Ibn Battuta — "The animals in this land are very wild. I saw a leopard once, and it was so clos…"
The animals in this land are very wild. I saw a leopard once, and it was so close I could almost touch it.
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More from Ibn Battuta
"The people of this city are very religious. They pray five times a day and fast during the month of Ramadan."
"I went on board, leaving my companions behind, and saw the Sultan of India, the most generous, courageous, and powerful of men, but without a drop of mercy in his heart."
"The Chinese are skilled in crafts, but they are not a people of religion."
"I have indeed - praise be to God - attained my desire in this world, which was to travel through the earth, and I have attained in this respect what no other person has attained to my knowledge."
"In this country, the women are beautiful, and they do not wear veils. They are skilled in spinning and weaving."
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.