A 700-year-old Ibn Battuta manuscript covering the celebrated traveller’s journeys through the Hejaz and the Gulf sold for close to Dh1 million at the 35th Abu Dhabi International Book Fair in September 2026.
London-based rare book dealer Peter Harrington brought the manuscript to the fair, which ran from 13 to 18 September at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre. The work preserves a substantial portion of the Rihla, Ibn Battuta’s 14th-century travel account and one of the most extensive records of medieval travel ever written.
What the Ibn Battuta manuscript contains
The manuscript covers Ibn Battuta’s travels between 1325 and 1333, opening with his departure from Tangier and moving through Cairo, Damascus, Medina and Mecca, Iraq, Persia, the Red Sea, East Africa, the Gulf, Anatolia and into Central Asia. It breaks off at his account of Nishapur in present-day Iran, corresponding to the first two volumes and the opening of the third volume of H.A.R. Gibb’s four-volume English translation.
Among its most discussed sections is one of only three major medieval firsthand accounts of the Hajj, preceded only by those of Nasir Khusraw and Ibn Jubayr. Ibn Battuta also provides what scholars consider the first description of the southern Gulf following the rise of New Hormuz in 1300. The text records visits to Qalhat and Niswa in Oman, Kalba and Khor Fakkan in present-day Sharjah, and pearl fishing off the coasts of Bahrain and Qatif.
Only seven complete or incomplete copies of the Rihla are known to survive worldwide. The earliest, an incomplete autograph manuscript by Ibn Battuta’s scribe Ibn Juzayy, is dated 757H (1356–7 CE) and is held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. A further copy is held at Cambridge. The manuscript sold in Abu Dhabi is a quarto measuring 250 x 190mm, written on laid paper in Maghribi script and bound in black-brown calf with a blind-tooled panel design and gilt-stamped fleurons.
Peter Harrington’s presence at UAE book fairs
Peter Harrington has exhibited at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair since 2016 and has also taken part in the Sharjah International Book Fair. The dealer is a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association, LAPADA, and the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, a network spanning 37 countries.
Previous items brought to the UAE by the dealership include a First Folio of Shakespeare valued at Dh20.8 million, the Rothschild collection of explorer Richard Burton’s works priced at Dh9.2 million, and a manuscript of Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine priced at Dh464,550.
The 35th edition of the fair was organised by the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre, part of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, under the theme ‘Turn the Page, Read the World’. According to the Emirates News Agency (WAM), the 35th edition brought together exhibitors from 95 countries.
