Travel to Middle East

The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century

Format: Paperback
Author: Ross E. Dunn
ReleaseDate: 09 December, 2004
Publisher: University of California Press
Rating:

Easily one of the best nonfiction books i've ever read!
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. This should almost be required reading in colleges, especially with the current geopolitical situation. 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.

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