Ibn Battuta — "The people here have a strange custom of greeting each other by rubbing noses. I…"
The people here have a strange custom of greeting each other by rubbing noses. It was quite an experience to get used to.
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More from Ibn Battuta
"The people of this city are very skilled in craftsmanship. They make beautiful pottery and intricate textiles."
"The women of this land wear so many ornaments that they jingle when they walk. It is quite a noisy affair!"
"The women of this country are very beautiful, and they wear silk clothes, but they are not veiled."
"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."
"In the Sahara, I saw a man who claimed to be 350 years old. He looked like a dried-up lizard, but the locals believed him."
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.