Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta was born in Tangier in the 1300s. At the age of 21, he left home and then spent the next 30 years traveling throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe. It is estimated that he covered about 75,000 miles. Upon his return to Tangier, he dictated an account of his travels, called the Travels of Ibn Battuta.
The Egyptian Nile surpasses [goes beyond] all rivers of the earth in sweetness of taste, length of course, and utility [usefulness]. No other river in the world can show such a continuous series of towns and villages along its banks, or a basin so intensely cultivated. Its course is from South to North, contrary to [unlike] all the other great rivers. One extraordinary thing about it is that it begins to rise in the extreme hot weather at the time when rivers generally diminish [get smaller] and dry up, and begins to subside just when rivers begin to increase and overflow. The river Indus resembles it in this feature. The Nile is one of the five great rivers of the world, which are the Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, Syr Darya, and Amu Darya; five other rivers resemble these, the Indus, which is called Panj Ab, the river of India which is called Gang—it is to it that the Hindus go on pilgrimage, and when they burn their dead they throw the ashes into it, and they say that it comes from Paradise—the river Jun in India, the river Itil in the Qipchaq steppes, on the banks of which is the city of Sara, and the river Saru in the land of Cathay. … Some distance below Cairo the Nile divides into three streams, none of which can be crossed except by boat, winter or summer. The inhabitants [people] of every township have canals led off the Nile; these are filled when the river is in flood and carry the water over the fields.