Talk with Tim Mackintosh-Smith and Barnaby Rogerson September 7, 2010

Ibn Batuttah of Tangier travelled the known world to its limits in the fourteenth century. Seven centuries on, Tim Mackintosh-Smith’s passionate pursuit of this medieval traveller takes him on a zigzag itinerary across time and space, from Zanzibar to the Alhambra (via the Maldives, Sri Lanka, China, and Guinea). The book’s climactic conclusion resolves his quest for the man who out-travelled Marco Polo by a factor of three, who spent his days with saints and sultans and his nights with an intercontinental string of slave-concubines. Landfall is the final book in Mackintosh- Smith’s trilogy on the travels of Ibn- Battutah. The two earlier books, Travels with a Tangerine and The Hall of a Thousand Columns, were received to huge critical acclaim and his journeys have also been turned into a major BBC television series. For the past twenty-five years he has lived in the Yemeni capital San’a, in a tower-house on top of the ancient Sabaean city, next to the modern donkey market. Barnaby Rogerson is a leading British travel author and publisher, whose books include Meetings with Remarkable Muslims and The Last Crusaders.