Published: 17 June 2010
by DAN CARRIER

JOURNEY To Mecca is the story of the travels of legendary north African explorer and scholar Ibn Battuta (who is played in this film by Chems Eddine Zinoun).

Battuta lived in Morocco and then walked around 3,000 miles eastwards to Mecca. He set out in 1325 and came back home 29 years later, having gone 75,000 miles – he went through Spain, India, China, and the Maldives – and when he returned the Sultan of Morocco told him to dictate his travels, which eventually became a book called the Rihla. 

In this bio-pic, we are treated to his adventures on route as he became the best-travelled ­person in antiquity, with characters slipping in and out of the story of his personal Hajj.

This film tells the story of his life and in turn shines a light into Islamic culture that is all too often ignored. It is about peace and enlightenment, is ­beautifully shot and researched, and simply makes you forget at times you are watching a staged bio-pic – not bad.

Shot using an Imax camera, normally this technique takes the viewer into the depths of the oceans or far out to space. Instead the beauty of the world around us is enhanced – the ­terrain of mountains and deserts, skies and rivers which Battuta traversed look gorgeous.  

His life was recently the topic of a well-received BBC4 ­documentary, and you can only hope that this gorgeously shot film will take the story of a man who went further than Marco Polo to a larger ­audience.