Journey to Mecca
| Journey to Mecca | |
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Promotional movie poster for the film
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| Directed by | Bruce Neibaur |
| Produced by |
Taran Davies Dominic Cummingham-Reid Jonathan Barker |
| Written by | Carl Knutson Bruce Neibaur Tahir Shah |
| Starring | Chems-Eddine Zinoune Hassam Ghancy Nabil Elouahabi Nadim Sawalha |
| Narrated by | Ben Kingsley |
| Music by | Michael Brook (original) |
| Cinematography | Afshin Javadi Ghasem Ebrahimian Rafey Mahmood |
| Distributed by | SK Films National Geographic |
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Release date
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Running time
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45 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English Arabic |
| Budget | $13 million |
Journey to Mecca: In the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta is an 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 in northern Morocco, in 1325, on a pilgrimage to Mecca, some 3,000 miles (over 4,800 km) to the East. The 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 travelling and covered 75,000 miles (117,000 kilometres) 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 to China", hence his further extensive travels.
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Wikipedia