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60 free Ibn Battuta trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Ibn Battuta left Tangier at 21 to make the pilgrimage to Mecca and did not come home for 24 years. By the time he stopped he had covered something like 117,000 kilometres, more than Marco Polo and Zheng He combined, and had served as a judge in Delhi and the Maldives, dined with the Byzantine emperor, crossed the Sahara to Mali and, he claimed, reached the court of the Yuan emperor in Beijing. This quiz follows the whole itinerary in order. Expect questions on the first hajj and the holy men who foretold his travels, the Ilkhanate and the Golden Horde, the Ottoman court of Orhan, Muhammad bin Tughluq's dangerous patronage, the shipwreck at Calicut, the topless Maldivians he tried to reform, Quanzhou and Hangzhou, the Black Death on the road home, the salt city of Taghaza and Mansa Suleyman's Mali. There is also a section on the Rihla itself: who wrote it down, what was borrowed from earlier travellers, and how Europe finally read it in the 19th century. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on Ibn Battuta and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on Marco Polo, the Silk Road and the Mali Empire.
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Q 01Ibn Battuta was born in 1304 in which city?
Tangier
The city's airport and stadium are named after him today.
Q 02Roughly how far did Ibn Battuta travel over his career?
About 117,000 km
That beats Zheng He at about 50,000 km and Marco Polo at about 24,000 km.
Q 03What is the account of Ibn Battuta's journeys commonly called?
The Rihla
Its full title translates as A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling.
Q 04The name "Ibn Battuta" is a patronymic that literally means what?
Son of a duckling
His full name as given in the Rihla runs to eleven links of ancestry ending in Lawati al-Tanji.
Q 05Ibn Battuta came from a family of what kind of professionals?
Islamic legal scholars
He would later serve as a qadi, or judge, in Delhi, the Maldives and finally Morocco.
Q 06Ibn Battuta's family belonged to which Berber tribal clan?
Lawata
He was of Arabised Berber descent and studied at a Sunni Maliki school.
Q 07How old was Ibn Battuta when he set out from home in June 1325?
21
He was leaving to perform the hajj, a journey that would ordinarily take sixteen months; he was away 24 years.
Q 08What was the purpose of the journey Ibn Battuta began in 1325?
A pilgrimage to Mecca
He wrote that he set out alone, "swayed by an overmastering impulse" to visit the illustrious sanctuaries.
Q 09In which Tunisian town did Ibn Battuta take his first bride, leaving her soon after?
Sfax
It was the first of many marriages; he usually married when he stopped anywhere for long and divorced when he moved on.
Q 10In Alexandria in 1326, a holy man told Ibn Battuta to visit his brothers in India, Sind and where else?
China
Sheikh Burhanuddin is said to have foretold his destiny as a world traveller.
Q 11Alexandria and Cairo, when Ibn Battuta arrived in 1326, were part of which empire?
The Mamluk Sultanate
The Mamluks kept the pilgrim road through Hebron, Jerusalem and Bethlehem safe from robbers.
Q 12Ibn Battuta's first attempt to reach the Red Sea was turned back by a rebellion near which port?
Aydhab
He returned to Cairo and went to Mecca via Damascus instead, as a holy man had prophesied.
Q 13In which city did Ibn Battuta spend Ramadan in 1326 before joining the pilgrim caravan south to Medina?
Damascus
Manuscripts he copied in Damascus that year, found at Al-Azhar in Cairo, are among the few outside corroborations of his story.
Q 21Ibn Battuta acquired his first slave, a Greek, as a gift from the ruler of which Anatolian beylik?
Aydin
He later bought a Greek girl in Ephesus for 40 dinars and another in Balikesir.
Q 22Which Volga city was the northernmost point Ibn Battuta claimed to reach?
Bolghar
Modern scholars think the trip up the Volga is very unlikely to have happened.
Q 23Ibn Battuta reached Constantinople escorting Princess Bayalun home to give birth. Whose wife was she?
Uzbeg Khan of the Golden Horde
She was a daughter of Emperor Andronikos III, whom Ibn Battuta met on arrival.
Q 14After his first hajj, Ibn Battuta headed northeast into which Mongol state?
The Ilkhanate
In Najaf he visited the mausoleum of Ali before a six-month detour into Iran.
Q 15Which Persian city did Ibn Battuta find flourishing because it had been spared Mongol destruction?
Shiraz
Baghdad, by contrast, was still partly ruined from Hulagu Khan's assault of 1258.
Q 16Ibn Battuta describes Mogadishu at its zenith in 1332, noting its export of what high-quality product?
Fabric
He wrote that the Somali sultan Abu Bakr spoke his native tongue but was also fluent in Arabic.
Q 17Ibn Battuta praised Kilwa, in present-day Tanzania, a transit hub for the trade in what?
Gold
He called it one of the finest and most beautifully built towns, its houses roofed with reeds.
Q 18After his third hajj Ibn Battuta set off for Anatolia hoping to reach the court of which sultan?
Muhammad bin Tughluq of Delhi
Tughluq was renowned as the wealthiest man in the Muslim world and hired scholars lavishly.
Q 19In Anatolia, Ibn Battuta lodged with semi-religious associations of young artisans known as what?
Fityan
He was so impressed with their hospitality that he lodged with them in more than 25 towns.
Q 20When Ibn Battuta reached Iznik it had just been conquered by which Ottoman ruler?
Orhan
He called Orhan the greatest of the kings of the Turkmens and said he never stayed a whole month in any one town.
Q 24Which great church did Ibn Battuta visit in Constantinople?
Hagia Sophia
It was his first journey beyond the boundaries of the Islamic world.
Q 25Which Central Asian city did Ibn Battuta call "one of the grandest and finest cities"?
Samarkand
He still noted its walls lay ruined from the Mongol invasion of 1220.
Q 26Ibn Battuta explained the name of the Kush mountains he crossed into India as meaning what?
Hindu-slayer
He said most slaves brought over from India died of the cold in the passes.
Q 27What post did Muhammad bin Tughluq give Ibn Battuta in Delhi?
Qadi (judge)
He found it hard to enforce Islamic law beyond the sultan's court and spent six years veering between favour and suspicion.
Q 28Which Hindu ritual did Ibn Battuta witness and describe in detail while in the Delhi Sultanate?
Sati (widow burning)
He also mentions the Indian rhinoceros living on the banks of the Indus.
Q 29Ibn Battuta finally left Delhi in 1341 in charge of an embassy to which country?
China
The Yuan court had asked permission to rebuild a Himalayan Buddhist temple used by Chinese pilgrims.
Q 30At which Indian port did a storm sink one of Ibn Battuta's embassy ships while he was ashore at a mosque?
Calicut
Vasco da Gama would land at the same port two centuries later.