Ibn Battuta — "The people of this city are very religious. They pray five times a day and fast …"
The people of this city are very religious. They pray five times a day and fast during the month of Ramadan.
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More from Ibn Battuta
"I saw in this city many things that are contrary to our religion."
"I was once offered a princess in marriage in this land, but I declined, for I was already married and had a long journey ahead of me."
"The children in this land run around naked, even in the marketplace. It is a strange sight to behold."
"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."
"The Chinese are skilled in crafts, but they are not a people of religion."
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.