Nathalie Moreira-Ramirez Professor Hoag HIST-343 The Travels of Ibn Battuta Ibn Battuta was born in Tangier, Morocco in 1304 and as a young man studied law. In 1325 Ibn Battuta decided to go for pilgrimage to Mecca that evolved into a twenty-eight year journey of mainly visiting countries under Muslim leaders. Ibn Battuta’s travel narrative of the kingdom of Mali is one of the very few firsthand accounts of the pre-modern world of West Africa. Ibn Battuta’s travel narrative about the Mali Empire reveals and adds to our understanding of societal norms, cultural practices, and the importance of religion in pre-modern West Africa. One important factor that can affect the documents accuracy is when and why this document was created. Ibn Battuta’s narrative of his travels in West Africa begins with a description of the Sultan of Mali. Battuta is very detailed in noting down the Sultans behavior as well as the Sultans appearance. We learn from Battuta’s brief description of the Sultan two important pieces of information, the Sultan appearance and how he enjoys having meetings. We learn that the Sultan “wears a gold hat that is held in place by a band, also of gold.” (22) According to Kevin Shillington in History of Africa, the empire of Mali’s main economic activity was in fact agricultural production but outsiders tended to only observe and focus on the empires gold production and mining. We know that Ibn Battuta visits the empire of Mali during the reign of one of the empires most effective ruler, Mansa Sulayman. In fact according to Shillington Ibn Battuta was attracted to the empire of Mali by Mansa Sulyman’s brother Mansa Musa and his famous pilgrimage in 1324 to Mecca. Again we see the important role gold 1