[عبدالله الخطيب]

Journey to Mecca

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJSmn6ITBMs




[grade="00008B FF6347 32CD32 4B0082"]Journey to Mecca[/grade]: In the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta is an award-winning IMAX ("giant screen") dramatised documentary film charting the first real-life journey made by the Islamic scholar Ibn Battuta from his native Morocco to Mecca for the Hajj (Muslim pilgrimage), in 1325


The 20 year old Muslim religious law student Ibn Battuta (1304–1368), whose full name was Abu Abdullah Muhammed Ibn Abdullah Al Lawati Al Tanji Ibn Battuta, set out from Tangier, a city of northern Morocco, in 1325, heading on a pilgrimage to Mecca, some 3,000 miles (over 4,800 km) to the East. This journey took him 18 months to complete and along the way he met with misfortune and adversity including attack by bandits, rescue by Bedouins, fierce sand storms and dehydration

Ibn Battuta spent a total of 29 years and 75,000 miles (117,000 kilometres) journeying before he finally returned home
He travelled "further than any writer before him.. covering most of the known world", through Africa, Spain, India, China and the Maldives

On Ibn Battuta's return, the Sultan of Morocco requested that he relate his experiences, and this was to become what the Saudi Gazette referred to as "one of the world's most famous travel books", the Rihla.. Voyage


With narration by Ben Kingsley, the film, which is "bookended" by scenes from the contemporary Muslim pilgrimage chronicles the first 18 month-long leg of Ibn Battuta's journey, to Mecca. It was filmed in Morocco and Saudi Arabia in English and Arabic, with Berber in the background

On the way to Mecca, riding alone on horseback, Ibn Battuta was held up by bandits, robbed and nearly killed, but when the leader of the bandits realized that he was a pilgrim, feeling ashamed, he offered to escort Ibn Battuta to Egypt (for a fee). It was a difficult journey by camel across the desert and they were faced with fierce sandstorms, before taking to boats to navigate the Nile. Reaching Egypt, he handed a letter given to him by a friend to a Sheikh, and based on a Hadith (an oral tradition) of the Prophet Muhammed, he was advised "to seek knowledge even if he had to go to far away places", hence his further extensive travels

Ibn Battuta had intended to continue his journey to Mecca by sea, via the port of ‘Aydhab on the Red Sea, but war and the dangers that posed made him travel by land through Damascus instead, joining a 10,000-strong caravan of fellow pilgrims along the way, staying with them until they finally reach their destination, Mecca