After months of planning, scripting, and the sort of meticulous historical fact-checking that would make Ibn Battuta himself say, “Mate, it’s just a travel story,” we’re thrilled to announce the launch of By Their Own Compass.

Our inaugural episode features Ibn Battuta, one of history’s most spectacular travel overachievers, on his journey from modern-day Turkey, across Central Asia, to India, hoping to land a job but following an itinerary that redefines “taking the scenic route.” Along the way, he dined with sultans, khans, and emperors whilst braving rough seas, high mountain passes, questionable lodging arrangements, and all the usual adventures familiar to long-term travellers, whether backpacking across Southeast Asia or crossing the mediaeval world.

It’s as if you responded to a job offer posted on LinkedIn with a message saying you’re interested and that you’ll be coming in for an interview sometime in two years.

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Why are we starting with Ibn Battuta? Because whilst most people know about Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta travelled five times farther than Marco, covering more ground, meeting more people, and leaving behind one of the most entertaining travel memoirs ever compiled. Ibn Battuta is the traveller’s traveller: curious, always ready for a detour, and eager to make contacts wherever he turns up. But he’s also a very human traveller: he can be judgmental, vain, occasionally insufferable, frequently brave, but always alive in the moment, whether it’s a Turkish bathhouse, a Mongol feast, or standing outside the Hagia Sophia.

If you enjoy this episode, there’s much more to come. Episode 2 drops in November, and we’re following the adventures of Emily “Mickey” Hahn in 1930s China, an era of jazz clubs, opium dens, pet gibbons, and hunky Chinese poets.

We’re soft-launching on Substack for now, but we’ll be adding feeds later this month so that you will be able to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and all of the usual podcast haunts. Consider this first episode as a “friends and family” preview.

By Their Own Compass is hosted by Sarah Keenlyside and Jeremiah Jenne: one journalist, one historian, both convinced that the best way to understand how we got here is to follow the people who actually made the journey.

Welcome aboard. Pack light. Bring an open mind.

And pro travel tip: if a Mongolian khan offers you a cup of fermented mare’s milk, it’s probably best to drink it, no matter what you think it tastes like.

Thanks for Listening! If you know somebody who also likes taking the longest route possible just because, send them this episode.

Episode TranscriptBy Their Own Compass: Ibn Battuta

Episode Transcript

Sarah (00:38) Welcome to By Their Own Compass. Each week we explore history’s most fascinating travellers and their journeys. I’m Sarah Keenleyside, journalist and lifelong traveller.

Jeremiah (00:48) And I’m historian and writer Jeremiah Jenne. Together we dive into the remarkable lives of those who crossed borders, bridged cultures, and made the connections that built our world. It’s about the journey and the destination. After all, one person’s frontier is another person’s front door.

Sarah (01:09) In today’s episode, we’re exploring the travels of Ibn Battuta. Now, you might vaguely remember his name from a BBC documentary or school textbook, depending on where you grew up, probably under the heading “The Muslim Marco Polo,” which is both inaccurate and deeply unfair.

Jeremiah (01:26) Marco Polo’s journey was maybe 15,000 miles. By the time Ibn Battuta finally made it back to Tangier, he had traveled five times farther than Marco, covering an estimated 75,000 miles across three continents through territory that is now part of 44 modern countries.

Sarah (01:43) Why does that matter? Because Ibn Battuta’s journey is a spectacular example of how connected the medieval world could be. A Moroccan could wander into a Mongol camp in Central Asia and be greeted with a banquet and a goblet of fermented mare’s milk, which by the way, he pretended to very much enjoy.

Now, Ibn Battuta’s complete three-decade journey would take us many episodes to cover properly. And we promise this won’t be the last time he appears on our podcast. So why this leg of his journey? Because it captures one of history’s most famous travelers at a pivotal moment in his lifetime of wanderlust.

Jeremiah (02:17) Either 1330 or 1332—Ibn Battuta isn’t always clear on dates. But by this point, he’s no longer the medieval equivalent of a gap year kid who refuses to come home. He’s in his mid-20s. He’s already done three pilgrimages to Mecca, including spending an extended sojourn there as a scholar and student of Quranic law to level up. While in Mecca, he hears about a possible job opening with the richest sultan of them all, the Sultan of Delhi. He’s supposedly on his way to India for a job but decides to take the longest route imaginable.

