have seen or experienced but didn't mention. Dunn recounts many of the Moroccan's interesting adventures, from being jailed in Delhi to trying as a judge to forbid Maldivian women going topless in public. Dunn also places Ibn Battuta in a framework of a hemisphere-wide Islamic civilization and as an ambitious semi-scholar who was perhaps not so well studied as he wanted people to believe. So, not only is this book a record of Ibn Battuta's life and voyages, it is a very interesting commentary on a large part of the world in the 14th century and the life story of a particular individual. If you like history, if you are interested in what was happening in the world beyond Europe in the days when "knights were bold" [and illiterate], read this book. It comes with good maps and some black and white photographs of places that might still look a bit like what they did in Ibn Battuta's time.
Rating:
Summary: From Tangier to the ends of the earth and back......
Review: Centuries-old travelogues tend to have this archaic, dusty sort of air about them. We can't identify with the people who wrote them because the language in no way resembles ours. This is of course the fault of those who translate those documents. Then too, travellers of medieval times or earlier tended to write about things not so much of interest today. In THE ADVENTURES OF IBN BATTUTA, Ross E. Dunn has successfully avoided these problems by writing ABOUT the 14th century North African traveller, Ibn Battuta, not just translating his book. Ibn Battuta (1304-1368) travelled around the civilized world of his day. Surprisingly enough for Eurocentric folks, the term "civilized" only included Spain at that time. It did, however, include most of the Islamic regions on earth, plus India and China. Dunn includes chapters on Tangier, North Africa, Egypt-Syria-Palestine, Mecca, Persia and Iraq, Yemen, Oman, and East Africa, Constantinople, Anatolia, Central Asia, India and the Maldives, China, Spain, and Mali---across the Sahara in West Africa. In each, he gives a picture of the times in that particular place, what Ibn Battuta said he saw and what he must have seen or experienced but didn't mention. Dunn recounts many of the Moroccan's interesting adventures, from being jailed in Delhi to trying as a judge to forbid Maldivian women going topless in public. Dunn also places Ibn Battuta in a framework of a hemisphere-wide Islamic civilization and as an ambitious semi-scholar who was perhaps not so well studied as he wanted people to believe. So, not only is this book a record of Ibn Battuta's life and voyages, it is a very interesting commentary on a large part of the world in the 14th century and the life story of a particular individual. If you like history, if you are interested in what was happening in the world beyond Europe in the days when "knights were bold" [and illiterate], read this book. It comes with good maps and some black and white photographs of places that might still look a bit like what they did in Ibn Battuta's time.
Rating: 
Summary: Give me a BreaK!
Review: Even though Ibn Battuta over the course of his lifetime (and this book) travelled all over the muslim world, it seems as if he didn't do too much. Regardless of that, this book is a well written account of the muslim world at this time; making Battuta not so much a character but a tour guide in one of the best travel books ever. If you're looking for an exciting adventure story, this is not the book for you; but if you're looking for a relatively painless way of learning some ancient muslim history and sociology this is the book for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Gets Better As It Goes On
Review: I suspect that the highly negative reviews of this book were written by readers who read the first 100 pages, found them tedious, and stopped. They should have stayed the course, for the narrative improves as Ibn Battuta makes his way eastward to India and the Far East.The reason it gets better is that Professor Dunn knows a great deal about that part of the world, and presents a fascinating discussion of its history and economics. While Europe was suffering through the Middle Ages, the Middle and Far East were the centers of civilization. The interesting question is "What went wrong?" Why did these same countries freeze, while Europe entered the Renaissance? But that's the topic of other books.
Rating:
Summary: A 14th century traveller who saw more than even Marco Polo
Review: In 1325 the young Morrocan Ibn Battuta left his home to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. On the way, he became enamoured with travel and travelled half the world, from North Africa to China, before returning to his home in 1349. His record of his journeys, the Rihla, is difficult to read and chaotically organised, leading historian Ross E. Dunn to present Ibn Battuta's story in a more accessible format. THE ADVENTURES OF IBN BATTUTA is an extremely interesting book, and I recommend it highly to anyone interested in world history. Battuta's memoirs often lack detail, so Dunn has put his travels in context by bringing in outside information. Thus, before covering Battuta's travels over the steppe of Northern Asia, he explains how the Mongols came to acquire so much territory and then convert to Islam. Another interesting part of Battuta's story is how Europeans and inhabitants of the Middle East interacted in the 14th century. Battuta gives an anecdote about a stay in a Muslim town in the Crimean where Italian traders had an outpost. Hearing the Italian's churchbells, which sounded to him like a diabolic cacophony, he and his friends immediately ran to the roof and began to make the muezzin call to prayer. Luckily, there was no violent conflict from this culture class. Dunn's background information also gives interesting details of European activity in Asia during the late Middle Ages. I didn't know that Venetian and Genoese merchants travelled and resided as far east as Tabriz (in modern-day Iran) until I read THE ADVENTURES OF IBN BATTUTA.
Rating:
Summary: World-Class Traveler !
