Tim Mackintosh-Smith is wary of the way Ibn Battuta is usually presented.
Popular retellings tend to cast the 14th-century Moroccan traveller as a heroic explorer who set out to conquer the distance and return with knowledge . Speaking to The National ahead of his appearance at the Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature on Saturday, the British travel writer and Arabist says he does not recognise that figure.
“There was a movie a few years ago on Ibn Battuta and I was a historical consultant on it. The way it turned out is that he was some great sort of heroic explorer figure, who chose what he did and where he went,” he says. “It wasn’t that way at all.
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