Ibn Battuta — "In Constantinople, I saw a church so large it could hold ten thousand people. Th…"
In Constantinople, I saw a church so large it could hold ten thousand people. The Christians there worship idols, but their buildings are magnificent.
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More from Ibn Battuta
"The people here have a strange custom of chewing betel nuts. Their mouths are always red, and they spit everywhere. It is not very appealing."
"I saw a rhinoceros for the first time near the Indus River. It looked like a huge pig with a horn on its nose, and it was uglier than anything I had ever seen."
"The women of this country are very modest, and they cover their entire bodies."
"The women of this land are very beautiful, and they do not cover their faces, even in the presence of men."
"The animals in this land are very wild. I saw a leopard once, and it was so close I could almost touch it."
About Ibn Battuta (1304-1369)
Moroccan Muslim scholar and explorer whose Rihla (travels) covered ~75,000 miles across the Islamic world from Mali to China — the most-traveled person of the medieval world. Closely associated with Marco Polo (his Venetian counterpart, traveling 50 years earlier in the opposite direction). For an intellectual contrast, see medieval European Christian insularity, the sheltered monastic-feudal worldview of 14th-century Latin Christendom — Ibn Battuta's 30-year journey demonstrates that the 14th-century Dar al-Islam was a single intellectual ecosystem from West Africa to Beijing, while medieval Europe was still tribal and parochial. The cleanest 'connectedness vs insularity' contrast in pre-modern history — Battuta could find a familiar Maliki judge in any city from Mali to Sumatra.