Ok I asked you ages ago about Edward II junk for my Robin Hood comic and I just gotta pop in to say thanks again because you making me aware of Ibn Battuta is the missing piece I needed for one of my major characters who has been stumping me with his backstory. You keep dropping just the most perfect morsels of knowledge and I am very grateful!
Oh man, I actually do remember you asking me about that, and it was many many moons ago, so thanks for sticking with me through the various Adventures that this blog has been on since. I hope your comic is going well and I’m still definitely interested to read it whenever it should be done!
If you want to learn more about Ibn Battuta and his world, there is a book that looks very interesting: The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century by Ross Dunn, the most recent edition of which came out in 2012. It contextualizes Ibn Battuta within fourteenth-century Islamic society, the history and culture of the places he visited, and the scope of medieval exchange and travel across the East and along the Silk Road. (On that note, I’ve also recommended The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan before, but will add it in here.)
Likewise, you can look into King Musa I of Mali (Mansa Musa) who flourished at the same time as Ibn Battuta (Battuta visited his court/kingdom, if I recall correctly) and is sometimes regarded as the richest man who ever lived, king of the indescribably wealthy fourteenth-century Mali Empire. (Readers of DVLA may recall a brief anecdote about Mansa Musa inadvertently crashing the Egyptian economy due to spending so much gold on his pilgrimage to Mecca, which is true.) I also answered this ask a while back with resources on medieval African history, including a few books on Mansa Musa and Ibn Battuta and their lives, societies, and cultures, such as the city of Timbuktu’s role in medieval West Africa as a flourishing center of scholarship and Islamic manuscript study.
Anyway, I hope that is useful for you, and I’m so glad that I’ve been able to help you with knowledge for your project!