Review: It is incredible to think that back in the 1300's one person could have traveled from Morocco through North and East Africa, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, the Crimea, India, Ceylon, Indonesia and China. I get tired just writing about it! But this is what Ibn Battuta did. When you think of how difficult (and dangerous!) it was to travel back in those days, it is just amazing. What makes this book especially fascinating is the look it provides into Muslim society. Here was a man who journeyed thousands of miles over many, many years but who only very rarely felt himself to be a stranger in a strange land. In some places Islam was in the majority and in some places it was the minority but Ibn Battuta was always able to find educated Moslems similar to himself who could provide a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear and money to spend. Very importantly also, they could provide spiritual support to a person very far from home. This book is best when it settles down in one place for an extended period, such as when Ibn Battuta journeyed to Medina and Mecca. This is the most important trip a Moslem takes during an entire lifetime and it is expected, health and finances permitting, that a believer will make the trip at least once in a lifetime. Medina is where the tomb of The Prophet is and Mecca was His birthplace. Mr. Dunn provides a physical description of the landscape of both places so that you can almost feel you are there and he also gives a fascinating description of the logistics of the journey as this is a trip that thousands of people would take each year and a solid support system was needed to provide transportation and food and water, etc. The religious ceremonies that a person was required to go through once in the Holy Cities is also given in great detail. The book is also very good when Ibn Battuta settles down in India for awhile and gets a nice, cushy government job working for a despot who sounds as though he was probably psychotic! You could be in his favor one minute but apparently if you looked at him the wrong way he might decide on the spur of the moment to have you executed. He would also come up with grandiose ideas to rearrange the entire society which would usually wind up making everyone miserable, if not dead. Kind of sounds pretty familiar, doesn't it? I guess some things don't change over the centuries..... Anyway, the only drawback to this book is that Mr. Dunn is trying to cram a lot of travel into a 300 page book so that some of the time you feel as though you are being given the "bum's rush" on one of those modern package trips where they shuttle you through 14 cities in 14 days. After awhile some of the itinerary starts to become one, big blur. It makes you wish that Mr. Dunn would have decided to write a longer book where things could have proceeded at a more leisurely pace. But this book is a good starting point and it gave me a glimpse into a world I knew very little about but would like to learn more of.
Rating:
Summary: A traveler with a charmed life
Review: So, what should we know about the Marco Polo of Tangier? The first thing is that the Marco Polo comparison, while of obvious utility, is really not a good one. The Adventures of Ibn Battuta is about Ibn Battuta and his world, and I think the story stands better on its own. Ross Dunn, the author, apparently thinks the same way, since the comparison is mentioned at the very beginning, but seldom after that. Battuta's travels through the world were done in a way only someone of his background could do them. So what did he do? Ibn Battuta was a twenty one year old scholar of probably modest talent who set out to perform the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and managed to not return home for twenty-four years. He apparently liked to travel, and took quite a few detours whenever he wanted to see something, usually a noted Muslim city or holy site. He did stay in India for quite a long time, working as a qadi, an Islamic judge, at a time when foreigners were welcomed for just that sort of thing. Eventually he made it as far east as China (maybe), as far south as modern day Tanzania, and in a later voyage in his life, down to Mali. Structurally, the text works well. In each section Dunn provides a background on the region before we learn of how Battuta spent his time there. It helps to know that such and such an emperor had been around for so many years, and was having the following problems. This is not just for our curiosity. Since Battuta, particularly in later years, involved himself often in government affairs, it becomes essential for the reader to know something about what was going on. Though Battuta wrote (or provided information for another author to write) a travel diary after his return, that is not what we see here. Dunn only references Battuta's Rihla occasionally. More often he explains some historiography of the work, pointing out that the text is unclear, missing portions, confusing, or just plain impossible, such as Battuta's claim to have visited Peking, though he would almost have to travel faster than a human could in those days to have done so in the time available. Of course what makes the text really work is the story. Battuta is an interesting character. He was half rogue and half self-important egotist. It is an essential feature of his travels that he was an educated Muslim traveling in Muslim lands. So everywhere he went, he could present himself to local leaders as a wandering Muslim from far away, and get himself treated to meals, lodging, and gifts. And when I say everywhere, it really was just about everywhere. This is one of the reasons the Marco Polo comparison doesn't work well. In many places he could find Arabic speakers, if not as native speakers, then at least as a second language. Between Islamic custom for charity towards travelers and Battuta's apparently charming personality, he traveled quite far in some comfort and without excessive culture shock. There is a darker side to Battuta's personality that come out in many places. He was, to put it mildly, a religious bigot. He was condescending towards Shiites. The first time he heard Christian church bells in a mixed region of Muslims and Christians, he and a fellow traveler ran up to the top of the local minaret and began shouting the call to Prayer to try to drown out the sounds. When faced with local behavior in distant lands that he thought non-Islamic, he typically behaved rudely - he wouldn't even enter the house of someone if he thought he would see the wife speaking to other men. As a judge, he imposed full Islamic justice (for wine drinking for example, eighty lashes) on unsuspected locals. In China he was infuriated that the locals didn't want to discuss Islam with him at all. When his career in the Maldives (off south west India) came to a halt, he sailed to a neighboring kingdom on the coast and offered to lead a military expedition to invade them; it didn't happen. So although Battuta could be charming and pleasant, he reserved that honor for proper Muslims, and if he had something to gain from them, all the better. The closest modern day analogy I can think of to describe him would be an arrogant nineteenth Century English nobleman touring the British Empire and ignoring or belittling the natives. The passage of time and remoteness of Battuta to our own life makes the story fun and fascinating, however much of a bore and a rogue he may have been in his own life. So I would give high marks to this story of the Ibn Battuta of the Islamic world.
Rating:
Summary: great snap shot of the muslim world in the 14th century
Review: This book is a good snap shot of how the muslim world was in the 14th century. Ibn Battuta also represents the intellectual thought and how traditional islamic knowledge was taught back then. and excellent book!
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