Sarah (02:51) Yeah, and what also makes this part of his journey so fascinating is the time he’s doing it, because it’s not only a transitional time for our intrepid traveler but also for the medieval world.

Jeremiah (03:02) The Ottoman Empire is rising, Constantinople is declining, and the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan and his descendants is fragmenting. As Ibn Battuta makes his way from modern-day Turkey to Central Asia over the Hindu Kush, he is witnessing the end of one world order and the birth of another.

Sarah (03:20) It’s an epic adventure and later in the episode, as always, we’ll talk about how you can follow this route today with some insider tips for the modern traveler.

Jeremiah (03:34) So let’s talk about who Ibn Battuta actually was. Muhammad ibn Abdullah ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Yusuf—try saying that three times fast—was born in 1304 in Tangier, Morocco into a family of legal scholars.

In the Battuta household, you didn’t get a PlayStation for your birthday. You got a book on Quranic law and a quiz before bedtime.

Sarah (03:56) Yes, they were very respectable, middle-class, scholarly, serious. The sort of family where becoming a judge is considered slacking off and your progress was measured against your Uncle Ahmed. And young Ibn Battuta, bright, well-behaved, articulate, memorized the Quran, and seemed perfectly destined to spend his life in Tangier telling other people what not to do.

Jeremiah (04:18) So Sarah, do you know what they call somebody from Tangier?

A Tangerine.

Yes, I was this episode years old when I learned that.

Sarah (04:25) Boom, there you go then.

Jeremiah (04:27) At the age of 22, Ibn Battuta told his family, “Hey guys, I’m just going to run over to Mecca, do my religious obligations, maybe meet some folks, I’ll be back in a year. Two tops.”

Sarah (04:37) Smash cut to 30 years later when Ibn Battuta finally returns home after basically doing a lap around what he considered the entire known world. He dictated his travels in a work called The Rihla or more formally, A Masterpiece to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling.

Jeremiah (04:55) Great title and one of the wildest, most detailed records of medieval travel we’ve got. In it, we also get to learn what kind of traveler Ibn Battuta was. Sure, he was brave, adventurous, and always willing to take the scenic route.

Sarah (05:07) But he was also absolutely shameless about name-dropping and social climbing with a supernatural ability to insert himself into almost any situation.

Jeremiah (05:16) As a result, his travel account can read a bit like a LinkedIn profile.

“I stayed with this incredibly wealthy merchant in Damascus. Lovely fellow, gave me a horse, then I had dinner with the governor of Aleppo. We’re best friends now.”

Sarah (05:28) And he could be the ultimate busybody with impossibly high standards. He was, after all, trained to be a judge.

Jeremiah (05:35) Whether it was men not covering up their junk in bathhouses or women showing their faces, and sometimes way more than that in parts of Africa, Ibn Battuta was right there to tell you that he does not approve.

Sarah (05:47) He could be vain, funny, savage. He often traveled with a spear and when traveling off the beaten track, that’s probably about as wise a precaution as Imodium would be to a modern traveler, but he’s always entertaining.

Ibn Battuta’s traveling the world, but what kind of world was it? I seem to remember from university that this was about the time that Edward III takes control of England, but is still about a decade away from launching a war with France that will last 100 years. In other words, the Hundred Years War.

Jeremiah (06:19) And in the Muslim world, there’s a general sense of relief that the worst of the Crusades are over, or at least in a timeout. “We’ll trade with you, but don’t get comfy” seems to be the motto.

As this episode today opens in 1330, there’s an uneasy peace, two divorced people trying to co-parent the Eastern Mediterranean.

Sarah (06:37) The shadow of the Mongols is still looming large, but here’s what makes the timing so perfect for our traveler. In the previous century, Genghis Khan’s armies rolled out of the steppe conquering everything from Korea to the suburbs of Vienna. Now Turkish tribes displaced from the West Asian steppe by Mongol pressure are staking out pieces of Anatolia, which is modern-day Turkey, creating a patchwork of ambitious mini-sultanates, each trying to outdo each other in terms of power, money and cultural capital.

Jeremiah (07:06) Now Christian Constantinople was perched on the edge of this transformation clinging to what it can on the Asian mainland. Constantinople, still stunning. Ibn Battuta is amazed at all of the domes, the decor, the walls, the ceremonies. But the Byzantine emperors who live there are basically Blockbuster Video circa 2005. Impressive business model, but for how much longer? Meanwhile, Ibn Battuta visits a scrappy Turkish clan called the Osmanli. We might know them better as the Ottomans. In a few decades, they’ll become the Netflix that puts the Byzantine Blockbuster out of business permanently.

