Early life

Born in Valencia in 1145, then seat of an Arab emirate; Jubayr was the son of an official of a Sunni Muslim Arab family that settled in the region for several centuries (c. 740). He studied the Quran, Hadith, law and literature in particular the practice of poetry - in Granada and later became secretary to the Almohad governor of Valencia. He composed many poems in this period.

They say that under pressure from the governor, he had to drink glasses of wine in September and, to atone for his fault; he decided to undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca.
This excellent witness told of his time then his trip, which lasted 2 ½ years. He died during a pilgrimage in 1217 third on the way back to Alexandria.
It is thus of Granada in February 1183, went to Alexandria by boat, and then visit Egypt, Arabia and goes through the Red Sea, is still nine months to Mecca. He returned across Iraq [spent five days in Baghdad], Syria, the Holy Land and Sicily (where he was shipwrecked near Messina). It is in Andalusia in April 1185. It will make a second trip shorter in the East (1189-1191). In 1217, he returned to Alexandria where he teaches and died the same year.

On 24 February 1183, he embarked on a Genoese ship to Alexandria, from off the Balearic Islands and the west coast of Sardinia. On board, he learns the fate of 80 Muslims - men, women and children - kidnapped in North Africa and about to be sold as slaves. Between Sardinia and Sicily, the ship is caught in a fierce storm. He said the Italians and Muslims on board, experienced sailors, they "all agreed to say he never seen such a storm of their lives." After the storm, they exceeded Sicily and Crete, before heading south and cross the North African coasts. On 26 March they arrived at

Ibn Jubayr was born in Andalusia in 1145 into a family of Arab notables. He received a careful education, scientific and literary, and was appointed secretary of the governor of Grenada. On 3 February 1184, he went to the pilgrimage to Mecca. On 25 April 1185, Ibn Jubayr was back with the journey he wrote.

Ibn Jubayr likes to travel and travel. He made three voyages to the East:

1 - The first in the year 579: starting from Granada to Ceuta and took the sea to Alexandria, then went to Mecca from Jeddah then he visited Medina, Kufa, Baghdad, Mosul, Aleppo and Damascus. Then he took the sea to Sicily on his way back to Granada in 581.
This trip lasted two years during which he recorded his observations with the eye of a spectator and attentive in his diary known as: Tadhkira bi-Akhbar 'an al-Asfar ittifâqât (Relation of adventures that occur during the travel).
And then follow this path, the second and third trip.

2 - The second trip was decided after they are received the news on the recovery of Jerusalem from the Crusaders by Sultan Saladin Ayyoub the year 583. The trip lasted a year.

3 - The third was his journey after the death of his wife, he loved to love, a trip to sublimate the pain of bereavement. It starts from Sebta to Mecca where he stayed for a period of time, and then he leaves for Jerusalem Cairo and then Alexandria, where he died the year 614.

Ibn Jubayr has only talked about the first trip.