A series of documentary travelogues in which Tim Mackintosh-Smith follows in the footsteps of 14th Century Moroccan scholar Ibn Battutah, who covered 75,000 miles, 40 countries and three continents in a 30-year odyssey. He was islam’s and perhaps the world’s greates traveller
View The Man Who Walked Across The World. Video hosted on Google. The Man Who Walked Across The World - 1 - Wanderlust
1 - Beginning in north Africa, Tim visits Battutah’s birthplace of Tangier in Morocco, and stumbles on a performance of medieval trance music. In Egypt, he goes to a remote village where Battutah had an astonishing prophetic dream and visits the world’s oldest university in Cairo.
The Man Who Walked Across The World - 2 - Magicians and Mystics
2 - Magicians and Mystics. In an effort to smash the West’s monolithic view of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith follows in the footsteps of 14th Century Moroccan scholar Ibn Battutah, who covered 75,000 miles, 40 countries and three continents in a 30-year odyssey. In Turkey, Tim watches an illegal whirling dervish ceremony, and in the Taurus mountains he meets the last of the Turkoman nomads. He chats to Tatars in Crimea, while in Delhi he watches a Muslim magician performing the Indian rope trick.
The Man Who Walked Across the World - 3 - Trade Winds
In an effort to change the West’s monolithic view of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith follows in the footsteps of 14th Century Moroccan scholar Ibn Battutah, who covered 75,000 miles, 40 countries and three continents in a 30-year odyssey. He explores the place of Islam in Hindu-dominated India and also China, and tells the story of the Islamic trade empire of the 14th century.
Tim Mackintosh-Smith (b.1961) is a British, Yemen-based author. Mackintosh-Smith lives in an ancient tower house off the "Market of the Cows" in the old city of San'a Yemen. He is the author of the Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph prize winning Yemen: Travels in Dictionaryland (1997), and more recently the first two volumes of his journeys in "the footnotes" of Ibn Batutah; Travels with A Tangerine (2001)and The Hall of a Thousand Columns (2005). He has written widely on subjects as broad as the collection of frankincense, the stories of M.R. James and the history of umbrellas. He has featured in a documentary film The English Sheik and the Yemeni Gentleman, and is presenting a BBC documentary series recreating the experience of tracing Ibn Battuta's fourteenth century travels into the present day. Despite his refuge in a distant corner of Arabia, Tim has succeeded in becoming celebrated among the literati of Europe and the Americas. He has a treatment for a feature film about the modern day descendants of Ibn Batutah.
Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn ِAbdullah Al Lawati Al Tanji Ibn Battuta (Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد ابن عبد الله اللواتي الطنجي ابن بطوطة) (born February 24, 1304; year of death uncertain, possibly 1368 or 1377) was a Moroccan Berber[1] scholar and jurisprudent from the Maliki Madhhab (a school of Fiqh, or Sunni Islamic law), and at times a Qadi or judge. However, he is best known as a traveler and explorer, whose account documents his travels and excursions over a period of almost thirty years, covering some 73,000 miles (117,000 km). These journeys covered almost the entirety of the known Islamic world and beyond, extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in the West, to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China in the East, a distance readily surpassing that of his predecessors and his near-contemporary Marco Polo.
At the instigation of the Sultan of Morocco, Abu Inan Faris, several years after his return, Ibn Battuta dictated an account of his journeys to a scholar named Ibn Juzayy, whom he had met while in Granada. This account, recorded by Ibn Juzayy and interspersed with the latter's own comments, is the primary source of information for his adventures. The title of this initial manuscript تحفة النظار في غرائب الأمصار وعجائب الأسفار may be translated as A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling but is often simply referred to as the Rihla الرحلة, or "Journey". Whilst apparently fictional in places, the Rihla still gives as complete an account as exists of some parts of the world in the 14th century. Almost all that is known about Ibn Battuta's life comes from one source—Ibn Battuta himself. In some places, the things he claims he saw or did are probably fanciful, but in many others, there is no way to know whether he is reporting or storytelling. However, due to the complexity and thoroughness of his accounts, we are left to assume that his chronicles were in fact true. An impact crater on the moon, the Ibn Battuta crater, is named after him. A themed shopping mall in Dubai, the Ibn Battuta Mall, also bears his name, with some of his earlier research and inventions in displays scattered throughout its corridors.
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