Rare Ibn Battuta ‘Rihla’ Manuscript Sells for Nearly AED 1 Million

A rare manuscript preserving Ibn Battuta’s ‘Rihla’ has sold for close to AED 1 million at the 35th Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, where it was presented by London-based rare book dealer Peter Harrington.

The copy is among only seven known surviving manuscripts of the medieval travelogue and covers Ibn Battuta’s journeys between 1325 and 1333. It begins with his departure from Tangier and follows his travels through Cairo, Damascus, Medina and Makkah, before continuing through Iraq, Persia, the Red Sea, East Africa, the Gulf, Anatolia and into Central Asia.

The manuscript ends with Ibn Battuta’s account of Naysapur, or Nishapur, in present-day Iran. Its contents correspond roughly to the first two volumes and the opening of the third in H.A.R. Gibb’s four-volume English translation.

Among its most significant sections is Ibn Battuta’s account of the Hajj, considered one of only three major medieval firsthand descriptions of the pilgrimage, alongside those of Nasir Khusraw and Ibn Jubayr.

The manuscript also includes what is regarded as the earliest surviving description of the southern Gulf after the rise of New Hormuz in 1300, with references to Qalhat and Nizwa in Oman, Kalba and Khor Fakkan in present-day Sharjah, and pearl fishing off Bahrain and Qatif.

Only seven complete or incomplete copies of the ‘Rihla’ are known to survive worldwide. The earliest, an incomplete autograph manuscript written by Ibn Battuta’s scribe Ibn Juzayy and dated 757H, or 1356–1357 CE, is held by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, while another copy is held at Cambridge.

The Abu Dhabi manuscript is a quarto measuring 250 by 190mm, written on laid paper in Maghribi script and bound in black-brown calf with blind-tooled decoration and gilt-stamped fleurons.

Peter Harrington has exhibited rare books at major UAE fairs since 2016, with previous highlights including a Shakespeare First Folio valued at AED 20.8 million, the Rothschild collection of Richard Burton’s works at AED 9.2 million, and a manuscript of Ibn Sina’s ‘Canon of Medicine’ priced at AED 464,550.