With the city overview of Mardin in Turkey, published by us today, we have just come to the end of the second phase of the Journeyed Cities of Ibn Battuta. From Mardin he went back to perform Hajj and in fact stayed there for more than three years before embarking on his next travels. The next phase was probably the most adventurous phase of his travels! If you have not done so yet, grab a translation of his "Rihla", it is really worth reading.
In the first part of the journey from Tangiers in Morocco, he covered cities in the regions of the present day Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Gaza, Jerusalem, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. After doing his first Hajj he proceeded to explore Iraq, Iran and two Turkish cities on the border of Iraq and Syria.
The interesting twist is that the Journeyed cities series of Ibn Batutta that we launched on the 15th December 2010, seem to coincide with most of these cities and countries undergoing sweeping changes right now.
In a few months time, we probably will need to adjust some of the city guides that we have published for these cities. The following was the only mention of the Tahrir square in our Cairo city overview; we published some time ago!
"In the center of the city in MidanTahrir is the Egyptian Museum, housing historic artifacts. About a kilometer from the MidanTahrir is the Abdeen Palace"
I am sure any new travel guide to Cairo will have something more to say about this Historic Square. What is more interesting is that the next country Ibn Batutta will take us is Yemen! We will Insha Allah start with Yemeni City overviews soon.
In 2009, at the World Travel Mart in London, Egypt launched its "Egypt: Where it all Begins" campaign to emphasize its place as the cradle of civilization!. That slogan will probably have a new meaning very soon. This campaign replaced the earlier one which was "The Gift of the Sun".
Among the above mentioned countries, Egypt and Morocco were two of the "Crescentrating's top 10 Halal Friendly Holiday Destinations for 2011". There is now one more reason to visit Egypt; help revive their economy when everything settles down to a new beginning.
Let us pray that peace and prosperity will return to this region soon!
