The Hall of a Thousand Columns: Hindustan to Malabar with Ibn Battutah [Paperback]

'This is his first venture into India but he comes upon the scene like a breath of fresh air.' (Charles Allen, author of Duel in the Snows 20041027)

'Esoteric, raunchy, hilarious, erudite and transporting, The Hall of a Thousand Columns is a marvellous traveller's tale like no other. I sense that Ibn Battutah has finally met his match.' (Eric Hansen 20041208)

'Tim Mackintosh-Smith has recreated, with enviable intimacy and elegance, the extraordinary life and times of the greatest traveller of pre-modern times.' (Pankaj Mishra, author of The Romantics and 20041101)

'Funny, cultured, humane and highly idiosyncratic' (Barnaby Rogerson, Literary Review 20050301)

'Few writers have the talent to pull off a notable trilogy in any genre . . . Mackintosh-Smith's is not in doubt . . . Rich and fascinating' (Sunday Times 20050301)

'With his hallmark combination of irreverence and empathy, Mackintosh-Smith . . . has confected a curiously addictive blend of history, travel and jokes . . . an engaging portrait of modern-day India - the charm, humour and quirkiness' (Guardian 20050320)

'A book that travels in time as well as in space . . . Intersperses dizzying glimpses of 14th-century Islamic court life with [the author's] own comic attempts to navigate modern-day India' (Daily Mail 20050416)

'Mixing Ibn Battutah's account with his own encounters and journeys, Mackintosh-Smith creates an enchanting text.' (Ziauddin Sardar, Independent 20050408)

'This is his first venture into India but he comes upon the scene like a breath of fresh air.' (Charles Allen 20050621)

'A deft use of language, anecdote, scholarship and a daunting appreciation for all that is wonderful and absurd in the world. Esoteric, raunchy, hilarious, erudite and transporting, The Hall of a Thousand Columns is a marvellous traveller's tale like no other. I sense that Ibn Battutah has finally met his match.' (Eric Hansen 20050611)

'Tim Mackintosh-Smith has recreated, with enviable intimacy and elegance, the extraordinary life and times of the greatest traveller of pre-modern times.' (Pankaj Mishra, author of The Romantics and 20050312)

'A rich texture of multiple perception . . . Beneath this funny, cultured, humane and highly idiosyncratic travelogue there is a darkly tragic theme. For interwoven with the real-time journey of Mackintosh-Smith through India is an enquiry into the nature of Islam in India'

(Barnaby Rogerson, Literary Review 20051215)

'A first-rate travel book, enlivened by the author's erudition, subtle humour, and sheer enthusiasm for his subject' (Traveller )

'Few writers have the talent to pull off a notable trilogy in any genre . . . [Mackintosh-Smith's] talent is not in doubt. . . . The author appears as an enthusiastic researcher, a thirsty drinker, and a traveller who allows little to deter him from his path . . . Rich and fascinating' (Anthony Sattin, Sunday Times )

'With his hallmark combination of irreverence and empathy, Mackintosh-Smith ... has confected a curiously addictive blend of history, travel and jokes. But above all, he engages with ideas, and his aim is that of the novelist - to send a bucket down into the subconscious.' (Guardian Weekly )

'Wisecracking . . . One of the most enjoyable things about Mackintosh-Smith's narrative is the way it intersperses dizzying glimpses of 14th-century Islamic court life with his own comic attempts to navigate modern-day India. A book that travels in time as well as in space' (Daily Mail )

'Mixing Ibn Battutah's account with his own encounters and journeys, Mackintosh-Smith creates an enchanting text . . . This is an engrossing book' (Ziauddin Sardar, Independent )

'An engaging portrait of modern-day India - the charm, humour, quirkiness and the way in which the country constantly juxtaposes the extraordinary with the mundane'

(Guardian )

'The wellspring of his writing is his profound immersion in a Muslim culture . . . the strength of his work derives from his position as both insider and outsider in the Arab world . . . Mackintosh-Smith is in that same learned yet good-humoured tradition [as Leigh Fermor]'

(Daily Telegraph )

'An engaging homage to one of travel writing's founding fathers'

(Henry Day. London Review of Books )

'They make, despite the dividing centuries, a good team ... This is a journey across time as much as land' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'A gripping read and a fitting testament to the Prince of Travellers’ --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'This is his first venture into India but he comes upon the scene like a breath of fresh air.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'A first-rate travel book, enlivened by the author's erudition, subtle sense of humour, and sheer enthusiasm for his subject.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'You really must read...: Rich and fascinating.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

‘A book that travels in time as well as in space’ --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'Few writers have the talent to pull off a notable trilogy in any genre...Mackintosh-Smith's is not in doubt.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

‘Mixing Ibn Battutah’s account with his own encounters and journeys, Mackintosh-Smith creates an enchanting text.’ --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

All the best armchair travellers are sceptics. Those of the fourteenth century were no exception: for them, there were lies, damned lies, and Ibn Battutah's India.



Born in 1304, Ibn Battutah left his native Tangier as a young scholar of law; over the course of the thirty years that followed he visited most of the known world between Morocco and China. Here Tim Mackintosh-Smith retraces one leg of the Moroccan's journey -- the dizzy ladders and terrifying snakes of his Indian career as a judge and a hermit, courtier and prisoner, ambassador and castaway. From the plains of Hindustan to the plateaux of the Deccan and the lost ports of Malabar, the author reveals an India far off the beaten path of Taj and Raj.



Ibn Battutah left India on a snake, stripped to his underpants by pirates; but he took away a treasure of tales as rich as any in the history of travel. Back home they said the treasure was a fake. Mackintosh-Smith proves the sceptics wrong. India is a jewel in the turban of the Prince of Travellers. Here it is, glittering, grotesque but genuine, a fitting ornament for his 700th birthday. (20041101)

Tim Mackintosh-Smith studied Classical Arabic at Oxford. At the age of 21, he headed east for the real Arabia. For the past 17 years, he has lived in the Yemeni capital, San'a - a place which has missed out on many of the more awful aspects of the post-medieval period. His first book, Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land, won the 1998 Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph Travel Book Award and his next book Travels with a Tangerine was critically acclaimed. (20050301)