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
"I was once offered a camel as a gift, but I declined, for I had no place to keep it."
"The people of this country are very clean, but they are not religious."
"The Chinese use paper money, which is the strangest thing I have ever seen. A man can carry around his entire wealth in his sleeve!"
"I saw a bird that was as large as a camel, and it had a long neck."
"The people of this city are very superstitious. They believe in evil spirits and carry charms to ward them off."
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.