Sarah (07:42) The vast Mongol Empire has splintered into competing Khanates and each one is desperately trying to prove it’s the most civilized. In China, the Mongol rulers of the Yuan dynasty are building Confucian temples and hosting Taoist mystics.

Jeremiah (07:54) While in Western Asia, Khans are converting to Islam and courting learned Muslims like Ibn Battuta to give their courts that little bit of intellectual credibility. Plus, there’s the usual royal competition over who controls the best trade routes and who throws the most lavish banquets. For a traveling scholar and professional freeloader like Ibn Battuta, this is being a free agent in a seller’s market.

Sarah (08:18) So that’s Ibn Battuta’s world in 1330: crusades cooling off, empires fragmenting, trade booming, and through it all strolls Ibn Battuta. No set itinerary, no backup plan, just vibes, a great beard, and the confidence of a man who thinks a 3,000 mile detour is extended networking.

Jeremiah (08:39) For Ibn Battuta, traveling to Anatolia in the 1330s was to step into another world. Muslim, sure, but only recently. The faith of the Anatolian sultanates still wore the scent of the steppe, but they were also fascinated by the poetry and culture of Persia and Byzantium. It was rough becoming refined. Now our Moroccan traveler arrives first in the port of Alanya. It’s a city on the southeastern coast of Turkey that today is still known for stunning architecture, a truly magnificent coastline and as a destination for package holiday booze-ups and sunburnt tourists with names like Klaus and Liam.

The Turks were generous, open, and surprisingly chill about certain recreational habits. Ibn Battuta noted, with what you sense was perhaps a slightly raised eyebrow, that they consume hashish and think nothing wrong in doing so.

One of the challenges with Ibn Battuta’s travelogue, The Rihla, is that it is sometimes sparing in geographic details and a bit casual with timelines.

It’s a memoir recorded decades later, not a daily journal or a Fodor’s guide to the 14th century Islamic world. Thus, Ibn Battuta’s Anatolian itinerary is a little difficult to reconstruct, but we do know he’s traveling from city to city, meeting sultans and famous religious figures, and he’s always down for a side quest. For example, he visits Konya, to this day a popular tourist destination in central Turkey. It’s known, both then and now, as the former home of the Sufi poet Rumi, who lived and taught there in the late 13th century.

Ibn Battuta was in his element, speaking with scholars and acolytes in the shade of the magnificent domes of the Konya mosques. Perhaps he even felt he had crossed back into Persia, as not only Rumi, but other Persian merchants, scholars, and teachers joined the polyglot mix of Turks, Greeks, Armenians, and a Jewish population in the city. And even 50 years after Rumi’s death, the mystic poet’s followers in Konya were gaining a reputation for their devotion, their mysticism, and euphoric rituals inspired by Rumi’s teachings.

The performers of this ecstatic whirling prayer were known as dervishes and it’s still a part of Konya’s cultural landscape today, both as a private religious practice and as a prepackaged performance for tourists.

Then there was the time at the Sultan’s court in central Anatolia when Ibn Battuta was asked, “Have you ever seen a stone that fell from the sky?”

His journey in Anatolia also took him to the Sultanate of Osmanli, then a second division Sultanate, but clearly on a path to promotion.

There was some debate as to whether Ibn Battuta met Orhan, the Sultan at the time. He was after all a notorious “yeah, I totally met that guy” name-dropper. But whether they met or not, he recalled Orhan’s great wealth and his growing military might.

Within Ibn Battuta’s lifetime, Orhan will begin expanding his sultanate, laying the foundations for an empire that would last into the 20th century, the Ottomans.

Ibn Battuta is more than playing tourist in Turkey. He is leveling up his reputation as he takes the long way to his job interview with the Sultan of Delhi. Every ruler, every holy figure is another name to drop later. Every gift from horses to fine clothes—and more troublingly, slaves—raises his status.

But despite his newfound wealth and standing, traveling on the outer edges of the Muslim world is still perilous. Our traveler and his growing entourage must contend with unscrupulous guides, treacherous mountain passes, all the usual fun of going off the edge of the map a bit. And the most unpredictable part, crossing the Black Sea to the Crimean Peninsula is yet to come.

