A 14th-century scholar out-traveled Marco Polo by tens of thousands of miles

Ibn Battuta left Morocco in 1325 for a pilgrimage to Mecca and kept going for nearly 30 years, covering roughly 73,000 miles across North and West Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and China. He dictated his account, the Rihla, from memory after returning home, and it remains one of the richest surviving records of the 14th-century world.

— Standard historical accounts, based on the Rihla, Ibn Battuta — Travels c. 1325–1354