Synopses & Reviews
Following on Travels with a Tangerine (a New York Times Notable book) and The Hall of a Thousand Columns, here is the third volume in the author's passionate pursuit of the 14th-century traveler who out-traveled Marco Polo
For Ibn Batuttah of Tangier, being medieval didnt mean sitting at home waiting for renaissances, enlightenments, and air travel. It meant traveling the known world to its limits. Seven centuries later, Tim Mackintosh-Smiths fascination takes him to landfalls in remote tropical islands, torrid Indian Ocean ports, and dusty towns on the shores of the Saharan sand-sea. His zigzag itinerary across time and space leads from Zanzibar to the Alhambra (via the Maldives, Sri Lanka, China, Mauritania, and Guinea) and to a climactic conclusion to his quest for the man he calls "IB"a man who who spent his days with saints and sultans and his nights with an intercontinental string of slave-concubines. Tims journey is a search for survivals from IBs worldmaterial, human, spiritual, ediblehowever, when your fellow traveler has a 700-year head start, familiar notions dont always work.
Review
"For over a decade British travel writer Mackintosh-Smith has been traveling the world and shadowing 14th-century Moroccan Muslim travel writer Ibn Battutah. Mackintosh-Smiths third and final book in the series (after Travels with a Tangerine and The Hall of a Thousand Columns) is as delightful as the first two." Library Journal, *starred review*
Review
"As the world shrinks and a virtual visit to any of the worlds most exotic places is but a quick tap of a smart phone away, fear not: travel writing is alive and well." Booklist
About the Author
Tim Mackintosh-Smith's first book Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land won the 1998 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and is now regarded as a classic of Arabian description. His two books on Ibn Battutahs adventures in the old Islamic world and in India, Travels with a Tangerine and The Hall of a Thousand Columns, were also received to huge critical acclaim. For the past 25 years his home has been the Yemeni capital Sana.