Ibn Battuta
Medieval world's greatest traveler
Moroccan scholar and explorer (1304-c.1369) who roamed the medieval world.
Over about 30 years he covered roughly 117,000 kilometers — across Africa, the Middle East, India, and China — far more than Marco Polo. He survived shipwreck and plague, met sultans and kings, then dictated the Rihla entirely from memory, a vivid travel memoir ranked among history's greatest.
Famous for
- Traveled ~117,000 km across 44 modern countries in 29 years
- The Rihla (travel memoir dictated from memory)
- Met sultans and survived shipwreck and plague
- Documented the 14th-century Islamic world
In Rubicon
Ibn Battuta is one of the historical characters you can play as in Rubicon, a trivia game where you answer in your own words and an AI judge reads what you meant. Ibn Battuta is filed under Geography & Places, and is strongest at Geography & Places and History & Civilization.
Others in Geography & Places
- Gertrude Bell — Helped draw modern Iraq
- Ida Pfeiffer — World traveler
- Zheng He — Admiral of China's treasure fleet