Ibn Battuta — "I was given a girl slave as a gift, and she was very beautiful."
I was given a girl slave as a gift, and she was very beautiful.
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More from Ibn Battuta
"The people of this city are very fond of music and dancing."
"The women here are not veiled, and they are not shy. They speak openly with men."
"The people of this city are very strange. They eat rice with their hands, and they do not use spoons or forks like us."
"I was given a parrot as a gift, and it could speak Arabic."
"The women of this country do not cover their heads even when they are in the house of the king. They are beautiful, and their bodies are well-proportioned."
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.