Mālī

The great West African empire that Ibn Battuta visited on his final major journey, during the reign of Mansa Sulayman — successor to the legendary Mansa Musa whose Hajj pilgrimage of 1324 had distributed so much gold that it temporarily crashed the gold price in Egypt. Ibn Battuta's account of Mali provides the most detailed and reliable medieval description of this powerful Muslim state: its court ceremonies, gold wealth, the genuine commitment to Islamic practice of its population, the unusual social customs (including mixed gender interaction) that he found disconcerting, and the extraordinary hospitality of its people. His visit is an irreplaceable historical document of a civilisation that left almost no comparable contemporary record in any other source.

As understood in the classical tradition of Ibn Battuta and the scholars of his school.