91Æ
ILLUSTRATION BY THERESA GRIEBEN132 7
Having been invited in November 1326
to join a caravan heading north,
Ibn Battuta travels through Persia. In
Shiraz he admires the piety of the local
women before arriving in Baghdad
1333
The Moroccan journeys to
Samarkand, which he considers
“one of the largest and most
perfectly beautiful cities in
the world”1334
Arriving in Delhi, Ibn Battuta
becomes a judge in the ser vice
of Sultan Muhammad Tughluq1341
Ibn Battuta is appointed
ambassador to the Mongol
court of China and sets out
on the long journey east,
stopping in the Maldives and
Sri Lanka, and suffering pirate
attacks and shipwrecks1346
The intrepid traveller arrives in
Quanzhou, China, having called
en route at Chittagong, now
in Bangl adesh