Ibn Battuta, the prince of travelers, being a “great medieval reporter,” made it possible for us to discover fourteenth-century silk routes from Tangiers to China, and also the heart of West Africa. He is believed to have traveled over 117,000 kilometers, thus outdoing renowned explorers like the Sephardic Jew Benjamín de Tudela (14,000 kms in the twelfth century), the Christian Marco Polo (15,000 kms in the thirteenth century) and the Chinese Muslim admiral Zheng He (50,000 kms in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries).

This conference, to be held at Casa Árabe’s headquarters in Cordoba, will introduce the figure of Ibn Battuta and describe his contributions to knowledge of the silk roads in today’s world. Tangiers, the birthplace of this Berber explorer, a great Malikite lawyer who spoke mainly Arabic, thus becomes a point of reference for understanding today’s tourism and a model for building new teaching methods based on travel and the culture of the peoples and nations visited.

For this occasion, we will be relying on experts Robert Lanquar, Abdelaziz Benami, Mimoun Hillali and Daniel Peyron, who will introduce this historical figure, both in comparison with contemporary travelers from that era, and on the experience and new pedagogies that have transcended up to the modern today.

Speakers and the topics they will be discussing

- Robert Lanquar, PhD, a World Bank expert and former international civil servant for the UNWTO, Cordoba: Travelers on the Silk Roads in the Middle Ages, from Benjamín de Tudela to Marco Polo and Their Contemporaries: Ibn Battuta’s place among these travelers.

- Abdelaziz Benami, with a Master’s degree in Tourism and currently a PhD candidate in Territorial Marketing, is the president of the Moroccan Ibn Battuta Association and the Association of ISITT students in Tangiers: Ibn Battuta, his travels - his ‘arrihla’ - narrated by Granada scholar Ibn Yuzayy: controversies about his personality. How can we get him to form part of international cooperation on the Silk Roads?

- Mimoun Hillali, doctor of History and Geography, professor emeritus at the ISITT (Advanced International Tourism Institute of Tangiers), Tangiers, and Daniel Peyron, former managing director of the Excelia Group: Intercultural training on globalization must reflect the teachings that can be taken from the great medieval travelers, especially on the Silk Roads.  What can we learn from them today, at a time when the world faces a major pandemic and exacerbated climate change? What new teaching methods should be developed in relation with the concept of “intercultural roads”?