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 Rh, and indeed almost up to the present day his accounts were received with incredulity, and he himself was regarded more as "Marco Millione" than as Marco Polo,

Extensive as were Marco Polo's travels, they were yet exceeded in extent, though not in variety, by those of the greatest of Arabian travellers, Mohammed Ibn Batuta, a native of Tangier, who began his travels in 1334, as part of the ordinary duty of a good Mohammedan to visit the holy city of Mecca. While at Alexandria he met a learned sage named Borhan Eddin, to whom he expressed his desire to travel. Borhan said to him, "You must then visit my brother Farid Iddin and my brother Rokn Eddin in Scindia, and my brother Borhan Eddin in China. When you see them, present my compliments to them." Owing mainly to the fact that the Tatar princes had adopted Islamism instead of Christianity, after the failure of Gregory X. to send Christian teachers to China, Ibn Batuta was ultimately enabled to greet all three brothers of Borhan Eddin. Indeed, he performed a more extraordinary exploit, for he was enabled to convey the greetings of the Sheikh Kawan Eddin, whom he met in China, to a relative of his residing in the Soudan. During the thirty years of his travels he visited the Holy Land, Armenia, the Crimea, Constantinople (which he visited in company with a Greek princess, who married one of the Tatar Khans), Bokhara, Afghanistan, and Delhi. Here he found favour with the emperor Mohammed Inghlak, who appointed him a judge, and sent him on an embassy to China, at first overland, but, as this was found too dangerous a route, he went ultimately from Calicut, via