Ingrid Bejarano Escanilla

Architect and builder by profession, Ibn al-Shaykh of Málaga wrote the most accurate description known of Egypt’s famous mariner’s sentinel— in what was essentially a primer for children, where it went unnoticed for nearly 800 years.

Over his 90-year lifetime, this chronicler of fact and unabashed fancy trekked, sailed, caravanned, studied and traded from the far Arab West to the northern- and easternmost reaches of the 12th-century Islamic world.