WASHINGTON D.C., 23 October 2007 — Karim Chrobog still remembers the day he fell in love with the story of Ibn Battutah. More than ten years ago, the Egyptian-German student at Georgetown University stumbled upon a National Geographic article that chronicled the tale of the great 14th century Arab traveler. “It was mesmerizing,” he said, recalling that day. “I realized that this great Arab traveler was perhaps the greatest of all time, even more important than Marco Polo.”

Chrobog then spent the next two weeks poring over documents and books related to Ibn Battutah and telling friends at Georgetown the tale of the “prince of travelers” who journeyed from Morocco to China and back traversing some 75,000 miles over a period of nearly 30 years. “I was surprised to see how little Americans and even Arabs knew about Ibn Battutah. Most people reacted with blank stares when I asked them if they had heard of him.” Chrobog, whose mother hails from Egypt and father from Germany, decided then and there that he would like to spread the story of Ibn Battutah to a wider Western audience. In his free time, he began writing a script for a documentary.

“I think I neglected my studies that semester,” Chrobog laughed, “because my mind was more on Ibn Battuta than my classes.”

After graduation, Chrobog shelved his dream of making a movie about the Arab traveler. He joined Time Warner in Washington D.C, helped develop government relations strategy for company’s flagship brands such as HBO, Warner Bros, CNN and Fortune, and eventually moved to Dubai in 2005 for public relations work.

“Once I was in Dubai, the story of Ibn Battuta started coming back to me. I wondered what he would have written about Dubai and the Emirates,” Chrobog said. “I think he would have liked the place because it is so full of other travelers.”

Like many dual nationals from both the East and West, Chrobog has been troubled by the growing gap that has emerged, particularly between the Muslim world and the West, especially after the events of 9/11.

“I see Ibn Battutah as a bridge-builder for his era, but also one who could be a bridge-builder today,” Chrobog said. “Ibn Battutah traveled during a period marked by great openness, tolerance, and immense intellectual curiosity. Without worries of visas and the other hassles of today’s world, he was able to wander to some 40 countries finding abode with the countries’ rulers offering his services as an Islamic judge. As a great observer of his time, he mentally collected vast information that he then dictated before his death.”

While in Dubai, Chrobog began reviving the idea of a film about Ibn Battutah, but he wanted to give it a contemporary twist. So, he latched onto an innovative idea: He would produce a feature film, rather than a documentary, and bring it into the modern world by creating a character that would journey in the footsteps of Ibn Battutah in today’s Arab world. Chrobog’s hope for the project is that it will become the largest UAE production ever done but for a worldwide market hungry to learn more about the Arab world.

He has benefited from some early investor to develop the project from CERT in Abu Dhabi under the auspices of His Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al-Nahayan, minister of higher education and scientific research and chancellor of Higher Colleges of Technology and has already attracted interest from several top Hollywood agents to represent the film. “I want the film to show the color and complexity of today’s Arab world. I didn’t want it only to be an account of the past, because I always believed that if Western audiences were simply given the reality of today’s Arab world and the ordinary lives and hopes and aspirations of today’s Arabs, that would do more to humanize them than a thousand books or articles,” Chrobog said.

He contacted Tim Mackintosh Smith, one of the world’s foremost experts on Ibn Battutah, an Arabic-speaking British journalist based in Sana’a. They then worked together to produce a detailed treatment of Ibn Battutah that tells the tale of a Western journalist who travels in the footsteps of Ibn Battuta and, with each country he visits, his stereotypes and prejudices about the Arab world give way to a fuller, more complex appreciation of the culture and people.