Life

It has thirteen gates and a sacred enclosure, which is about a mile long and closed by a great gate. No one is prevented from entering this enclosure, and indeed I went into it...

Ibn Battuta describes Constantinople.The city is enormous in size, and in two parts separated by a great river , in which there is a rising and ebbing tide. In former times there was a...

In the midst of the hall three men were standing to whom those four men delivered me. These took hold of my garments as the others had done, and on a signal from another...

Our entry into Constantinople the Great was made about noon or a little later, and they rang their bells until the very skies shook with the mingling of their sounds. When we reached the...

His horsemen were divided into squadrons, two hundred horsemen in each squadron. Over them was a commander, who had in front of him ten of the horsemen, fully accoutred in armour, each leading a...

From Mahtuli to Constantinople is a journey of twenty-two days, sixteen to the canal , and six thence to Constantinople. From this fortress one travels on horses and mules only, and the waggons...

She ordered food to be served and we ate in her presence, and when we desired to leave she said “Do not sever relations with us, but come often to us and inform us...

The day after my arrival I visited him in the afternoon at a ceremonial audience; a great banquet was prepared and we broke our fast in his presence. These Turks do not follow...

Ibn Battuta travels to meet Uzbeg KhanWe then prepared for the journey to the sultan’s camp, which was four days’ march a place called Bishdagh, which means “Five mountains.” In these mountains there...

Nevertheless the merchants make a handsome profit, for the least that a horse fetches is a hundred dinars (that is twenty-five dinars in Moroccan money) and it often sells for twice or three...