Sarah (13:14) So Ibn Battuta rocks up to port in Turkey and he immediately gets the full medieval welcome wagon treatment.

Jeremiah (13:22) Which is basically armed men sprinting at him with knives in their belts. Yeah, but here’s the important thing that kills me and I guess doesn’t kill him. They’re not trying to rob him. These groups, they’re referred to as Akhi or Fityan. They’re fighting each other for the privilege of making him dinner. “Back off buddy, dibs on the scholar.”

Sarah (13:26) As you do.

It’s quite sweet really in a slightly terrifying way. I’ve had competitive hotel touts in Chiang Mai, but this is another level.

Jeremiah (13:51) Yeah, and then when he actually gets to these places, I don’t know what he’s expecting, a medieval hostel situation, but it’s more like a boutique hotel. Carpets, lamps, the works. These associations were kind of part religious order, part frat house, and they did a lot more than just offer lodging for weary travelers.

Sarah (14:10) Yeah, these fityans were community funded social organizations that weren’t just hostels, though that’s the part that most interested Ibn Battuta. But they were also sources of stability and mutual protection and safety in a sometimes turbulent Turkish world.

Jeremiah (14:25) Yeah, I have to say that at least reading Ibn Battuta, trekking through Turkey was probably challenging, but never boring. And friendly accommodations and generous sultans aside, his reaction to a lot of what he sees is very him, isn’t it? He has this whole “this is quite lovely, but also deeply morally concerning” vibe.

He’s in Muslim territory. But he’s coming out of Mecca. He’s coming out of some areas that are a lot more established or a lot more Arab, influenced by Arabic culture. And now he’s on the edges.

And so it’s Muslim, but not like he knows Muslim. The women aren’t veiled. Everyone seems to be getting stoned. You’ve got these judges that are running these side businesses with slave girls.

Sarah (15:13) Which is genuinely awful, by the way.

Jeremiah (15:15) Yeah, absolutely. And for Ibn Battuta, it’s all just evidence that he’s reached the edges of civilization as he knows it. And honestly, in some ways, the man’s not wrong about that.

Sarah (15:27) No, there’s something quite relatable about that culture shock, isn’t there? That moment when you realize your assumptions about how things work just don’t apply in this new place.

Jeremiah (15:36) This is why it’s so relatable. It’s a medieval travelogue but yet he’s expressing a lot of the same frustrations, a lot of the same questioning that any traveler has no matter what the era. And he has some very pointed opinions about some of the things he sees.

Sarah (15:52) But the thing is, this is just the beginning for him because Anatolia is going to look positively conventional compared to where he’s going next, right?

Jeremiah (15:58) Right, because we’re going to be putting him on a boat to cross the Black Sea to the Crimean Peninsula on his way to meet a Mongolian Khan.

Sarah (16:07) What could possibly go wrong?

Ibn Battuta was famously not a brave sailor. He was far more comfortable on horseback or simply walking through the world. But across this Black Sea from Anatolia lay the lands of the Golden Horde and their leader, Özbek Khan.

Like the Turkish sultans, Özbek Khan was a recent convert to Islam and just the type of man who might appreciate a learned scholar like Ibn Battuta, with the added bonus that Özbek Khan was one of the wealthiest and most powerful potentates in Western Asia.

He nominally ruled an empire that extended from the frozen wastes of Siberia and the area around Moscow to the Caspian Sea and from Eastern Europe across the steppe to parts of modern day Kazakhstan. But first, Ibn Battuta had to get to the steppe and the voyage across the Black Sea did little to diminish our traveler’s dislike of ocean crossings.

First the boat was blown off course, then it was nearly swamped by high waves.

It’s a bit like asking the flight attendant if there will be any more turbulence and she hands you a life vest, a crash helmet and a hit of her vape.

After several days at sea, their ship reached Kaffa. Today, the Crimean port of Feodosia. This polyglot port teamed with traders from across the known world.

Italian sailors, Egyptian merchants, and rough folks from the frozen north. It was a city of many faiths, something which seems to have triggered Ibn Battuta. While relaxing in the local mosque, he and his entourage were shocked when bells in the local Christian church began to ring.

