BATTUTA Ibn De Mohammede Ebn Batuta Arabe Tingitani eiusque itineribus. Commentatio academica quam rectore Academiae magnificetissimo… Carolo Augusto… annvente amplissimo philosophorum ordine pro loco in eo rite obtinendo… Auctor Joannes Gothofredus Ludovicus Kosegarten.

DSB, II, 516-517.

Editio princeps in the West of extracts of Ibn Battuta’s Travels, edited by the German orientalist Johann Gottfried Ludwig Kosegarten (1792-1860), professor of Oriental languages at the University of Jena from 1817 to 1824, and later a professor at Greifswald. He is remembered for translations and editions of Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit poems, songs, and fables.

A Muslim Traveller of the Fourteenth Century, Ibn Battuta (1304-1368/1369) visited most of the Old World, including Central Asia, Southeast Asia, China, and the Iberian Peninsula. After returning home from his travels in 1354, at the suggestion of the ruler of Morocco, Ibn Battuta dictated an account in Arabic of his journeys to Ibn Juzayy, a scholar whom he had previously met in Granada. The account is the only source for Ibn Battuta’s adventures, and it is often simply referred to as The Travels (Rihla).

Ibn Battuta’s work was unknown outside the Muslim world until the beginning of the 19th century, when the German traveller and explorer Ulrich Jasper Seetzen (1767-1811) acquired a collection of manuscripts in the Middle East, including a 94-page volume containing an abridged version of Ibn Juzayy’s text.

The German orientalist Johann Kosegarten published three extracts of The Travels in 1818 by. A fourth portion was published the following year. French scholars were alerted to the initial publication by a lengthy review published in the Journal de Savants by the orientalist Silvestre de Sacy.

Three copies of another abridged manuscript were acquired by the Swiss traveller Johann Burckhardt and bequeathed to the University of Cambridge. He gave a brief overview of their content in a book published posthumously in 1819. The Arabic text was translated into English by the orientalist Samuel Lee and published in London in 1829.

“Although exceptionally rich in personal data, the Travels was not meant to constitute a personal record in terms of the circumstances of the author’s life or the proper sequence of his itinerary. Its purpose was to enlighten the reader about the remarkable and often marvellous things and event that could be observed in other countries and to deepen his understanding of human society and his respect for the divine handiwork in all its richness and variety. This purpose was uniquely achieved and has given the Travels its lasting greatness… Ibn Battuta’s work is a source of unmatched importance for fourteenth-century India (to which about one-fifth of it is devoted), and even more so for the Maldives, southern Russia, and especially Negro Africa. Ibn Battuta is often the only medieval author to give us information on these areas; and where there is additional material, the value of his observations remains undisputed”(DSB).

This dissertation by Kosegarten is divided into four large chapters including a general part on the Travels, followed by the extracts on the travels to Persia, to the Maldives, and to Africa. The original Arabic text is followed by Kosegarten’s essay on each part.

Light waterstain throughout.