Ibn Battuta was born in 1304 in Tangier, Morocco, into a family associated with Islamic legal scholarship. He received an education in Islamic law and began travelling when he was still a young man.
In 1325, he left Tangier intending to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca. What began as a religious journey eventually developed into decades of travel across much of the known world of his time.
Ibn Battuta travelled through North Africa and Egypt, visited the major cities of the Middle East and eventually reached Mecca. He repeatedly returned to important centres of learning and pilgrimage.
His journeys later took him through Persia, Central Asia, India, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia and possibly parts of China.
After returning to Morocco, Ibn Battuta dictated an account of his experiences to the scholar Ibn Juzayy. This work became known as the Rihla and preserved valuable observations about the societies he encountered.