In what was not Ibn Battuta’s finest moment of intercultural adaptation, he decided to respond to this sonic assault by ascending the minarets and chanting as loudly as he possibly could the Quran and the call to prayer. Local Muslim leaders rushing to this interfaith battle of the bands quickly told Ibn Battuta to knock it off lest he start a holy riot.

From the Crimean Peninsula, our Moroccan scholar went north, hitching a ride with an official caravan bound for the camp of Özbek Khan. This meant leaving behind the familiar world of cities and ports for something entirely different, a world where entire civilizations moved with the seasons.

Traveling into this nomadic world meant adapting to a completely different way of life. People rode in felt-covered carts, what were essentially yurts pulled by horses, oxen or camels, little mobile homes where families lived as they followed their herds across endless grasslands.

The man, the Khan didn’t disappoint.

He was wealthy, generous and commanding. His table, however, was another matter. Ibn Battuta quickly discovered that Central Asian haute cuisine was not to his taste.

He had a more favorable view of the Khan’s wives, particularly the principal wife, who invited his lurid curiosity.

Wisely not investigating this anatomical phenomenon of wife number one, Ibn Battuta did eventually befriend the Khan’s third wife, the likely illegitimate daughter of the Byzantine Emperor. She was pregnant and begged her husband to let her give birth among her family in Constantinople. The Khan agreed and ever the opportunist, our traveler signed up as part of the escort.

As a parting gift, the Khan lived up to his reputation for generosity, adding considerably to Ibn Battuta’s wealth: 1500 gold dinars, silver ingots, and a large collection of horses, robes, and furs. In July 1332, he joined Princess Bayalun’s impressive retinue of 5,000 horsemen, 500 troops and servants, 200 slave girls, 20 Greek and Indian pages, 400 wagons, 2,000 horses and 500 oxen and camels. Their destination? The great and still Christian capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople.

Jeremiah (21:01) So my favorite part of this story is here’s this patron saint of globalized travel in an incredibly cosmopolitan Crimean port. Everybody is sort of getting along and he decides to start a noise war. Church bells ring and he’s “right, that’s it. Get the Muslims. We’re going up the minaret. We’re fighting back.”

Sarah (21:27) Yeah, it’s so embarrassing because he just completely freaks out and you know the local Muslim leaders are just thinking, “for heaven’s sake, he’s such a tourist.”

Jeremiah (21:35) Yeah, “we have a good thing going here with the Christians. This guy from Morocco comes in, he’s going to ruin it for everyone. Just stop, just stop.”

Sarah (21:44) Yeah, he does better on the steppe though, doesn’t he? He somehow talks his way into the Khan’s inner circle to the point that they’re serving him this fermented mare’s milk and oversharing about royal bedroom habits.

Jeremiah (21:56) The mare’s milk thing kind of... I’ve had kumis before, it’s kind of like fizzy yogurt. I’ve never done it in the presence of a Khan. I have had a situation where I’ve led travel groups to Tibet and we’ve drunk yak butter tea, which is exactly what it sounds like if you’ve never had it. It’s salty tea made with yak butter and the first cup is amazing on a cold winter’s day. The third, fourth, fifth cups start to have some very lubricating effects on the lower digestive system. And it’s always tough to say no when it’s being served to you by these amazing monks. I’ve never had to turn it down from a khan. I’ve never had to try to drink it in front of one of the most powerful rulers in the world.

Sarah (22:47) This brings to mind a time when I found myself at a very fancy dinner at the Royal Opera House in London. I think this was 2003 or something like that. And I was sitting opposite Raine Spencer, who I don’t know if you know who that is. She...

Jeremiah (23:02) Yeah, for the American, explain to me who Raine Spencer is.

Sarah (23:04) Well, she’s kind of Princess Diana’s evil stepmother or was Princess Diana’s evil stepmother. Her nickname was Acid Raine. Anyway, she looks a bit sort of Margaret Thatcher-esque, big bouffant hair and lots of makeup. And I was served a cold asparagus gazpacho with sour cream and then lots of caviar. And this was before I moved to China and I was a very fussy eater.

And I just took the first mouthful of this thing and just very unfortunately happened to make eye contact with her as I retched in her face. Yeah, I never forgot it because just the look of horror on her face as she saw my reaction to this cold green soup. Even now I probably wouldn’t eat that. Asparagus, sure. Sour cream, sure. Caviar sometimes. But put them all together, it’s a pretty gross combination in my opinion, but feel free to disagree with me.

