The Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta, who visited Constantinople towards the end of 1332, mentions in his memoirs having met Andronikos III.

* 1304 – Ibn Battuta, Arabian explorer ( d. c. 1368 )

Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta left vivid descriptions of the empire.

(, ), or simply Ibn Battuta (), also known as Shams ad-Din ( February 25, 1304 – 1368 or 1369 ), was a Berber Muslim Moroccan explorer, known for his extensive travels, accounts of which were published in the Rihla ( lit.

Ibn Battuta was born into a Berber family of Islamic legal scholars in Tangier, Morocco, on 25 February 1304, during the reign of the Marinid dynasty.

In June 1325, at the age of twenty-one, Ibn Battuta set off from his hometown on a hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca, a journey that would take sixteen months.

For safety, Ibn Battuta usually joined a caravan to reduce the risk of an attack by wandering Arab Bedouin.

In the early spring of 1326, after a journey of over, Ibn Battuta arrived at the port of Alexandria, then part of the Bahri Mamluk empire.

Of the three usual routes to Mecca, Ibn Battuta chose the least-travelled, which involved a journey up the Nile valley, then east to the Red Sea port of Aydhab, Upon approaching the town however, a local rebellion forced him to turn back.

Ibn Battuta returned to Cairo and took a second side trip, this time to Mamluk-controlled Damascus.

Rather than return home, Ibn Battuta instead decided to continue on, choosing as his next destination the Ilkhanate, a Mongol Khanate, to the northeast.

An interactive display about Ibn Battuta in Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai, United Arab Emirates

On 17 November 1326, following a month spent in Mecca, Ibn Battuta joined a large caravan of pilgrims returning to Iraq across the Arabian Peninsula.

Then, instead of continuing on to Baghdad with the caravan, Ibn Battuta started a six-month detour that took him into Persia.

Ibn Battuta joined the royal caravan for a while, then turned north on the Silk Road to Tabriz, the first major city in the region to open its gates to the Mongols and by then an important trading centre as most of its nearby rivals had been razed by the Mongol invaders.

Ibn Battuta left again for Baghdad, probably in July, but first took an excursion northwards along the river Tigris, visiting Mosul, Cizre and Mardin, in modern day Iraq and Turkey.

Ibn Battuta remained in Mecca for some time ( the Rihla suggests about three years, from September 1327 until autumn 1330 ).

Ibn Battuta also mentions visiting Sana ' a, but whether he actually did so is doubtful.

From Aden, Ibn Battuta embarked on a ship heading for Zeila on the coast of Somalia.

Ibn Battuta described it as " an exceedingly large city " with many rich merchants, noted for its high quality fabric that was exported to other countries including Egypt.

After a journey along the coast, Ibn Battuta next arrived in the island town of Kilwa in present day Tanzania, which had become an important transit centre of the gold trade.

But, again, we have no real evidence on this from that quarter until the close of the ninth century A.D., when an Arabic scholar, Tabit Ibn Korra ( 836-901 ) is said to have discussed the magic square of three.

Ibn al-Haytham is said to have pretended to be mad to escape the wrath of a ruler.

* Sirat al-shaykh al-ra ' is ( The Life of Ibn Sina ), ed.

Persian poetry from Ibn Sina is recorded in various manuscripts and later anthologies such as Nozhat al-Majales.

** This is a distinguished work which stands out from, and above, many of the books and articles which have ben written in this century on Avicenna ( Ibn Sīnā ) ( A. D. 980 – 1037 ).

** This German publication is both one of the most comprehensive general introductions to the life and works of the philosopher and physician Avicenna ( Ibn Sīnā, d. 1037 ) and an extensive and careful survey of his contribution to the history of science.

is: Ibn al-Haytham

The medieval exegete Abraham ibn Ezra believed that Job was translated from another language and it is therefore unclear " like all translated books " ( Ibn Ezra Job 2: 11 ).

For Avicenna ( Ibn Sina ), for example, the a tabula rasa is a pure potentiality that is actualized through education, and knowledge is attained through " empirical familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts " developed through a " syllogistic method of reasoning in which observations lead to propositional statements which when compounded lead to further abstract concepts.

The historian Ibn Khaldun describes fiqh as " knowledge of the rules of God which concern the actions of persons who own themselves bound to obey the law respecting what is required ( wajib ), sinful ( haraam ), recommended ( mandūb ), disapproved ( makrūh ) or neutral ( mubah )".

One of the Arabic translations, ‘ Kitab ila Aglooqan fi Shifa al Amraz ’, which is extant in the Library of Ibn Sina Academy of Medieval Medicine & Sciences, is regarded as a masterpiece of Galen's literary works.

Classical hadith specialist Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani says that the intended meaning of hadith in religious tradition is something attributed to Muhammad but that is not found in the Quran.

Ibn al-Salah, a hadith specialist, described the relationship between hadith and other aspect of the religion by saying: " It is the science most pervasive in respect to the other sciences in their various branches, in particular to jurisprudence being the most important of them.

Ibn al-Salah's ʻUlum al-hadith is considered the standard classical reference on hadith studies.

While empirical investigations of the natural world have been described since classical antiquity ( for example, by Thales, Aristotle, and others ), and scientific methods have been employed since the Middle Ages ( for example, by Ibn al-Haytham, Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī and Roger Bacon ), the dawn of modern science is generally traced back to the early modern period, during what is known as the Scientific Revolution that took place in 16th and 17th century Europe.

