Abu 'Abdullah Ibn Battuta was born in Tangier, Morocco, in 1304 CE. At twenty-one he left home for Hajj — and the journey stretched to nearly three decades. North Africa, Egypt, Sham, the Hijaz, Iraq, Persia, East Africa, Anatolia, Central Asia, India, the Maldives, China — he travelled through them all.
He served for some years as a qadi at the court of the Sultan of Delhi. Around 1346 CE he came to Bengal. In his account he describes Bengal as a land of plenty, where goods were astonishingly cheap and the rivers were lined with boats.
On this journey he went into the hill country towards Sylhet and met a celebrated shaykh whom he calls Shaykh Jalal ad-Din.
Back home, at the command of the Sultan of Morocco, he related his experiences and the writer Ibn Juzayy set them down. The book, known as ar-Rihlah, is a priceless record of the medieval Muslim world.