Jeremiah (24:02) I like all those things. I’m not sure I’d put them together. I can imagine the pressure of trying to do that while somebody is staring at you. I think also Ibn Battuta, he’s there, he’s at these big banquets. I guess he’s kind of used to it—this banquet thing is kind of his game, right? He goes, he shows up and he’s “feed me.” And one of the interesting things about the Khan as well, which is a little bit different from some of the other sultans, particularly in the Islamic heartland. The wives eat with the Sultan. They’re there too, which is a little bit unusual for Ibn Battuta. Not the least of which because he’s eating in front of these women and he keeps thinking to himself “I know a secret about you.”

But first wife aside, also the third wife Bayalun. She’s a Byzantine princess, and she’s pregnant. And it seems that from the little we get from Ibn Battuta that the two of them actually got on pretty well, not in any kind of carnal sense, obviously, at least as far as we know. But the fact that they’re both outsiders in this nomadic steppe world. And she’s married to this Khan. She wants to go home to have her baby. And so she asks her husband to gather 5,000 people, 2,000 horses, 500 camels, and this Moroccan dude. And let me head home for a quick spell to see the family.

And Ibn Battuta’s along for the ride, probably just wants to get away from the mare’s milk, it’d be my guess.

Sarah (25:42) Yeah, but let’s be honest, he’s not exactly a passive victim here is he? He’s this dude who has a talent for inserting himself into the most dramatic situations possible. “You’re planning a mission to Byzantium? Is there room for one more?”

Jeremiah Jenne (25:58) Fifty-two days after departing the Khan’s camp on the grassland, the Princess Bayalun’s huge entourage, plus one Moroccan traveler, reached the guarded frontier of the Byzantine Empire. They cross into Byzantium at a point in what’s today the southeastern part of Bulgaria. The party says goodbye to the Khan’s guards and their steppe RVs, swapping carts for horses.

And that isn’t all that’s abandoned at the border. Like any of us returning after a long sojourn abroad, the princess and her immediate entourage indulge in some of the familiar comforts of home.

Poor Ibn Battuta, prim and mostly proper Muslim scholar that he is, watches in horror as the Khan’s wife celebrates being back in her homeland with the medieval equivalent of a bacon martini.

As a guest of the princess, Ibn Battuta is not only under imperial protection, but is given the honor of meeting her father, Emperor Andronicus III. With the aid of an interpreter, he entertained the emperor with travelers’ tales of Christian shrines in Palestine and in the Levant. The emperor, clearly charmed by his exotic visitor, offers Ibn Battuta use of a royal steed as well as a guide.

Ibn Battuta makes the most of this imperial access, exploring the city’s bazaars, markets, and monasteries.

He crosses the Bosporus Strait to see the Genoese colony on the opposite bank and carefully notes that one section of the city is called Estanbul, an early rendering of what would become Istanbul. In his wanderings, one building in particular stands out for Ibn Battuta: the Hagia Sophia.

Constantinople is a fading capital, a declining empire, but Ibn Battuta seems aware he’s witnessing something magnificent. What he couldn’t know was that a little over a century later, Mehmed II, descendant of that scrappy sultan Orhan he had met in Anatolia, would convert this very Christian shrine into one of the largest mosques in the Muslim world.

Ibn Battuta plays tourist in a Christian city for almost a month, but it becomes clear that the princess is happy to be home and in no rush to return to her husband on the steppe. So Ibn Battuta decides that it’s time for him to continue his travels to India. He leaves Constantinople sometime in the autumn of 1332, backtracking to the Byzantine frontier, once again, exchanging his horse for a cart and heading out into the steppe.

Winter comes early as he rides north towards his ultimate destination, a long and cold slog before he finally reaches the capital once again of Özbek Khan.

So it’s a long, hard trip with the princess, but I guess the payoff is he gets to see what would have been one of the greatest cities in the medieval world. And when he gets there, it’s a Christian city. And his description of the Hagia Sophia is... Let’s be clear, absolutely bonkers. Thirteen gates, marble water channels, grapevines, jasmine everywhere. He talks about two walls, about a cubit high, inlaid, forests of trees. I mean, come on, church or garden? He’s just rhapsodic about the Hagia Sophia, a place he never actually walks into.

Sarah (29:40) Yeah, he can’t actually go inside it, right, because they want him to prostrate himself to what they claim is a piece of the true cross.