* Ibn Taymiyyah, a Syrian Islamic jurist during the 13th and 14th centuries who is often quoted by contemporary Islamists.

Isaiah is mentioned as a prophet in Ibn kathir's Stories of the Prophets and the modern writers Muhammad Asad and Abdullah Yusuf Ali accepted Isaiah as a true Hebrew prophet, who preached to the Israelites following the death of King David.

All that is known about Ibn Battuta's life comes from the autobiographical information included in the account of his travels.

The Abbasid Caliphate at its height, in 830 ADImportant contributions were made by Ibn al-Haytham ( 965 – 1040 ), a mathematician from Basra, Iraq considered one of the founders of modern optics.

For example, it is considered very unlikely that Ibn Battuta made a trip up the Volga River from New Sarai to visit Bolghar and there are serious doubts about a number of other journeys such as his trip to Sana ' a in Yemen, his journey from Balkh to Bistam in Khorasan and his trip around Anatolia.

Built soon after the conquest of northwest Africa, the first mosque built in this region is the Great Mosque of Kairouan ( in Tunisia ) founded by the Umayyad general Uqba Ibn Nafi during the second half of the 7th century and considered as the oldest place of worship in the western Islamic world.

The 14th century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun is considered one of the greatest political theorists.

The British philosopher-anthropologist Ernest Gellner considered Ibn Khaldun's definition of government, " an institution which prevents injustice other than such as it commits itself ", the best in the history of political theory.

For example, Al-Mansur Ibn Abi Aamir, whose rule is considered to have marked the peak of power for Moorish Al-Andalus Iberia, married Abda, daughter of Sancho Garcés II of Navarra, who bore him a son, named Abd al-Rahman, and commonly known in pejorative sense as Sanchuelo ( Little Sancho, in Arabic: Shanjoul ).

He is considered the " father " of all commentaries that followed on the Talmud ( i. e., the Baalei Tosafot ) and the Tanakh ( i. e., Ramban, Ibn Ezra, Ohr HaChaim, et al.

The battle ended in a Zengid victory, and Saladin is credited to have helped Shirkuh in one of the " most remarkable victories in recorded history ", according to Ibn al-Athir, although more of Shirkuh's men were killed and the battle is considered by most sources as not a total victory.

Ibn al-Haytham ( Alhazen ), a pioneer of the scientific method who is considered to be the " Father of Modern Optics " and arguably one of the first scientists.

In particular, Ibn al-Haytham, Avicenna, Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, and Abu al-Qasim, who all flourished around the year 1000, are considered to be among the greatest scientists of the Middle Ages.

In 1242, the Arabian physician, Ibn al-Nafis, became the first person to accurately describe the process of pulmonary circulation, for which he is sometimes considered the father of circulatory physiology.

Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, considered the greatest epic of Italian literature, derived many features of and episodes about the hereafter directly or indirectly from Arabic works on Islamic eschatology: the Hadith and the Kitab al-Miraj ( translated into Latin in 1264 or shortly before as Liber Scale Machometi, " The Book of Muhammad's Ladder ") concerning Muhammad's ascension to Heaven, and the spiritual writings of Ibn Arabi.

* The Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart, from the Original Arabic Version of Bahya Ben Joseph Ibn Pakuda's al-Hidaya ila Fara ' id al-Qulub by Menahem Mansoor ( the only translation from the original Arabic and considered the best translation )

Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab advocated a popular purging of the widespread practices by Muslims being what he considered to be impurities and innovations in Islam.

From the ninth century onward, owing to Caliph al-Ma ' mun and his successor, Greek philosophy was introduced among the Arabs, and the Peripatetic school began to find able representatives among them ; such were Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina ( Avicenna ), and Ibn Rushd ( Averroës ), all of whose fundamental principles were considered as criticized by the Mutakallamin.

From the ninth century onward, owing to Caliph al-Ma ' mun and his successor, Greek philosophy was introduced among the Persians and Arabs, and the Peripatetic school began to find able representatives among them ; such were Al-Kindi, Farabi, Ibn Sina ( Avicenna ), and Ibn Rushd ( Averroës ), all of whose fundamental principles were considered as criticized by the Mutakallamin.

From the 9th century onwards, owing to Caliph al-Ma ' mun and his successor, Greek philosophy and Hellenistic philosophy were introduced among the Persians and Arabs, and the Peripatetic and Neoplatonic schools began to find able representatives among them ; such were al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Avicenna ( Ibn Sina ), and Averroes ( Ibn Rushd ), all of whose fundamental principles were considered as criticized by the Mutakallamin.

Averroism eventually led to the development of modern secularism, for which Ibn Rushd is considered as the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe.

The Ash ' ari polymath Ibn al-Haytham ( Alhacen ) is considered a pioneer of phenomenology.

Avicenna ( Ibn Sina ) is considered the father of modern medicine, for his introduction of experimental medicine and clinical trials, the experimental use and testing of drugs, and a precise guide for practical experimentation in the process of discovering and proving the effectiveness of medical substances, in his medical encyclopedia, The Canon of Medicine ( 11th century ), which was the first book dealing with experimental medicine.