Ibn Battuta — "The Chinese are a people who do not have shame, and they do not care about their…"
The Chinese are a people who do not have shame, and they do not care about their honor.
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More from Ibn Battuta
"I saw a man who had two heads, and another who had three legs, and another who had a hand like an elephant's trunk."
"The people of this city are mean and stingy, and they are not generous."
"The Sultan of this land is a generous man, but he has a strange habit of giving gifts of old clothes and worn-out shoes."
"I saw a fish in this land that had legs and could walk on land. It was a most extraordinary creature."
"The houses in this land are made of mud and straw, and they are very small. I had to bend over to enter them."
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.