Reddit reviews The Travels of Ibn Battutah

I'm doing my own research into this as I also became interested in Battutah after reading your post.

Mackintosh-Smith has a one-volume abridgement of the travels, unrelated to his personal three-volume reconstruction of the journey. This is abridged from the four-volume translation by Gibb and Beckingham, published by the Hakluyt Society, which I believe is the edition you mentioned.

It is worth noting that the scholars who compiled the complete Arabic version of the Travels were critical of the translation you linked by Samuel Lee:

> "In their introduction Defrémery and Sanguinetti praised Lee's annotations but were critical of his translation which they claimed lacked precision, even in straightforward passages."

Took that straight from Wikipedia but it claims to be sourced from the French edition of the Travels, here. It's also worth noting that translation is fairly dated by this point.

Personally I'm not the type who can get through four volumes of older, translated text, so I'll likely go with the Mackintosh-Smith abridgement. Figured it was worth posting so people know what options are out there. There's also Dunn's version as you say, which is another option.

Most things from the past will be unknown to most people - usually people know of the major stuff - not the minor details.

You might consider reading original material from scholar/travelers from China to India (the advantage of reading original material - esp. for a writer - is that you get loads of detailed material which is relevant for you and you may notice it - although it may not be relevant for the wider picture a historian maybe painting - so there will be details which will be valuable to get a sense of the environment).

For example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faxian

and his accounts of visit to Taxila (Greco-Buddhist university - in present day Pakistan - which was part of the greater India in pre-1947 era):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxila

Or this guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xuanzang

another link for him:

http://www.chinabuddhismencyclopedia.com/en/index.php/Xuanzang_or_Hsüan-tsang

There are many other original travelogues you can read to get an idea of that period and region.

You can read Al Biruni's India - which chronicles India as he experienced it in 1000 AD - the variations in Hinduism as were apparent to him. He bitterly criticizes one of his contemporary Muslim conquerors for being brutal (Mahmud Ghaznavi who is remembered by both Muslims and Hindus for his aggressive actions against hindus and their temples).

And these are all modern looking books - i.e. since the people/scholars who wrote these were perceptive etc. So Al Biruni's India includes some details about variations and the types of people.

https://www.amazon.com/Alberunis-Abridged-Library-Al-Biruni-1993-05-01/dp/B017POL2C8/

As aid to Al Biruni's critical recounting of the state of India around 1000 AD (much of the book is very technical examination of things) - you may consider reading some of the British journals of the people of India - where they documented for each region the tribes and their oral history (as an effort to understand them so they could rule them).


There are many books about history - Ibn Khaldun's Preface to his history of the world is one of the most famous books of science/observation (The Muqaddimah) - but you could peruse his voluminous history of the world - which would be somewhat fanciful - and this again would be around 1000 AD.

https://www.amazon.com/Muqaddimah-Introduction-History-Princeton-Classics/dp/0691166285

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Biruni

If you have interest in the European region from 900AD - there are some travelogues by Muslim scholars/travelers who went north into european lands (the inspiration for the movie starring "The 13th Warrior" starring Antonio Banderas):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120657/

The 13th Warrior

https://www.amazon.com/Ibn-Fadlan-Land-Darkness-Travellers/dp/0140455078/

Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North

Again these books come across as very contemporary - as their writers analyze each group of different (to their eyes) people they meet. It also gives secondary insight into the details of those periods.



Although slightly later than your time period - from the 1300s - you can read Ibn Battuta and his travels all over - and his fanciful descriptions of the people he meets:

https://www.amazon.com/Travels-Ibn-Battutah/dp/0330418793/

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta

He also kept a journal: Amazon link

I've been mostly going through this one: http://www.amazon.com/Travels-Ibn-Battutah/dp/0330418793/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419450305&sr=8-1&keywords=ibn+battuta+tim

i've enjoyed it quite a bit so far. he does admit to excising what he considers to be uninteresting details, so i may have to find a more comprehensive volume.