Travels with a Tangerine is next on my reading list. Here's a bit about the book from a review at iraquipapers.com:
Ibn Battutah, the greatest traveller of the pre-mechanical age, set out in 1325 from his native Tangier on the pilgrimage to Mecca. By the time he returned twenty-nine years later, he had visited most of the known world, travelling three times the distance Marco Polo allegedly covered. Spiritual backpacker, tireless social climber, temporary hermit and failed ambassador, he braved brigands and his own prejudices. The outcome was a monumental book on The Wonders of Wandering and the Marvels of Metropolises - in short, The Travels.
Captivated by this inquisitive, indefatigable man, Tim Mackintosh Smith, in the tradition of earlier Arab authors, set out to write a dhyal to his book - a 'tail', or continuation of the original train of writing. Travels with a Tangerine follows the first stage of the Moroccan's eccentric journey, from Tangier to Constantinople. Destinations include an Assasin castle in Syria, the Kuria Muria Islands in the Arabian Sea and some of the greatest cities of medieval Islam. Mackintosh-Smith travels both in Ibn Battutah's footsteps and in the footnotes of his text, rooting out memorabilia of the man and his age - buffalo-milk puddings, a crimean minaert, dancing dervishes and the scions of defunct dynasties.
The New York Times has just published an article about the book, Following the Path of a Medieval Arab Wanderer. (NYT requires free registration.) Fascinating.
About buying the book online:
Here's the link to Travels with a Tangerine at Amazon.com, but they say the book isn't available right now. You'll have better luck at Amazon.co.uk or at Chapters.ca.