Abstract
The Moroccan Muslim Ibn Baṭṭūṭa and the slightly older Venetian Christian Marco Polo are probably the two most significant transcontinental Old World travellers of mediaeval times. Both men have attracted an extensive modern literature on their peregrinations, with much speculation and discussion on the authenticity or otherwise of certain of the places they purported to have visited and seen. For Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, the modern Anglophone reader has the benefit of the fine, four-volume translation and commentary by Sir Hamilton Gibb and C. F. Beckingham published in the Hakluyt Society’s Series 1958–94 (with a useful fifth, Index volume, 2000, by A. D. H. Bivar) which discusses the numerous problems of chronology and itinerary arising from the Riḥla. For the scholar of travel literature, the Gibb and Beckingham translation is unlikely to be bettered, but there remains much scope for specific studies of this opinionated and rather intolerant Maliki religious lawyer and of his wanderings over some thirty years.
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