Ibn Battuta Trivia
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59 free Ibn Battuta trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 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 01A crater named after Ibn Battuta lies on which body of the Solar System?
The Moon
The Moon. The 11 km crater in the Sea of Fertility was plain Goclenius A until 1976, when astronomers renamed it after the traveller.
Q 02Ibn Battuta is often called the Muslim world's answer to which earlier traveller?
Marco Polo
Marco Polo. The Venetian died the year before Ibn Battuta set out, and the Moroccan went on to cover far more ground, some 120,000 km, yet his account stayed unknown in Europe until the 1800s.
Q 03Camels carried Ibn Battuta across deserts later on, but he left home in 1325 riding which animal?
A donkey
A donkey. On the road across North Africa he fell so ill with fever that he was tied into the saddle to keep from falling off, and kept going.
Q 04In the Anatolian city of Konya, Ibn Battuta visited the tomb of which Persian poet?
Rumi
Rumi. The tale he heard there says the poet was a professor who walked out of his own lecture to follow a sweet-seller, vanished for years and came back speaking only in Persian verse.
Q 05Which ships did Ibn Battuta admire in Indian ports for their four decks, lockable cabins and private lavatories?
Junks
Junks from China carried a thousand men, he wrote, and a merchant could live unseen in his locked cabin for a whole voyage while the sailors, whose children lived aboard, grew vegetables and ginger in wooden tubs.
Q 06Aged 21, how did Ibn Battuta say he set out from home in 1325?
Alone
Alone, he wrote, with no companion to cheer him and no caravan to join; fear of robbers soon changed that, and he crossed most of North Africa in the company of other travellers.
Q 07What did Ibn Battuta report the Chinese using for money in place of metal coins?
Paper notes
Paper notes the size of a palm, stamped with the ruler's seal, did all the buying and selling; a shopper who offered a silver coin in the bazaar was ignored until he changed it.
Q 08Ibn Battuta's first marriage ended soon after his dispute with whom?
His father-in-law
His father-in-law, a Tunisian official in the same caravan, fell out with him after Tripoli, so he parted from the bride and married a Fez scholar's daughter instead, feasting the whole caravan for a day.
Q 09Which wonder of the ancient world did Ibn Battuta visit in 1326, finding one of its faces in ruins?
The Lighthouse of Alexandria
The Lighthouse of Alexandria could still be entered in 1326, though one face had fallen; when he came back in 1349 it was so far gone that he could not even reach the door.
Q 10Cairo, when Ibn Battuta arrived in 1326, was the capital of which state?
The Mamluk Sultanate
The Mamluk Sultanate was run by former slave soldiers who had seized Egypt from their own masters and then driven the Mongols out of Syria, which kept the roads safe for travellers like him.
Q 11What forced Ibn Battuta to turn back at the Red Sea port of Aydhab?
A local rebellion
A local rebellion: the ruling family had risen against the sultan's governor and sunk ships, so he went back to Cairo, just as a holy man on the Nile had warned him he would.
Q 12In which city did Ibn Battuta spend Ramadan in 1326 before joining the pilgrim caravan south to Medina?
Damascus
Damascus held him for the rest of the fasting month: he studied with its scholars, lay ill with fever in a professor's house and still found time to marry again before the caravan left.
Q 13After his first hajj, Ibn Battuta toured Iraq and Persia, then ruled by which Mongol state?
The Ilkhanate
Q 21Ibn Battuta described a northern 'Land of Darkness' reached only on sledges pulled by which animals?
Dogs
Dogs, because their claws gripped ice that neither man nor beast could walk on; once there, merchants left goods on the snow overnight and came back to find furs in their place, never seeing who took them.
Q 22Ibn Battuta reached Constantinople escorting pregnant Princess Bayalun home to give birth; whose wife was she?
Uzbeg Khan of the Golden Horde
Uzbeg Khan of the Golden Horde sent her off with thousands of horsemen; once across the frontier she dropped the Muslim call to prayer, drank wine and, her attendants said, ate pork.
Q 23Entering Hagia Sophia would have required Ibn Battuta to do what?
The Ilkhanate was in its last years: he rode for ten days in the caravan of its young ruler Abu Sa'id, whose death in 1335 left Persia to break apart in civil war.
Q 14Which southern Persian city did Ibn Battuta find flourishing because the Mongols had never sacked it?