Jeremiah Jenne (29:47) Yeah, he’s a century early, because once the Ottomans get through with it, not a problem at all. And I keep thinking about... he’s absolutely blown away by Constantinople, its grandeur, its majesty, palaces, the churches. He doesn’t, I don’t know if he notices or maybe senses the unraveling. It’s almost like we go to one of those famous old hotels that has a little bit faded, one of the places where the jet set movie stars like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor hung out in the 1970s, but today is trading on its name and keeping the creditors at bay and not paying the maintenance guy. And so we see what we want to see, but we’re not always paying attention to the little dark stains in the corner.

Sarah (30:36) It is one of the challenges of playing tourist, isn’t it? You go to a place that’s famous and you really want to be impressed and sometimes it can be hard to see the realities underneath.

Jeremiah Jenne (30:45) Yeah, that’s a fair point. You get the sense with Ibn Battuta, faded or not, it’s still the capital of the Byzantine Empire. And he’s still psyched to be there. And he gets to meet the emperor Andronicus, father of the pregnant princess, who is the whole reason for the trip. And the emperor, at least according to Ibn Battuta, seems really eager to meet Ibn Battuta.

Why do you think this is? It seems like whether it’s a fityan neighborhood hostel, a sultan, a khan, now an emperor, he seems to always be able to score the dinner invite, or he always is able to get the meeting.

Sarah (31:20) Yeah, he’s edutainment, isn’t he? Some kings go on crusades and the Khans have mobile courts, but they can’t go everywhere. So they have to rule, they have a job to do. So someone like Emperor Andronicus III would rarely, if ever leave his palace or capital city, nevermind his realm. Now he’s got this bloke who waltzes in and tells him tales of ocean crossings and steppe camping and deserts and Africa. And that’s pretty exciting, right? It’s “feed this guy the good figs and he’ll give us a TED talk on his top 10 magical destinations for the pious Muslim traveler.” It helps you travel without traveling.

When Ibn Battuta and party finally reached the great steppe city of Bukhara, modern day Uzbekistan, he expects to see one of the most renowned centers of Islamic learning in the world. Instead, he finds devastation. The Mongol ancestors of his old friend, Özbek Khan, had obliterated cities across Central Asia in displays of warfare so terrifying that resistance meant annihilation. And Bukhara was an example.

Our wandering judge isn’t above leaving a one-star review, it seems. But the Uzbek trading city of Samarkand lifts his spirits.

Although its walls and gates were also destroyed and the city’s famed gardens and centers of learning only gradually restored, Ibn Battuta heaps praise on the town and its people.

In other words, five stars, highly recommended. On the outskirts of Samarkand stands the tomb of Qutham, son of the Prophet Muhammad’s uncle, who died during the Islamic conquest of the city.

The remarkable thing is that you can still visit this tomb today. The site just outside of modern Samarkand remains one of the most revered pilgrimage sites in Uzbekistan. The marble columns, the decorative inlays, the flowing water, it’s all still there, seven centuries after his visit.

Finally, on September 12th, 1333, Ibn Battuta reaches the Indus River and the edges of the Delhi Sultanate. The revelation of medieval connectivity that a Moroccan scholar could traverse continents, find welcome in remote courts, and witness civilizations in transition has been fully revealed. He’s excited about the job opportunities in India. Surely the Delhi Sultanate is a fair and reasonable employer. Wouldn’t be a total lunatic who would try and ruin or end the lives of his employees, right? Well, that’s a whole other story.

Jeremiah Jenne (34:52) So after following Ibn Battuta through all these incredible places, the obvious question is, can you actually go there today?

Sarah (35:02) Turkey is absolutely brilliant. If you want that mystical Sufi atmosphere that Ibn Battuta experienced, you can head to Konya.

Jeremiah Jenne (35:20) So Sarah, where could we go if we still wanted to experience a little bit of that kind of nomadic lifestyle? Maybe not the way Ibn Battuta did it, but at least experience some of what he described.

Sarah (35:33) Yeah, definitely. So Mongolia during the Naadam festival, parts of Kazakhstan, they use trucks now, but that whole hospitality culture, the mobile lifestyle, that’s all still there.

Jeremiah Jenne (35:45) Yeah, I think there are some interesting modern adaptations of the nomad lifestyle out on the Mongolian steppe. Yes, horses are still used, but so are ATVs.

