Özbeg Khan

Within days, he has found the small Muslim quarter of the city, has prayed in its mosque, has begun making the inquiries that will carry him onward into the territory of the Golden Horde proper.

And it is here, in these final preparations, that he first hears the name that will define the coming months of his journey, Ozbeg Khan, ruler of the Golden Horde, a Mongol prince four generations removed from Genghis Khan himself, who converted to Islam in his youth and has since made the faith the settled religion of his court, even as many of his subjects on the open steppe continue to follow the old shamanic ways or Christianity or nothing at all, in a tolerance that seems to Ibn Battuta both admirable and slightly bewildering.

The journey from Kaffa toward the Khan's camp takes him, for the first time, out onto the open steppe, and it is here that his account slows down, lingers, as though he understands he has entered a landscape unlike anything he will otherwise encounter in his life.

The land flattens in every direction until the horizon becomes a perfect circle around him, broken only by the low-mounded burial sites of peoples long vanished, and by the vast herds of horses that seem, at a distance, like shifting patches of shadow on the grass.

He learns to sleep with his water skin inside his clothing, against his body, lest it freeze solid by morning.

He learns that a face left exposed to the wind for too long can lose feeling entirely, can turn white and numb in a way that frightens him the first time he notices it happening to his own cheek, and he begins wrapping his face as the Tatars do, leaving only a narrow slit for his eyes.

It is in this state, half frozen, awed, increasingly reliant on the kindness of people whose language he barely speaks and whose customs he is only beginning to understand, that Ibn Battuta finally approaches the encampment of Ozbeg Khan himself.

He has been told to expect a large gathering.