Travel to Turkey

Travels with a Tangerine: From Morocco to Turkey in the Footsteps of Islam's Greatest Traveler

Format: Paperback
Author: Tim Mackintosh-Smith
ReleaseDate: 08 June, 2004
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Rating:

Ibn Battutah couldn't have been this dull
Regrettably, the focus of this effort is more on the author, Timothy Macintosh-Smith himself than on the intrepid traveler Ibn Battutah. I've spent some time in Tangier, where Ibn Battutah is still a well-known name after a lot of centuries, and was happy to see that someone had produced a new look in English on the subject. I've no doubt that Mackintosh-Smith is a well-educated and experienced Arabist, but his writing style in this short book is not only stilted and pretentious, it's frequently closeminded and (to my mind) unfair to the alleged subject. There are occasional insights worth having here, but overall, this is not a book that I would recommend. .

Tedious with Gratuitous Obscurity
The premise is interesting. I wanted to enjoy this book. The author is fascinated by Ibn Battutah and his travels. He sets off to follow in IB's footsteps. The author draws references from many bizarre sources presumably to help clarify or explain some of his experiences, but what it ends up being is gratuitous obscurity. I carefully sought out his references, but I did not feel rewarded. I noted with interest how often the author clarified that he was not married and did not wish to be and that he is not a Muslim and did not wish to be. These two issues arose many times. I was interested in the Eye of Joy and a couple of his jokes, but overall I felt the author was trying to impress the reader with his wide knowledge of obscurity rather than share an experience with his reader.

One of the best
Mackintosh-Smith can write!!
He is a stylist of the highest order. Mr. He combines this with a Quixote-like obsession with Ibn-Batuta and an erudite facility with Arabic. All this makes for a book that offers a personal, insightful and often very funny guide to regions of the world that could do with being better understood. He is neither an old-fashioned Orientalist nor an anti-Orientalist. At best one could perhaps describe him as a post-Saidian with a fondness for bowel movements.

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