This four-volume edition of the Arabic text of the Journey of the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta (1304–68/9), with a French translation was published in 1853–8. In 1325, Ibn Battuta, who came from a family of jurists in Tangier, set out to make the pilgrimage to Mecca - the beginning of a journey that would last for twenty-four years and take him as far as China. In Volume 4, the sultan of Delhi asks Ibn Battuta to lead an embassy to China, during which he suffers difficulties, including attacks by Hindus, and shipwreck. He eventually reaches China via Sri Lanka, Vietnam and the Philippines; he then performs a fourth hajj before returning home, after twenty-four years' absence. He sets out again, to visit first Muslim Spain and then further regions of Africa, as far south as Timbuktu and down the river Niger, before returning home to dictate an account of his travels.
