In the fourteenth century, the Arab traveler, Ibn Battuta embarked upon his famous journey around the world. In the twenty-first century, the global metropolis of Dubai commemorated this journey by opening a mall, dedicated to Ibn Battuta’s adventures. The Ibn Battuta mall is designed as a series of seven courts, each of which is executed in the architectural style of countries visited by the medieval traveler. With a focus on the Islamic world, the mall incorporates the hallmark architectural styles of several pre-modern Islamic dynasties, presenting a spectacular pastiche of classical Islamic civilization, while housing the familiar brands of the contemporary, global economy. Built by a state-owned development company, the mall utilizes the Islamic art canon to present an abridged, sanitized narrative of the “greatest hits of Islamic civilization,” for local and international consumption. This Ibn Battuta mall offers a new mode for experiencing the classical Islamic past. It translates the field of Islamic art history to a wider audience through the splendor of the mall’s decoration and didactic displays in a mission to “edutain” the audience. In doing so, it offers a mass market corollary to the burgeoning museum industry in the Gulf. While it is tempting to dismiss the mall as neo-Orientalist kitsch, this paper argues that the Ibn Battuta mall makes a more nuanced claim regarding Dubai’s identity. By recreating the travels of Ibn Battuta for modern consumption, the mall presents classical Islam not as dogmatic or insular but as a dynamic, global enterprise – just like Dubai itself. In doing so, the project situates Dubai not only as the de facto inheritor of the glories of the Islamic past but as continuing a rich tradition of Islamic globalism, one that is rooted in scientific, cultural, and capitalistic ventures, facilitated by the connectedness of the Dar al-Islam.