Sarah (35:56) Central Asia, that’s where you can properly follow in his footsteps, I would say today in 2025. Uzbekistan is fantastic. That tomb he described in all that really ridiculous level of detail for him, that’s still there. It’s still gorgeous.

Jeremiah Jenne (36:12) Is it still as ornate? Is there all the gold and silver and stuff that he saw? I’m guessing time has kind of ravaged it a bit.

Sarah (36:21) A bit less bling, yeah. But when you walk into that complex in Samarkand, the Shahi Zinda necropolis, it’s completely breathtaking. There’s row after row of these turquoise tiled tombs. Each one is more intricate than the last. And Ibn Battuta’s tomb of Qutham is right there among them.

Jeremiah Jenne (36:39) Have these tombs been opened by archaeologists? Can you go inside?

Sarah (36:43) Well, you can’t actually go inside the actual tomb, but you can stand in that courtyard. And there’s

still some marble columns that he described and there’s still water flowing through the channels. So pilgrims still come on Fridays, bringing offerings just like they did seven centuries ago. So in that sense, all of that authenticity is still there.

Jeremiah Jenne (37:01) I guess I’ve never been to Uzbekistan and I’m kind of thinking what is travel like there? Is it—I have no frame of reference. Is it easy? Is it hard?

Sarah (37:10) I think it’s easier than you think actually. There’s an e-visa online, there’s trains between the major cities, proper hotels. The Tashkent-Samarkand high-speed rail takes two hours. And if you’re serious about going, there’s a company called Koryo Tours, a really great company that we’ve worked with many times and they do excellent trips there.

I probably wouldn’t go with anyone else actually. They know all the historical sites and also how to do the logistics. So yeah, I think totally worth doing. And also just somewhere that most people haven’t been and it’s always nice to go to a place where you don’t see loads of other tourists, especially right now. So yeah, I can’t recommend that enough.

Jeremiah Jenne (37:49) So if all of this has got you inspired—and it’s certainly got me inspired to try to follow Ibn Battuta—not only can you go to some of the places that Sarah just talked about, but I’d also recommend your local library and Ross Dunn’s The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, which is the definitive academic biography in English. It’s really well researched. It’s really well documented. But if you’re looking for something a little bit more travelogue, a little bit—I wouldn’t say light reading—more written for a general audience, I would definitely, definitely check out Tim Mackintosh-Smith’s trilogy. It’s absolutely brilliant. He follows Ibn Battuta’s route in the modern world. I’d start with his first book Travels with a Tangerine which, as I mentioned at top of the episode, when I first bought the book, I thought involved some kind of fruit. He goes on, there’s two other books in the series. It’s amazing, it’s amazing travel writing to begin with, but it also kind of shows how Ibn Battuta’s world and the modern world intersect. Other thing too, proper wordsmith.

Sarah (38:50) Thanks.

Jeremiah Jenne (38:58) I had to look up more words from reading Tim Mackintosh-Smith than I have had in a modern book in a while. Guy has a vocabulary.

Sarah (39:07) Yeah, he also knows his stuff. Tim Mackintosh-Smith lived in Yemen for years. He speaks Arabic. He reads Ibn Battuta in the original. So yeah, he’s definitely qualified, isn’t he? He also wrote an impressive history of the Arab people. His insights are fascinating. I agree. I highly recommend it.

Jeremiah Jenne (39:25) All right, so between those books, maybe a trip to Samarkand, definitely a trip to Turkey. Read Ibn Battuta and you’ll never look at medieval travel the same way.

Sarah (39:36) From his departure from the Turkish coast as a wandering scholar to his arrival at the Indus River as an international man of means with horses, glittering gifts, servants, and letters of recommendation from emperors, Ibn Battuta’s early journeys are a remarkable example of the richness and cultural sophistication of the medieval Islamic world.

Jeremiah Jenne (39:56) But in many ways, the adventures of Ibn Battuta are only just beginning.

Sarah (40:00) In India, he’ll test everything he’s learned in the service of the Sultan of Delhi, one of the most powerful but unpredictable rulers in the medieval world. Whether his great gamble pays off spectacularly or goes absolutely nowhere. Well, that’s a story for future episodes.

Jeremiah Jenne (40:17) Thank you for coming on this journey. Join us next time as we explore more stories from people who lived life by their own compass.

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