Shiraz
Shiraz lay far to the south and its ruler had bought the Mongols off with tribute, so refugees from the ruined northern cities poured in and set off a flowering of poetry and art.
Q 15Which East African port did Ibn Battuta find at the height of its wealth, exporting fine cloth to Egypt?
Mogadishu
Mogadishu's young men rowed out to every arriving ship, each claiming a merchant as his guest; as a scholar, Ibn Battuta was instead lodged by the sultan and sent food from the palace three times a day.
Q 16Kilwa, the island town Ibn Battuta reached off East Africa, grew rich shipping which metal from Zimbabwe?
Gold
Gold from Zimbabwe reached the coast at Sofala and passed through Kilwa, whose sultan, Ibn Battuta wrote, was nicknamed 'the generous' for his gifts and often raided the mainland for booty.
Q 17Which Delhi sultan, known for lavish gifts and bloody punishments alike, gave Ibn Battuta a rich post at his court?
Muhammad bin Tughluq
Muhammad bin Tughluq showered him with money, then put him under guard for his friendship with a Sufi who had defied the throne; he gave away his goods and lived as a hermit for months until the danger passed.
Q 18Anatolia's fityan brotherhoods, Ibn Battuta found, pooled their daily wages to do what?
Host travellers
Host travellers: members brought each day's earnings to the lodge to buy food for guests, and two brotherhoods once drew lots for the right to host him.
Q 19Which Ottoman ruler, son of the dynasty's founder Osman, had just captured Iznik when Ibn Battuta arrived?
Orhan
Orhan, he wrote, was the greatest and richest of the Turkmen kings, yet never stayed a month in one town: he spent his time riding between nearly a hundred fortresses to keep them in repair.
Q 20At the Genoese port of Kaffa, which unfamiliar sound so alarmed Ibn Battuta that he had the Quran recited from a minaret?
Church bells
Church bells rang on all sides an hour after he arrived, and he had never heard any before; the defiant call to prayer brought the town's Muslim judge running in armour, fearing for the visitors' safety.
Bow to a cross
Bow to a cross: an old monk who had walked him through the courtyard told him the rule could not be waived, so the Muslim jurist stayed outside and wrote up only the exterior.
Q 24Which Central Asian city did Ibn Battuta rank among the largest and most beautiful in the world?
Samarkand
Samarkand earned that praise even though most of its riverside palaces, and much of the city itself, still lay in ruins a century after the Mongols sacked it.
Q 25Ibn Battuta wrote that the Hindu Kush means 'Hindu-slayer' because so many of which travellers froze in its passes?
Indian slaves
Indian slaves, boys and girls marched north for sale, died there of cold in large numbers, he wrote; it is the earliest explanation of the name on record, though dictionaries now call it a likely folk etymology.
Q 26Which now-famous snack did Ibn Battuta describe at the Delhi court as a fried pastry of minced meat, nuts and spices?
Samosa
Samosa: he called it sambusak, its name across the Middle East, and the meat-and-nut pastry is thought to have reached India with cooks from Persia and Central Asia who served the Delhi sultans.
Q 27Which Hindu ritual did Ibn Battuta witness and describe in detail while living in India?
Sati (widow burning)
Sati (widow burning) was voluntary, he noted, and in the sultan's lands needed royal permission; but a widow who refused, he added, lived on in coarse clothes, despised by her own family.
Q 28A Chinese embassy asked Delhi's sultan for permission to rebuild what, sacked by his army in the Himalayan foothills?
A Buddhist temple
A Buddhist temple: the sultan refused, saying only those who paid the poll tax could build temples in Muslim lands, yet he answered with richer gifts than he had received and made Ibn Battuta his envoy.
Q 29At which Indian port did a storm wreck the ship carrying Ibn Battuta's embassy gifts while he prayed ashore?
Calicut
Calicut, where Vasco da Gama would later land: the treasure ship broke up and its passengers drowned, and the vessel with Ibn Battuta's own goods sailed off, leaving him ten dinars and the carpet he had slept on.
Q 30In which island nation did Ibn Battuta serve as chief judge and marry into the ruling family?
The Maldives
The Maldives, once Buddhist, wanted a judge who knew Arabic and the Quran, so its rulers plied him with pearls and jewellery and saw to it that no ship would take him away.