This volume comprises a translated portion of Ibn Battuta's (1304–68) famous fourteenth-century travels from Morocco to the Far East translated by the late Professor Noel King (d. 2009) and edited with an introduction by his friend and one-time student A.M. Butters recently of the University of Turku, Finland. The editor briefly introduces Ibn Battuta to the reader who is perhaps unfamiliar with both the man and his adventures. He then relates Professor King's own involvement with Ibn Battuta. Together with a colleague, a translation of the last of Ibn Battuta's three decades of travel ventures, titled Ibn Battuta in Black Africa, was published in London in 1975.

The editor of the present volume writes in the Introduction that it “features a translation and commentary by Professor King of the final part of Ibn Battuta's well known travelogue (Rihla) through India, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, China and then back to the Middle East and Northern Africa in 1342–49” (p. 1). This is the only accurate description reflecting the book's title which itself includes “The Spice Islands”, now known as the Indonesian region of the Moluccas, and has little to do with the actual contents. The Table of Contents has a further version of the middle portion of the volume as containing “Sri Lanka and Ma'bar” followed by “Bengal and Assam”. Moreover, the Contents further notes the section on India as comprising pages 23–107, whereas the text between pages 78 and 107 comprises Ibn Battuta's account of the Maldives, identified in Gibb and Beckingham's fourth volume of The Travels of Ibn Battuta (1994) by a correct chapter heading, but in Butters’ edition by only a footnote.

The translated section under the heading “India”, beginning on page 23, only covers the very last days of Ibn Battuta's near-decade sojourn in India at the court of the Sultan of Delhi, Muhammad Ibn Tughluq. The Sultan had latterly commissioned Ibn Battuta with the safe delivery of a fabulous royal gift to the King of China. The venture failed utterly as the ships hired to carry the valuable goods were destroyed in port by fierce storms. Rather than test the Sultan's certain wrath, Ibn Battuta's immediate avenue of escape was to sail some ten days to the next stage of his adventures, the Maldive Islands, one of the most colourful destinations of his entire travels. And yet, it does not merit the status of a separate chapter but is merely tagged on to the chapter on India (pp. 78–107) of which the Maldives were not a part!

Apart from the confusion over place names in the book's title and table of contents, there is a further point about the contents of this particular edition. We can take seriously the editor's comment in his introduction that his master, Professor Noel, was “especially motivated to make Ibn Battuta's work more accessible to younger readers” (p. 9) and that he “tended to nitpick less about issues of historicity or scientific accuracy than other scholars” (p. 10). This volume, a small portion of the entire work, still describes enough of the experience of medieval travel and the character of Ibn Battuta himself in a manner that a younger audience of sixth formers or first year undergraduates would enjoy and benefit from. More illustrations would have been a welcome bonus.