A native of Shiraz, he studies in Baghdad; as a youth he takes up the precarious life of a dervish because of an unhappy love affair. Having made the pilgrimage to Mecca fifteen times, he reaches India and Asia Minor on his wanderings, even becoming a prisoner of war of the Crusaders in the West. He survives fabulous adventures, and gains a superb knowledge of peoples and places. After thirty years he returns, revises his works and becomes known. He lives in and weaves a vast range of experience and brims with anecdotes, which he embellishes with proverbs and verses. His firm purpose is to edify his readers and auditors.
He lives well secluded in Shiraz to the age of 102 and is buried there. The successors of Genghis had made Iran a kingdom in its own right where it was possible to dwell in peace.