This paper takes a look at master-slave relations glimpsed through the prism of travel literature. Specific examples are drawn from the “Rihla” travel memoir of the famed 14th-century Moroccan Ibn Battuta. Analysis is rooted in the studies of Mamluk-era slave trade and frontier studies. The uniqueness of Ibn Battuta’s narrative lies in his multiple roles: the observer, buyer and user of slave women who is both the owner and story-teller. The first-person record places various women on the orbit of the fortune-seeker whose wandering career places him in the military-elite environment of Turco-Mongol courts from Egypt to India. . The focus is on the lived experience of enslaved women, frequently recent captives and first-generation slaves. After the initial dislocation caused by captivity, the women purchased by “The Traveler of the Arabs” accompanied him across countries, continents, and seas, sometimes at great peril. Travel sketches provide miniature case studies that enhance our understanding of social history and throw light on the complex dynamics of marriage, family and owner-slave relations. Ibn Battuta was not only an observer, but also beneficiary of the ongoing war, raiding, and the resulting influx of captives and slave trade in foreign women, men, and children. He was also trained as a lawyer, so we have in his case an informed slave purchaser and concubine user. Several distinctions transpire that affect behavior, mobility, gender, and ownership relations. The microcosm of Ibn Battuta’s familial establishment illustrates differences in treatment by the male head of household between free wives and slave concubines; between female and male slaves; between concubines and female servants. The Rihla as an historical source is valued for the information about the women Ibn Battuta encountered, including his learned and royal patronesses. The traveler avails himself of multiple chances to describe and discuss free and famous women. What was mobility for them and Ibn Battuta meant dislocation for the enslaved individuals. Whether in a settled environment or on the road, the women’s histories form a fluid series of individual vignettes that enrich Ibn Battuta’s portrait as husband, father, but also slave-owner, whose concubines and children were driven from country to country or from household to household by the will of their master.